As Toei Studio’s animation staff labored through their final month on Be Forever Yamato, the publicity machine ramped up with major media coverage and the first live events of the summer. On the other side of the planet, Star Blazers was winning hearts and creating a groundswell of its own. Here’s a full view of this exciting month.
The runup to summer 1980 was deceptively quiet on the surface, but momentum was building like a freight train underneath as Be Forever moved into the second half of production. It culminated in a press conference that sounded the starting gun on the biggest promo campaign in anime history.
The new decade dawned with the making of a new Yamato adventure that would be just one part of Academy Studio’s busiest year of them all. While the production team got started, a steady flow of media kept fans at bay. But…for how long? Here we examine the state of Yamato world for the first quarter of 1980.
This brings us to the halfway point between The New Voyage and Be Forever. With Space Carrier Blue Noah off and running, the next new Academy TV series was announced, accompanied by another rush of riches that closed out a very eventful year and gave way to an even bigger one.
As summer merged into fall, the world of Yamato was only getting bigger in the wake of The New Voyage, and Office Academy studio was only getting busier. The American premiere of Star Blazers and the Japanese premiere of Blue Noah were just part of the picture. Here’s everything that happened in these productive months.
July 1979 delivered a big one-two punch with both of the feature films returning to theaters and The New Voyage premiering on TV. It was no accident that these things reinforced each other, making this the third straight summer of Yamato fever.
This stretch of time can be described as a gap, since it marked the period between the Yamato 2 finale and the broadcast premiere of The New Voyage. Such gaps are replete throughout Yamato history, but as we all know they are often rich in news, media, and merch.
The spring months of 1979 saw the epic conclusion of Yamato 2 and the first word about the next adventure. A continuing flood of media still gave everyone plenty to talk about. Here we see everything that happened in March and April. [2 pages]
As Yamato 2 moved into its post-Telezart phase with four very compelling episodes, development continued on The New Voyage, media coverage intensified, and new books kept the world expanding. Pile on more model kits, an unusual LP, and more, and it added up to a very rich month.
At the dawn of 1979, Yoshinobu Nishizaki’s Office Academy studio was on the highest trajectory ever seen in the TV anime industry. He took Office Academy into expansion mode, organized around merchandising and new anime productions. The first of these began in January, a little thing we now call The New Voyage.
As 1978 drew to a close, Yamato fever showed no signs of abating. Farewell would soon be back for revival screenings, Yamato 2 approached its halfway point on TV, and new merch continued to appear, especially on the music side. It all made December a month to remember.
Though Farewell to Yamato was no longer in theaters in November 1978, it continued to dominate the discourse, both in media and merchandising. But it was no longer the entire story, as demonstrated by the increasingly divergent episodes of Yamato 2 on TV. Here’s everything the month had to offer…
Imagine that it’s July 1977, two months after Star Wars exploded into the world. Now, without buying a movie ticket, you’ll get to watch an expanded version play out over 26 episodes on TV. That mind-blowing scenario was pretty much what fans were getting when Yamato 2 took to the airwaves. And you bet it sparked a lot of activity…
The month following the incredible box office success of Farewell to Yamato was both a victory lap and the beginning of a marathon. As new media coverage and publishing rolled out to feed a grateful public, production began on Yamato 2 and a major step was taken on the road to Star Blazers.
This was the month when all the suspense finally broke. Farewell to Yamato destroyed all previous box office records for anime films (including that of Yamato itself) with a fresh, uncompromised, top-notch production. It was a moment no one could have foreseen four years earlier.
The final month before the Farewell to Yamato premiere was a steady climb of excitement and anticipation as film production plowed through its final stages and publicity ratcheted up to maximum. Here’s what a full-blown case of Yamato Fever looked like…
As 1978 approached its midpoint, Yamato fever was heating up. The publicity campaign was just starting to ramp up, but production was running at full speed as the premiere date loomed ever closer. Here’s everything that brought us to the end of June, a period that included major announcements and the birth of anime journalism.
The new year brought new products, the birth of the official fan club, continued media attention, and a trickle of news about Yamato Part 2 that only vaguely hinted at the rush of preproduction activity behind the scenes. Here is an extensive record for the busy first quarter of 1978.
If we were to name this specific stretch of Yamato history, the appropriate word would probably be “Afterglow.” The feature film was still burning up the box office after three months, media coverage was still very active, and important new things arrived to firmly plant Yamato‘s flag into the soil of the future.
The explosion of diverse media coverage continued well after the August premiere of the Yamato movie brought anime into Japan’s mainstream entertainment culture. October 1977 felt like a collective breath of air after the avalanche of September, but the next wave was coming.
As summer gave way to fall, Yamato‘s fortunes just kept on climbing in an unprecedented increase in demand. Media attention widened and deepened as it became increasingly obvious that Yamato had evolved from fad to phenom and was here to stay.
The whole world changed for the better in August 1977, and that is not an exaggeration. With the August 8 premiere of Space Battleship Yamato, the entire anime industry in Japan experienced a seismic shift that still gives us aftershocks today. In this report we’ll go through that pivotal month one step at a time and see how the future began.
It is no exaggeration to state that the period covered in this report was the most pivotal time in all of Yamato history. The movie that would change everything was already in production as the year began and there was low-level buzz about it, but getting that movie in front of the public was the key to everything that followed.
1976 was a slow year for Yamato. As “super robots” took over the anime landscape, Yamato fans probably despaired that their show was over forever. In fact, the most important action was happening under the surface, destined to change everything. But for now, let’s see what got Yamato fans through this year of dim prospects.
Even before the first TV series concluded, the next and most important phase of Yamato history began: the “redemption year.” Its driver was an unexpected force that would slowly but steadily change everything for the better. The name of that force was “fandom.” In 1975, that force took shape for the first time.
This series answers the question, “What if Cosmo DNA existed in real time during the production years?” Everything is chronicled in the order it all happened, bringing history to life in a whole new way. First up: the prehistory of Yamato all the way up to the end of “origin year” 1974. [2 pages]
