One of the joys of collecting the music is that each successive reissue of the catalog over the decades has placed more of it into the hands of eager fans. That long process finally culminated with Nippon Columbia’s Yamato Sound Almanac. Here is a rundown of the first half of this milestone in Yamato music history.
Published by Office Academy, August 1978. After months of agonized anticipation, Farewell to Yamato had finally been released in movie theaters. This issue commenced with an account of the premiere and moved forward from there to examine what else was happening or about to happen in this pivotal time period.
In 1983, the saga arrived on home video at exactly the same time its finale was running in theatres. In the time since then, Yamato has been released many times over in practically every format. A review of its complete video history gives us an ideal scope through which we can view the evolution of an entire medium.
Yamato played as big a role in the home video revolution as it did in the anime revolution, showing what was possible and sparking an enormous appetite for more. And as soon as Yoshinobu Nishizaki finished making Yamato movies in 1983, he shifted gears and got started on Yamato videos. Here are the results…
When Yamato 2 appeared, it divided the fans into two camps; those who considered it an alternate version of the greatest movie ever made, and those who considered it an inferior version of the greatest movie ever made. When this issue was published, Yamato 2‘s fate was still up in the air and opinions were flying furiously.
This issue was published in April, 1979 to coincide with the conclusion of Yamato 2. The ratings were so impressive that Yoshinobu Nishizaki had already given the green light to The New Voyage. Without missing a beat, this issue jumped right from one to the other.
by Tim Eldred
Although the idea for a Yamato documentary came to me just about a year ago, it has been many years in the making. Now that the work’s behind me, I thought I’d take this moment to share with you what made it happen.
Written by a circle of fans called “The Iscandar Project.” Their work was an attempt to create a history for Star Blazers rather than Space Battleship Yamato, and this gave everyone a freedom of expression they might not have otherwise enjoyed. As you will see, this lead to some fascinating concepts. [5 pages]
At the beginning of 2008, Exec Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki had re-entered public life and Bandai Visual was preparing a remastered DVD box and model kit spearheaded by lifetime fan Hideaki Anno. Things lined up perfectly for Anno and Nishizaki to appear together. They conducted two interviews that are presented here.
