Interview with General Director Harutoshi Fukui and Director Naomichi Yamato

A carefully crafted story and stunning visual beauty

Here’s what’s interesting about Be Forever Yamato REBEL 3199!

This new work by writer Harutoshi Fukui reflects the current era while placing importance on the theme of the original work that has continued since the beginning. This is the first time it will be visualized by Director Yamato.

Text by Ryosuke Kobayashi / Photos by Tomoaki Tsuruta (WPP)

See the online version of this article here

Harutoshi Fukui

Born November 15, 1968 in Tokyo. After dropping out of Chiba University of Commerce, he worked for a security company while writing Twelve Y. O., which won the Edogawa Rampo Award. He won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award and the Japan Adventure Fiction Association Grand Prize for Another Nation’s Aegis. He won the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Newcomer Award and the Japan Adventure Fiction Association Grand Prize for Lorelei at the End of the War. Both of these works were later made into films. He has a deep knowledge of Gundam, and wrote the novel Mobile Suit Gundam UC.

See his credits at Anime News Network here

Naomichi Yamato

Born November 1, 1973, in Yamaguchi Prefecture. He directed the 2016 TV anime Macross Delta: Passionate Walküre, and served as assistant director for Macross Delta: Absolute Live!!!!!!. After directing episodes of Yamato 2205, he made his directorial debut on Be Forever Yamato REBEL 3199. His name is written in katakana, but it is actually his real name.

See his credits at Anime News Network here

A collaboration between a rare storyteller and Director Yamato

The general director of this work is Harutoshi Fukui, who was in charge of the series composition for Yamato 2202 and Yamato 2205. He is part of the “target generation” that has been following Yamato‘s works ever since he watched the movie Farewell to Yamato when he was in the fourth grade of elementary school.

In 1998, he won the Edogawa Rampo Award for his novel Twelve Y. O., and since then, Another Nation’s Aegis and Lorelei at the End of the War have become hits one after another. Known as a writer and a storyteller of rare talent, he has taken on a remake of a work based on the movie Be Forever Yamato and the TV anime Yamato III.

“The original Be Forever is one of the works that pushed the boundaries of hand-drawn anime, so I felt that there was no point in trying to top that. We could use today’s technology to create the same kind of artwork, but to be honest, I focused more on the development of the story this time.”

Be Forever Yamato was released in 1980. Not only was it made using the best anime technology of the time, it also used the “Warp Dimension” method, which greatly expands the field of view as the story progresses, and Fukui says, “Even now, it’s amazing to watch, and the animation is like an out-of-place artifact.”

Director Naomichi Yamato took on the challenge with modern visual technology. “It’s a difficult project, and I didn’t just jump into it lightly, I was prepared. I knew it was natural that I would have difficulties, but I accepted it with the intention of doing my best.”

Kenji Yasuda, who directed Yamato 2205, the previous work before the remake, is a close friend who worked with Mr Yamato on the Macross Delta series. Yasuda approached him to participate in The New Voyage. And this time, it was Fukui who recommended him as the director.

“He did two episodes for each chapter of the previous series, and when I saw how he worked, I thought, ‘I definitely don’t want to let this guy go!’ When we were deciding who to choose as the next director, I recommended him.”

The reason is that he is a hard worker, Fukui explained. “I’ve worked with many directors up until now, but Director Yamato is the best. Because he’s a hard worker. He’s willing to put in the effort to go farther than I expect he will.”

“Besides,” Fukui added, laughing, “his name is unforgettable.”

This will be Yamato’s first directorial work.

“The first proposal for Yamato was made in 1973, one year before the series aired and just a few months before I was born. We were born at the same time and grew up in the same way. I feel a sense of kinship with this work, and at the same time, it’s a symbol that I admire.”

Left: The white anchor mark added to the bow is a change preserved from the original Be Forever, and this work follows that one closely. Although it cannot be seen in this image, the three lines are also painted around the main guns.

Right: Countless unidentified enemy soldiers descend from the sky to the new capital city on Earth. Yuki Mori is the first to notice their presence. The story progresses by following the original closely.

The reason for the “insane amount of work”

According to Fukui, the main reason for hiring the hard-working Yamato as a director is that, “I knew before we started that 3199 would be the most difficult series ever.”

“The hardest part is that, in previous stories, once the journey began, the main setting was just inside Yamato. But this time, one of the most important characters will remain on Earth. So the story on Earth and the story inside Yamato will be told in parallel. Yamato will also stop by various places, which means that the setting will be different for almost every episode…”

Those who have seen the previous works will probably have some idea of what he means by “one of the most important characters.”

“What I mean by the setting being different is that we can’t reuse the same images. We have to create new background boards each time. It’s natural for a single movie, but doing that for a 26-episode series is insane. So we’re trying to do our best this time, and the biggest challenge is the sheer volume of work involved.”

The original Be Forever was a two-and-a-half-hour movie, but it also incorporates many elements from Yamato III, which aired weekly on TV in 1980 as the sequel to Be Forever. To begin with, these two works have completely different stories.

“Rather than fusing the stories, I created it by embedding the theme that has continued since the first original work. In that way, the framework is naturally decided from the beginning, and the task is how to overlap it with the original. I took parts from Be Forever and Yamato III and fleshed out the framework. That’s the process.”

Rather than creating such a story and then leaving the rest of the work to Director Yamato, Fukui made various requests regarding the creation of the images.

“There are shots here and there where Fukui says ‘follow the original work,’ but it’s not easy to reproduce what the geniuses of the time created one by one.”

From such a statement, Director Yamato‘s struggles are revealed.

“The overall flow is very complicated, and I have to make adjustments after each creation. I don’t just make it myself, I have to ask various staff members to do it, and the staff members are from different fields all mixed together, so they have to adjust to each other’s work as well.”

This is probably what Fukui defines as a hard worker. The attention to detail and hard work of both Fukui and Yamato are packed into this work.

Regarding the direction, Director Yamato said, “I was grateful that Mr. Fukui didn’t give me top-down orders, but listened to each of our ideas and asked us, ‘How about this method?’ I was grateful that he thought about various methods.”

The original Be Forever is the story of Yamato, but also the story of a woman traveling with Susumu Kodai. Those who have seen it should know which scene this corresponds to. And the woman with the big eyes on the right is not Yuki Mori, but another important female character. Sanada is reflected in her eye.

What is the feeling that is no longer a fantasy?

We asked Mr. Fukui about the story, which he said he was particularly concerned about.

“The first Yamato came out in a time when children who never knew war had reached their teens and twenties. Now we’re daring to make Yamato, which is a relic of war, again. As for the story, you’d think it would be, ‘Japan lost, and the Battleship Yamato sank, but this time we won a great victory in a space war. Hurrah!’ But it’s not. It ends with, ‘We should have loved each other to begin with.’ For Japan, where there was no war education at that time, that feeling of regret at the end had a huge impact. It’s what the first generation of postwar people came up with when they were able to make things themselves.”

This is probably “The theme that has continued since the first original work” Mr. Fukui talked about earlier. So, what kind of era does he think we are living in now, 50 years later?

“We’ve overcome obstacles like the ‘bubble collapse’ and the ‘earthquake’ in the last 20 years, but now we’re seeing AI and other things that could take away people’s jobs, and we’re in an era that’s been depicted in science-fiction. We really have to take that seriously. We’re in an era where maintaining the humanity that was previously thought to be universal is more difficult, and where values are unstable. I never thought we’d live in such an era.”

What is the meaning of the new Yamato work being created in this context?

“We want to entrust our thoughts and feelings to Yamato, and properly convey what needs to be said. So there will be some raw parts, and it will be an ensemble drama with many characters. For example, there’s the same kind of pressure as the Corona crisis in the story, and people who watch it will think, ‘Ah, I’m in this.’ It’s written so that it applies to everyone. The first chapter is the introduction to the story, but it’s going to get deeper from here.”

Mr. Fukui also mentioned current problems happening in the world.

“These days, there’s a sense of tension because you don’t know when you’ll be drawn into a war. The Earth in Yamato‘s world is really modern Japan. There are great powers around, and they don’t hesitate to use powerful weapons, but they have a history that makes them different. In the old series, it would have been easy to say, ‘Therefore, we’re a peaceful nation, and we who wish for peace are righteous.’ But the reality is that it’s no longer that simple. I’m pretty merciless in depicting those kinds of things.”

This is one area where the film differs greatly from the original.

“The things depicted in this new work are no longer fiction, and I think there’s a feeling that it didn’t have back then.”

Detox: objectifying and evaluating the world in which you live

When reconstructing a story that everyone knows, is Mr. Fukui writing “the story he wants to see”? Or does he lean toward “the story that everyone wants to see”? Which is it this time? Which is this work?

“The things that the audience wants at a minimum are also what I want, so there may be some parts where we’re almost the same.”

As a Yamato fan, he probably understands the psychology of fans well.

“What I’m really particular about is not to lose sight of the theme from the first movie. I’m sure there will be a lot of different opinions on that.”

The first Space Battleship Yamato movie became a big hit when fans gathered signatures to make it into a movie. It grossed 2.1 billion yen, and the sequel, Farewell, grossed 4.3 billion yen. Be Forever, which followed, grossed 2.5 billion yen, but did not garner as much enthusiasm as the previous two.

“Naturally, people were expecting the same tear-jerking feeling as in Farewell. But I didn’t shed a single tear. However, both in terms of the visuals and the story, it was a film that was full of surprise boxes, so it’s a bit difficult to remake it exactly like that.”

Fukui evaluates the original as just a lot of fun, for better or worse. So this latest film adds some fun to the solid framework of the theme.

“Just like the original Be Forever, it’s fine to have a movie that’s just fun and entertaining and helps you forget the sorrows of everyday life, but on the other hand, it can also objectify what you’re seeing and doing, and remind you, ‘Oh, this is the world I’m in now.’ There is a detox that can only be achieved by doing that, and that’s also one of the important benefits of movies. In that sense, I think I can promise you the best detox.”

The latest work will show us living in the current era, and even our own position within it.

“It’s like a story that makes you take a moment to look back at yourself as you live from tomorrow onward, and that’s the story that is about to begin.”

However, this remake version is the fourth series in 12 years. Not all fans have been following the series for a long time, but Fukui has already taken that into account.

He says the film Age of Yamato was “made for those people.” Released in 2021, it compiled the first remake and Yamato 2202 as a documentary-style compilation from the perspective of one of the characters, Shiro Sanada.

Fukui, who is well acquainted with the psychology of fans, also said, “I think most people, after shedding tears at Farewell, didn’t cry a single drop at Yamato after that.”

He approached the remake with this knowledge.

“I’m going to say this now: I think everyone’s tear ducts will probably burst by the final episode.” (Laughs)

So what kind of ending awaits Yamato at the finale of the journey? To find out, you must first watch Chapter 1 of REBEL 3199. And Fukui added these words in conclusion:

“Yamato actually had a lot of female fans at the time. It’s important to bring back as many of those fans as possible, so we’re also trying to make it easy for women to watch. I hope you’ll watch it with your wife or girlfriend.”

The original was high quality in every aspect, so it seems that creating the images was extremely difficult. “It was made by people with obvious strengths, and there aren’t many works that can do this. I’d be grateful if you could enjoy the accumulation of that,” says Director Yamato.

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