YAMATO is one of my all-time favorites, which I was introduced to with the Bandai model kits being sold at a shop in Japantown, waaaay back in 1975/76. As a kid, I was fascinated with space adventures, and the evocative images on the boxes fired my imagination. Around this time, I met a another kid who had just moved to San Francisco from Tokyo, and he told me all about YAMATO, and I picked up the original Matsumoto manga shortly after that (I also picked up the three volume manga by Akira Hio).

In the Summer of 1977, the first YAMATO movie became a surprise hit at the Japanese box office (becoming the #1 domestic movie that year, and the first animated film to achieve that status), and started the Anime Boom. (BTW, STAR WARS was not released in Japan until the Summer of 1978.) While producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki was preparing the film for Japanese theaters, he also edited a version for foreign territories, which was dubbed in Los Angeles (the voice of Captain Okita was performed by none other than Marvin "Robby the Robot" Miller!). Immediately, Nishizaki started international PR, and I caught a photo and mention in Famous Monsters magazine that summer in the previews of upcoming releases, and I was excited that YAMATO was coming to America. But, I had to wait a little longer.

The film opened in England in 1978 and was covered in STARBURST magazine, but while it received heavy coverage, the review was less than flattering, criticizing the animation (not realizing it was made for television) and calling it a rip-off of STAR WARS, even though YAMATO predated Lucas' space opera by three years. The next year, I attended WorldCon in San Francisco, and the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (which I joined that weekend) was running a video room showing non-stop anime throughout the entire convention showing things that were subbed, dubbed and raw (guess where I was most of the time?). So, they screened a copy of the film, which was recorded off of Los Angeles television -- Nishizaki brokered a barter deal with one of the stations there to run the film in prime time!

Of course, in the fall of 1979, STAR BLAZERS premiered on television in major US markets (and then branched out across the country over the next year) and was covered in STARLOG magazine, which called the series "the best animated science fiction series, animated or otherwise." The rest, as they say, is history.

In 1980, we were running our second "Japanese Fantasy Film Fare," and we ran the movie version of the YAMATO 2 series (episodes 27-52 of STAR BLAZERS aka "The Comet Empire" story arc). This compilation film was created for television broadcast, and was not produced for theatrical release. This was followed by another "telefeature" based on the YAMATO III series. Both of these telefeatures were issued a few years later on Laserdisc in Japan, but have not been issued on DVD.

I am currently playing the Playstation 2 game, SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO: MEMORIES OF ISCANDAR, which RAWKS!
August Ragone
Author, EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS
Coming this fall from Chronicle Books

Director, SHOCK IT TO ME! Classic Horror Film Festival
Oct. 5-7, 2007 • Castro Theatre • San Francisco