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Interestingly, the finished film plays a lot more like an Italian Space Opera than STAR WARS (which wasn't released in Japan until July of 1978, seven months after THE WAR IN SPACE bowed in Japanese cinemas)...
Although, it should be pointed out, Nakano Teruyoshi in the interview on the Discotek disc says he saw Star Wars with Tanaka Yuuko and she said that she wanted to make a movie like it. So War in Space was definitely "influenced", shall we say, by Star Wars.

The big space beast looks almost exactly like Chewbacca, after all ('cept of course for the big samurai-helmet-looking horns sticking out of his head), which couldn't be a coincidence.

I would agree though, as I said above, it played much less like a Star Wars rip-off and more like a sequel to Battle in Outer Space. I got a kick out of it.
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