I never said that STAR WARS wasn't an influence, but it’s not as obvious as the other, stronger, influences. THE WAR IN SPACE still has less to do with either STAR WARS or BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE, than it does with SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO (aka STAR BLAZERS) and ATRAGON. If you watch YAMATO and ATRAGON, you'll see precisely where they got everything -- excluding Chewie's cousin -- for THE WAR IN SPACE. Anyone who can't see that, or denies it, doesn't know a thing about Japanese pop culture in the late 1970s -- and that fact that the original story credit is given to a "Hachiro Jinguji", the central character from ATRAGON.

Also, with all due respect, I am afraid that I have to contradict Mr. Nakano. In late 1985, I went along with members of the fanzine "Nitto Shimbun" to Toho Studios for an interview with producer Fumio Tanaka and Teruyoshi Nakano about THE WAR IN SPACE. Nakano told us that the film went into production because of the success of YAMATO and the worldwide boxoffice for STAR WARS. Early in the planning stages -- when the film was going to be a sequel to BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE -- Nakano went to Hawaii to see STAR WARS (with Fumio and Tomoyuki "Yuko" Tanaka). This was in the summer of 1977, before production began.

In the interview on the disc, Nakano says that he saw STAR WARS in Japan, and in his home. Frankly, that's impossible. The film wasn't due for release in Japan until July of the following year, and home video recording equipment was brand new and expensive -- plus, I doubt that Fox would have let anyone have a "screener" of the film. I also believe I remember reading in the original program book for THE WAR IN SPACE (which I no longer own), about Nakano and the producers going to see STAR WARS in Hawaii. Interestingly, the main crew for ARRIVERDERCI YAMATO -- the follow-up to the first YAMATO feature -- when to Hawaii to see CLOSE ENCOUNTERS...

If was funny, after the formal interview was over, everyone was just chatting, and Fumio Tanaka asked me what I thought of THE WAR IN SPACE. Yaps! Carefully, I said that the film was very fast-paced, exciting, and had some great optical work and excellent pyrotechnics. Whew! I barely skated past on that one!

I just checked the entry for THE WAR IN SPACE in “The Complete Story of Toho Special Effects Films” (Toho Publishing, 1983); the entry for the film (pg 405) says that it was indeed patterned after YAMATO, and the title for the behind-the-scenes story is “Atragon in Space!”… FYI.
August Ragone
kaijupro@yahoo.com