Space Battleship Yamato For Dummies

As we all know, after 16 years there's a new SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO film coming out. On Dec. 12, the film SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO REBIRTH premieres in Japanese theaters, and even across the Pacific we can feel the excitement. Whether you ran home from school to catch the latest episode of "Star Blazers" in 1979 or you discovered the series on DVD last week, we are all breathlessly awaiting the new adventures of the blue and red space battleship and its intrepid crew.



What's that you say? You've never seen "Star Blazers" -- OR SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO? Well, don't worry. We here at Let's Anime feel your pain. That's why we've created this handy list of crib notes that will allow you to hold forth on YAMATO and YAMATO-related concepts at any gathering of anime fans you may find yourself in. Now you can fool the pros and make everybody think you too wasted your youth watching cartoons on TV when you could have been outside - you know, playing sports! THIS GUIDE IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. Warning: contains spoilers for 30 year old cartoons.



Yamato - Imperial Japanese battleship destroyed in World War Two and rebuilt in 2199 as a super space battleship in order to journey to Iscandar and retrieve the Cosmo Cleaner D from Queen Starsha in order to remove the radioactivity that is slowly destroying all life on Earth. Also involved with the destruction of the Comet Empire, mysterious planet destroying activities in the Greater Magellanic Cloud, an invasion of Earth from the Dark Nebula, certain events involving the interstellar war between the Galman Empire and the Bolar Commonwealth, and the diversion of the innundation of Earth by the water planet Aquarius. All this is helpfully transcribed in record albums, storybooks, video tapes, DVDs, model kits, toys, and other historical documents.

Kodai Susumu / Derek Wildstar - determined, hot-headed young deputy captain of the Yamato, this wild young hellraiser soon settles down and by the third time the Yamato's had to save Earth, he's become the boring captain the new young guys rebel against. Before they die. Finally consummates his marriage to long-suffering girlfriend Yuki Mori in the last reel of FINAL YAMATO, depending on which version you're watching.


Younger Yamato crewmen must know where their reproductive organs are at all times.

Captain Okita / Avatar - Captain of the Yamato, this grizzled space veteran leads the way to Iscandar, inspiring his subordinates and saving the Earth. He is such an inspiration that Kodai even talks to his ghost on a few occasions, which is a good trick since we learn in FINAL YAMATO that Captain Okita didn't actually die at the end of the trip to Iscandar, but was secretly put into suspended animation and revived for the purposes of making the script to FINAL YAMATO a little stupider.

Shima Daisuke / Venture - Yamato navigator and general second banana. Occasionally gets into disputes with Kodai. Worries about his kid brother, falls in love with Trelaina/Teresa, and is killed in FINAL YAMATO for the purposes of making the script a little stupider.

Yuki Mori / Nova - Yamato's chief nurse, all-space radar operator, required female character, and very patient fiance of Susumu Kodai. Is the only female on board the Yamato, except when she isn't. Deflowered in a bizarre sequence excised from later prints of "Final Yamato".


True love waits.

Time Radar - interesting device on board the Yamato which allows operators to look back in time and see previously occuring events, including Tokugawa using a corner of the engine room as a urinal.

Tokugawa / Orion - Yamato's chief engineer. Totally does not care where he takes a whiz. His son, also named Tokugawa, becomes assistant engineer, but does not share his father's lack of regard for proper toilet training.

Sanada / Sandor - his arms and legs are bombs.

Argo - we can't put a show on American television named after a WWII battleship from a country we were fighting! What's another name for a ship? Um... "SS Minnow". "Titanic". "Edmund Fitzgerald." No wait, "Andrea Doria". "PT 109". No, those won't do. What's that ship those Greeks were on in "Jason And The Argonauts"? Give me a minute, it'll come to me.



ARRIVEDERCI YAMATO - another title for "Farewell Space Battleship Yamato Soldiers Of Love", a film in which the Yamato is completely destroyed. This didn't stop the Yamato from returning in a TV series sequel "Yamato 2", which you saw as the Comet Empire series, and in which the Yamato was not destroyed.

Arufon - Dark Nebula lieutanant assigned to seduce Yuki Mori and find out the location of the secret Earth Defense Command base in the film BE FOREVER YAMATO. Does he succeed? Hey, at least he's in there trying, unlike some other guys we could mention who are too busy saving Earth to pay any attention to their supposed fiances.

BE FOREVER YAMATO - seemingly endless film in which the Yamato must travel across time and space beyond the Dark Nebula to deactivate a bomb which is somehow instantly triggered across five hundred thousand light years, from a command post on a fake Earth that may or may not be populated by machine people. Stick around for the amazing "Warp Dimension" trick if you catch this one in a theater.

Beemera - aptly named planet populated by bee people. Hint: don't try the honey.

Black Tigers - space fighter planes carried on board the Yamato, these distinctive black and yellow ships can operate in outer space or in atmosphere. Apparently there is an unlimited supply of these planes.

Comet Empire - properly named "Gatlantis", this huge intergalactic colony vessel is the home of a green-skinned race of space invaders ruled by Emperor Zordar, who in the American version is demoted to "Prince" and whose consort Sabera ("Invidia") is given a nice Oedipal twist and becomes his daughter. When you blow up the Comet Empire a super space battleship comes out of the wreckage, and then you have to blow THAT up. If you're in the movie, you must sacrifice yourself and the Yamato, but if you're in the TV series then the mysterious Teresa from planet Telezart will use her awesome space powers to save the universe, which she could have done at any time, really, but nobody wants to watch a TV series of the Yamato getting its decks painted.


Operators are standing by. Call now!

Cosmo Cleaner D - aka "Cosmo DNA", this machine can remove the radioactivity caused by years of Gamilon planet bombing, and thereby save Earth. A team of "Star Blazers" called the Star Force undertakes the perilous mission. But can they travel to Iscandar, 148,000 light years and back, in just one Earth year?! I bet they can.

Analyzer / IQ-9 - a genius robot with the mind of an 8 year old boy.


Programmed for sexual harrassment! Note regulation "granny panties."

Dr. Sado / Dr. Sane - potato-head chief medical officer on board the Yamato. A heavy drinker and always drunk, but a super excellent medical doctor. So they say.

Ota / Eager - Star Force crewmember in charge of looking at the radar screen and saying "Missiles approaching!" in his hayseed voice whenever enemy missiles are in fact approaching the Argo.

Cosmo Zero - also known as the "Super Star" fighter, this sleek high-tech space fighter plane piloted by Susumu Kodai when he feels the need... the need for speed. The number of Cosmo Zero planes carried on board the Yamato varies widely according to which studio is animating this week's story.

"Derek Wildstar" - why yes, we DID write the American version of this show in the late 1970s, why do you ask?

Leiji Matsumoto - manga artist and WWII buff whose attention to detail and obsession with the Pacific War made SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO much more interesting than it would have been originally. Other works include GALAXY EXPRESS 999, SPACE PIRATE CAPTAIN HARLOCK, and, uh, SEXAROID.




Yoshinobu Nishizaki - producer of YAMATO whose other works include BLUE NOAH and ODIN and various weapons and narcotics violations.

BLUE NOAH - Nishizaki-produced anime series about a space battleship defending Earth against invading aliens. Any resemblance between it and YAMATO is purely coincidental. Also the name of the Earth Defense Command flagship in SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO REBIRTH.

Wave Motion Gun - super powerful weapon that fires from the nose of the Yamato, just where the Imperial chrysanthemum was on the original WWII Yamato, thereby symbolizing the godlike power of the Divine Emperor destroying the enemies of Japan. I mean, the Earth.

Planet Bombs - Slightly more destructive than "plant bombs".

Desslar / Desslok- This blue space dictator is a sex machine to all the chicks. When he's not executing subordinates for laughing at their own jokes he's waging interplanetary war, surviving being blown into the vacuum of space, teaming up with the Comet Empire strictly for revenge and then switching sides, and watching his home planet get blown to bits. Though he spends most of his time pining away for Queen Starsha, he's not above gettin' busy with other space ladies on occasion. Just don't ask him for child support.


Ask to see his "Desslar Gun."

Gamilas / Gamilon -this volcanic hollow planet is a twin planet of Iscandar, an altogether more appealing world. Both are in the solar system of Sanzar in the Greater Magellanic Cloud, one hundred and eighty-six thousand light years from Earth. Once ruled by Desslar, Gamilas was destroyed in a mining accident involving non-union workers from the Dark Nebula, and Iscandar was destroyed after being blown out of its orbit by the same explosion. Not a good day for Desslar, really.

Talan - the moustache man. Desslar's second in command, trusted confidant, and general all around go-to guy. Talan's moustache is admired by all.


Psychological profile of Talan by "Kaoru Sotorin"

Garuman / Galman - the ancestral home of the Gamilas peoples, this planet near the Galactic Center was conquered by the Bolar Commonwealth. And then one day Desslar showed up and conquered it right back.

Skee-Ball - Desslar's favorite carnival game.

Starsha - queen of Iscandar, this impossibly skinny woman is not only the last survivor of her planet, but must deal with guiding the Star Force to Iscandar so that they can get the Cosmo Cleaner D out of her basement, while at the same time fending off the increasingly insistent romantic advances of Desslar, the dictator of the planet next door. He's only going to buy that "I'm doing my hair" excuse so many times! Eventually falls in love with Susumu Kodai's brother, an altogether more pleasant fellow.

Iscandar -this largely aquatic, peaceful planet is home to Queen Starsha and not much else, all of her subjects having died of a mysterious space disease. She sends her sister Sasha/Astra to Earth with the plans for the Wave Motion Engine so that the Yamato can come to Iscandar and retrieve the Cosmo Cleaner D. Involved in a complicated orbital arrangement with Gamilas. Destroyed by Queen Starsha to keep it from being exploited by the Dark Nebula.

Sasha - daughter of Susumu Kodai's brother Mamoru and Queen Starsha of Iscandar, she's first seen as an infant in the climax of YAMATO THE NEW VOYAGE. Two years later in the film BE FOREVER YAMATO she's a 16 year old girl, using her mysterious space powers to invent the concept of "moe".



Star Blazers - American version of SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO, comprised of a 1979 release of the first two YAMATO television series and a 1985 re-syndication of the show with an added 25 episodes taken from the third SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO series, dubbed by a completely different cast.

Star Dipwads - parody dub of ARRIVEDERCI YAMATO produced in 1989 by two Georgia teenagers. Rewritten plot involves cornbread that makes your stomach explode, a Comet Empire composed entirely of copulating sheep, and repeated use of the "Klondike Bar" jingle. Sequels: THE MAKING OF STAR DIPWADS, A STAR DIPWADS CHRISTMAS, and STAR DIPWADS II: THE METAL YEARS.

Earth Defense Command - organization in charge of commanding the defense of Earth. Also the name of the 1980s era Yamato/anime fan club operated from the Dallas Texas area, charged with defending fanzines and video tapes. The EDC maintains a gigantic fleet of space battleships which are all destroyed whenever Earth is threatened, paving the way for an inspiring last-minute save courtesy the Yamato.



Aquarius - planet made up of mostly water which tools around the universe raining on other planets. Occasionally there is too much rain and planets get completely destroyed. Sometimes evil races of outer space people use their enormous colony ships to warp Aquarius into the path of other planets and deliberately drown them just for kicks, as seen in the fine documentary film FINAL YAMATO.

Teresa / Trelaina - rail-thin last survivor of planet Telezart, her mysterious space powers enabled her to "master the secret of anti-matter." She used this power to end a civil war on her planet. Unfortunately she did this by killing everybody else on the planet. Her lonely space vigil is interrupted by the arrival of the Comet Empire and it's her warning to Earth that spurs the Yamato into action! She and Shima have a long-distance relationship, and like most long distance relationships it ends soon after they meet.


Teach me more of this Earth custom known as "clothing." Also, "sandwiches."

Captain Saito / Sergeant Knox - commander of the Space Marines, a rough-tough gang of two fisted fightin' men who love to fight and stuff. Rescued from a Comet Empire advance force by the Yamato, the Space Marines show their gratitude by fighting with Yamato crewmen until they can be deposited on planet Telezart where they can fight Comet Empire tanks. Fight fight fight.

Domel / Lysis - Gamilas general with a huge chin, called in to finally take care of that blue and red space battleship once and for all. His complicated plan involves fleets of space carriers, teleportation devices, and a missile with a giant drill on the front. He and his huge chin are blown to bits in a fairly meaningless attack on the third bridge.

Third Bridge - this curious structural appendage to the hull of the Yamato was added to give the design something interesting looking on the lower half. It's constantly being blown to bits, so if you happen to find yourself assigned to the Yamato, make sure your duties keep you out of the Third Bridge. In the new film it's painted blue, apparently to confuse attackers.

FINAL YAMATO - Otherwise known as "Space Battleship Yamato -the Concluding Chapter", this 1983 film was the absolute last outing for the Yamato, never gonna be another YAMATO, nossir. Except for YAMATO 2520.



YAMATO 2520 - we don't talk about this one.

Well, we hope this guide has been helpful to you and your self-esteem in regards to knowledge of SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO. As to why your self-esteem should be tied up in trivia about a space cartoon... that's another story. YAMATO - TAKE OFF!!

the yamatocon excuse

I realize Let's Anime posts have been thin on the ground since Christmastime, and I do apologize. Part of why this is, is because I wrote an article for the Star Blazers website about Yamatocon, the 1983 Star Blazers convention in Dallas Texas. This article is now up at Starblazers.com for you to read and enjoy!

I also wrote a short review for the upcoming OTAKU USA magazine, and that took a little time away from the dear Let's Anime. And of course every week over at Mister Kitty I provide commentary for items of questionable quality culled from our vast comic book collection. So it's not like I ain't been busy.

At any rate we should have something goofy for you here in a little while - so don't touch that dial!

SPACE FANZINE YAMATO: THE UNTOLD STORY

On the birth of Space Fanzine Yamato
guest columnist Steve Harrison tells us how he published the first American fanzine dedicated to a single Japanese animated series! Take it away Steve!

The genesis of Space Fanzine Yamato has its roots in STAR BLAZERS. STAR BLAZERS took over my mind, in a way. Its early 1980s broadcast was the “catalyst anime” that got me hooked, and thru different means and avenues I started to pick up items from the Japanese “parent” show, SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO. My main focus (mostly due to this being all I could find) was the vast catalog of YAMATO record albums, so those beautiful full color liner notes, those few pictures were my main, my ONLY knowledge of YAMATO. The Drama Albums (LP recordings of actual dialog and music from films and TV) helped, because even without understanding Japanese, one fairly quickly picked out character names. Not that I had any real clue about the correct spelling or anything, and yes, I was aware enough to know that “Jason Kodai” and “Shane O’Toole” (character names used in the international version of the SPACE CRUISER YAMATO movie) had nothing to do with the actual Kodai and Shima. Oh, some of the wacky, utterly mistaken ideas I had looking at those pictures!

So I was at a convention (an SF/media con, there were no such things as “anime cons” back then) near Detroit, ConFusion I believe, in Jan. ‘82... I had lugged my trusty Sylvania VCR with me in hopes of maybe nabbing some new DR. WHO episodes, maybe show off some STAR BLAZERS to some friends (trying to get more people hooked on the show), and who knows... my Detroit friends implied that at this con there were sometimes some folk who were into that “Japanimation” stuff. So, I also lugged along most of my YAMATO LPs, because I didn’t have any books on the show. I didn’t know there WERE books on the show.



So, yeah, in freezing cold Michigan winter weather I’m lugging a 42 pound VCR, a box of tapes and cables and such, and 10 or so pounds of LP records. I was younger, stronger and clearly insane.

Well, after a day of doing con stuff, I finally get word that yes, those "Japanimation” folks made it to the con, they were from Canada, and I was introduced to Marg Baskin and her crew. They were polite enough but a tad standoffish, I assume because of my “newbie” status. Seemed STAR BLAZERS and YAMATO wasn’t too interesting to them, except for this one girl whose name I just couldn’t catch (it’s an odd problem. Some people I meet and *snap* I lock the name and the face and no problem. For other people the name just vanishes instantly, even though I WANT to remember. It’s embarrassing).

So this young woman was keenly interested in my YAMATO LPs. She was pointing to pictures, saying names, describing history and story points… holy crap, she knew stuff!

We spent most of the convention just talking to each other, to the point where we talked for just about 24 hours straight! It started mainly because it was late at night and she was locked out of the room, I had offered her some space to crash in my room (OK, not my room, the room I shared with 6 other fans... man, we were all crazy then) but she was uncomfortable with that and I couldn’t blame her… so we spent all night long wandering the hotel and talking about YAMATO and anime and stuff.

I finally locked in her name was Ardith, we had a good laugh over my wonky brain. She mentioned that she did some writing for the Star Blazers Fan Club newsletter (wait...there's a Star Blazers Fan Club?!) and so on. The end of the convention was near and I was feeling really depressed. I figured off she goes to Canada and I’d never see her again and how do I keep in contact and...

Oh what a doofus I was! She wasn’t a Canadian, she was from Michigan! Home in Battle Creek and going to school in Ann Arbor! Boggle and joy!

(Then a blizzard and ice storm hit and the convention became “Continuation” and I lost my job at the time because the State Police wouldn’t let anyone onto the highways.)

Found out that she was hoping to attend a con in Chicago in Feb. 82 called “Capricon”, she knew that the Chicago C/FO was going to be showing anime, she hoped I could go too....

So naturally, broke, jobless, I still cadged a way to get to Chicago, register for the con, pay for my share of the room, and convince my best friend (and only other person in the Star Trek Club of Grand Rapids who was hep to STAR BLAZERS) Jerry Fellows to come with me to meet Ardith and see what Chicago had to offer.

During our time together, Ardith made mention of how she was getting upset with the producer of the Star Blazers Fan Club newsletter. It seemed that the editorial habit was to take Ardith’s carefully constructed reports from Japan (she WAS going to school in Ann Arbor for Journalism, after all) and rewrite them, taking credit for her work, her knowledge. There were articles and reviews that she DID get a byline on, but all the news that the newsletter reported came from her, uncredited, and it bothered her.

Me being me, and maybe trying to show that I was “somebody” (likely because of some buried feeling of inferiority due to her knowledge of Japanese and all that), I blithely suggested “Well, why don’t you do a newsletter or fanzine of your own?” I was met with a confused expression... you couldn’t just produce such a thing! It took...

It takes a typewriter and a photocopy machine, or taking it to a printer if you want it to look really good. There was no magic, no mystery to producing a newsletter or a fanzine, I had done it (well, newsletter, but I knew people who did ‘zines), and I had done similar things in putting on Babelcon, the Grand Rapids media con. It was work, but it was easy work. She was unsure, but grew more interested as I talked. Even there I had coined the name “Space Fanzine Yamato” out of a general giddy session of “naming” stuff (Space Lunchbox Yamato, Space Ice Cream Cone Yamato, etc.). So plans were laid. Ardith would translate whatever she wanted to translate, I would write about things, Jerry would write about things, we’d package it and sell it.

Thanks to Ardith I learned about (L.A. anime retailer) Books Nippan, and started to buy Roman Albums and anime magazines. My knowledge slowly grew, the outline of what I wanted to see in Space Fanzine Yamato firmed up, and the format started to gel in my head.



I was applying the “George Lucas” philosophy. Back in 79 when I got hooked on Star Blazers, what would I have wanted to know? What would I have wanted to buy? I decided to produce the fanzine that I would have wanted then.

One of the magical moments was when Ardith told me her friend James was making a trip to Los Angeles and could pick up “Japanimation” items while he was there. From his trip I got the BE FOREVER YAMATO blueprint book- and the final concept locked into place. I would include a translated copy of that Yamato cutaway blueprint as a “bonus item”, ala what the Japanese magazines Animage and My Anime were doing.

So the slow, grinding agony began. Ardith first produced a flood of work...then as time went on it slowed. I, being a slug, painfully ground out my text. Jerry had finished all his pieces like a week after we discussed it. Time burned on, relationships developed, blossomed, fell apart- oh, there was a hella lot of drama as time went on, much of it totally surprising to me, and I was... not the best person I try to be at times. Finally all the articles and translations were in hand. Lots of money had been spent taking Roman Albums to the copy shop for chara model sheets and other pictures. We had a long session with the 35 mm camera, photographing LP jackets. We took all our text to the typesetter and underwent the painful process of choosing fonts and size and all that stuff (Oh GOD as my WITNESS to have had a Mac and laser printer in 1982! File under “if I knew then what I know now”).



I had done paste-up work for my high school newspaper back in ‘76 and spent years producing newsletters, flyers, and program books for the Trek club and Babelcon, so I understood the mechanics, but I clearly didn’t have professional tools. No predesigned layout sheets, so I used graph paper. No hot wax machine so I used spray fixative. No Khyron machine for headlines, so anything not done at the typesetter ended up with Letraset and typewriter. The front cover illo came from a “This is Animation” book (and the black border was HELL to dry), the picture on the back was one of Ardith’s B&W photos taken off TV. I was up 'til 1 AM doing the paste-up.

I haven’t mentioned advertising yet, or what the deadline was. I wanted SFY to come out at the next Capricon, Feb. 1983. I thought it made sense, an anniversary as it were. It was suggested I do the “reservation” thing, take money from people and use that to fund production, then ship when the book came off the presses. I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to have to refund money if the project fell apart and I didn’t want to have the debt hanging over my head (moral as well as fiscal). I wanted to have a finished product ready to ship, costs finalized and known. Good thing I did that, because there were a few times it looked like the book wasn’t going to make it.

Flyers were created and put out at various conventions, the idea being that if you were interested in SFY you would send me your name and address on a SASE, and when the book was ready I would mail out notices, you’d send money and you’d get your copy. I was quickly buried under replies, over the course of a few months I had like 60 SASEs. My, there’s some interest out there.



What were the mechanics of printing Space Fanzine Yamato? I took the paste-ups to the printer. 11 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11, folded to make 44 pages, plus card stock cover. 100 copies, cost (from memory) $130. The Yamato blueprint was 8 1/2 x 14, took that to a different shop with a photocopier that could shoot that size, got a deal of 8 cents per for 100. Typesetting was $80. I didn’t factor in the costs of the film and developing for the LP pictures, the cost of photocopying from the Roman Albums, the cost of any of the books and stuff I had bought or the materials cost for graph paper and fixative.

So, production costs: approximately $218 for 100 copies. MSRP of the ‘zine was $3.00. First printing was sold out by March 1983. Not too shabby. Did a second printing due to demand, sold THAT out just as quickly.

So, why no SFY issue 2?

The team had all fallen apart by Feb. 1983. Conflicts, personal issues, confusion, hurt, words said, words unsaid, mistakes, misunderstandings... quite a soap opera had developed and to all of us it was all so serious. Many of the events caught me totally by surprise, other issues...well, again, if I knew then what I know now…

Ultimately, without Ardith, I couldn’t do it. Not JUST because of her knowledge and translation skills (a significant factor, nonetheless), but because without her I just lost the fire, the “heart” to do it. Over the years many have tried to boot me into rebooting the concept, because clearly the idea of a Space Fanzine Yamato is still valid. Jerry even started a website, Space Webzine Yamato, to try and get me going (and he’s done such an excellent job I feel I’d just be a drag on his work at this point.) but that fire is... well… not GONE, but it’s banked, the coals glowing in the back of the bin.



Still, for all the pain at the end, I¹m really quite proud of the finished product. Oh, I¹d do some things different now, or course. Just the advent of desktop publishing alone would have totally revamped the production process. The ability to scan in a drawing from a book, be able to scale it, clean it up, flow text around it...*sigh*.

Oh yeah, the Offical Bootleg. After the initial two press runs, I was contacted by Derek Wakefield of the Texas Earth Defense Command STAR BLAZERS fan organization. He wanted to know if they could do a print run of SFY for their members. Seems there was a great deal of upset that copies were not available. So I figured as long as it was marked as a reprint, go ahead, it was for a good cause. One of the reasons I agreed was I had heard that someone out there was actually duplicating a copy and selling them for something like $6 each! Good lord, what a bizarre mixed feeling THAT caused!

Then there was seeing a copy sitting in a showcase at a comic shop in Battle Creek, in mylar, with a $20 sticker on it. I nearly busted my sides laughing.

The face of anime and its fans has changed quite a bit since the '80s. The idea of a dedicated booklet explaining basic things about a series such as character names, episode titles, listings of products released all seems quite quaint, even primitive in today’s world of one click data mining. Yet nobody had really done what we did with Space Fanzine Yamato, and that's quite an accomplishment. Now in some ways the spirit of the 'zine lives on at Jerry's Space Webzine Yamato and in the growing data tapestry at the official Star Blazers website as overseen by Tim Eldred, and that's a pretty proud legacy.

I haven't seen Ardith since...oh, lordy, 1984? She finally managed to achieve her dream of living and working in Japan, and I do hear from her indirectly via a mailing list once in a blue moon. Jerry is still in town and we get together when we can. And every once in a while I do have that voice in the back of my head, saying "hey, let's get the band back together!"




color illustrations from SPACE CRUISER YAMATO/ARRIVEDERCI YAMATO promotional booklet; black and white illustrations from SPACE FANZINE YAMATO vol. 1

the lost Yamato manga story

It's still hectic and crazy here at Let's Anime World Information Network Cohesive Dissemination & Fabrication Division, so to tide you over until I can get everything hooked back together, here's a post that is just to point you to another website that has some cool new old stuff.

Tim Eldred has been busting his hump over at starblazers.com trying to create and maintain the web portal presence of the American version of one of Japan's anime classics, AND bring together a vast, scattered denomination of information about the movies, TV shows, videos, DVDs, comics, books, magazines, LPs and CDs, model kits, fanzines, toys, doujinshi, and assorted strangeness devoted to that red and blue space battleship. There are literally dozens of fascinating articles at the site that make for hours of entertaining reading for anyone interested in Star Blazers, including never-before-translated Japanese articles, brand new features on the American Star Blazers comics of the 80s and 90s, Japanese Space Battleship Yamato doujinshi, the galaxy of Yamato model kits... more byzantine pop culture trivia than you can fire a wave-motion gun at.



ANYWAY, one of the cooler things up at the site is a translation of "Eternal Story Of Jura"", one of Leiji Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato manga stories from the gory glory days of the 1970s. Three different outfits had the manga rights to Yamato, so at one point you had three different versions of the Yamato blasting its way to three different versions of Iscandar. Because Japanese cartoon continuity wasn't confusing enough, right? Those of us nutty enough to buy comics in languages we can't read feverishly purchased the SF COMICS editions of Matsumoto's Yamato manga when we could find them at comic shows or Japanese grocery stores. And while there are a few slight deviations from the TV storyline, it mostly made sense.




Except, of course, for one story about mysterious big-eared space women using telepathic powers to mess with the minds of the Yamato crew. So the anime fans of the 80s were mightily confused. Confused, that is, until now, because the entire story is now translated and online for your reading pleasure at starblazers.com!!




So quit listening to me and go read a classic Matsumoto Yamato manga story and spend a few hours immersed in the trivia of Space Battleship Yamato. You'll be glad you did.

Also, if you're like the guy who spoke to me at AWA last year wanting to know where he could get Star Blazers - well, you can order the DVDs right from the site. That's where you gets yer Star Blazers, pal. All of it.