It's official: The new "Space Battleship Yamato" feature film is under way

by Chris MaGee

This isn't so much a breaking news story as it is a reassurance that a cool project that was proposed last year is actually taking place. Back at the beginning of August we reported that Yoshinobu Nishizaki was planning a brand new feature length "Space Battleship Yamato" animated film. At that time Nishizaki, the original producer of the 1970's animated series that many of you in your mid-30s will remember by its North American dubbed title "Star Blazers", was assembling a team made up of original series director Toshio Masuda, "Gatchaman animation director Tomonori Kogawa, and a crew of 40 staff in hopes of bringing the Yamato out of space dock sometime this year.

Now, according to a report posted at Anime News Network the proposed "Space Battleship Yamato" film is actually under way and slated for a a release later this year. Yamato Studio, the crew that Nishizaki assembled for the film had a promotional booth complete with a silhouetted image of the iconic space battleship (above) at the Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009 being held at Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba this week. They also gave a very basic plot outline: set 21 years after the events of the series Susumu Kodai, now a space captain, must help evacuate the planet Earth after its threatened by an expanding black hole.