Leiji Matsumoto

SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO aka STAR BLAZERS Is Reborn

by David Corbin    Posted: November 10th, 2009 at 2:02 pm

You can’t keep a good battleship down. As our partners at Omelete are reporting, 26 years after Final Yamato was released, a new chapter is finally being written in one of the most popular space operas ever to come out of Japan. On December 12, Space Battleship Yamato: Rebirth will premiere in Japan. Released in America as Star Blazers, the Space Battleship Yamato saga began in 1974 out of a collaboration between Yoshinobu Nishizaki and Leiji Matsumoto. The film has been in pre-production as far back as 1992 but was cast into development hell following a lengthy copyright lawsuit between Matsumoto (he of Galaxy Express and Daft Punk fame) and Nishizaki.  Nishizaki’s arrest and incarceration on drug and weapons charges did not help matters either.  And you thought Gene Roddenberry had street cred. In any event, the copyright lawsuit was eventually settled in Nishizaki’s favor in 2004, he was released from prison in 2007 and now audiences can finally find out what happened to our heroes (and heroines) following the defeat of the Deingili and the subsequent detonation of the Yamato in the last movie. Hit the jump for more details as well as the Japanese trailers.

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