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Space Battleship Yamato 2202 Anime Series Confirmed

A new anime series in the Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato anime franchise has been confirmed under the title Uchū Senkan Yamato 2202: Ai no Senshi-tachi (Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Warriors of Love or Star Blazers 2202: Warriors of Love). The staff has released the series' first visual, drawn by illustrator Makoto Kobayashi:

The staff has also opened an official website for the series. The website had been registered in Japan on January 8, and volume 13 of Yamato Kōkai Nikki: Yamato Crew Premium Fun Club Magazine, the official Yamato Fan Club magazine, shipped this week with the news.

Nobuyoshi Habara (Fafner and Fafner EXODUS director, episode director and storyboard writer for Star Blazers 2199) is directing the new anime, and Harutoshi Fukui (Mobile Suit Gundam UC original novel writer, screenplay for Harlock: Space Pirate) is writing and overseeing the scripts. The late Yoshinobu Nishizaki is credited with the original work, and his son Shōji Nishizaki (Star Blazers 2199 planning, producer for Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection) is the executive producer.

The staff will reveal other details about the new series at a later date.

Shōji Nishizaki revealed in the fan club magazine last August that a second season of the Space Battleship Yamato 2199 anime was in development. Shōji Nishizaki added that production would not be officially green-lit until at least this year. Aside from the "2202" in the new series' title, the project's website does not confirm if this new series is the sequel Shōji Nishizaki mentioned, and the website does not specify the new series' connection, if any, to the Farewell Space Battleship Yamato film; that film's Japanese title was Saraba Uchū Senkan Yamato - Ai no Senshi-tachi (Farewell Space Battleship Yamato - Warriors of Love).

The Space Battleship Yamato 2199 series is a remake of the original 1974 Space Battleship Yamato series created by Leiji Matsumoto and Yoshinobu Nishizaki. The series first premiered in Japan as a series of seven movies shown theatrically in Japan from 2012 to 2013, each containing four episodes' worth of runtime (except for the first movie, which only shows the first and second episode). The series then began airing on Japanese television in April 2013. A compilation film of the series opened in Japan in October 2014 with the title Uchū Senkan Yamato 2199: Tsuioku no Kōkai (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Voyage of Remembrance), and a new film that continues the story opened in Japan in December 2014, with the title Uchū Senkan Yamato 2199: Hoshi-Meguru Hakobune (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Star-Voyaging Ark).

The original Space Battleship Yamato anime was adapted for American television in 1979 as Star Blazers.

Sources: Anime! Anime!, Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web