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15-Meter Space Battleship Yamato Model Rises in Tokyo

The official blog of the live-action Space Battleship Yamato movie announced on Monday that a 15-meter-long (about 49-foot-long) Yamato spaceship model will rise at a "Yamato Sacas" exhibit in the redeveloped TBS Akasaka Sacas area in Tokyo. The exhibit will remain on display from November 20 to December 4.

The film uses computer graphics (CG) to depict the spaceship, so the model is based on the film's CG data for its design. The exhibit will feature a "Wave Motion Gun Laser Show" complete with the "firing" of the ship's trademark bow armament. There will also be a Yamato Gallery with actual costumes, props, and miniatures (including the Cosmo Zero, Cosmo Tiger, and Gamilas/Gamilon craft) from the film.

According to the official blog, the live-action film's Yamato spaceship is 533.6 meters long, which makes the exhibit model about 1/36-scale. The original anime version of the spaceship was 265.8 meters long, or just under half the length of the new live-action version's spaceship. A five-meter-long (16-feet-long) went on display last year to promote the animated Space Battleship Yamato Resurrection film. The English-language Starblazers.com website posted images of a smaller two-meter-long (seven-feet-long) cutaway model that first went on display in 1977.

37-year-old SMAP band member Takuya Kimura (Howl's Moving Castle's Howl) is headlining the live-action film based on the 1974-1975 space opera anime classic, which was adapted as Star Blazers in English. The other cast members include Meisa Kuroki (Vexille - 2077 Isolation of Japan's Vexille, Crows Zero's Luca), Toshiro Yanagiba, and Tsutomu Yamazaki. Takashi Yamazaki, the director best known for Returner, Always: Sunset on Third Street, and last year's Ballad, is helming the project, and Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler wrote and sang the film's theme song, "Love Lives." The film will open in Japan on December 1, less than a month after the unexpected passing of the franchise co-creator and producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki.

Source: Cinema Today

Image © 2010 Space Battleship Yamato Production Committee