Bye Bye Baby, Abayo

Dear Mr. Steve Harrison,

My rocal Mandarake in Shibuya has a copy of the hardcover Final Yamato deluxe book on sale for a mere 4750 yen. How rare is this item, and it is worth the purchase?

Thank you,

Comments

[Steve Harrison]

Dear Patrick:

Thank you for your kind letter and nice picture! I like Space Battleship Yamato too!

*eheheheheh* sorry, I've been unwell and the poisons in my body make me giddy at times.

The Final Yamato HC is fairly rare, at least from where I sit. I see them pop up on Yahoo Japan auctions once in a while, they usually end up selling between 7,000 Yen to 11,000 Yen, and it was a pricy sunnavabitch when it came out, over 10,000 Yen new IIRC.

If it happens to have the shipping carton and the pewter 10th anny paperweight included, that's a fucking killer deal and you should grab it.

Is the book worth it? YMMV. I'm not keen on Final Yamato as a movie and its place in Yamato canon, but there's some damn fine design work and I just love books and that price is firmly in my personal 'comfort zone' when it comes to such things. for me my interest isn't so much what's there that's been duplicated in other books, it's the oddball rough designs, the discards and aborted ideas and concepts. I recall thumbing thru the Be Forever Yamato HC and seeing all these unused logos, patches, things that were *really cool* if you're into such things.

It's surely a 'bragging rights' item if nothing else.

Part of the question would be, do you have any of the other Academy/Westcape produced hardcovers? The silver three book set produced for the first series is beautiful just from a 'book' point of view if nothing else, the HC for New Journey caught me totally by surprise, I mentioned the Be Forever HC above, only the Arrivederci Yamato HC is a little bit of a letdown, but they're ALL worth having IMHO.

Does that help?

I sure talk alot when I could have just said 'buy it' huh? ;)

[Patrick Macias]

I have the Be Forever hardcover (natch) here at Draft One. My Arrivederci one is in storage somewhere in Cali, same as the "Photo Story" volume of the silver set. They tend to break those up and sell them individually in the stores here. I forgot what was in the other two volumes. I'm always afraid I'll end up with 300 pages of script and self-congradulatory essays by La Nish.

The Be Forever HC is just as I'd want it to be. Yeah, Arrivederci is a little small by comparision, but the sucker gets the job done, and better than the Roman Album for the same film.

They ALWAYS seem to have multiple copies of the New Journey HC in stock, hovering around the 1600 to 2100 yen range (same as the Ideon hardcovers, remember Ideon?). Too bad it's the entry in the series I'm least interested in. Still, is the book all that?

Also, you're all insane. Final Yamato Roolz.

[Steve Harrison]

Pardon me if I get too...you know, lecture to excess. I loves me some Yamato books and talking about them :)

There's two versions of the first series books. The beautiful silver set, hardcover, and autographed by any two of the three key people- Nishizaki, Matsumoto and the director whose name escapes me at the moment and so I reveal my weakness.

The silver books are broken into equal chunks, each volume having some of the photo story, some of the model sheets and some of the scripts.

Then Nishizaki did a really smart thing, releasing a trade paperback edition, and breaking things down into fan friendly parts- one volume was all the model sheets, one the complete photo story, and one all the scripts. As far as I am aware, the content is competely the same between the two editions.

I'm still waiting to get my silver three book set, but I did score the model sheets TPB not long ago, and that's sweetness. Now I can finally *read* the scrawled comments by the 'three races of Gamilas' illo! Well, I could if I knew more Japanese....

Is the NJ HC worth it? It's a nice companion piece to the Be Forever HC, it's a book I didn't even KNOW EXISTED until I stumbled across it at a Project: A-Kon years ago, it's got not only a nice photostory layout but all the deleted scenes in the proper place as well (and there's always been questions on how much of that was actually fully animated, seems only stills remain)... it's very much worth under 2000 Yen, and someone who can read Japanese would probably get a LOT out of the planning and design notes, there's like 30 pages of that.

I just like it. I think if you really took a look, flipped thru the book it would capture your heart too.

Ohhh, they've got the Ideon HCs sorta cheap? damn. I recently got the 5 volume Gundam HCs for like 2500 Yen (for all 5!) and have enjoyed going thru them, laughing at all the stuff that the kids, the Gunpla Generation, just would have a fit over because it pisses in their face about what Gundam was, at the time.

Now my quest is for the (I believe Takara produced) Space Pirate Captain Harlock limited edition memorial box...seen it a couple of times, always gone or too rich for my ability, but what would you expect with a couple of books, a cel, a bunch of other stuff in a double gatefold box...

Listen to me! Unemployed and yet I lust for stupid books in a language I can't read! I'm a fool! a fool! MAD!

screw it. It's better than blowing my brains out over who won American Idol or something :)

Steve's rule of thumb on anime books. anything under $25 USD is a steal, esp. for old stuff. It's worth buying just in case at that point. Does that help any?