With Robotech (Macross), Battle of the Planets and other retro anime products extremely popular in the U.S., it is interesting to note that Venture Soft is planning a new 52-episode series featuring Space Cruiser Yamato, the same galactic battlewagon that figured prominently in the anime series that was dubbed Starblazers here in the States.   The new series has a somewhat unwieldy title, Great Galaxy Series -- Great Yamato Arc: 7 vs. 7, and it will not follow the story line of the New Space Battleship Yamato manga.  Instead the series features an original story and designs from Matsumoto Keiji, who set his series in the year 3199 with the forces of the Milky Way galaxy, led by the Yamato, arrayed against the ferocious onslaught of the Metanoids.

 

Like many of the new anime series from Japan the Great Galaxy Series will feature a combination of computer and hand-drawn animation.  Given the previous exposure of the Yamato series in the U.S., it is highly like that this latest anime series, which won't debut on Japanese TV until next year, will make it to the U.S., and sooner rather than later, given the shrinking gap between when new series debut in Japan and in the U.S.