🚀 In the fall of 1974, a Japanese TV cartoon about a battleship flying across the galaxy was losing badly in the ratings, and it was cut short. It went on to help change who anime was for. On October 6, 2026, exactly 52 years after its first broadcast, a new feature film was announced with Evangelion's Hideaki Anno as director: Space Battleship Yamato √2199.

Production I.G, the studio behind Ghost in the Shell, and Anno's own Studio Khara are making it together. The announcement calls it the first joint production between the two studios. The co-director is Yutaka Izubuchi, who made the 2012 remake Space Battleship Yamato 2199. Both men trace their careers back to the 1974 show, and the film arrives while the franchise is running two separate Yamato lines at once.

Cut short at 26 episodes

If you grew up in the United States in the late 1970s or the 1980s, you may know this show as Star Blazers. The English version premiered on September 17, 1979, with the ship renamed the Argo and the crew given English names (Okita became Captain Avatar).

In Japan it began on October 6, 1974, in a Sunday 7:30 p.m. slot. The premise: an alien bombardment has poisoned Earth, so humanity rebuilds the sunken World War II battleship Yamato as a starship and sends it on a long voyage to bring back a device that can save the planet.

According to a 2020 piece by Fuyuhiko Takahori in Gendai Business, the show's average ratings sat in the 7 percent range, far below what that slot was expected to pull. It had been planned at 39 episodes and ended at 26. The competition did not help: the rival channel was airing Heidi, Girl of the Alps, directed by Isao Takahata.

Reruns saved it. The same article says Yamato was rebroadcast on weekday afternoons around 4 p.m., and junior high school students heading home after school found it and spread the word. On August 6, 1977, a theatrical film re-edited from the TV episodes opened in Japan. Takahori reads that moment as the point where older teens and adults no longer had to hide that they liked a TV cartoon.

An eighth grader in 1974

Anno was born in 1960. The film's press release says he has been hooked on Yamato since his second year of junior high, roughly eighth grade. By that math he was in junior high when the show first aired, the same generation as the students who later kept it alive.

He went on to build a career partly out of revisiting what he grew up with. After Neon Genesis Evangelion, he was behind the "Shin" reboots of Godzilla, Ultraman and Kamen Rider. In 2012 he storyboarded the opening sequence of Yamato 2199, and in 2024 he planned and produced the franchise's 50th-anniversary screenings, exhibitions and books.

His comment on the new film, posted on the official site, says he is making it not just to fulfill a boyhood dream. He wants it to carry hopes for the next generation and for his own.

Izubuchi has said much the same. At the April 2012 premiere of Yamato 2199, he told the audience that the original series was what led him into this line of work, according to Weekly ASCII.

Two Yamatos at once

Yamato 2199 launched a remake series that kept going after it. Its final chapter, Be Forever Yamato: REBEL3199 Chapter 7, under chief director Harutoshi Fukui, is scheduled to open in Japanese theaters on October 30, 2026. That is 24 days after Anno's announcement.

When Khara first revealed its Yamato project in October 2024, it said the new film would take a different course from the remake series that began with 2199. Izubuchi was already reported to be involved at that point. Now the title carries the number 2199, the official reading is "Route 2199," and in Japanese "rūto" can mean both a square root and a route. What the film actually is, whether a fresh retelling, a branch off 2199, or something else, has not been announced.

Yamato's rights are not held in one place: in 2024 Khara said it had been granted the right to make new animation by Voyager Holdings and had received a copyright license from Tohokushinsha. The new film's production committee is called Shin Office Academy. Office Academy is the company credited with producing the 1974 series.

Not everyone is cheering. In Yahoo! Japan News comment sections on announcement day, some readers insisted Yamato ended with the 1978 film Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, and others said they were tired of Anno remaking old properties.

Production I.G and Studio Khara, together for the first time

Outside Japan, Production I.G is best known for Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass and Haikyu!!. Khara, which Anno founded in 2006, made the Rebuild of Evangelion films. The two have been moving closer: Anno joined Production I.G's board on August 21, 2025, and Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, who founded I.G's forerunner in 1987, has a planning credit on the film. How the work is divided between the two studios has not been said.

Khara is also developing a new Evangelion series, but that one is directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki and Toko Yatabe. Yamato is the one Anno is directing himself.

What we still don't know

As of October 6, 2026, there is no release date; the official site says it will be announced once decided. There is no story outline, no voice cast and no trailer. Nothing has been said about an international release or streaming.

What exists is a single teaser visual of Yamato lifting off from a ruined landscape toward space, and a production that has been underway since 2024. Some English-language outlets render the title as Cosmoship Yamato √2199. The next scheduled update is an interview with both directors, plus a first Yamato illustration, in the November issue of Newtype, on sale October 9, 2026.

Fifty-two years later

Yamato's story is about a ship leaving a dying Earth on a mission nobody expects it to survive. The show itself nearly didn't. A boy who was in junior high when it aired is now at the helm.

Did Yamato reach your country as Star Blazers, under some other name, or not at all? And if you watched it as a kid, would you trust a lifelong fan to remake it?

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