On March 25th, a Tokyo district court handed down a ruling overturning an injunction filed by Leiji Matsumoto against Yoshinobu Nishizaki barring Nishizaki from claiming to be the original creator of the legendary Anime Series Space Battleship Yamato (a.k.a. Star Blazers in North America). Nishizaki, who was arrested in 1999 for illegal gun possession, is currently in prison.

In the near future I would like to report in more detail on what caused the court case. Right now though, I’d like to clear up some misunderstandings spreading among Anime fans.



The court ruling only stated that Nishizaki had the ‘personal right of the author;’ the right that guarantees an author that their work can not be altered without their permission, even if they have lost all property rights to the work.


Nishizaki’s “personal right of authorship” only applies to 8 titles; Yamato (’74-75), Yamato the Movie (’77), Farewell Yamato (’78) , Yamato 2 (’78-79) , The New Departure of Yamato (’80), Yamato Forever (’80), Yamato 3 (’81-82), and Final Yamato (’83) .


Meaning that Nishizaki has no rights to any new Yamato series made by Matsumoto, nor any rights to derivative works such as videogames.


While working on the new Yamato series, Matsumoto appealed the verdict in the intermediate court of appeal and the case is currently undergoing deliberation. In any case, it is said to be unlikely that Matsumoto will come out completely victorious.

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