Hideaki Anno and Yutaka Izubuchi will co-direct Yamato √2199, the first film Production I.G and Khara have made together
The new Space Battleship Yamato feature teased by Studio Khara in 2024 now has a title, a teaser visual of the ship rising from a ruined Earth, and a staff list. Cast and release timing are still unannounced.
Exactly two years after Studio Khara first hinted at a new Space Battleship Yamato feature, the project has resurfaced with a title, two directors and a single moody image. Its official website went live on Tuesday, October 6 — the anniversary of the day the original TV series began airing in 1974 — under the name Uchuu Senkan Yamato √2199, rendered in English as Cosmoship Yamato √2199. The root sign in the title is read as "route."
Hideaki Anno, the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion, shares the director's credit with Yutaka Izubuchi, and the pair are also jointly listed for design works. Anno takes on two more hats as executive producer and as a planner, sharing planning duties with Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, whose résumé includes Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These. Yoshinobu Nishizaki, who produced the first Yamato, holds the original-work credit.
A first for both studios
Production I.G and Studio Khara are animating the movie between them, and neither company has partnered with the other on a production before. The committee financing it goes by Shin Office Academy. Khara explained that the name was picked as a gesture of respect toward Nishizaki and the crew who made the original series, and that Shoji Nishizaki gave his approval before it was adopted.
The teaser art is sparse: the battleship sits poised to take off from a wrecked, desolate landscape, with a field of stars overhead. No trailer accompanied it.
Anno framed the project in personal terms. In a statement he said the team is making the film "not only to fulfill a boyhood dream, but to keep making a Yamato that carries our prayers and wishes for the next generation and our own."
Where it sits next to the remakes
Izubuchi is no stranger to the ship. He directed Space Battleship Yamato 2199, the remake series that began in 2012, and his other work includes RahXephon. That remake line carried on through 2202 and 2205 and is now wrapping up with Yamato yo, Towa ni: Rebel 3199, a seven-part theatrical retelling of Be Forever Yamato and Yamato III spread over 26 episodes. Its seventh and last chapter reaches Japanese cinemas on October 30.
√2199 is not a continuation of that line. When Khara first revealed the film in 2024, it described it as heading in a different direction from the 2199 series, and reporting on this week's announcement repeats that it is being developed separately from the remakes. Viewers who want the earlier take can find 2199 on Crunchyroll in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and a dozen other territories.
Fifty-two years of the Yamato
The first broadcast run lasted 26 episodes, from the autumn of 1974 into the spring of 1975, and English-speaking audiences came to know it as Star Blazers. Leiji Matsumoto drew a manga alongside it, closing that run with its third volume at the end of 1979, and a second TV series, Uchuu Senkan Yamato 2 (Star Blazers: The Comet Empire), followed in 1978. In English, Seven Seas has published Matsumoto's manga as an omnibus, while Dark Horse released Michio Murakawa's comic version of 2199.
Still to come
For now the film exists as a title, a poster and a staff list. There is no cast, no running time and no release window yet; further details are due through the official site and the X account @yamato_r2199.
