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Seven Seas Licenses Leiji Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato Manga

Seven Seas Entertainment announced on Tuesday that it has licensed Leiji Matsumoto's Space Battleship Yamato (Uchū Senkan Yamato) manga. The company will release the manga in one large trim hardcover omnibus volume titled Space Battleship Yamato: The Classic Collection on October 30, 2018.

Seven Seas will reveal new licenses every day this week. Space Battleship Yamato is the third of three license announcements for Tuesday, after Yugo Ishikawa's Wonderland manga and Dojyomaru's How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom light novels

Seven Seas describes the story:

The human race has one year left to live. Aliens known as the Gamilas have attacked Earth, poisoning it with radioactivity and driving humans underground. As humankind grows sicker by the day, their final hope is the Space Battleship Yamato–constructed from secret plans and equipped with advanced technology. Its mission: to reach a distant planet and bring back a cure to save humanity. Will the ship and its crew rescue the Earth in time?

The Yamato space opera franchise began with the first Space Battleship Yamato television series in 1974. Matsumoto's manga ran concurrently with the show and was compiled into three volumes in Japan. Over the next 35 years, the television anime spawned two television sequels, two video projects, six anime films, and a live-action film. Most recently, is has inspired the Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2199 remake, which began as a series of seven movies in 2012-2013 and later aired as a television series, and the Uchū Senkan Yamato 2202: Ai no Senshi-tachi sequel, another seven-part theatrical film series that is ongoing in Japan.

The original Space Battleship Yamato anime was adapted for American television in 1979 as Star Blazers. A live-action Hollywood Star Blazers film is in the works.