Yoshinobu Nishizaki
| Yoshinobu Nishizaki 西﨑義展 |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
Hirofumi Nishizaki (西崎弘文 Nishizaki Hirofumi?) 18 December 1934 Tokyo-fu, Japan |
| Died | 7 November 2010 (aged 75) Chichi-jima, Ogasawara, Tokyo, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Known for | character design, illustration |
Yoshinobu Nishizaki (18 December 1934 – 7 November 2010) was a Japanese film producer best known as one of the two co-creators of the anime series Space Battleship Yamato. He was sometimes credited as Yoshinori Nishizaki. He was born in 1934 and graduated from the Nihon University Art Department.
Nishizaki graduated in 1957 from Nippon University. His first love was music; he owned a jazz club and was also a jazz radio personality. He formed Office Academy in 1963 as a music production company. Nishizaki's entry into the anime world came in 1970 when he joined Osamu Tezuka's animation studio, Mushi Production, as a sales manager; his first job was to sell the studio's anime Marvelous Melmo to a TV broadcaster in Osaka. Nishizaki produced his first anime, Triton of the Sea, in 1972, and followed it up with the ambitious musical comedy Wansa-kun in 1973; both were based on Tezuka manga, but due to an apparent copyright mixup on Nishizaki's part, Tezuka lost the rights to the anime versions of both series, and Mushi Production made both shows without Tezuka's involvement. Both shows were also ratings disappointments.
Nishizaki produced the classic Space Battleship Yamato franchise in 1974 with its initial television run. At first its ratings were as disappointing as those of Nishizaki's previous ventures; however, the franchise exploded in popularity in 1977 with the release of a hugely successful movie-length edit of the TV series, and "Yamato Fever" continued unabated in Japan for the next six years. Edited versions of the three Yamato TV series were also a cult success in the United States under the title Star Blazers.
Nishizaki's other works produced during and after Yamato's peak of popularity did not come close to matching the explosive popularity of Yamato, and during the 1990s, he began to fall into rough straits financially. His company, New Japan Visual Network, founded in 1984, declared bankruptcy in 1991, and Nishizaki himself declared bankruptcy in 1997 amidst his wrangling with Yamato co-creator Leiji Matsumoto over the copyrights to Yamato. In 1994, Nishizaki designed a short-lived follow-up series called Yamato 2520, and was later sued by Matsumoto for breach of copyright. The case over Yamato led to halting the production of the video series after only four episodes. The dispute was finally settled in 2003, with Nishizaki winning the use of the name Yamato and the original plot and characters but losing the use of the original conceptual art, ship and character designs to Matsumoto.
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