Yamato 2520 – music by David Mathes and Kentarou Hata

2 min read

In 1995, without the help of Leiji Matsumoto, who was instrumental in the creation of the original Space Battleship Yamato, Yoshinobu Nishizaki tried to launch a “Yamato: The Next Generation” of sorts, Yamato 2520, set 100 years after the original Yamato’s adventures came to a fiery end. With no concrete connection to the original Yamato characters or settings – i.e., no mention of the Gamilons, Iscandar, or the Comet Empire – the series chronicled the voyages of a small group of young people from a divided future Earth who discover the plans for the original Yamato, and use them to build a ship that manages to look almost completely unlike it.

The show lasted only six episodes before production and financial difficulties closed up the animation shop, and creator Nishizaki later wound up in prison, leaving former partner Matsumoto to take the reigns of the Yamato license and the franchise. Many fans now regard Yamato 2520 as a curiosity, and not part of the main Yamato saga (not unlike the second Yamato movie, which killed off the entire crew!).

Not helping matters much is the music. Though some of it is quite nice in its own way, there is once again no connection to the Yamato sound of old. Hiroshi Miyagawa’s sweeping, epic music helped to define the original series with pounding martial action music, dreamily romantic pieces with a lyrical quality, and even a little 2 out of 4edge of 70s funk. The original Yamato music isn’t even so much as quoted here, with the Yamato 2520 score favoring modern-day synth precision, and frankly it’s dull in places. It’s not a total loss, but like the short-lived series from which it originated, the Yamato 2520 soundtrack fails to live up to the legacy to which it would inevitably (and yes, perhaps unfairly) be compared.

  1. Track 1 (2:57)
  2. Track 2 (4:49)
  3. Track 3 (3:36)
  4. Track 4 (4:17)
  5. Track 5 (5:29)
  6. Track 6 (2:48)
  7. Track 7 (5:09)
  8. Track 8 (3:55)
  9. Track 9 (2:43)
  10. Track 10 (5:54)
  11. Track 11 (2:49)
  12. Track 12 (4:35)
  13. Track 13 (3:30)

    (Track titles on this disc were entirely in Japanese.)

Released by: Sony Music Japan
Release date: 1995
Total running time: 52:39