Yoshinobu Nishizaki

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.

Life and work
Nishizaki produced the classic Space Battlesip Yamato franchise in 1974 with its initial television run. In 1994, he designed a short-lived follow-on series, Yamato 2520. Nishizaki was later sued by the other Yamato co-creator, Leiji Matsumoto, for breach of copyright.

Legal troubles
On December 2, 1997, police stopped his car on the Tōmei Expressway in Shizuoka after he was driving suspiciously. He was arrested when police found inside his attache case 50g of stimulants, 7g of morphine, 9g of marijuana. While on bail he went to the Philippines on his English-registered cruiser the Ocean Nine; he returned to smuggle in an M16 with M203 grenade launcher, a Glock 17, and a large amount of ammunition. January 21, 1999, Nishizaki was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for the narcotics possession charge. Later on February 1, 1999, he was arrested after a handgun, 131 bullets and 20 grams of stimulant drugs were seized from his house in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo. Nishizaki, voluntarily submitted two automatic rifles, 1,800 bullets, and 30 howitzer shells kept in a station wagon in his garage, police said. Police said that Nishizaki had hidden an Austrian handgun loaded with three bullets under a zaisu chair in a study. Nishizaki told police that he had bought the handgun in Hong Kong 10 years earlier. On February 20, 2003, he was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for the possessing firearms charge. He was released from prison on December 9, 2007.

Nishizaki's new Space Battleship Yamato anime film was released December 12, 2009. There is also a live action film set to premiere in December 2010.

Death
Nishizaki drowned on 7 November 2010 at Chichijima, Ogasawara, when he suffered an apparent heart attack after falling off the research steamboat Yamato.

Filmography

 * Little Wansa (1973)
 * Space Battleship Yamato (1974)
 * Space Carrier Blue Noah (1979)
 * Urotsukidōji (1987)
 * Odin: Photon Sailer Starlight (1985)
 * Yamato 2520 (1994)
 * Uchū Senkan Yamato: Fukkatsu hen (2009)