Today, Anime News Network reveals that manga artist Michi Murakawa will be working on a manga serial adaptation of the upcoming animated series Space Battleship Yamato 2199. However, while the manga will be serialized in the Japanese magazine series Newtype Ace, it will begin its run in the magazine's March 10 2012 issue, which will come out before the anime premieres, a scenario likely to mirror he case of Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), whose manga adaptation (though probably not NGE canon) launched before the anime itself.

This will be Murakawa's first time working on a Space Battleship Yamato manga since Studio DNA's Space Battleship Yamato: The Faraway Planet Iscandar Comic Anthology, which was released in 2000 as a tie-in withSpace Battleship Yamato: The Faraway Planet Iscandar, the 1999 Playstation video game adaptation of the first SBY T.V. series.

Too bad Newtype USA isn't active anymore, otherwise this might have been the first time a Japanese-published Space Battleship Yamato comic book serial gets distributed in North America, and it's been long since any U.S. comic book series based on the Americanized Star Blazers version of the classic anime legend has been running. Also, it's a shame that Space Battleship Yamato's original conceptual artist and director Leiji Matsumoto isn't involved with anything Yamato 2199 related, but I understand and respect that he's a busy guy with a few anime projects to deal with at the moment. Anyway, if Japan isn't planning to commercially export any more SBY anime outside Japan, at least give us the Yamato 2199 manga to check out. Afterall, there is still a Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) fanbase outside Japan.

2:42 PM Canada EST