Collecting Space Battleship Yamato Models

Space Battleship is a long running and beloved series in Japan and worldwide and such it has quite a lot of merchandise out there, not to mention some superb garagekits and scratch builds over the years including very impressive massive Yamato builds both by fans and by the show staff.

For this post I’ll be including several links to “ourstarblazers” a Star Blazers site run by giga-fan Tim Eldred, his site is a great resource for those who really love Yamato/Star Blazers. I do not have a huge collection of Yamato figures so many of the photos in this post are pulled from Tim’s site.

In this post we’ll look at model kits for Yamato both large and small scale, Soul of Chogokin (SOC) diecast figures, and gashapon (capsule toys) for Yamato. If you are unfamiliar with Space Battleship Yamato please check out our where to start post here. Keep reading below the break.

Yamato has a very big range of model kits, and during the peak popularity of the show in the 2010s, they were easy to get and very affordable, although looking at prices now as I write this post it’s clear there is definitely a scarcity now on secondary markets as the low price of $12 I paid is now $60 for the same mini-kits.

When it comes to model kits there are those from the OG series which you can still find fairly easy at second hand stores in Japan (should you take a trip there), and at somewhat reasonable prices as well as US eBay.

The more moden Yamato remake tends to be a lot easier to come across both online and in second-hand stores, and of course being produced 40 years later the build quality is a lot higher, plus we’ve got color separation. Yamato has a large age range of fans, so we try as best we can to include the original artwork along with the modern artwork on the MechaStellar roster, and to give you a good idea of what ship is what if you happen to buy up a bunch of model kits from the 70s.

For this post we are mainly going to focus on the modern range of Yamato kits. The most important thing to note when you are buying these is that THERE ARE TWO SCALES for modern Yamato. When these were released, to honor the tradition of the original kits, each large size kit came with a bonus mini kit. However, if you’re searching online, not every seller is going to distinguish if a kit is a mini-kit or not, so be sure to search around for a bit before clicking buy so you don’t wind up with an extra small model. Pictured below are examples of the mini-kits.

The small size kits tend to be very small in size, while you could use them with 1/400 scale Gundam minis or SRW gashapon for instance, they are remarkably smaller than the old Gundam Salamis and Musai kits and so will look a bit off side by side. The mini-kits I have shown above are for the Dreadnoughts that appeared in 2202. They look fine next to 1/400 figures, but are about 1/3 the size of the ancient light blue salamis kit.

In general if you play with larger models, or just like your ships to be large in comparison to your figures, it would be best to stick with the larger range of kits for Yamato. It will also give you better size parity with other ship series such as Harlock’s Arcadia.

Unfortunately I don’t have any large scale Yamato kits at the moment but I’ll update the post later once we have some to do size comparisons. In the meantime here’s an interview with the model kit developer. https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/767/

Yamato 1/1000 Scale Model Kits

I’m going to refer to Tim Eldred’s personal site for Star Blazers / Yamato pretty often here since he’s done an excellent job of consolidating info on Yamato including the model kits and a lot of really interesting background information. For the below model kit releases I’m going to summarize what is in each section but I highly recommend jumping over to Tim’s site for great photos and background info.

Yamato 2199 Model Kits Part 1 (https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/831/)

1/500 Yamato Kit
1/1000 Yamato Kit
1/1000 UN Cosmo Navy Kit – Kirishima, Yukikaze & Murasame
1/1000 Cosmo Navy Set 2 – Color variants for Murasame and Yukikaze
1/1000 Operation M Set – Mega box with the whole UN fleet
1/72 Cosmo Zero Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 kits
1/72 Cosmo Falcon customs for Kato and Shinohara
1/1000 Pormelia Astro Assault Carrier (Sattelite Cannon)
1/1000 Garmilas Warships – Destria Cruiser and Kelkapia Cruiser
1/1000 Garmilas Warships 2 – Gaiderol Battleship and Kripitera Destroyers
1/1000 Garmilas Warships 3 – Meltoria Battle Cruiser, Dimensional Submarine, 2x Czvarke fighters (smaller scale)
1/1000 Garmilas Imperial Guard Warships – Imperial blue recolors
1/1000 Gelvades Carrier (Red)
1/1000 Deusura II Core Ship

Yamato 2199 Model Kits Part 2 (https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/079a/)

1/1000 Domelaze III Dreadnaught
1/1000 Garmilas Imperial Guard Warships – Imperial blue recolors
1/1000 Yamato with Cosmo Reverse
1/1000 Gatlantis Carrier Kiska
1/72 Metallic Cosmo Zero
(Small scale) Solar System Battle – Includes various Garmilas fighters and tanks

Yamato 2199 Model Kits Part 3 (https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/080a/)

Mecha Collection Mini Kits to include:
- Yamato and Yukikaze
- UN Kirishima & Murasame
- Cosmo Zero & Cosmo Falcon
- Garmilas Destria Heavy Cruiser
- Garmilas Triple Deck Carrier (Purple, Green, Blue)
- Garmilas Red Carrier & Drill Missile Ship
- Garmilas Deusular II & Control Ship
- Garmilas Domelaze III
- Garmilas Dimensional Submarine
- Garmilas Gaiderol
- Gatlantis Warships Lasceaux and Kukulkan
- Gatlantis Nazca carrier
- Gatlantis Carrier Kiska

Yamato 2202 Model Kits Part 1 (https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/464a/)

1/1000 Yamato 2202, Final Battle & Ginga
1/1000 Andromeda & AAA Deluxe version
1/1000 Yunagi combined fleet
1/1000 Dreadnaught & Mars Defense version
1/1000 Aldebaran
1/1000 Apollo Norm
1/72 Cosmo Blackbird
1/1000 Gatlantis Kiska

Yamato 2202 Mini Model Kits (https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/465a/)

2202 Yamato
Andromeda & AAA Version
Apollo Norm
Ginga
Dreadnaughts
Neu Balgrey
Cosmo Falcon, Cosmo Tiger II, Czverke and Gatlantis Fighter
Gatlantis Kalalum
Gatlantis Warships Lasceaux and Kukulkan
Garmilas Zoellegut (Domelaze repaint)

MegaHouse Cosmo Fleet

MegaHouse is a great option for having space ship figures. But wait! There’s a similar problem here, MegaHouse Cosmo Fleet Special is for the larger size figures, the regular cosmo fleet collection are much, much smaller. Pictured above are the Cosmo Fleet Special Triple Deck Carriers. All the figures are scale agnostic but are roughly the same size as the Cosmo Fleet Special Gundam ships seen in this post.

While they are nicely detailed the ships are fairly tiny, here is the Desula II next to an ancient Salamis model kit.

The smaller Cosmo Fleet Collection are around the same size as a Gundam 1/400 figure. If you don’t care about scale, it is a great way to get a lot of no-assembly required Yamato ships.

Soul of Chogokin – Yamato

Do you like giant diecast spaceships? Do you have money to spare? Well in that case you may want to consider the Soul of Chogokin (SOC) line of figures which also had several inclusions for the Space Battleship Yamato series. Not only are there a few different models for Yamato but it also includes a 2199 Garmilas ship.

Each SOC has a number which identifies it, for example GX-53 refers to the original Daitarn 3 release, GX-65 has updated paint colors, and GX-82 is the smaller (but more articulated) Full Action version of Daitarn 3.

Below are a list of SOC for Space Battleship Yamato. If you’re looking for indepth reviews I’ve included the reviews by Gold from the Brave Fortress website who puts together great SOC reviews.

GX-57 Classic 70s design Yamato (https://bravefortress.com/gallery/soul-of-chogokin-gx-57-space-battleship-yamato/)
GX-58 Andromeda (https://bravefortress.com/gallery/soul-of-chogokin-gx-58-super-battleship-andromeda/)
GX-64 2199 design Yamato (https://bravefortress.com/gallery/soul-of-chogokin-gx-63-space-battleship-yamato-2199/)
GX-86 2202 Yamato design (https://bravefortress.com/gallery/soul-of-chogokin-gx-86-space-battleship-yamato-2202/)
GX-89 2199 Garmilas Warship (https://bravefortress.com/gallery/soul-of-chogokin-gx-89-space-battleship-yamato-garmillas-warship/)

I’m a big fan of the SOC for battleships, they make for excellent display pieces and look fantastic on the tabletop. As for scale they’re very large and can be used side by side with pretty much any robot.

The SOC shown above has a neat gimmick that allows you to pose it at different angles to mirror Yamato veering around for a climactic assault. One downside to SOC battleships, which you can also see in this picture, is that they have a gigantic base. This can be a bit difficult when maneuvering around terrain, so be sure to use the old trusty “wobbly model’ rule.

I’ve got the GX-64 2199 Yamato and it also comes with some extremely small fighters for the Cosmo Falcon and Cosmo Zero. Speaking of small figures:

Gashapon (Capsule Toys)

Yamato also has various gashapon that has come out, although the quality varies quite a bit. The quality level and sizing of the Harlock’s Arcadia are rather nice. I’ve seen a few Yamato gashapon with not so great detail or quality, however, the mechanical collection has some great figures for the Cosmo Falcons and Cosmo Tigers.

(I’ll include photos and scale comparisons once I locate my minis)

Read more about those here: https://ourstarblazers.com/vault/198/