Yoshinobu Nishizaki was a Japanese film producer best known as one of the two co-creators of the anime series Space Battleship Yamato.
15 Facts About Yoshinobu Nishizaki
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki was born in 1934 and graduated from the Nihon University Art Department.
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki founded the studio Academy Productions which produced Space Battleship Yamato as well as the 1980 anime series; Space Emperor God Sigma for Toei Company.
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki's first love was music; he owned a jazz club and was a jazz radio personality.
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki formed Office Academy in 1963 as a music production company.
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Yoshinobu 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 Yoshinobu Nishizaki's part, Tezuka lost the rights to the anime versions of both series, and Mushi Production made both shows without Tezuka's involvement.
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In 1994, Yoshinobu Nishizaki designed a short-lived follow-up series called Yamato 2520, and was later sued by Matsumoto for breach of copyright.
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The dispute was finally settled in 2003, with Yoshinobu 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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Yoshinobu Nishizaki was arrested when police found inside his attache case 50g of stimulants, 7g of morphine, 9g of marijuana.
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On January 21,1999, Yoshinobu Nishizaki was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for the narcotics possession charge.
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki, voluntarily submitted two automatic rifles, 1,800 bullets, and 30 howitzer shells kept in a station wagon in his garage, police said.
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Police said that Yoshinobu Nishizaki had hidden an Austrian handgun loaded with three bullets under a zaisu chair in a study.
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki told police that he had bought the handgun in Hong Kong 10 years earlier.
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki was released from prison on December 9,2007.
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Yoshinobu Nishizaki drowned on 7 November 2010 at Chichijima, Ogasawara, when he suffered an apparent heart attack after falling off the research steamboat Yamato.