THE JOURNEY & FUTURE OF UNIVERSAL CENTURY GUNDAM ①
Interview and Text by Shino Kokawa

I Wanted to Create Something That Runs Through Universal Century Gundam from First Gundam to V Gundam

――I watched Mobile Suit Gundam: Light of Life Chronicle U.C., which is included as a bonus video for the U.C. Gundam Blu-ray Libraries. It’s a video that succinctly and clearly summarizes “What is the Universal Century?” Moreover, it hints at the next hundred years, a fitting bridge to “UC NexT 0100” at this pivotal time for encapsulating the Universal Century.

Fukui: Definitely. I felt like we needed to do something meaningful at this juncture. I wondered if we could put together something that spans the entirety of Universal Century Gundam, from the original series all the way to V Gundam. Back when the final chapter of Gundam UC (episode 7) came out, we made a compilation called “One Hundred Years of Solitude” that strung together recaps of all the Gundam shows up to that point. I started thinking about whether we could do something like that again, and that’s what got the ball rolling on this project. The One Year War era Gundam has always had a huge following, and that expanded even more with the addition of UC. So now, as we get ready to venture beyond that, the background lore just keeps piling up for new fans coming in. It’s unrealistic to expect one video to make someone understand everything, but I figured we should at least make something that piques their interest.

――How did you come up with the idea to frame Light of Life as a conversation between Amuro and Lalah?

Fukui: Actually, Bandai Namco Arts initially suggested, “What if we had Bright (Noa) narrate it?” But I said, no, there’s no way that would work all the way to V Gundam (laughs).

――(Laughs)

Fukui: We reached a point where having any living person narrate would be pretty much impossible (laughs). When you think about who would be fitting to look back on the whole Universal Century saga and gaze upon the Earth in ruins, it had to be Lalah. We all agreed on that pretty quickly. But she’s not really the type to monologue endlessly. So she needed a partner, and when you think Lalah’s partner, it’s gotta be either Char or Amuro. And here, what Lalah would say would probably be totally different depending on whether she’s talking to Char or Amuro. If the goal was to have a more balanced, impartial discussion of the story, Amuro was the clear choice. Plus, I had already done a stage reading called “Portrait of the Red” from Char’s perspective a while back.

――So, is the dialogue between Amuro and Lalah supposed to be their consciousnesses communicating?

Fukui: Exactly. If you start watching it cold, you might be like, “Huh? Are ghosts just chatting it up now?” But actually, the world of Gundam has been pretty welcoming of ghosts since the very beginning (laughs).

――(Laughs) Your UC series was groundbreaking in how thoroughly it depicted the first year of the Universal Century. Looking back, can you tell us again why you wanted to or felt compelled to, go all the way back to the start of the Universal Century in UC?

Fukui: Honestly, I had no idea it would become such a big undertaking. At first, I imagined it as a small-scale side story, filling in a gap somewhere, like some of the other Gundam spinoffs. For instance, the timeframe between Gundam ZZ and Char’s Counterattack is mostly uncharted territory. So initially, I was planning to tackle that period… which ended up becoming its own separate serialized story, Moon Gundam. Anyway, when I first pitched the idea, Sunrise said that if we were going to do this with the intention of eventually adapting it into an anime, they wanted a story that really grabbed the world by the horns, so to speak.

―― Not just a mere side story.

Fukui: Right. So, it was back to the drawing board. I mean, if you think about it, the technological leap that allowed humans to go from being earthbound to living in space is mind-boggling, right? But in the Gundam universe, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It was like humanity had already played its final hand. The whole Gundam story is about how humans dragged all the sins they’d been racking up on Earth out into space with them. So, I figured if we start depicting things from the moment those sins were first carried over, it might shed light on some interesting stuff. I thought it’d be impactful and easy to grasp if we kicked things off in U.C. 0001, with the very first shot fired and blood already being spilled.

If It Weren’t for Gunpla, Gundam Would Be in a Different Place Today

――It’s been 40 years since the Universal Century was born alongside First Gundam. Looking back, what do you think was groundbreaking about the concept of the Universal Century?

Fukui: To put it bluntly, Gunpla.

――(Laughs)

Fukui: Without Gunpla, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and Gundam wouldn’t be where it is today. The reality is that boys have an inexplicable attraction to weapons and things that go boom. In postwar Japan, you had this dynamic for a while of the wartime generation parents and their kids. Kids would say, “Dad, you rode in this?” and military model kits from WWII had a huge market, capitalizing on that sentiment. But then, as part of postwar education, a movement emerged to properly teach children about pacifism. That wiped out the militaristic plastic model culture. The Zenkyōtō and similar movements also sparked a rebellion against the wartime generation parents, and being into that stuff became uncool. That rapid decline in military model kits happened from the 60s into the 70s.

――Around the time of the student movements.

Fukui: Exactly. Before that, elementary school kids would build and play with tanks and Zero fighters. Shogakukan magazines from back then would casually feature articles like “How the Japanese Navy Fought.” That’s just how it was for a while after the war. Then that got pushed back against, and by our generation, that stuff had vanished, replaced by Ultraman and Kamen Rider on magazine covers. Those satisfied the craving for heroes, but the hard-edged militaristic elements, the concept of tools as objects, weren’t really fulfilled anymore. That’s where Gundam landed with a bang! Initially, Gunpla was simply… even if you called them Mobile Suits, they were basically boxes, only as detailed as dolls. But then everyone started painting letters on them like real weapons, doing camo paint jobs, weathering them like tanks, and they quickly veered towards the military side. It took on the role of single-handedly catering to the part of every boy that’s drawn to military things. Sure, Space Battleship Yamato was a stepping stone before that, but Gundam and Gunpla took it to a whole new level. That’s how powerful it was, and ultimately, that’s been a huge driving force behind its 40-year market dominance.

――So Gunpla was the biggest driving force.

Fukui: Yes, but there’s actually another wrinkle to this. Universal Century Gundam, particularly the works Yoshiyuki Tomino made himself, increasingly rejects militarism. I completely understand that sentiment. If you charge full speed ahead into militarism, it just becomes a playground for enthusiasts. Any creator would rather make something that gets people pondering the future and the very nature of existence itself. That struggle of how to reject militarism becoming a mere playground, I believe that history runs through Zeta Gundam, Gundam F91, and V Gundam. So, in the end, they shifted away from the militaristic route after Zeta. But where did Gundam’s militarism persist? In the One Year War works by creators other than Tomino, and then Gundam 0083 Stardust Memory burst onto the scene, essentially the epitome of turning Universal Century Gundam into a militaristic playground. You could say Gundam carved out its militaristic market by making those 4-5 years its sweet spot. But when you examine Gundam through a militaristic lens, ultimately, it only draws in enthusiasts. It’s a stage every boy goes through, but the number of people who continue to hold it dear even as adults drops sharply. So, I decided to set aside militarism. Well, not completely, but while keeping it in sight, I stopped making it the central focus. And what symbolizes Tomino’s rejection of militarism is Newtypes. I aimed to lean more towards a Newtype-esque sci-fi direction rather than militarism. In other words, I made UC with the intention of reclaiming Gundam as a story.

Alongside Militarism, Gundam Also Had an Extremely Allegorical Structure

――In the dialogue between Lalah and Amuro in Light of Life, it’s stated that mobile suits are devices that firmly impart the pain of war to people, make them understand it. Not something indirect like dropping bombs with drones, but something that directly conveys the reality of the battlefield.

Fukui: That’s right. That’s been a consistent thread since the days of First Gundam. Militarism tends to veer towards realistically depicting what contemporary militaries and weapons would be like. But Gundam has an extremely allegorical structure in that regard. Militarism tends to seep in and undermine that allegorical framework. So what I’ve done since UC is deftly separate that out and include it as an accent while maintaining this as the foundational baseline.

――It’s true that the spinoff works centered on the One Year War are rather single-minded, in a sense.

Fukui: Yeah, it’s plain to see when you look back over the list of works like this.

――Rather than that single-minded approach, you wanted to create works that took a bird’s-eye view of the Universal Century.

Fukui: Precisely. Based on my own intuition, I thought Gundam had way more fans than that. I mean, back in elementary school, we all lined up to buy Gunpla, so I figured everyone… they’d outgrow the military stuff, the war games, by late middle school at the latest. But then, everyone who underwent that baptism by fire, if we could call them back, I was confident it could be a substantial business opportunity. So, I decided to step away from the military angle and return to the themes that Gundam originally sought to explore.