Interview with Anime Director Shinji Takamasu (3/4): Through Hell: Gundam W & X Edition

Having exercised free rein on SD Gundam and having shaped the Brave Series into a gold standard of children’s robot anime, director Takamatsu had already grown into a formidable figure. Yet, just as he was steering other projects, word of crisis reached him from the frontline of Gundam Wing.

Sugita: You had been deeply involved in the Brave Series for many years, but with Gundam Wing you returned to the Gundam fold. My understanding is that you joined in the unusual capacity of acting director. How did that come about?

Takamatsu: At the time, I was working on the follow-up project to The Brave of Gold Goldran when suddenly I was told, “Studio 1 is in a state of emergency, you need to come.” This was around September 1995, roughly half a year after Gundam Wing had begun airing.

Sugita: That’s quite a sudden twist.

Takamatsu: The producer then was Hideyuki Tomioka, my senior back from my very first days on Armored Trooper Votoms. But Director Masashi Ikeda was no longer there. Episode 30 had a storyboard; the first half had already been checked by the director, but the second half hadn’t. Episode 31’s storyboard had been commissioned, but there was no script at all for episode 32. That was the state of affairs.

Sugita: So beyond that, nothing but barren wilderness. Ordinarily, you’d be left with no option but despair. How on earth did you pull it back together?

Takamatsu: With episode 32, there simply wasn’t time to draft a script from scratch. We slotted in a compilation episode, which bought us roughly a month’s worth of breathing room. During that time I called in staff and writers, and we rebuilt the production as best we could.

Sugita: A ferocious battlefield. But to be able to cut through the panic and rebuild in such conditions, that’s impressive.

Takamatsu: And then, as if that weren’t enough, I learned there was to be a new mobile suit, the Epyon. Bandai was breathing down our necks: “Get it in there fast.” So we had no choice but to create the Epyon’s debut episode. I asked screenwriter Katsuyuki Sumizawa to dash out a script within a week. We took his first draft and greenlit it as-is. As for the storyboard, Nabeshin (aka Shinichirō Watanabe) and I split it down the middle and finished it in a week.

Sugita: Having to produce episodes when the direction itself wasn’t even clear… that must have been brutal for the rest of the staff, too. And even if you got past Epyon’s arrival, you’d still be staring at that same wilderness. How did you manage to flesh out the story from there?

Takamatsu: Ikeda’s series plan had been nearly exhausted by the end of two cours, yet the broadcast had another six months left. By episode 33, we still had about twenty to go. That really was wilderness. We couldn’t stop, so I just kept ordering scripts and storyboards from whichever writers would step up. Without claer direction from us, the story just naturally grew more expansive and chaotic.

Sugita: That explains some of the narrative peculiarities in retrospect. Maintaining any sort of quality control must have been near impossible.

Takamatsu: Exactly. And I was still finishing Goldran, so after checking storyboards I had to leave the rest to the team. Everyone pressed forward, saying, “If each of us does our part, we’ll somehow manage,” but with no clear view of what lay ahead. The art director took full responsibility for the visuals, the sound director for the audio. Nobody ruled over the whole, an utterly free-for-all production floor.

Sugita: Hearing all this makes me want to rewatch the final stretch of Wing. Clearly there are more hidden struggles.

Takamatsu: One of the biggest was the opening. Starting with the third cour, we were supposed to switch to a new opening. Ultimately it did change, but the production was so strained, the song got released before the new visuals were even made.

Sugita: Ah, yes. I remember the track being used as an insert song instead, and only much later did the opening finally switch. Back then I thought, “Why now of all times?”

Takamatsu: We were drowning in the main production and simply had no room to animate a new opening. With no other option, we decided to use the song as a battle insert track week after week. The actual new opening sequence wasn’t completed until maybe two episodes before the finale. The fully finished version only aired maybe once or twice.

Sugita: Despite such extreme circumstances, Gundam Wing still became hugely popular, I myself enjoyed it immensely at the time. Your ability to pull everything together under pressure truly amazes me.

Takamatsu: Well, to tie the story together, we ended up with characters saying one thing in the first half and the opposite in the second. But to finish the show, there was no avoiding it. Frankly, by the two-cour mark, Wing was on life support. Restoring it to working order inevitably created contradictions.

Sugita: That’s a staggering account. And then you went on to direct After War Gundam X, which directly followed Wing. Did you inherit the same staff and conditions?

Takamatsu: Yes, more or less. The new project was being cobbled together in the middle of that chaos. It might even be fair to say that X begins from a setting of despair precisely because the Wing production situation itself was so desperate. (laughs)

Sugita: The staff must have been exhausted, and the time pressure unrelenting. How did you even construct the overall plan, let alone the scripts?

Takamatsu: I personally wrote the “Once there was a war” narration that opens episode one. Then I turned to scriptwriter Hiroyuki Kawasaki, who had worked with me on Brave Police J-Decker and Goldran, and said, “Looks like we’ve got to do another Gundam. Can you handle it?” There was no time for meetings or back-and-forth. Out of trust, I left it all with him. With no chance to build a larger team, Kawasaki ended up writing all three cours by himself.

Sugita: That you were able to see it through to the end with your team intact speaks volumes about the trust built over previous projects. From my experience, intense pressure on set breeds anxiety, making strong leadership crucial.

Takamatsu: Around that time, evening anime slots were rapidly turning into news program slots, pushing anime and tokusatsu shows to early mornings. Gundam X was no exception, suddenly shifting to a morning slot in its third cour.

Sugita: I still remember forcing myself up at 5 a.m. to watch.

Takamatsu:We found out midway through writing the first half, forcing us to hurriedly restructure the series into three cours. That’s why the second half of X unfolds at such a breakneck pace.

Sugita: When struggles arise from forces outside the creative process, it must feel terribly helpless. When you were in charge, did you ever think, “Maybe I should just walk away too”?

Takamatsu: At the time, my mindset was simply, “There’s no choice, we have to do this.”

Sugita: That’s incredibly admirable.

Takamatsu: To tell the truth, I don’t know if I’d push myself that far today. Back then, it never even crossed my mind. I just thought, “We have to find a way,” and forced things through. But by the end of Wing and X, a year and a half later, I was completely spent, body and soul.

Sugita: I was only on the audience side, enjoying it blissfully unaware. But I think your struggle had real meaning.

Takamatsu: Hearing that makes it worthwhile. (laughs)