I’m skimming the new Tomino book about G-Reco and it makes my brain hurt. Some of this info is a bit crazy and was either omitted or incredibly vague throughout the series. Not sure if I should attempt bullet points, but here we go nonetheless:

FOREWARD

• Tomino admits he shouldn’t be writing about a work that he planned and directed. If it were popular, others would have done so already.
• If I’m understanding, despite the late timeslot, it wasn’t much of an issue since people would record it and watch later, but Tomino kept the pressure on himself?
• Stuff that he came up with during the planning stage was incredibly deep(?), so he had to reflect on the harshness of the production schedule.
• Looking over the entire story as a TV version, he could see the lack of content checks from the planning stage, found narrative omissions, and came to the consensus that the TV version was only the “zero-gou” (first prototype) in the film production stage.
• DVDs would be put on sale to recoup production costs, but he couldn’t stop that.
• He started revising it as a film version since he was accustomed to doing this, so it was a force of habit.
• He started making changes from the TV storyboard to a film version. He told them he’d be doing this but didn’t get a decent answer back.
• Comments how live actions don’t have this luxury. Directors cuts only add in deleted footage. Animation allows for things to be added easier.
• He took more than two years to present the storyboard of the films to the production department.
• Cue the line about if it wasn’t popular, it’d be cut. (If the first movie wasn’t popular, there’d be no more)
• He wrote this book to help deepen the understanding of as many supporters as possible.

INTRODUCTION

Three Major Corrections with the Film Version:

He considered just fixing the three errors he made, but there were a lot of others, and he had been carried away by the habits of working on anime and stopped thinking.
He was amazed at his own stupidity and writing this book allowed for him to see it again. So, we have three points:

Putting Eyes on the G-Self

• He helped with the 1/1 construction of the Gundam. At the end, when it was dismantled, few people know that the head and left arm were removed first and it was temporarily posed in the last shooting position.
• Akira Yasuda drew a version of the G-Self with eyes, but the animation version only had the glass surface in the shape of eyes, just like the old Gundam.
• No one was concerned about the G-Self’s expression (the eyes) after it was on TV.
• The 1/1 Gundam helped him get a better perspective on the head. He said that in 40 years of Gundam, no one has really depicted the “pupils” or the camera lens in the eyes. (Note: Didn’t Gundam Wing do this once?)
• He cites the many manga running in Gundam Ace and the artists (and writers) neglecting this.
• As the movie version moved forward, staff didn’t push back on the changes of eyes. He was surprised.
• He cites this lack of eyes and the fact that no one else really does it as being “bound by the curse of Gundam”
• He says that by giving it eyes, he feels that the mecha also have emotions
• Even though the stage of the story is ultra-futuristic, the motif is the result of thinking about things realistically, not fantasy.

Windows on the Crown

• Tomoaki Okada’s first draft of the Crown floored him.
• It was a messy design with Minovsky Flight Engines, yet looked plausible.
• Tomino’s original design was very rough. He immediately approved the design and sent it off.
• He realized at the end of the show that there was a problem with the design. He couldn’t remember when, but the depiction of the Crown was wrong to him.
• The windows were always black, which was fine for the setting art and whatnot, but not for the animation.
• Unoccupied or unused rooms were fine to be black, but the ones being used should’ve been lit up.
• That’s it, so that’s why they’re lit up in the movie version. A simple fix added so much more to the world.
• Says he should’ve been aware of this from the beginning since he’d be depicting the Nut and ships…

Using the Nut for Scenery

• A fake setting(? ウソ設定). Since the era has a history that is inherited from the Gundam world, he decided it was possible. (He’ll explain more about the lies later).
• 3 different scales are due to not know which size would be appropriate since there is a cluster of basic production units that are forced to produce industrial waste that pollutes the Earth.
• He noticed a big problem with this towards the end of production too.
• Says white color for it should have been a better choice, but it doesn’t translate well on screen.
• As such, it made it hard to tell which of the 144 units was witch, even if explained in the dialogue.
• Plus, it was never shown for extended periods of time on screen, which made it hard too.
• He saw one of the Bond movies and was inspired by a scene change.
• So, for the movie version, it was fixed by redrawing the outside wall to make it look like the scenery changed.
• Ended up with the film version of Haiyan with the scenery of Coriol, Dimitar, and Wanjira (Uh… new Nut shots?).
• Coriol is quite cute, Haiyan is grand Wanjira is derived from Africa, so he wanted a continental feel, but it was hard. Dimitar is pretty straightforward and dignified.
• By making this tweak, he was able to shift the attitude of the animation more so towards a movie.

Lesson’s Learned:

• Be careful with habitual work. Habits are dangerous. Whenever you are stuck doing the same thing, always ruminate and reflect on it. That’s it.
• Whenever you feel something is wrong, ask yourself what it is and try to find a cause. But, if you get carried away, you just keep making mistakes over and over. It’s not a sign of old age, just one of the pitfalls of habits.

G-RECO’s EARLY STAGES

ATTACK A: PUTTING TOGETHER THE MAIN PLOT 1

Early Stage Proposal
Penning a Bright Future
“Reconquista in G” Proposal Outline [COMPANY SECRET] February 2010 to March 8th
General Comments

Towards Reconquista in G
Reconquista Happened through Movements
Cautioning Oneself 1
Cautioning Oneself 2

ATTACK B: PUTTING TOGETHER THE MAIN PLOT 2

G-Reco’s Early Setting

Introduction
Human Sources of Pollution Multiply
Organizations Have No Consideration for the Earth
Tools for Lying
The 21st Century, Supported by Psychosomatic Disorders
The Threat of Artificiality
The Discovery and Towing of Luna II
The End of the Universal Century
The Age of Feeding on One Another

Rebuilding the Space Elevators
Sankt Porto
The Blossoming (Development) of Peripheral Technology
Space Colony Construction Period
Invention of New Battery and Capsules
Regarding Weapons
Luna II Territorial Dispute
Principality of Zeon and Gundam
A Sense of Abandonment
Space Elevators
Towasanga’s Hermes Foundation
Transfer of Capital Tower’s Operational Sphere
Crown
SU-Cordism
General Taboos of the Regild Century
Human Habits
A Different Kind of Taboo
Leaving Taboos to Religion
Exceptions to the Taboos (The Overnight Festival)
Setting of SU-Cordism’s Cloistered Emperor
Hermes Foundation
Considerations
I’d Like to Make Some Partial Changes to the Universal Century
To Prolonge the Life of the Earth

CREATION OF THE WORLD

ATTACK C: BASIC SETTING (Phenomenon)

Regild Century is in the year 1014
About the Terrain
Political Distribution by Continent
Capital Army
Life Without Gravity
Proof Still Takes Time
Will My Internal Clock go Haywire?
I Don’t Want to Think About Problems With Radiation Exposure
What is Radiation?
Is there Any Radiation Damage?
Origin of the Name B-Clover and its Role
The Power for the Linear Motors Comes from the Earth
Laser Beams in the SU-Cord Church
Use of Kumpa’s Office and Partitions
And the Airlock’s As Well
The Prototype for Towasanga Came from a Drawing Exercise
It’s Going to be a Hysterical Cyrano-5
Okada’s Issues
Opening Port at Cyrano-5
Gel Curtain
Adoption of Kuntala and Towasanga
Can Humans be Equal?
Fau Fau is a Term that Shouldn’t be Uttered (I forget what this was, sorry)
Cheerleaders and the Use of Dance
About Babies
Gynmastics on the Megafauna
Learning
Raraiya and Flaminia Kalle’s Strange Appearance
Why is it so bad to be a grown woman?
花とけもの一つに棲めるをとめ子はひる深くねむり眠りつつ育つ
On Eyes and Toilets
A Different Kind of Toilet Song

**MORE TO COME**