THE CREATOR OF GUNDAM REVEALS THE SECRETS OF HIS CRAFT
ON THE EVE OF HIS EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY

By Yukinori Otani

Tomino blazed through every question with a rapid-fire energy that never once faltered. We at the magazine were simply overwhelmed by his vitality.

I WILL KEEP RESISTING THE TIMES

“If I hadn’t gone into animation, I might have ended up a criminal. (laughs) When I was in my first year of middle school, I once chased my mother around the house with a knife. That’s how impulsive a person I am. I believe I was spared a prison cell, saved my own life, really, by channeling that impulse into my work.”

So confesses Yoshiyuki Tomino, the towering figure of anime who has helmed Mobile Suit Gundam and countless other productions. This November 5th, he celebrates the auspicious milestone of his eightieth birthday.

The Gundam franchise, born from Tomino’s original vision, has been generating fresh momentum in recent years. Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, based on his novel, was adapted into a film by director Shuko Murase and surpassed two billion yen at the box office. G-Reco, Reconguista in G, for which Tomino serves as chief director, has released its third installment, Legacy from Space, out of a planned five-part theatrical run. And in 2022, three entirely new Gundam titles by other creators are slated for announcement.

“It’s a wonderful thing to see the Gundam universe expanding like this. But the question is: can we beat Demon Slayer and EVA? No, the real question is whether we have the fighting spirit to say we must beat them. Gundam is becoming a property that’s cutting into markets worldwide, across Asia and beyond. This is a kind of war: Gundam’s campaign to take on the world.”

Tomino’s works are renowned for their prescience. Hathaway’s Flash was written as a novel roughly thirty years ago, yet its depiction of a terrorist’s struggle feels as though it anticipated the world that emerged after the September 11th attacks.

“When I was writing that story, the Cold War was in its final days. What I was thinking about was this: even when the Cold War ends, the weapons remain. Those weapons would scatter across nations, and ideologically entrenched groups would wage guerrilla warfare with them. If you have an accurate understanding of the history of warfare, that’s a natural progression. In Hathaway’s Flash, the protagonist is executed at the end of the story, and that, too, is the only natural conclusion. In the real world, terrorism must not be allowed to stand. Being brought to justice is how it should end. You can’t go around cheering, ‘Long live the villainous hero!’ I’ve been consistent in how I’ve portrayed Char Aznable along exactly those lines. And yet somehow you still get people saying things like ‘Char is the ideal boss,’ which is really quite exasperating. (laughs)”

Meanwhile, Reconguista in G, set roughly two thousand years after Mobile Suit Gundam, pushes his foresight even further. A space elevator for transporting goods, energy compression technology, a candy that provides an entire day’s worth of hydration, every idea in it is the kind that would transform the world if it actually existed.

“In Reconguista in G, I’m depicting something no robot anime has tackled before: economic theory. The reason I kept hammering away at the space elevator is that you need a transportation infrastructure connecting Earth and space before you can even begin to move resources. Those resources are what make the world function. They’re what allow people to live. I wanted audiences to grasp that fundamental principle. The hydration candy is the same kind of thinking, I’m a coward, so I look at a cockpit with no water bottle and think, ‘I’d be dead in a few hours.’

This time around, I even installed a toilet inside the mobile suit cockpit, because I have a frequent urination problem and I’d need to go every fifteen minutes. (laughs) Every device and mechanism I put into my work comes from thinking about what people would actually need to live in space. To depict a world while ignoring those realities, that was something I simply could not allow myself to do.”

At the Sunrise animation studio. This is where Tomino is at work on his latest project.

ANY PLANS FOR A NEW WORK?

Tomino directs his productions with overwhelming insight and an unflinching sense of reality. From his vantage point, the real world today looks distinctly misshapen.

“Watching the chaos from the Prime Minister’s resignation announcement through the Liberal Democratic Party leadership race, I see a glaring absence of any real perspective, the fact that people are in financial ruin under the state of emergency during the pandemic, that people are falling into depression and dying. And yet, riding a wave of populism, some are blithely reaching for the imperial system and constitutional revision. The constitution was built by our predecessors through painstaking efforts. I feel that this kind of foundational thinking has been completely abandoned.

This isn’t just a problem with politicians. I sense that modern people in general are growing foolish. The internet has made vast stores of knowledge available, and in exchange, we’ve seen a surge of rhetoric that skims only the surface of wisdom, an era where everything must be easy to digest. I call this ‘the folly of the informed.’ I want to push back against this, even if only a little. Those of us who are old should say what needs to be said, and say it plainly.”

At the threshold of eighty, his razor-sharp tongue, his analytical eye, and his creative ambition show no sign of dimming.

“I do have ideas for a new work after Reconguista in G. Whether it materializes, I can’t say. I’m a person with narrow interests, and considering the career I have left, I’ve come to accept that I’ll probably go out as ‘Tomino, the Gundam guy.’ But even having that name to carry is a blessing. These days, my daily routine includes doing the first set of radio calisthenics every morning. As long as my legs can push off the ground and carry me forward, I intend to show what I can still do.”

Tomino is currently deep in production on the fourth installment of the theatrical Reconguista in G.

Tomino in 1961, during his first year of university. Photographed at a training camp for the broadcasting club he belonged to.

Source: Kodansha’s Friday Digital (October 2023)