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Translator's Note: The following interview with chief director Yasuhiro Imagawa, accompanying the release of the Mobile Fighter G Gundam Blu-ray Box, appeared in the November 2016 issue of Tokuma Shoten's Animage magazine. Here, Imagawa provides some rare details about the origins and development of the series, as well as explanations of his influences and character name sources. |
It's what we've all been waiting for~! The Mobile Fighter G Gundam Blu-ray Box the fans have longed for is finally released! Now, to commemorate this, we've conducted a long interview with Chief Director Yasuhiro Imagawa! We're entering the unknown backstage of an anime masterpiece—ready, go!!
The TV anime Mobile Fighter G Gundam, which began airing in April 1994, was a complete departure from the series that Chief Director Yoshiyuki Tomino had previously been constructing. As the first Gundam to unfold with a completely new worldview, it drew a great deal of attention at the time.
G Gundam depicted the battles and personal growth of the Gundam Fighter Domon Kasshu against the backdrop of the "Gundam Fight," a robot fighting tournament held on Earth every four years to decide control of the United Colonies Federation. Thanks to Chief Director Yasuhiro Imagawa's passionate character drama and successfully overwhelming dramatization, it earned a broad fanbase, and superbly established the idea of another Gundam world. In other words, without the success of G Gundam, later hit works such as New Mobile Report Gundam W, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, and Mobile Suit Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans would never have existed.
G Gundam began as heresy, and has now become a standard in its own right. Rather than fading, its appeal has only increased with the passage of time. This Blu-ray release will be a fine opportunity to confirm that fact!
Yasuhiro Imagawa
Born July 24 in Osaka Prefecture / Animation director and scriptwriter / Main works as a director include Mr. Ajikko, Giant Robo the Animation—The Day the Earth Stood Still, Seven of Seven, and Tetsujin 28: Morning Moon of Midday.
Imagawa: G-Gun has been released in a few different packages, but when it first came out on video, it was released simultaneously on videocassette and laser disc. Nowadays the video releases begin while a work is still on the air, but at the time, the rule was that it would only be released after the broadcast ended.
When it first came out on video, the manufacturer Bandai Visual told me "Since this work has the Gundam title attached to it, we have no choice but to release it on video." In other words, they thought there was no way it would sell. That's how harshly G-Gun was received, and it still hasn't changed. Even if I said "I'd like to do a sequel," nobody would listen to me. That's always been the situation with G-Gun.
Imagawa: At the time, people called it "the winter of Gundam." Basically, back then, even if they put out Gundam toys they didn't sell. They couldn't sell them no matter what they did, so for the first time ever, they came up with the idea of replacing the director. I think that was a really shocking development for Gundam fans back then.
Imagawa: I felt tremendous pressure at the idea of replacing Mr. Tomino as director, and inheriting the title of Gundam. Before it became G-Gun, I was initially planning a work called "Polcarino Gundam." (1)
Imagawa: That was the hero's name. It meant "Polcarino's Gundam," so we called it "Polcarino Gundam." The name Polcarino was taken from the protagonist of Director Pietro Germi's film The Railroad Man... or so I thought, but when I checked that again recently, it turned out I was mistaken. (laughs)
Imagawa: It's a movie I love, and the details and story of the plan resembled it a little, so I thought I'd borrow the protagonist's name. But I got it wrong. So what the heck is a Polcarino? (laughs)
Imagawa: Anyway, at the point when I'd tentatively constructed a plot for the first half with this kind of theme and this kind of story, and gotten as far as the script for the first episode, I was summoned to Bandai. They told me "The next Gundam will be like this," and showed me a lineup of Gundam faces wearing various national costumes, such as Gundams in Napoleonic and Russian hats.
The game Street Fighter II was popular back then, so they said "Gundams from all the world's nations fight to decide which is the best one. Please make a work like that." The "Polcarino Gundam" plan vanished at that moment, and the G-Gun plan began.
Imagawa: Somehow, I managed to put together a plan that met their conditions. But when I brought it to them, they revised the order again. (wry laughter) I really struggled with it. They had a lot of requests, but one of them was that the main objective was to make something aimed at children. I don't mean to call it "cheap," but robot anime for children means a cool-looking world where you fight, you win, and the enemy explodes with a big boom. But it was First Gundam (Mobile Suit Gundam) itself that destroyed that formula. In episode 1 a Zaku is hit by a beam saber and blows up, but the rival Char returns home undefeated.
So in G-Gun, the order was that the hero would win, but the enemies wouldn't lose. I didn't understand what they meant. (laughs) I struggled with that too. The number one was supposed to be decided by winning against Gundams from all over the world, so it would be difficult if the others didn't keep losing. On the other hand, while it didn't seem like a problem if the windmill Gundam (Nether Gundam) and cactus Gundam (Tequila Gundam) blew up, the Neo American Gundam (Gundam Maxter) and the rest of the four main national Gundams were vital to the toy sales strategy, so we couldn't blow them up. There were a lot of contradictions.
In meetings, we put forward various plans... Soon, the idea emerged that each Gundam could have some kind of "mark," like the headbands in a cavalry fight, and it's defeated if it loses it. (2) From that came the rule that you're disqualified if your head is destroyed. In that case, the four main Gundams could be partially destroyed.
Imagawa: In the first episode, they okayed the Neo Italian Gundam (Neros Gundam) being defeated and exploding. But when the main four Gundams showed up in succession from episode 2 onwards, we couldn't blow them up. We had to think of a pretext for winning, how the opponent could get away, or how to end the match in a draw. The stress just kept building up and I couldn't release it.
Nowadays I could imagine telling the story in a different way, such as having all four main Gundams show up at once in the first episode, but things were so chaotic at the time that we couldn't even think of that. In short, we couldn't find a way to escape all those constraints.
Any way we looked at it, we couldn't make sense of a world in which Gundams battled each other to decide who was number one. Another thing I struggled with was that when the staff asked "Why are we making a Gundam like this?" I couldn't answer them with any conviction. It just got more and more confusing.
When we create fiction, in a sense, we're telling lies. We fool the audience with interesting and well-crafted lies in order to entertain them. Normally, the director thinks of something they'd like to make, and they lie to the rest of the staff to get them to believe in it. Then all the staff tell further lies based on the lie they've accepted, and they fool the audience as well, drawing them into the world of the story.
But nobody will fall for a lie that the director doesn't even believe themself. Thus the first half of G-Gun, in particular, was pretty unsteady. But as we were making it, the content itself and the direction I wanted to go gradually solidified, and that's why the second half became so explosive.
Imagawa: That's right. It's because I realized along the way that I was completely pinned down. In a situation where you're locked inside a pitch-black room, with your body tied up and unable to move freely, even if you're told "Come on out!" that's simply not possible. I decided "If there's no exit, then I'll just have to create an entrance." So I fought back with the appearance of Dongfang Bubai, Master Asia.
Imagawa: I wasn't thinking about that at the beginning. But we had to establish an enemy who would be a powerful rival in order to show the hero's strength. So naturally I thought that enemy should be his master.
Imagawa: Actually, we were rushing to create a new character, and "Dongfang Bubai" was just a placeholder name. (laughs) This is still the case, but I'm really bad at deciding on character names. Or perhaps I should say that I don't obsess about them. I figure anything is fine.
Imagawa: So far, G-Robo is the only time I've ever been that particular, or perhaps that free, about naming characters. Taking a hint from my beloved Water Margin, I really enjoyed giving them nicknames like "Shockwave Alberto."
Getting back to the topic of G-Gun, at first "Dongfang Bubai" was just a symbol indicating a new character, attached as a placeholder name. So the rest of the "Devil Gundam Four Heavenly Kings" were also named after the titles of wuxia novels, such as The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. But even through they were placeholder names, this information was leaked to children's magazines at the time, and they ended up being published. And then we had no choice but to use them in the show as well! (laughs)
Imagawa: I generally didn't choose the names. The only ones I decided were Rain, Dongfang Bubai, and Allenby. Rain was named after the musical film Singin' in the Rain, and that was referenced in the Neo Turkey episode (episode 11). Because it was about her, I wanted to make it a rainy story.
As for the name Mikamura, if you rearrange the characters, you get the name of the "Voice of Heaven" who overturned my "Polcarino" proposal. (4) (laughs) So Dr. Mikamura was originally going to be the number one villain. But as the episodes progressed, I decided he couldn't be the main villain, and at the end I made him a good father instead. I was defeated by the power of Mr. Motomu Kiyokawa, the actor who played him. (laughs) The eventual switch to Urube as the final villain was a last-minute ad lib.
Imagawa: That was the name of a female conn officer who appeared just two times in Star Trek: The Next Generation, a foreign drama I really like. The actress who played her was very cute, and I liked the sound of the name "Allenby." I think the family name Beardsley was chosen by Mr. Ryota Yamaguchi, who was responsible for the script of episode 30, where Allenby was introduced.
Imagawa: It wasn't me who named him, but the name Domon came from "Doraemon." If you remove two characters, you get "Domon." As for the source for Kasshu... I've forgotten. (laughs)
Imagawa: Our guideline at the time was to make it like a boys' manga for children, and he gave us an entry point for that. For me, it's easier to imagine things if I have pictures, and when you're trying to make something more specific than a hot-blooded boys' manga, it's easier to go ahead when you have some artwork. I thought Mr. Shimamoto's art might be the most appropriate for this hot-blooded subject matter, so I called him in.
I really liked Mr. Shimamoto's Masked Boxer, and I thought that if he could bring in that same hot-bloodedness, it would help me set guidelines for the staff. An animator can't draw something from scratch unless you've conveyed all the concepts to them, but the concepts weren't yet fully finished. Since we still had to make progress with the work, I thought it would be better to base it on Mr. Shimamoto's drawings.
Imagawa: I don't think he did all that many. In general, he got the image for each character in one go. Then the character designer, Mr. Hiroshi Ousaka, realized Mr. Shimamoto's drawings for animation.
Imagawa: At the time, Mr. Ousaka was commuting between Osaka and Tokyo. When he went back to Osaka, I gave him some money and told him "Next time you come, get me some pork buns from 551 Horai." He returned to Tokyo with thirty or forty pork buns, even though they were really heavy. Then everyone in the studio was saying "Wow, I love them. Thank you!" "Thank you so much!" "You're the best, Mr. Ousaka!" Wait a minute, I said, they were my gift. (laughs) I appreciate that you came back carrying all that weight, but something isn't right here~~(cries)!! (laughs)
Imagawa: I was delighted when I came in to the studio the morning after Mr. Ousaka had gone back to Osaka, and he'd drawn a picture of a girl crouching down to look at me. It said, "How would you like it if when you woke up, a girl like this was wishing you good morning?" (laughs) There were a few of these drawings, and they were really elaborate. I wanted more of them, so I wished he'd go back to Osaka again. (laughs)
Imagawa: I do. From time to time, I'll randomly remember it and bring it out again.
Imagawa: None of them particularly stands out, so I can't decide. I enjoyed all the characters. This isn't a character, but what ultimately made the biggest impression on me was Mr. Hideyuki Hori, who played Kyoji. A little before episode 44, he started giving us incredibly passionate performances, which reached their climax with the episode where Kyoji died. In other words, episode 44.
When the post-recording was done, he asked me "There are a few episodes left until the final one, right? I died defeating the Devil Gundam, but what happens after that?" I told him "The Devil Gundam returns to space and revives," and he flew into a rage, saying "Then what did I die for?!" I still remember how he screamed. (laughs) Somehow he seemed so serious...
Imagawa: What was my passionate performance for, he asked? That's how energetic Mr. Hori's performance was in the post-recording. Speaking of which, there's a line where Schwarz is encouraging Domon and he says "You haven't changed at all! Just like back then! Just like back then! Just like back then~~~!!!" Normally you'd record "Just like back then!" once, and then add an echo so you hear it multiple times. But I decided to have him scream the line multiple times rather than using an echo, and he repeated it three times.
Mr. Hori put tremendous passion into it, and it ended up being really cool. But everyone else was trying desperately not to laugh at how intense he was, and then I cracked up watching them. (laughs)
Imagawa: I didn't obsess that much over the protagonist's role, and that was decided through auditions. Two actors I did request were Mr. Takeshi Aono, who played Birdman, and Mr. Shozo Iizuka, who played Inspector Bertino in the first episode. That's because Bertino was supposed to become a regular cast member in the second half.
Imagawa: I think he debuted in the previous V Gundam, and became a lead actor in his sophomore year. I like novices, so I use them for the lead roles whenever I'm doing a TV series.
Imagawa: It's because novices give it everything they've got. It's gotten harder now, but when they're on the air for six months or a year, their performance gets steadily better. As the story progresses, the performer grows along with it. I cast novices because I like that process. Ms. Minami Takayama in Mr. Ajikko, too, was a novice who'd never stood in front of a microphone before.
Imagawa: I still remember the moment when Mr. Seki really blossomed. I think it was episode 17. It's the first time he confronts his brother Kyoji, and finally he brandishes his sword and says "I'll~~do it!!" with a big dramatic emphasis. In that instant, it was as if he'd shed his skin or transformed. He delivered this signature line eloquently and made it his own. So after that, I figured I could leave the rest to him.
Imagawa: I've heard of such moments where actors suddenly transform, but they say there are transformative moments like that in my own field as well. When I was young, I was pretty useless as an episode director, but they told me I'd undergone a transformation when I did "Hyper Jeril" (episode 37) on Aura Battler Dunbine. There are times when you're instantly enlightened.
Imagawa: I didn't think so myself, but it felt like I'd released some kind of frustration.
Imagawa: Compared to Domon and the others, she's the only "grownup." Rain has an allure and an image of adult femininity like that of Fujiko Mine. (5) So when I heard Ms. Amano's voice in the audition, I decided on her immediately.
The other fighters are all basically children, aren't they? They often say that women are mentally more mature. If the hero was a child, then I wanted her to have a bit of adult femininity and glamor. Although she accompanies the hero as a mechanic, there's a bit of a gap between them, and it's also a story about bridging that gap. To bridge it, the child needs an adult presence.
Imagawa: I wanted to make some kind of love story. But how should I do that? If I went too far it would be too realistic, and if the story became overly tangled, well... So it was perfect that Allenby showed up. It became a kind of love triangle, which added to the drama.
Imagawa: Who knows. (laughs) I just wanted to give it a happy ending.
Imagawa: I think it was Dongfang Bubai's Master Gundam that people really liked. Even more than the design, the biggest thing was that its cloak system was reproduced in the plastic model. (6) At first they told us the cloak transformation was impossible, but we really wanted to it to have a cloak, so we asked Bandai to give it one even if it had to be made of vinyl. They said even that was no good, but we thought a transformation like that should be possible. So we asked another mechanical designer, Mr. Katoki Hajime, to do a design drawing. After a few rounds of back and forth, the cloak system was finally realized.
Imagawa: I guess in the end, we wore Bandai down. (laughs) It was a game of catch, or rather, an exchange of blazing fastballs. The cloak system was a new transformation for Gunpla at the time. And there was a 1/60 scale model with minutely articulated fingers. (7) That was another thing we did for the first time in G-Gun, and they've continued it ever since.
Imagawa: The concepts of Gundam design also changed after G-Gun. They became a lot more angular. (laughs) Now it's okay for them to carry spears as well as guns and shields, so it feels like at least one shackle was removed. But in that respect, the starring God Gundam was the most restrained. (laughs)
Imagawa: That's right. Even though it carried sabers, it barely used them. Perhaps I should say that in dramatic terms I wasn't able to make use of them, or that I just didn't feel like using them. (laughs)
Imagawa: It seems like the toys all sold well. Of course, the numbers didn't compare to previous Gundams, but I heard they sold better than the previous V Gundam. So ultimately, it seems Bandai's notion of aiming Gundam at little kids was the right call. We weren't able to take such a drastic step ourselves.
Imagawa: The temple bell Gundam (Mandala Gundam) and fish Gundam (Mermaid Gundam).
Imagawa: There were three TV anime works that brought me into the industry. One was Josephina the Whale. Another was Yatterman, where every week I looked forward to seeing what kind of crazy mecha they'd show us. And the third was Future Boy Conan. When I'm creating my own works, I can't help wanting to make something like those three.
At first I thought I could make G-Gun appealing in a way that was somehow like Conan, but it didn't turn out like that. Gradually, I started to wonder whether it might be like Yatterman. What kind of crazy stuff could I show each week to entertain the viewers? But in the chaotic initial stages, it was hard to go in that direction. So it turned into Yatterman starting with the Neo Hong Kong arc.
Imagawa: A new Gundam showed up every week, and what's more, it was a crazy one. (laughs) The mechanical designer, Mr. Kunio Okawara, completed the temple bell Gundam and fish Gundam I just mentioned with Nepal and Denmark in mind. But I actually gave him my own rough designs and asked him to redraw them. I gather that when he saw my drawings, Mr. Okawara asked "Is it okay to do this like Yatterman?" But the windmill Gundam (Nether Gundam) he'd previously drawn was already like Yatterman. So I said, "From now on, let's go for it."
Of all these Yatter-mecha Gundams, personally I'd say the temple bell Gundam is my Zeong. (laughs) And I'd still say the fish Gundam is the best, since its aqualung closes up in underwater mode. There's no point, because it's just a robot. (laughs)
Imagawa: I wanted a Josephina-the-Whale Gundam to show up in the final episode. (laughs) The mothership Josephina is a whale-type Gundam stuffed full of seafood Gundams. Another thing I wanted to do was to reprise Neo Spain's bull Gundam (Matador Gundam) by having a giant body show up, and combine with the head to form an enormous bull. I really wanted to do that, but we couldn't pull it off. I wanted to make it a ridiculous cow with a Jersey head and a Holstein body. (laughs) Something that was never going to win.
Imagawa: That's right. And the Statue of Liberty cannon shoots out a beam of light, which is also very traditional. I wasn't deliberately aiming for that, I just personally thought it was cool. There wasn't anything in G-Gun that I did to make people laugh, I just wanted the viewers to enjoy it every week. And most of all, I was enjoying it myself. (laughs)
Imagawa: For example, I enjoyed Neo Germany. Why was that costume a tricolor national flag, why was there a pompom attached to it, and so forth. (laughs) At the time, people may have thought it was a gag or a joke, but I was doing everything very sincerely. I thought that things like the "Red Flag Come-on" of the bull Gundam in the Neo Hong Kong arc, and the formation of forty Nether Gundams that showed up in the final episode, were genuinely cool.
Neo America and Neo France, on the other hand, were difficult. Neo America had the "American dream," and Neo France was "snobby," but those were just cliches based purely on theory. In hindsight, maybe I could have made George of Neo France a less conflicted character. But when we started, things were pretty chaotic, and in some respects I couldn't get that far outside my comfort zone.
Come to think of it, it was probably episode 24, where we really cut loose with the Neo Hong Kong arc.
Imagawa: Where it has about twenty minutes to get to Hong Kong from Guiana, which is practically on the other side of the world. So it flies into space and bounces using the recoil from the ropes. (laughs)
Imagawa: When I came up with the idea, people got really mad and asked if I was serious, but I told them I was. Since we'd gone to the trouble of setting up the ring ropes, we had to use them, and I said it might be cool to use them like a pro wrestler. The energy we got from that carried us through to the final episode.
Imagawa: I had that scene in mind from the beginning. Everything we did in G-Gun was about "love." I think the love between teacher and student, between brothers, between parent and child, and even friendship are all forms of love. I felt only love could tie it all together at the end.
At the time, people told me the scene in the last episode where Domon confesses his feelings to Rain would be the most embarrassing finale in the world, or rather the universe. (laughs) But when it was broadcast, it seems they all watched it at Sunrise, and everyone took Domon's confession very sincerely.
Imagawa: I agree. I hope they'll be able to see just how sincerely we were working. Even the Love Love Tenkyoken was depicted not out of theory, but because we sincerely thought it was cool, and because there was ultimately no other way to resolve things.
In that sense, I'd like them to watch and enjoy it in a straightforward way. If they can just believe what the characters are saying, without worrying about this and that, I think they'll be able to enjoy the ending. We weren't trying to say anything too challenging, and we were really doing something very simple.
(1) There's no established spelling for this, but based on Imagawa's explanation, I've tried to interpret it in an Italian style.
(2) The Japanese game 騎馬戦 (kibasen), or "cavalry fight," is a jousting game similar to "chicken fight." Three children carry a fourth, who wears a special headband that the enemy team tries to capture.
(3) In the context of G Gundam, the name 東方不敗 is usually translated as "Undefeated of the East." However, this is supposed to be the character's actual name, and he's named after a character from a famous wuxia novel and an even more famous series of Hong Kong action movies. I've thus used the Cantonese rendition of this name, as is usually done for those works.
(4) In other words, "Mikamura" is an anagram for Katsushi Murakami of Bandai.
(5) Sexy Fujiko is one of the main characters of the Lupin III series.
(6) The cloak transformation system was only reproduced in the 1/100 scale HG Master Gundam.
(7) Only the 1/60 scale HG-Ex God Gundam had independently movable fingers.
(8) The Japanese term 本気 (honki) would usually be translated as "serious," but somehow that doesn't seem like quite the right word for G Gundam.
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