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Translator's Note: Combattler V • Voltes V • Daimos Roman Robo Anime Climax Selection, published by Magicbox Inc. in November 1980, is a retrospective of the three-part "romantic robo" series directed by Tadao Nagahama. This book represents something of a labor of love by Nagahama, who edited and financed the book himself. Here, I've translated one of the personal essays Nagahama wrote for the book, in which he discusses the planning and development of the 1976 TV series Super Electromagnetic Robo Com-Battler V. |
Tadao Nagahama
—In my career as a director, it feels like I've never had so much trouble at the start of a program.—
I previously wrote that in the Com-Battler V Roman Album. (If you haven't seen it, you might find it interesting to read alongside this.) Here I'd like to elaborate on things I couldn't write about there, while also considering Com-Battler V's situation as a robot show.
Why did it give me trouble? Because it took so long. And why did it take so long? —Well, I'll have to tell you a little story about that.—
When the end of Reideen the Brave's broadcast run was all but certain, those of us on the Reideen team really wanted to somehow continue the program, and we came up with a plan for a "Reideen sequel."
—After the fighting is over, the Reideen is serving as a relay station for the peaceful use of Mutron energy. Then a new enemy from the phantom empire appears. But the Reideen won't move... is it all over?! Suddenly, a new Reideen shows up! And riding in it is Akira's younger brother!—
I think it was a story like that. However, the station's response to this plan was slow in coming. (1) As we waited impatiently, an entirely different plan came our way from somewhere else. This was Com-Battler V. If "New Reideen" wasn't going to happen, we wanted to take this on, but since we hadn't heard back about "New Reideen" we couldn't give them a reply about Com-Battler either.
I can put this in print now, but at the time, I was really struggling with the constant pressure from Mr. Iijima. (2) So I used the tactic of saying "The person in charge is on a business trip, and they haven't come back yet." Meanwhile, we continued working on "New Reideen" as much as possible. But we couldn't keep waiting forever. Just as it was about to become impossible to start the new program, we finally gave up on the "Reideen sequel" and decided to take on Com-Battler V.
The staff were all in a panic. We had to abruptly switch from the idea of "New Reideen" that we'd previously been fixated on, and start thinking about Com-Battler from scratch. And because we'd waited until the last possible minute, the timing was urgent. At a point when we should have finished the scripts and storyboards, Com-Battler didn't even have a completed plan. We certainly had a great idea for a toy, in which five mecha combined into a single robot, but we hadn't figured out how we were going to use that in a drama. We had no idea at all of the robot's features, the character setting wasn't appealing, and we didn't have a clear notion of why the five initially scattered heroes came together or why they combined. And the biggest shock was the drawings of the characters. An ugly robot, and old-fashioned manga-style characters... we'd never be able to win the hearts of the viewers with those.
At the time, I always invited naughty kids from the neighborhood to the Reideen preview screenings. One day, on the way back from the preview, they happened to see some Com-Battler setting on my desk. "What the heck's that?! Hey, pops, why're you making something this terrible?"
They had keen eyes. I always observed them as they watched the previews, reconsidering the parts that made them yawn and smiling when I saw their eyes sparkling. When they spoke this clearly, there was no doubt. If we went ahead like this, the program would be a failure. Needless to say, I started searching desperately for a way to save the program. Above all, the characters had to look cool if I was going to have confidence in them, so I hastily begged for Mr. Yasuhiko's help. And he did a magnificent job!
The beauty of Mr. Yasuhiko's characters is something every anime fan knows, but it's surprising how seldom people mention how wonderfully rendered his mecha and monsters are. When you place it in his hands, any kind of mecha turns into something attractive, like it had undergone cosmetic surgery. Anyway, that's how we resolved the character issues. But there was a still a fundamental problem in terms of drama.
A five-part combination was certainly interesting. But instead of the usual single protagonist, we had five people, and we couldn't get a handle on them. The setting was that they couldn't combine unless their feelings were synchronized, which was fine. But if we made that the focal point of the drama, we'd end up with a recurring formula where every time we asked "So will they be able to combine today or not?!" and people would give up immediately. From the toy company's point of view, if there are five times as many mecha then you can expect to sell five times as many toys. But from the dramatist's perspective, the more mecha you have, the greater the possibility of failure. In that situation, we wistfully recalled the simple structure of Reideen.
Ultimately, I decided to divide them up by giving each of the five mecha a distinctive function, and then connecting that to the personality of the character piloting it.
Unit 1 was the leader. When they combined, its pilot would represent the robot. As a high-speed fighter, this machine was extremely maneuverable, so its pilot was a former biker, a speed demon with exceptional reflexes... He also had the appropriate name of Hyoma Aoi. (3) I wanted him to be livelier than Akira, so he was established as an emotionally volatile young man with an exhilarating charm, badly raised but full of energy.
Unit 2 was a sniper machine, a high-performance attack craft that could pull off any shot no matter how difficult. Its pilot was Juzo Naniwa, a master rifleman good enough to compete in the Olympics. Since I also wanted him to serve as a sub-hero who would be an antagonist to the main character, he had a cool, realist side.
Unit 3 was established as a tank from the beginning, but to make its characteristics even clearer, we gave it a power shovel and designed its appearance to look more powerful. It's an unsung hero that does a tough job quietly but with a lot of guts. Its pilot Daisaku Nishikawa was a judo master who was born in Kumamoto on Kyushu. He's an amiable fellow who's always smiling, and a character who's the core of the team's harmony.
Unit 4 was an underwater machine. But since it couldn't always be fighting underwater, we gave it repair functions and the role of transporting Unit 3. Its pilot was Chizuru Nanbara, who boasted exceptional skills as a skin diver.
Unit 5 had the ability to move freely underground, but there weren't going to be scenes like that in every episode, so we gave it a reconnaissance role. Its pilot was Kosuke Kita. Given his role as a scout, we established him as a clever child prodigy, an elementary school student who had studied overseas in America.
Thus, when they were separated, they could each fight in a way that made use of the person's individual characteristics. And when they combined, they created an even more powerful mecha and character. That's easy to say in writing, but the actual work was really hard. The schedule was tight, and we had many sleepless nights...
Anyway, next came the setting for the robot's weapons. We gathered Mr. Takachiho of Studio Nue, the writers Mr. Masaki Tsuji and Mr. Yoshitake Suzuki, the episode directors Mr. Tomino, Mr. Satoshi Dezaki, and Mr. Terada, as well as Mr. Yamaura of the planning office (who it seems is using the name "Hajime Yatate" nowadays). We held a series of exhaustive meetings, from which were born things like the super electromagnetic yo-yo, the super electromagnetic spin, and the super electromagnetic tornado. When we all worked together to create the super electromagnetic yo-yo, Mr. Yamaura groaned "It's such a waste to give this to Toei! Let's save it for when we're working on a Sunrise plan!"
It's true that everything we created there belonged to the planners, and in the end it didn't belong to us personally, or even to Sunrise. This frustration would later be the driving force behind the creation of Sunrise-planned works such as Zambot 3.
Anyway, what kind of drama were we going to create with these characters? An obvious theme was the fellowship of sensitive boys and girls, five experts who'd been hastily gathered in a time of world crisis. Meanwhile, we were also working on something that would have a major impact on subsequent robot shows—the setting for the enemy side. Up until then, the enemy were usually all bad guys, hideous in form and figure. But here, I tried to create a drama highlighting the tragedy of the enemy side, whose destiny in a robot show is to be destroyed. I created a kind of drama I'd never been able to contemplate before.
To do this, I needed a character who would be beautiful in appearance, rather than the previous hideous enemies. This was the origin of the beautiful villains who would be so widely discussed afterwards. Unaware that he was an android created by his mother Oleanna, and then betrayed by this mother who he worships—this also evoked the sorrow of today's young people, who are forced to study like robots under a strict system of entrance exams. Mr. Tsuji and the rest of the main staff who created the setting for this drama had to keep their mouths tightly shut about how it was going to end. That was relatively easy at a time when there weren't any anime magazines.
...And so we created episode 25, which was somewhat strange for an episode of a robot show. If that were the only episode they'd seen, everyone would want to side with Garuda. Depending on your point of view, the Com-Battler team might even seem despicable. In fact, I've met some extreme people who were so angry at the Com-Battler team that they came to hate the program itself. That's the result of stubbornly seeing only one side of a drama that was created to train people to look at things from different angles.
However, the drama of the Com-Battler team and the drama of Garuda intersected only in the battlefield. The true intersection of the two dramas would have to wait until Voltes V and Fighting General Daimos. These things can't just develop all at once. My intention in this book was to consider all three of these works together, so this is a perfect place to do that.
Technically speaking, Com-Battler was thoroughly devoted to delivering entertainment value in the form of a self-contained 30-minute story. While Voltes and Daimos were works that deliberately tried to deviate from the conventional robot show pattern, Com-Battler followed the course of a traditional robot show.
There's nothing more boring than fighting for the sake of fighting. In Com-Battler, we carefully set the stage in the first part to heighten the drama of the final battle. (4) How essential is the battle? How unpredictable is the outcome? How interesting do you expect it to be? Only when you've made those preparations will your drama find its way to success. We pursed that desperately in Com-Battler, and it seems we had some measure of success. Perhaps that's why people who were looking for the entertainment of a traditional robot show loved Com-Battler more than other works. (5)
Looking back on its now, though the start was exhausting, that's all the more reason it was such a satisfying job. I think we were really able to create a film with no gaps. (6) That was thanks to the brilliant preparations that Producer Iwasaki had made far, far in advance, and to Producer Nozaki, who hounded us relentlessly about the schedule even though we called him a "demon." (7) I'd like to conclude this essay by expressing my deep gratitude to Animation Director Kanayama and the rest of staff, who maintained the high quality of the work while admirably enduring this pressure.
(1) Presumably NET, the station that broadcast both Reideen and Com-Battler V.
(2) Takashi Iijima, the co-planner of Com-Battler V. Formerly with Toei Doga, he'd been transferred over to the main company to work in Toei's TV division shortly before the launch of Com-Battler.
(3) Hyoma's first name combines the Japanese characters for "leopard" and "horse."
(4) Here, I think Nagahama is talking about the "first part" of each 30-minute episode.
(5) I'm not sure if Nagahama means "more than Voltes V and Daimos" or "more than other robot shows." The former would certainly be more modest.
(6) Literally, a film with no 白味 (shiromi), which is apparently a technical term for white frames used to connect unfinished shots.
(7) Masami Iwasaki and Yoshihiro Nozaki were credited as 制作担当 (production managers) on Com-Battler.
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