Production Reference:|
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Translator's Note: The Zambot 3 Memorial Box, released in May 1997, was a laser disc collection of the 1977 TV series Super Machine Zambot 3, the first work released by Nippon Sunrise. The accompanying booklet includes some exclusive creator and staff interviews, and I've translated a selection of these here. |
Director Ryosuke Takahashi, known for Dougram and Votoms, is a Sunrise virtuoso rivaling Director Yoshiyuki Tomino. His long career experience includes serving as director of 0-Tester, the second work created by Soeisha, Sunrise's predecessor (although the nuance is actually slightly different), and his association with Sunrise actually goes back further than Director Tomino's.
Mr. Eiji Yamaura, meanwhile, was one of Sunrise's founding members. As its planning chief, until he later became company president, he was involved in Sunrise's works alongside the series directors and other staff. And as for Director Yoshiyuki Tomino, he probably requires little introduction.
These three people, who walked together throughout Sunrise's early days, talked to us about their memories of that time, the situation in which robot anime found itself, and the outlook for the future.
Tomino: I only started assisting in earnest around the time of 0-Tester, so so I don't know much about what happened before that.
Yamaura: 0-Tester was Soeisha's first independent work.
Tomino: And Hazedon came before that?
Yamaura: That's right. The manga artist Mr. Haruyuki Kawashima did the original story and the key art. He was from the same area as me, and he used to draw things like courtroom illustrations for news reports.
Takahashi: The chief director on Hazedon was Osamu-chan (Mr. Osamu Dezaki).
Yamaura: Marutan (Mr. Masao Maruyama) also worked on it.
Tomino: So Madhouse (a production studio that still exists, chaired by Mr. Maruyama) was working for Soeisha before it became Sunrise?
Yamaura: No, that's not it. I don't think they were working with us as part of Madhouse.
Takahashi: I'm pretty sure they left with Hazedon, and then I joined when 0-Tester started.
Yamaura: You scared them off. (laughs) (1)
Takahashi: Right, when I quit Mushi Pro, I intended to stop doing TV anime. So I formed Group Dirt with some friends. But I soon quit that as well, and I started wandering around Europe with some friends in the theater world. Then Yoshi-chan (Mr. Yoshinori Kishimoto, the first president of Sunrise) and Mr. Yamaura caught me and forced me to direct for them. Since Osamu-chan had ended up quitting Hazedon, they didn't have a director for the following 0-Tester.
Yamaura: The entire staff back then was pretty small. We had to rely on whoever was around or we could talk to. When Sunrise started out, we were all virtually amateurs. People who were doing photography or production work just days before were suddenly learning, by imitation, to do planning and management.
Takahashi: In that respect, 0-Tester was good fun. It was my first time as series director, and wasn't it your first time doing planning, Mr. Yamaura? It was also the first time Mr. Yoshitake (Suzuki) was credited for the original story... Incidentally, it was Akira Kamiya's first lead role, and Yoko Asagami's debut work as well.
Yamaura: It was certainly interesting. Nobody had a clue what they were doing. (laughs)
Tomino: I don't know much about those days.
Takahashi: But you did a lot of storyboards for us, Tomi-chan. That includes the final episode. The other day, I was able to watch the first and last episodes because they're now on video, and it already felt like Gundam.
Tomino: ...I don't remember a thing about it. All I recall from 0-Tester was seeing Mr. (Yoshikazu) Yasuhiko doing episode direction. He was doing the unfamiliar task of pre-shooting, and when he said he didn't really understand it, I remember butting in and saying "You do it like this." (2) I didn't even know his name at the time, but when I thought back on it later, I realized that was Mr. Yasuhiko. (laughs)
Yamaura: So you could say Sunrise had two origins. There was 0-Tester in the Soeisha era, and then Zambot 3 which was created when it actually became Nippon Sunrise (now Sunrise). We were basically an artisanal production company. Because the company was formed by a bunch of people who had no money, we did everything on a shoestring. Then we were unexpectedly blessed with a hit work.
Tomino: That's a pretty blunt way of putting it! If this is going to be in print, you should say something a little more appropriate. (laughs)
Yamaura: I can't help it, that's the honest truth. It would sound cooler if I said we had hopes and dreams, and we worked our very hardest to create our ideal animation. (laughs) But that would be a lie. (laughs)
Yamaura: It just seemed like the best option. We were glad we'd all quit Mushi Pro together, but there was no point if we were only doing subcontracted production. So when we were wondering what to do, we decided we should just be copycats. At that point, Toei had already taken the lead in creating robot shows. So it was a bit of a knockoff, but it was still our own original. We had to make it an original if we were going to get our own merchandising character.
Tomino: That's simply because we were depicting obvious things in an obvious way. If a giant robot were fighting, it would naturally result in the town's destruction, and the people under its feet would be killed and injured. And then, what would the people whose homes had been destroyed be thinking—? We just took things that had previously been ignored and treated them in a normal way.
Tomino: Huh? After 0-Tester, we suddenly go straight to Zambot 3?
Takahashi: No, not at all. Didn't you do Reideen, Tomi-chan?
Tomino: Oh, that's right... I have a grudge against that one because I was replaced as director, so I try to forget it as much as possible. (laughs)
Yamaura: On Reideen, the station's basic complaint was that it shouldn't be a continuing serial. They wanted us to make standalone episodes with clearly understood winners and losers. But ultimately, the audience ratings for the first five episodes before that change were good, and then they dropped after we did what the station told us to.
Tomino: That may have been true for a while, but they recovered when Mr. (Tadao) Nagahama came in as my replacement. And Sunrise was able to introduce the new style of TV anime that Director Nagahama had created with Star of the Giants to its robot shows, giving them more depth as well. Though it was a humiliation, I directed individual episodes of Com-Battler V and Voltes V under Director Nagahama because I was determined to steal all his techniques.
After that, I was somehow allowed to go from Zambot 3 to Daitarn 3 and Gundam in succession, and they say I created the style for Sunrise's subsequent robot shows. But it wasn't perfected with just those three shows. A lot of it reflects what I learned under Director Nagahama.
...So, what kind of character is Ryosuke Takahashi? There's someone who hates being used by other people. (laughs)
Takahashi: By the time of Reideen, I'd already parted ways with Sunrise and started Akabanten (a production studio chaired by Mr. Takahashi).
Tomino: So here's how it looks to me. Ryosuke Takahashi is a man who demonstrated how to create a foundation for independence as a staffer, while I was someone who wasn't capable of such independence. Instead, I went from Zambot 3 to Gundam under Sunrise's umbrella. So first of all, there was a difference in character between myself and Ryosuke Takahashi.
But after that, ever since L-Gaim, they never let me make anything except Gundam. Meanwhile Ryosuke Takahashi, because he was a self-reliant man, expanded his work into multiple franchises. After 15 years, he's even become a producer on Gaogaigar. I'd like young people to use this resilience and determination as an example.
Takahashi: It's not like that. My Akabanten work wasn't too hard because I could do it on my own cycle. And anyway, since I didn't want to do a TV series, I'd covered myself by saying I wouldn't do robot shows as a matter of personal principle. But when he approached me about Cyborg 009, Mr. Kishimoto told me "Cyborgs aren't robots," so I had no choice but to come back and direct at Sunrise.
Then Gundam started at the same time as 009. And of course, it was a shock when I saw the first episode. I realized it was no longer an era where you could make it as a director just learning by imitation, like at Mushi Pro. It simply wasn't possible, and since I couldn't compete on the same playing field, I was more determined than ever not to do a robot show.
At that point, Mr. Yamaura came to me and said "The era of the robot show as you know it is over, so why not try again?" He threw a Gundam video down in front of me. I thought he was barking up the wrong tree, and I meant to run away out of fear, but I ended up doing it. That led to Dougram, which I made with Mr. (Takeyuki) Kanda. I guess I was drawn to the possibilities rather than the fear.
[ Translator's Note: The remaining half of the conversation focuses mainly on Evangelion and the younger generation of creators. Though the discussion is entertaining, it doesn't relate to the production history of Zambot 3 and other Sunrise works, so I'll skip ahead to the end in my translation. ]
Yamaura: Well, putting Eva aside, the popularity of Gundam is very strange. It hasn't dropped in twenty years. Normally, even a popular work will have more ups and downs.
Tomino: What are you talking about?! Of course that's due to the talent of its chief director! (burst of laughter)
Yamaura: ...But Tomi-chan, the two of us used to say "I wonder why it became a hit?" "Surely it was just luck." (laughs)
Tomino: That can't be true, or other works would have stayed popular for twenty years as well. But regardless of why it became popular, there's a good reason why it maintained its popularity. ...Do you believe me?
Yamaura: I won't know until you tell me.
Tomino: I did the TV version of Gundam under my real name Yoshiyuki (喜幸). But I was really worried when Yoshi-chan died, and I went running to a famous divination master. (3) They gave me the pen name Yoshiyuki (由悠季). The reason was that "With your original name, you'll only have temporary income, but with this name you'll keep making money for a long time." You've got to believe me! (burst of laughter)
Yamaura: It just goes to show that those who believe will be saved. (laughs)
Takahashi: I guess it's down to luck that I've never won at the racetrack.
Tomino: Right, unless you throw away your bad luck at play, it'll get in the way of your work. (laughs) But I'm half-serious about what I just told you. Abandoning my real name and using a pen name also enabled me to distance myself from Gundam a little bit. (4)
But after that, I think I was trying to be too clever, and that made it impossible to drastically change the work itself. It might have been better to be more laid-back about it—let's make that our credo until the day we die. We'll deal with it by telling the youngsters to be more disappointed with Eva. (laughs)
Yamaura: They should be disappointed. After all, this is a world where filmmaking is everything!
(March 17, 1997, at Nakamuraya in Shinjuku)
Yoshiyuki Tomino / Director and author (Zambot 3 original story & chief director)
Born in 1941 in Kanagawa Prefecture. After graduating from the cinema department of Nihon University College of Art, he joined Mushi Pro in 1964. In November of that year, he debuted as an episode director on episode 96 of Mighty Atom. He left Mushi Pro in 1967, in the middle of Princess Knight, and then directed episodes of many TV works as a freelancer. He first served as chief director on 1972's Triton of the Sea, and after Reideen the Brave, he went on to establish the genre of the "real robot show" with Zambot 3, Daitarn 3, and Gundam. Gundam in particular, which became a huge boom in the early 1980s when it was adapted into movies, had a great influence on later anime works including the current Evangelion. After the film version of Ideon was released in 1982, he changed the spelling of his name, and became a leading figure in the anime boom as the director of many subsequent works. He has also written many novels, including Garzey's Wing, which he himself adapted as an anime.
Ryosuke Takahashi / Director, scriptwriter and producer
Born in 1943 in the Tokyo Metropolis. He joined Mushi Pro in 1965, and debuted as an episode director on Wonder 3. He then directed episodes of works such as Animal 1, Dororo, and Kunimatsu-sama no Otoridai. After Mushi Pro went bankrupt, he became a freelancer, and debuted as a chief director in 1973 on Sunrise's 0-Tester. After that, in addition to founding Group Dirt and Akabanten with friends, and working on series such as Manga Nippon Mukashi Banashi, he also directed Sunrise works such as Cyborg 009, Dougram, Votoms, Galient, and Layzner. In recent years, in addition to being credited for directorial support on Studio Gallop's adaptations of works originally serialized in "Ribon" magazine, such as Akazukin Chacha and Kodomo no Omocha, he's returned to Sunrise and taken on the role of a producer on Gaogaigar.
Eiji Yamaura / Sunnet (Inc.) director (formerly Sunrise planning chief)
Born in 1936 in Kagoshima Prefecture. He joined Toei Doga in 1958 and served as a photography assistant on the feature film Saiyūki. After transferring to Mushi Pro in 1954, he continued to work in photography, handling technical supervision on Wanpaku Tanteidan and composite photography on Vampire. He left Mushi Pro in 1972 and established Soeisha with Yoshinori Kishimoto, Masanori Ito, and Masami Iwasaki. As of the following year's 0-Tester, he took charge of launching plans as the planning chief, and up until he became president of Sunrise he served as a contact person for all the company's works, including Reideen, Com-Battler V, Zambot 3, and Gundam. In this role, he mediated between the sponsors and the series directors, scriptwriters, and other production staffers, playing a major part in deciding on the plans and the content of the works. He left Sunrise in 1993, and is now once again involved in planning anime works as the director of Sunnet (Inc.).
(1) Yamaura's comment 「脅かされてね」 just means that somebody was threatened or intimidated, without specifying who. It's my guess that he means Dezaki and Marayama were scared away by Takahashi.
(2) The Japanese term 撮出し (satsudashi), which I've translated as "pre-shooting," is a stage in the anime production process in which the episode director checks the materials required for each cut before sending them out to photography.
(3) The term Tomino uses here, 姓名判断 (seimei handan), would technically translate as onomancy—divination based on the subject's name. This is a popular fortune-telling practice in Japan and China.
(4) I think the Japanese phrase Tomino uses here 「多少引いて『ガンダム』に接する」 means emotional, rather than professional, distancing.
That was exactly the point in time when I was working on Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, so I only did the designs for Zambot 3. Later on, I also did some revisions on the opening. But because I consider myself an animator and director, I think of my participation in Zambot 3, where I only did the designs, purely as "helping out."
Initially, I wasn't told anything about what kind of story it would be, and I had the impression it would be more gag-focused. Before Zambot 3, I'd also been working on Robokko Beeton, a gag show with characters three heads high. I hadn't shaken off those habits yet, so when I drew Kappei and the others, they ended up being relatively manga-like characters with short legs. As the story got more and more serious, I was not only surprised, but I also thought I'd made a mistake. If I'd known from the beginning it would be this kind of story, I thought, I'd have made characters who could support slightly more serious dramatic performance...
Nowadays, anime-style characters have become a new trend, but at the time, the only two drawing styles were manga and gekiga. (1) And what's more, the manga-style characters introduced by Tezuka-sensei were now mocked as looking "old." They said you couldn't draw muscles and bones in manga, so it couldn't support realistic dramatics. Also, perhaps because it was the trend of the times, the exaggerated gekiga style was the mainstream even in robot anime. (2)
I hate the gekiga aesthetic, though. So during 0-Tester, they once made me redo 80 cuts at a time. The only reason they gave me was "The drawing's no good." Before that, I'd been working on collaborative projects and New Moomin at Mushi Pro, and nobody had ever said anything about my drawing. I was thinking about that when, later on, they asked me to do character design for the first time on Reideen... They were asking for realistic characters, not Tezuka-style ones. But I didn't want to draw gekiga characters either. Thus, for the first time, I consciously tried to draw characters who were basically manga-like but had muscles and joints, and whose expressions could support serious acting.
Up until then, I'd never really had my own particular drawing style, but ultimately this developed into something that could be called a "personal style." Looking at the characters of Zambot 3 in terms of drawing style, in my third robot anime after Com-Battler V, I was trying to simplify the gekiga aesthetics that still lingered at the time of Reideen into something more manga-like.
However, they hadn't established an animation director role for the individual episodes, which was outrageous even at the time. It was really a poorly treated work. But Mr. Tomino worked alone, guerilla-style, and successfully did what he wanted to do—I think that's what the work called Zambot 3 was about. Of course, this was before Mr. Tomino had a smash hit with Gundam, so his position wasn't so favorable and he was fairly cynical. But he had the guts to do something, and I thought he was a very interesting person. Personally, I prefer minor players, or rather I hate major ones, so I sympathized with him at the time.
Robot anime is fundamentally silly. Nonetheless, he tried to directly depict heavy topics like human life and death. He even paid attention to the locations in his direction, using local place names like Noheji in Aomori Prefecture. So I still feel some regret that I did a disservice to Mr. Tomino. If I'd known ahead of time that he had such ambitions, I'd have approached it differently, and perhaps even joined the staff as an animation director. But Mr. Tomino didn't reveal his ambitions to anyone. In that sense, it was truly Mr. Tomino's one-man series. That's the work called Zambot 3.
Profile
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko / Born in Hokkaido in 1947. Though he enrolled in Hirosaki University, he dropped out in 1970 and moved to Tokyo, entering Mushi Pro's training school in September of that year. His talent was quickly recognized, and he did key art on New Moomin, animation setting for Wandering Sun, and character design on Reideen. His designs, which took the appealing style of Tezuka manga and turned it into something more modern, came into full bloom with Gundam and had a huge influence on subsequent animation and manga.
(1) Gekiga (劇画) is a gritty and cinematic style of Japanese comics, aimed at adult readers, that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
(2) The Japanese term 劇画調 (gekiga-chō), which Yasuhiko uses here and in the following sentence, could be interpreted as either "exaggerated, overdramatic" or as "gekiga style." I've varied the phrasing a little bit for the sake of readability.
Back then, I was an aspiring manga artist, and my immediate concern was building up my dramatization skills. (1) Then Mr. Kiyomi Numoto, who I'd happened to meet, asked me if I'd like to try animation work and referred me to Sunrise. The timing was perfect, so I took him up on it without hesitation. That's how I ended up joining the staff of Zambot 3.
However, since I had no previous animation experience at all, I was initially assigned to the planning office. Here, I learned the basics of anime while doing odd jobs. After a while, I began working on Zambot 3, but at first I had no idea what kind of work it was. I was just doing as I was told based on the instructions of Mr. Eiji Yamaura, who'd decided the outline.
Even after I realized it was a robot, I never thought it would be used in the show itself. I just focused on toy blueprints and transformation gimmicks, drawing and revising, drawing and revising. Even after I got the OK, I had to go to the toy company for advice and guidance about things that might be problematic in the toy, and day after day I kept going over it. Though this wasn't the kind of dramatization I'd wanted to do, I now look back on that time with great fondness. And the emotions I felt when the toy was completed, and I saw the real thing with my own eyes, have been an inspiration to me ever since.
At the same time, however, this work also brought home to me my own inadequacy with mecha. Mr. Kunio Okawara, the Studio Nue people, and so forth were actually drawing most of the mecha back then. Though they gave me the title of mechanical designer, all I did was come up with the transformation gimmicks and draw simple mecha that appeared in individual episodes, a position in which I was embarrassed to be called a designer. Even the Mecha-Boosts were drawn by the manga artist Mr. Mitsuru Hiruta and then cleaned up by Mr. Yasuhiko... That's the reason I started doing episode direction as of the subsequent Daitarn 3.
...As far as other memories, of course I was most impressed by the skill of Mr. Yasuhiko. He really seemed to shine. Mr. Yasuhiko cleaned up the Zambot itself, and drew what you'd now call a pose collection, and it was just incredible. Even now, when I look at his setting, it's completely flawless.
It's been twenty years since it aired. That seems like a long time ago, but looking back on it now, I feel like we were terribly reckless. I'm not just talking about the company, but about myself as well... Of course, that sort of thing can probably be excused because it was an early work, but personally I feel Zambot 3 can be summed up in that one word.
Profile
Ryoji Hirayama / Born in Nagasaki Prefecture in 1952. An aspiring manga artist who entered the animation world to study dramatization. Though he was responsible for mechanical design on Zambot 3, he became an episode director as of the subsequent Daitarn 3, and then worked as a director on Gundam (TV series and first movie), the Manga Hajimete series, and so forth. He is currently working as a manga artist.
(1) The Japanese phrase 演出力 (enshutsu-ryoku) could also be interpreted as "directorial abilities," but in the context of manga it refers to visual storytelling.
The relationship between Studio Nue and Sunrise goes all back to the planning of 0-Tester, an early production by Soeisha, the predecessor to Sunrise. Tatsunoko Production's Gatchaman was already airing at the time, and achieving great success. Soeisha must have realized that it, too, would need staff who specialized in mechanical design in order to create its future mecha anime. As people who were drawing weird SF illustrations filled with mecha, and were also interested in animation, that created an opportunity for us to stand out.
Though at least we could draw pictures, we'd only just begun working as professionals, and we didn't know anything about drawing character sheets for animation. So Mr. Kiyomi Numoto, one of Soeisha's original members who used to be the head of Mushi Pro's anime school, taught us all kinds of knowhow. It's thanks to him we made it this far, and I'm greatly indebted to him for his mentorship.
Although we were credited for "design cooperation," on Zambot 3 we were actually involved in most of the main and secondary mecha design, from the Zambot itself to the King Bial and the Bandock. As an aside, that's why the various close-combat weapons with which the Zambot 3 is equipped, starting with the Zambot Grap and the Zambot Cutter, strongly reflect the tastes of Haruka Takachiho, who is now a novelist but served as the contact person on the Studio Nue side during the production of Zambot 3.
In those days, however, we were still fumbling around without the kind of systematic process we have nowadays, so they didn't have us draw all the mecha. Many other people were involved aside from us, including Mr. Ryoji Hirayama and Mr. Kunio Okawara, who had just transferred from Tatsunoko Production to Mechaman. So we participated by handling only part of it. In fact, even with Com-Battler V, Sunrise probably didn't have the kind of system it does today. But the work proceeded according to a makeshift order of battle, and it was ultimately cleaned up into a final draft by Mr. Hirayama and Mr. Yasuhiko.
...But thinking about it now, it was amazing. Mr. Hirayama must have created orthographic views of the mechanical designs as well, but at the time, they were making toys of all kinds based on the setting that Mr. Yasuhiko originally drew for animation use. There really wasn't enough time.
Though all these people were involved, when it came to the King Bial and the combination and boarding process of each mecha, I was responsible for pretty much everything except the cleanup. With the King Bial in particular, I remember that Director Tomino told me "I want an SF spaceship, not an anime-style warship," and I drew it with tremendous enthusiasm. Naturally, some things that would have put an excessive burden on the animators, such as the combination scenes, ended up being rejected...
Although nowadays the concepts of SF have spread widely even among ordinary people, I'm still amazed that Director Tomino had mecha like this appear twenty years ago, and that the work called Zambot 3 incorporated them in its depiction. Being so deeply involved in a work like that when I was only just starting out... I think there's no doubt that it paid off handsomely for my present self.
Profile
Kazutaka Miyatake / Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1949. As a result of the dōjinshi activities he began in his student days, focusing on SF illustration, he established Crystal Art Studio, the predecessor to Studio Nue, with Mr. Kenichi Matsuzaki and others. He went on to be involved in many works in addition to Zambot 3, including Reideen the Brave, Aura Battler Dunbine, and Super Dimension Fortress Macross, working on mechanical designs and constructing worldviews.
Zambot 3 is said to be the ancestor of Sunrise's real robot shows, but we weren't initially thinking of it like that. To differentiate it from the works of other companies, the plan that Mr. Eiji Yamaura and I came up with was based on the concept of a soft, family-oriented sentai show. (1) The fact that it developed into a hard and realistic work was because it was strongly influenced by the presence and intentions of Director Tomino, who joined us later on. While the plan creates a worldview and sets a certain direction, it's ultimately up to the series director to determine the character of the work itself and bring it to a conclusion.
Director Tomino joined Zambot 3 at an earlier point than on the previous Reideen. As he gradually drew it into his own world, it went in what you could call a more Tomino-style direction. With the human bomb storyline, for example, at some point Director Tomino implemented it by declaring not "I'm thinking of doing this" but "I've done it." At the time, I thought it was only a passing whim, and I had no idea it would have such a huge impact on the narrative...
It can be very difficult to put together a plot when you can't anticipate the developments and ideas inside the director's head. But on the other hand, as you clash with each other, it often results in something far better than you initially expected. In that sense, I think we did a good job.
Though it wasn't as obvious as with Director Tomino, I think the realistic orientation that came across so strongly in this work was actually always there within myself and within Sunrise, a company started by refugees from Mushi Pro. Perhaps that's partly a reaction to the fact that they couldn't make realistic things in their Mushi Pro days, because under Tezuka-sensei, the emphasis was on humanism. It was also a time at which the winds of the era had begun to change, and films and manga alike were taking on a more realistic orientation. So I think it suited us perfectly. Manga, too, had changed dramatically with the appearance of gekiga. Of course, that's just my personal opinion as someone who became a scriptwriter out of admiration for Mr. Shinobu Hashimoto, who wrote Seven Samurai, and I felt the same way at Mushi Pro as well. But I can't help thinking there was a definite influence from those times and those people.
I suppose this may still be the case, but particularly in the early days, Sunrise's robot shows were poorly regarded. They were seen as inferior to things like the "Masterpiece" shows, and people called them "30-minute toy commercials." But on the other hand, when we were drafting the plans, we were aware that in exchange for featuring the robots we could get our way where the content was concerned. In that situation, even though we couldn't make anything but robot shows, we were confident that we could do whatever we wanted through that medium, and that was a source of moral support. Nowadays, although we don't have the same conflicts, it feels like some of the motivation, or perhaps the toxicity, has vanished from the works. That's a pity.
Mr. Yamaura credited me for the original story on the condition that I put together the entire plot. He was attempting to increase the visibility of animation scriptwriters, which was extremely low at the time. Recently, the Television and Radio Writers' Association of Japan has started protecting the rights of scriptwriters, so I think we've more or less achieved that. If so, that's a good thing, but when you lose that constant sense of hunger, it spreads a kind of poison, and you no longer feel a sense of urgency. On reflection, I think that ends up making the works more boring.
Looking back, Sunrise back then didn't have a fixed staff or organization. It was a group with the recklessness of rogue samurai, so it could take a variety of risks. Perhaps Zambot 3 was a work born from that very situation.
Profile
Yoshitake Suzuki / Born in Tokyo Metropolis in 1942. He joined Mushi Pro in 1963 as an assistant director, and worked on Mighty Atom, Goku no Daibōken, and Dororo under Gisaburo Sugii. He debuted as a scriptwriter on Tatsunoko Pro's Space Ace, followed by works such as Star of the Giants. After becoming a freelancer, he became involved in Sunrise's planning starting with 0-Tester, and was recently responsible for series structure on Gaogaigar. He uses the pen name Fuyunori Gobu for his scriptwriting.
(1) Sentai, literally "squadron," is a subgenre of Japanese live-action TV shows featuring teams of costumed heroes. Power Rangers is an archetypal example.
I left my previous job at Tatsunoko Pro in 1976, the year before Zambot 3 began airing. (1) Immediately afterwards, then-President Kishimoto invited me to join Sunrise as an assistant producer on Robokko Beeton. My impression at the time was that the company had a relaxed atmosphere that didn't seem very businesslike. Back then, Sunrise was a small production company that mainly provided production support for other companies, and it had probably inherited a strong influence from Mushi Pro, which was a creative group. But I was used to Tatsunoko Pro, which was really corporate, so I sometimes found it bewildering.
Though they went on to give me the title of producer on Zambot 3, President Kishimoto was effectively the general producer, and it felt like I was purely managing the production on site. (2) I scraped together staffers from all over, but organizing this staff was really difficult. At the time, Sunrise's main staff were devoted to Com-Battler V and Voltes V, so most of our staff had to be newly assembled. I remember that I and the production manager Mr. Yutaka Kanda had tremendous trouble doing that. When I look back now on that staff list, I'm deeply moved to think we had such people working with us.
Even in that kind of environment, I think that both I and Director Tomino were consciously trying to make something different from a traditional robot show, and go in a different direction from Director Nagahama. As a result, I feel Director Tomino was able to establish a storytelling style and technique in which each episode was self-contained, but if you watched the entire thing then it became a single grand drama.
For my part, even as I was thinking about that, I was working hard to arrange directors, storyboard artists, animation directors, animators, photographers, and so forth for each episode so that we could somehow get them finished. Although I brought in various animators, Mr. Yoshinori Kanada of Studio Z really stood out. Frankly speaking, Studio Z's drawings were clearly different from the character sheets, but the completed key art was so wonderful that everyone else accepted them by saying "Studio Z is bespoke."
Actually, most of the animation I'd previously worked on, such as Minashigo Hacchi and Kashi no Ki Mokku, took an approach that was relatively soft even for Tatsunoko Pro. I thought that's what anime was about, so the truth is that at first I was rather uncomfortable with robot shows. In short, I thought robot shows would always be inseparably linked to toy companies... But I was able to accept that feeling once I grasped the simple schema that these works only existed because of the sponsors.
As for my impression of the work itself, I remember feeling that it was very powerful. Naturally the voice actors also provided support, but when we were doing the post-recording, I keenly felt something coming through from the screen. Thinking back on it now, it truly did have a hidden power.
Profile
Yoshikazu Tochihira / Born in Yamanashi Prefecture in 1949. He joined Tatsunoko Pro in 1969. First serving as a production assistant on Minashigo Hacchi, he worked on the production of Kashi no Ki Mokku, Kerokko Demetan, and Tentomushi no Uta, finally leaving the company after Gowapper-5 Gordam. At Sunrise, he also worked on the production of The☆Ultraman. He is currently with Studio Kikan, where he is serving as producer on Shima Shima Tora no Shimajiro.
(1) The original Japanese text, as published in the Memorial Box, says this was 1971 but that's surely a typo.
(2) The Japanese phrase 「現場の制作プロデューサー」 is literally "on-site production producer."
Mobile Suit Gundam is copyright © Sotsu • Sunrise. Everything else on this site, and all original text and pictures, are copyright Mark Simmons.
