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Translator's Note: Invincible Super Man Zambot 3 / Invincible Iron Man Daitarn 3 Chronicle, published by Brain Navi in November 2003, is a book devoted to the early Nippon Sunrise works Super Machine Zambot 3 and The Unchallengeable Daitarn 3. It features a variety of exclusive creator and staff interviews, as well as detailed production histories, and I've translated a selection of these here. |
Director Tomino was deeply and powerfully involved in Zambot as its chief director and an original story creator. Here, he tells us about the situation at the time of broadcast, including the voice cast and the feelings of the director himself.
They offered me the role of chief director on Zambot purely as a job. The timing was terrible for me in a personal sense, but I accepted with my future career in mind. The plan itself was pretty much finished. The characters and mecha were all done, and since Sunrise wanted to make it a "family show" with robots, the blood relationships of the protagonist and his family were also fully established. None of the plan's essentials were my idea.
I think I was pretty clear, though, in taking the line that it should be a story about the "Jin family." (1) At the point when I joined, the fate of the protagonist's family hadn't been decided. I recall asking Mr. Fuyunori Gobu (a pen name for Mr. Yoshitake Suzuki) for a structure that could be turned into a TV series format. When it came to clarifying the "family show" aspect, and how we were going to involve the Gaizok, he basically adopted my ideas, or rather I forced them on him... well, perhaps it was both.
All of this, however, was still purely at a planning stage, so it didn't dramatically change the work itself. That may not be satisfying to habitual readers of anime books. (smiles)
I decided that on Zambot 3, my first time as chief director of a robot show, my theme would be "breaking the patterns of traditional giant robot shows." If a ridiculous weapon like a giant robot were fighting within Japan, that alone would produce a series of unbelievable major disasters. I wanted to depict these disasters, and I thought they should be depicted. This was something that had never been done in any previous giant robot show, so in other words, it was "pattern-breaking."
And you shouldn't have such convenient wars and disasters where allies and regular cast members never die. So I thought I had to create stories where people died, to break that pattern as well. I didn't actually want to depict the "raw emotions" surrounding that too strongly, though.
At the time, there had already been a dozen or so giant robot series, and they'd all been pretty popular. Viewers had gotten used to them, but I couldn't imagine it was good for a creator to unthinkingly give in to that kind of environment. By settling on this main theme of "pattern-breaking," I could create fresh dialogue and fresh reactions. Well, it wasn't truly fresh. But at least I could come up with dialogue different from what I'd seen before.
In creating this kind of narrative, the dialogue lines also became longer. That meant we could reduce the frame counts of the action scenes. This was very convenient in production terms, which was a priority in my situation.
It was often part of the director's job to depict these kinds of raw reactions. If they feel fresh, they'll be more powerful from a directorial perspective, and that helps you make the work unique. In my case, they've never given me good staff for the animation group. This was particularly bad on Zambot, so I thought we needed a powerful story to make up for the animation. At the same time, if we we had fresh expressions, I figured the series could survive despite the poor artwork, so I made it based on that policy.
To put it very coldly, there aren't any deeply memorable episodes in Zambot. In terms of the overall impression, the most striking thing is that it's a story where most of the family end up dead. That was a theme throughout the entire series, so if I had to choose, the most strongly memorable episodes would be ones related to that theme.
And there weren't any characters I placed emphasis on, or found it especially easy to work with. In my case, I don't particularly distinguish among characters unless I can really empathize with them. Partly that's because of my own conviction as a professional that, as much as possible, I should avoid favoring specific characters. I still follow that as a director. I try to give their scenes the necessary dramatization regardless of whether they're a main character or just Bad Guy A. Otherwise I'd only be able to depict the ones I liked, and the work would become narrower.
Ms. Nobuyo Oyama, who played Kappei, was already a veteran. People with that much technique can handle anything you throw at them, and it doesn't matter whether or not you direct them. In that sense, I relied on her to a tremendous extent. The voice actors were all veterans, but that's just the way it worked out. Back then, there weren't a lot of jobs for veterans, and voice acting was still looked down on and discriminated against. It was a very difficult time for them. There was limited scope for theater or performance in those days, and unless they were in great demand there wasn't much work, so even veterans were easy to get.
Another memorable one was Ms. Toyoko Takechi, who played Umee. When theatrical people like her realize that their role occupies an interesting place in the drama, they'll have fun performing it regardless of whether it's theater or anime. As a result, Ms. Takechi never matched the lip-sync. (laughs) What we did at the time was, after the recording was finished, we'd re-edit the film to match the lip-sync to Ms. Takechi's delivery. It was really difficult, but I couldn't change her dialogue. She gave a lot of performances that made me feel "If that's what she said, then I have no choice." It was really entertaining for me as a director, so we made the lip-sync match no matter what. I was also deliberately sloppy with the timing when I was editing the film. "Oh, it ended up being one second over, but that's okay." (laughs)
People can only act in their own style, so all you can do is meet them halfway. I think that's just what acting is like. I still believe that, in terms of both dialogue and performance, it feels utterly false to say everything within a predetermined time. In fact, aren't people who are better at dubbing worse at acting? If they're only good at matching, doesn't the performance suffer? In recent years, though, that's started to change. I'm starting to see actors who've watched things like that since they were children, and can perform while matching the timing.
I have my own idealized image of the family. There are grandparents, parents, and in some cases maybe even great-grandchildren. Four or so generations of people are firmly gathered in one place. But there are also people who deviate from this, and can't have a family of their own. I didn't want to depict only this because that's the way the world is. (2)
I also have doubts about the idea or sense of family, especially the so-called "nuclear family." (3) During Zambot, I was clearly conscious as a director of the feeling that we shouldn't just have nuclear families. That's why I left so much space for the grandparents to appear.
This wasn't from a sense of "We should cherish our elders," but rather "We're here because our grandparents existed, so we have no choice but to acknowledge them." To the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, the grandparents' existence can sometimes function as a minus. But in the end, whether they reject or accept that, the next generation is going to create a new world and a new family. That's how the cycle goes. So when I was making Zambot, I thought it was a definite societal mistake to foreground the nuclear family.
It's now been thirty years since Zambot, and unfortunately I still don't have any grandchildren, but my opinions about this haven't changed. At my age, I can imagine there's a clear difference between the grandparent who dies surrounded by their grandchildren, and the one who dies without seeing their grandchildren's and great-grandchildren's faces. I think the idea of a nuclear family just feels too cruel.
SF-style movies and anime are mostly pretty boring, aren't they? I can tolerate the first Star Wars, but before that, basically all SF movies were quite dull, whether they were anime or live-action. I can't think of any interesting SF on film. Although I like things like King Kong, even that's boring as a drama. Why, I wondered, can they only tell such simple stories?
What I came to realize is that people who like SF and special effects don't know enough about theatrics and ordinary drama. So I tried to create something that could be watched as a normal drama, with a story that would be typical for a movie. I simply made things that incorporated film techniques into anime, without any sense that I was making an SF show or a robot show... But it's a little disappointing that I didn't put any SF-style original ideas into Gundam.
In anime, you can only express drama through cinematic functions. But why do people think that when a robot shows up, it instantly becomes "robot anime" and you're not creating drama anymore? That's my question. There are also people like that, who don't get drama, among the sponsors. To them, robot anime is only about things like robots in action, docking, and new robots appearing. That's why Gundam was canceled.
Does it still need to be a robot anime even if you're going to make it like a narrative film? There's a synergistic effect where, simply because it's robot anime, it'll look "realistic" even if you attach a cliched narrative. So, by choosing the job of robot anime, I really think I was able to create stories that exceeded my own skills and abilities.
Do you need a twenty-meter robot in a narrative film? Absolutely not. But if I made one without it, it would be boring, and the story would be a mess. Nobody would watch it. Perhaps robot shows are a constraint for me to discipline myself.
When I'm trying to make an interesting visual work, I'm aware that if I thoughtlessly include only things I personally like, then I'll only be able to create stories that reflect my own tastes and make people say "Now I know what you're into, Tomino." Because I want my own works to be seen by a lot of people, I can't make things like that. Really, I'm annoyed when movies are made by people who are satisfied just making what they like. They use hundreds of people and spend huge sums of money. I don't have that kind of idiotic courage.
Actually, three days before they approached me about Zambot 3, I'd accepted the job of chief director on an anime based on a preexisting original work. But when I was asked to direct Zambot, I turned the other one down. In the end, I thought I'd benefit from a situation where I could write an original story and develop my own skills. If there's a pre-existing work, you're always more constrained. But when I called and said "I'm sorry, I'd like to step down," naturally they didn't give me any more work for a while. (laughs)
PROFILE
Yoshiyuki Tomino. Born in 1941 in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture. A genius who has driven a major part of Japan's TV anime industry, starting with Gundam. He's also written many books as a novelist. "A Zambot novel? I wanted to write a novelization, and I wrote thirty or forty pages as practice. I'll take that to my grave." (laughs)
(1) Though the name of the family was already decided before Tomino joined the project, the Japanese spelling 神ファミリー was his own suggestion.
(2) I'm not sure how to parse this vague comment. The Japanese text here reads 「それが世の中だろうから、これだけを描くことはしたくなかった」.
(3) "Nuclear family" (核家族, kakukazoku) means the same thing in both Japanese and English—a two-generation family consisting only of parents and their children.
"Zambot 3" was the first independently created work of Nippon Sunrise (now Sunrise). Because of this, the journey to its broadcast presented a series of extraordinary challenges...
Text = Yoshito Sakai
The TV anime series Super Machine Zambot 3, the first work Nippon Sunrise (now Sunrise) created on its own, was also a breakthrough work for Yoshiyuki Tomino, who is now a leading director in the field of Japanese animation.
Co-produced with Nagoya TV and the Sotsu Agency, it aired on Nagoya TV from October 8, 1977, to March 25 of the following year, running a total of 23 episodes. Its content amounted to a direct reexamination of the "giant robot show," a genre of TV anime that flourished in the mid-1970s following 1972's Mazinger Z (Toei Doga).
In this feature, we'll examine the process by which Super Machine Zambot 3 was planned, starting from the earliest stages. In doing so, we'll also address the content of the work itself.
The anime production company Sunrise Studio (the predecessor to Nippon Sunrise) was originally founded in 1973 by production staff who had left the old Mushi Production. Sunrise Studio was part of Soeisha, a children's film production subsidiary of the film distributor Tohokushinsha, and it did the actual film production for anime programs developed by Tohokushinsha and Toei's TV division.
Eventually, at the end of 1976, Sunrise Studio was reorganized into Nippon Sunrise. Becoming independent from Soeisha, it began planning is own original works. The two earliest of these plans were "Bomber X" and "SF Thrilling Robot Action Zambot 3 (working title)." Chronologically speaking, the plan for "Bomber X" (later developed into The Unchallengeable Daitarn 3) was apparently conceived before Zambot.
In 1976, Kiyomi Numoto, a founder of Sunrise Studio who had later transferred to the toy company Takara, recognized the creative and commercial value of the programs that Sunrise was producing (such as Toei's Super Electromagnetic Robo Com-Battler V). It was Numoto who introduced Sunrise to the toymaker Clover, an affiliate of the major toy company Tsukuda Original, which had been dealing mainly in soft vinyl toys. Clover, which wanted to expand its range of character goods, and Nippon Sunrise, which had just established a new structure, agreed on a strategy of "Create a fresh robot anime, and make it successful."
Soon, through the efforts of the Tōyō advertising agency (the predecessor of the current Sotsu Agency), Nagoya TV, an affiliate of the TV Asahi network, was chosen as the planning and producing station for Zambot. The broadcast was to begin in the autumn of 1977.
In an even earlier draft of "Zambot 3" the original concept, as envisioned by Eiji Yamaura, the head of the Nippon Sunrise planning office, was that the main robot would be a five-part combiner. However, this idea was shelved, and it became a three-part combination. This was mainly due to funding and technical constraints on the Clover side, and Sunrise's desire to save labor on setting and animation. The name "Zambot 3," incidentally, had the double meaning of "a three-part combining robot" and "Sunrise's robot."
As the planning of the new program continued, the broad concept of "family action" was added to the general idea of "a giant robot show where multiple mecha combine" that Yamaura had chosen for the original plan. The goal was to present a fresh drama where, rather than strangers who gathered together based on a sense of justice or duty, the robot would be operated and supported by people bound by blood relationships. At this point, it was also established that it would run a total of two cours.
Yamaura commissioned scriptwriter Yoshitake Suzuki to write a proposal based on this concept. This proposal became the previously mentioned "SF Thrilling Robot Action Zambot 3 (working title)."
The content of the "Zambot 3" proposal was generally similar to the completed work. The heroes were collectively known as the Jin family, with the protagonist Tempei Jin (age 12) supported by a cheering squad of three sisters named Yuri, Michi, and Aki, as well as his kid brother Sampei. (1) Though there were subtle differences, many elements that were carried over to the actual work were already established at this stage, such as "the protagonist's family are descended from space aliens," "three mecha scattered across Japan," "a transforming combat robot with lots of variations controlled by the boy protagonist," and "the true enemy is actually a giant computer."
On the other hand, some important dramatic elements of Super Machine Zambot 3, such as "the protagonists are persecuted by the general public" and "a structure where good and evil are reversed," weren't yet incorporated at this stage. These ideas came from Yoshiyuki Tomino, who was appointed as director of this work in June 1977.
Tomino had previously been chosen to direct Tohokushinsha's Reideen the Brave (1975), on which Sunrise Studio provided production support, but he'd been forced to step down in the middle of the series. For him, Zambot was a chance to make his comeback as a director. Thus, in the months before the broadcast began, Tomino set to work with all his might.
Meanwhile, first drafts of the characters and mechanics had already been created by the designer Ryoji Hirayama (now Ryoji Fujiwara). He had put together a draft proposal for the latter, with the motif of a Japanese-style helmet and armor. The creator group Studio Nue, however, also joined the project around the same time as Fujiwara, and several of its members were mobilized to refine the mecha design. It's been said that model sheets and so forth for the main robot were also drawn by Kunio Okawara, who was then a member of the design company Mechaman.∗
∗ It was said that Kunio Okawara drew the Zambot 3's internal mecha for magazine publication, but Okawara himself has since stated that he wasn't involved with Zambot. Kazutaka Miyatake of Studio Nue has also claimed that it was Okawara who drew the very first basic design of the Zambot 3, which was then passed on to Nue, after which Yasuhiko refined its form and Hirayama finally traced it (in the June 1980 issue of "Out").
All of this is testimony to Nippon Sunrise's eagerness to perfect the main robot for the first original plan it had ever managed to get on the air. The crescent moon on the Zambot's forehead, which served as its symbol, was added at the very end at Tomino's suggestion. It was cleaned up for animation use by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, who joined the program a little later.
The themes that Tomino himself added to the draft "Zambot 3" plan were ones that had rarely been directly depicted in traditional giant robot anime, and could be called the dark side of the hero show. These were realistic situations such as "the protagonist inevitably ends up doing damage to their surroundings as they repulse the enemy" and, as a result, "people see the protagonists who should be protecting them as enemies."
Eventually, these themes (especially the latter) lead to the final theme of "The foolish Earthlings hate each other, without trying to understand the pain of their fellow people. Is there any reason they should exist in this universe?" One could say that, with the addition of these themes, the "Zambot 3" plan leapt ahead to become the work called Super Machine Zambot 3.
Tomino also adjusted the story's terminology, changing the spelling of "Jin family" from the 「ジン一族」 of the original plan to 「神ファミリー」, retaining Yamaura's concept but giving it even greater impact. In this, we can see Tomino's determination to seriously depict a drama about "family."
Because the ideas he proposed were so fundamental to the worldview of this work, Tomino's name was added to the "original story" credits alongside Yoshitake Suzuki.
And so Zambot 3 was launched, but gathering production staff such as producers and animators proved to be a challenge. Sunrise's main staff, who had been assigned to the production of Com-Battler V and Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V for Toei's TV division, were being held in reserve for Fighting General Daimos, the followup to Voltes which was to begin in 1978. Thus, there were few people who could be spared for Zambot.
The Sunrise producer in charge was originally supposed to be Tohru Komori, the production manager on Star of La Seine (1975), for which Sunrise Studio had provided production support. For various reasons, however, Sunrise had to start over from scratch. Ultimately the role was assigned to young Yoshikazu Tochihira, previously of Tatsunoko Production, whose experience included being chief production manager on Tatsunoko's giant robot anime Gowapper-5 Gordam (1976). Encamped at Sunrise's Studio 1, Tochihira and chief production manager Yutaka Kanda worked hard to secure a staff and set up the program in the short time that remained. (2)
Meanwhile, in June, Yoshiyuki Tomino met with the animator Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and asked him to join the production. But Yasuhiko had his hands full with animation direction on the 1976 daily-life SF comedy Robokko Beeton (Tohokushinsha), for which Sunrise was providing production support. Hoping to get some rest, he declined the job of animation director on the new work, and did only revised drafts of the character designs and cleanup on the mechanical setting. (Although he ended up doing animation direction on the opening and ending.)
The animation work was done mostly by up-and-coming animation studios such as Green Box (an anime studio made up mainly of staff from Tatsunoko Pro) and Studio Z (a successor to the capable Studio NO.1, which had proven itself on Toei Doga's works). Studio Z in particular provided young talents such as the animator Yoshinori Kanada, who was then becoming recognized throughout the industry for his exceptional ability, as well his fellow animators Kazuo Tomizawa, Osamu Nabeshima, and Masakatsu Iijima, and the episode director Shinya Sadamitsu. The images they created onscreen with their unique sensibilities and bold techniques became one of Zambot's charms.
Incidentally, Zambot didn't have assigned animation directors. The animation supervision for each episode was apparently handled by Yoshiyuki Tomino and the main animator for the episode in question. For the final episode, Nobuyoshi Sasakado was seconded from Sunrise's Studio 2, where Voltes was produced, to do the main animation. Episode 20, which was actually the last one produced, was handled by Nakumura Pro, the main animation studio on the followup program Daitarn 3. These final episodes were tightened up with all their usual skill.
Another of Director Tomino's objectives was to enrich the sound, and he pursued this in coordination with the sound director Noriyoshi Matsuura. In Tomino's own words, they selected a cast who were "fundamental" and had "distinct characters," starting with Nobuyo Oyama who played Kappei Jin and including Katsuji Mori (Uchuta Kamie), Ichiro Nagai (Heizaemon Kamikita), Akira Shimada (Butcher), Toyoko Takechi (Umee Jin), and Toshio Furukawa (Shingo Kozuki).
Meanwhile, Tomino entrusted the background music to Takeo Watanabe, a leading figure in the world of live-action TV drama whose only previous TV anime work had been on the "Masterpiece" series and sports-oriented shows. At first, Watanabe was reluctant because robot shows were too far outside his field, but he gave in to Tomino's enthusiasm and provided the background music for this work in collaboration with his junior colleague Yushi Matsuyama. To quote Tomino once again, the "sometimes disappointing level" of the animation was rescued by the sound aspects.
As for the scripts, original story creator Yoshitake Suzuki served as main writer. Under his pen name Fuyunori Gobu, he wrote episodes 1, 5, 22, and 23, which were key points in the program. Additional scripts were contributed by Yoshihisa Araki, Soji Yoshikawa, Shoichi Taguchi, and Hiroyuki Hoshiyama. Depending on the episode, these were sometimes revised in the storyboarding stage, but they each poured their talents into making Zambot an innovative work.
In addition to Tomino, a total of 12 people were involved in the directorial area, including Hiroshi Jinzenji, who storyboarded episode 3, and Susumu Gyoda, who directed that episode. (3) Gyoda, who went on to direct a total of five episodes between episode 3 and episode 17, could be considered part of the regular directorial staff along with Shinya Sadamitsu, who storyboarded and directed the five episodes that were animated by Studio Z, and Kazuyuki Hirokawa, who worked on a total of four episodes from episode 12 to the final episode (sometimes handling both storyboards and direction). (4) There were many people, however, who only worked on a single episode. This serves as a record of how hard the production side was struggling to find personnel.
Tomino himself drew the storyboards for nine episodes, from the first to the final episode, under his pen name Minoru Yokitani. He also directed three episodes, at least according to the credits, but it's believed that he was involved in the direction of many others on the production site.
Translator's Note: The remainder of the article, amounting to roughly 1/3 of the total text, goes on to discuss the progress of the animated story and the reaction among fans and critics. Technically this isn't production information, so I'll pause my translation here.
(1) The term "Jin family" is written here as ジン一族, rather than 神ファミリー as per the final show.
(2) This seems like an error. Zambot was produced at Sunrise's Studio 3, while Studio 1 was working on Robokko Beeton up until Zambot's broadcast debut. It's possible, though, that Tochihira and Kanda used Studio 1 as a base of operations while they were recruiting their production staff.
(3) The original text says that Gyoda storyboarded the episode and Jinzenji directed it, rather than vice versa, but this appears to be a mistake and the following sentence contradicts it.
(4) I believe Sadamitsu and Studio Z only worked on four episodes, and the episode list published in this book agrees, but I've left this part as per the original text.
As the head of the planning department, Mr. Yamaura has been observing the production site ever since Sunrise was founded. First, he told us about the early days of Sunrise and the time of Zambot.
Before Super Machine Zambot 3, Nippon Sunrise was initially set up as a company called Soeisha, which was created with funding from Tohokushinsha. We then went on to make works such as Reideen the Brave.
At first, the broadcasting station for Reideen hadn't been decided, so we made the first five episodes or so independently. When it was eventually decided that NET (now TV Asahi) would be airing it, the station producer came in, and they had a very forceful data-based attitude about children's programming.
Though we were passionate about the creation of the work, the balance of power was against us. The result was that the work changed course after the fifth episode, and series director Yoshiyuki Tomino also stepped down halfway through. But when it aired, the audience ratings for the first five episodes were really good.
Though this gave us some confidence in our work, and we'd realized Tomino's ability, it was still frustrating that we couldn't get our own ideas across and that we hadn't been able to protect Tomino. Given all of this, we began to imagine a company that would give us more autonomy in our creative works.
...However, while data and common sense were surely important elements, we gradually realized that it was a production company's job to go beyond that in creating its works. Until then, when an order came from the broadcasting station we'd say "yes, yes," but that alone wasn't enough. If you create a work based on data, you can certainly make something successful, but it'll end up exactly the same no matter who makes it. In a way, I'm grateful we were able to realize that.
For me, just saying "yes, yes" works well enough, but it still becomes tiring. It's exhausting enough that the staff also get physically worn out and say they want to quit. It was at this point that Nagoya TV, the Tōyō Agency (the predecessor to the current Sotsu Agency), and the toy company Clover came to us and said "Why don't we create a work together?" And thus the anime production company Sunrise was born.
When we were producing Super Machine Zambot 3, our first independently created work, we had three points in mind.
First, "The drama is high, the target is low." That meant keeping the target age group young, creating works with highly dramatic content, and releasing toys at low prices. That should have been impossible based on previous data. In fact, we were supposed to create drama suitable for younger audiences, but we wanted to change that.
Next, "The toy shouldn't be different from the robot in the work." Even if they were inexpensive, we had to sell a lot of toys. So we thought the toys needed to faithfully reproduce the combination and transformation of the robot in the work.
And finally, "Let's promote the staff." This was exactly the point at which anime magazines appeared, so we thought we could shine a spotlight on staffers such as episode directors, scriptwriters, and animators who had previously worked entirely behind the scenes.
Honestly, you could say that Sunrise back then was a group of amateurs, but I wonder whether that's still the case? We'd all be racking our brains on the second floor of a coffee shop that was going out of business or in a 2DK apartment, trying to come up with ideas for plans.
That was the situation as we were wondering what we could do. You could say it brought out the best aspects of that group of amateurs. In short, Nagoya TV, the Sotsu Agency, the toy company Clover, and Sunrise itself were all amateurs who were making anime for the first time.
Up until then, Clover had just been releasing low-priced goods for titles where the main products came from major manufacturers. And at the time, 5:30 PM (the broadcast time on Nagoya TV, which was the key station) was a time slot used for reruns. So we hadn't been able to get a good time slot. Even 6:00 PM wasn't really a time slot for first-run broadcasts, but we were able to get by fairly well with a 5:30 PM slot.
The good thing about all of us being amateurs was that normally, if one work becomes a hit, you'd be asked to make a sequel. But they let us make Super Machine Zambot 3, The Unchallengeable Daitarn 3, Mobile Suit Gundam, and The Unchallengeable Trider G7, following harder works with softer ones. Thinking about the viewer's perspective, we figured they'd get bored if we just kept doing the same thing, so we were grateful for that.
After making four shows, however, these amateurs all became professionals. (laughs) And then everyone had their own personal opinions. When Mobile Suit Gundam became a hit, they started asking us to make more works with that kind of theme.
What I remember from when we actually made Zambot 3 is that Japanese people are really fond of family lineages. I think the setting was mainly created by Mr. Yoshitake Suzuki, and he established that all the relatives gather and fight because they're connected by past bloodlines. He also gave them that sense of duty that Japanese people really love, where they have to save the Earth. In his setting, following the standard convention for combining shows, he established three characters of whom one was a girl. In that respect, he was just going with the typical approach.
First of all, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko-chan's characters were great. Even more than his designs, Yasuhiko-chan's characters were really good. His style was very difficult, but the lines were so soft. I really loved those characters.
Tomino-chan wasn't involved from the beginning, but he joined us as a director at the point when the proposal was completed. I think that was around the time Yasuhiko-chan's characters were finalized. We'd recognized Tomino-chan's ability on Reideen, so we asked him to be the series director. When I saw the completed film, it had indeed become the director's creation, that is, a work by Tomino-chan.
And wasn't that also the first time we held a training camp for the staff? The whole staff went in the Red Arrow to the Kawagoe mineral springs. For a while after that, it became standard procedure for Sunrise to hold training camps.
However, at the time we were also doing a subcontracted work (Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V) for Toei, so the production system on site was very difficult. This is both a strength and a weakness of Sunrise, but when it comes to staffing, it's usually first come first served. (laughs) All the staff end up on the work that first puts its name out there and says "Let's do it!"
Likewise, with Zambot, back then all the main staff were working on Voltes V and its followup program Fighting General Daimos, so we ultimately had to make Zambot with other staff. It was truly difficult at the time. Well, I guess there was no work that wasn't difficult. I think we were able to do it despite these difficulties because we had to. We'd been backed into a corner where we felt we had to be working on our own productions, no matter what.
And besides, the conditions were ripe. I think of everything from Reideen to Zambot 3, Daitarn 3, and Gundam as one continuous flow, but when you accumulate all that experience, you also accumulate frustrations. I think everything we'd accumulated by doing that came out, in a good way, in the work called Super Machine Zambot 3.
It's the same for Tomino-chan, Yasuhiko-chan, and everyone else. When people are backed into a corner, something comes out of it. When we started the company called Sunrise, we had to get work at any cost, we had to make it successful, and we had to sell merchandise. Backed into a corner like that, something will come out of that reckless abandon. Even when we were doing works for Toei as a subcontractor, that enabled us to understand the standard for anime works and come up with ideas for how we could surpass it.
That's where the "drama" part comes in. I suppose Zambot 3 was an attempt to differentiate ourselves as creators by not having the drama simply end with the defeat of the enemy.
From the outset, we'd decided that Zambot 3 would run a total of 26 episodes. This was to maintain a good balance with the toys. With the broadcast starting in October, at first we'd be releasing merchandise in the low-cost range, followed by the high-priced main products for Christmas and the New Year. Ultimately, because of the timing, we had a year's worth of results in just six months.
Because the toys sold so well, they let us do the following Daitarn 3 for a full year. The police car that transformed into an airplane (the Mach Patrol) was a big seller at the time, and Mr. (Kunio) Okawara even made a transforming wooden prototype for it. Actually, there was also a plan for it to transform from a police car into a robot, but for various reasons that was dropped.
...To some extent, it was an era where merchandise sales took priority over audience ratings. Rather than being accepted and watched by a wide audience, we were making works aimed at a smaller group who would buy the products. That was our approach to creating the works. These days, it's gotten harder to keep making works that prioritize the sponsors.
Surprisingly, even when you let them make something freely, people who think "I'd like to make this kind of a work!" are never able to create a hit work. They can't just do what they like, since there also the constraints of having to get audience ratings and sell toys. By finding a way to be creative within those constraints, you can come up with something interesting. Recycling patterns from past data is a very different thing from using it creatively.
This is a little off-topic, but in Mobile Suit Gundam, there's a gang of three children named Katz, Letz, and Kikka. I think Tomino found them difficult to use. When the adults are fighting a war, how can you involve little children? But he got creative and made episodes like the one where the kids dispose of the bombs (Mobile Suit Gundam episode 30, "A Small Defensive Line"). As a result, this led to the last scene of the final episode, where the children guide the escaping Amuro.
Those three characters were originally included due to the data-based idea that child characters appeared in other robot shows, and of course we should include characters close in age to the children in the audience. But if we'd discarded them because they were hard to use, and hadn't come up with a creative solution, that moving final scene wouldn't have been possible.
PROFILE
Eiji Yamaura. Born in 1936. He initially belonged to Mushi Production, but in 1972 he founded Sunrise Studio, the predecessor to the current Sunrise, with Mr. Yoshinori Kishimoto, Mr. Masanori Ito, etc. Major works include 0-Tester (literature manager) and Zambot 3, Gundam, Ideon, and Gundam F91 (planning).
Mr. Suzuki was involved in the launch of the Zambot plan, and is credited for the original story. Here, we've asked him to look back on the bygone days of Sunrise's early years.
At the point when the planning of Zambot began, I was involved with Sunrise as a writer and a planning brain, in a role like that of a sounding board for Mr. (Eiji) Yamaura. Mr. Yamaura would talk to me about what he'd come up with as a planner, and he'd ask me "Please put something together." Then Mr. Yamaura would give his opinion again based on what I'd written. Through this kind of back-and-forth, we'd gradually settle on a plan.
I was originally at Mushi Pro, and that's where I first met Mr. Yamaura. At the time, Mr. Yamaura was in the photography department, and I was an assistant director and production assistant, so our relationship was purely professional. After that, Mushi Pro's management went awry, and everyone started leaving for other companies. I basically wanted to write scripts, so I quit Mushi Pro and began walking the path of a scriptwriter. And this may sound weird, but Mr. Yamaura and the others created their own company because they said they had to make a living. That was Soeisha, the predecessor to Sunrise.
At the time, I was writing scripts elsewhere. Then the freshly created Sunrise called me in. Before I arrived, it seems they'd brought in Madhouse's Mr. Maruyama (Masao Maruyama, currently the president of Madhouse) and the director (Osamu) Dezaki, and though I don't know much about it, I was called in as a replacement when they left Sunrise. I joined in as one of the writers on Hazedon, and at the time, Mr. Maruyama was serving as literature manager.
After that came 0-Tester, which was inspired by Thunderbirds. Because that had been a hit, Soeisha's backer Tohokushinsha wondered whether they could sell another round of similar toys, so they asked us to do it.
Back then, Sunrise consisted of about nine people who'd gotten together and formed a company, and it didn't have the structure or appearance of a business. For the time being, they had to take on contract work to keep the studio going.
In the early days, Sunrise was a kind of hodgepodge. Even though they knew they had to do everything themselves, whenever they could find the time, they'd go to a pachinko parlor or go drinking someplace. Before it developed a real business structure, it was a weird and irresponsible space filled with chaotic energy.
I think, though, that this irresponsibility was sometimes helpful. When things are incomplete and unconstrained, you can genuinely vent your energy into the work. But you can't necessarily create a good work when everything is precisely ordered into a system.
Anyway, they were now subcontracting for Tohokushinsha and starting to operate as a company, but since they were independent they had to create their own original story. And to do that, they needed to write an original proposal. I think that's why they called me in. There must have been other people, so I don't know why they came to me. I guess in the end, after they'd contacted a lot of other people, I was the one who met Mr. Yamaura's expectations.
In those days, the studio was in a small room on the second floor above a coffee shop in Kamiigusa. They didn't have a conference room, so I went to Mr. Yamaura's apartment to write. He was newly married at the time, so I was grinding away at the proposal in a room next to their bedroom. (laughs)
How should I put it? Those were irresponsible days. I felt the power of "craftsmanship" that lay in being careless. Sometimes we'd say we were thirsty and hold our planning meetings while drinking beer. (laughs)
If a robot show became a hit, there was a high probably it would make a good profit. We were a small production company that would blow away in a stiff breeze, so unless we had a hit the first time around, we didn't know what would become of us. We were also adding a fair number of people, so we were dealing with the reality that we had to survive in the industry and support our families. Thus, the company's policy was that the plans we created shouldn't just be masterpieces, but should also be works that made a profit and resulted in solid merchandising.
I was involved in the planning of Zambot 3 from the very beginning, and as I was saying earlier, it started with me talking to Mr. Yamaura and turning that into a plan. I think Mr. Tomino came in after that. So the plan began with Mr. Yamaura, then it was refined as he discussed it with me. The proposal wasn't as solid as those you see nowadays, and it was pretty rough. I think Mr. Tomino joined us after this had been somewhat firmed up through my back-and-forth with Mr. Yamaura.
When I say it was firmed up, that doesn't mean we'd decided all the details of the structure. You never know how it'll ultimately end up. Even if you write a structure that goes all the way to the end for presentation purposes, that's just a placeholder. It isn't finally decided until the story gets rolling, and even then, the ideas in the director's head can change. In that sense, it felt a lot like improvisation or live performance. Rather than meticulous calculation where you think ahead and set up the story, it felt more like sheer momentum. The only thing that had been decided was the general direction.
Since this was 25 years ago, I don't really remember any detailed anecdotes. My apologies. I've forgotten the plot of the first episode, but I remember that in Zambot the family suddenly came rushing out. The setting was that they're caught up in a robot war without knowing why. I think that sort of thing is rare among Sunrise plans even now, and in that respect, it was a very striking work.
Even given the content of Zambot, the human bombs are a very Tomino touch. In my case, I wouldn't do anything that extreme, and I focused on the family aspects. Things like the grandfather going out and drinking tea while fighting. There's a family spending every day together, and the fighting is part of their daily life.
Ultimately, Mr. Yamaura and I were imagining a story that was mainly about fighting as a family. But I don't think Mr. Tomino likes that sort of thing. It doesn't suit his basic nature. It feels like it doesn't match the world he depicts unless it's about high society, with cool protagonists and pretty girls, rather than the life of the common people. Family shows tend to be corny, don't they? I wonder what he thinks about that. He hates corny things. (1)
When Mr. Tomino creates original plans, they're seldom about the laughter and tears of families. Even when a family shows up, I think he's better at highlighting the tragic aspects of humanity in an elevated fashion, rather than raw depictions of the conflicts arising from within the family. He doesn't seem to like situations where things collapse messily, fights break out, and the natural instincts of human beings are laid bare.
So if you ask me whether I prefer brandy or cognac, I'd probably say cognac. (laughs) I don't think I could put up with people who'd blurt out "sochu."
The most memorable character was probably Kappei. I also liked the tea-drinking granny, but of course the protagonist leaves the strongest impression. Personally, what I really wanted to do was the part about carving out your own destiny in a situation where you're caught up in the fighting. I was young myself in those days, and in a position where life was a battle. That aspect of myself at the time carried over to the protagonist.
If you can identify with these raw aspects then you can empathize with the characters, and depict them straightforwardly even when your scriptwriting techniques are immature. Thinking about myself as a writer back then, I think I was competing with straight pitches. So when I was writing, I was doing it with the feeling that I wanted to draw the viewers in without any misalignment of our emotions. Even if I couldn't write skillfully, I could make them understand my feelings. And once I got past that, I started trying to fake them out with curveballs (laughs), which brought out my wicked side.
I started throwing curveballs when I was in my mid-thirties. In your forties, that doesn't work anymore. (laughs) Sometimes I have a chance to talk to the viewers in person, and at some point I realized that the viewers were around the same age as my own child. (laughs) Even when I'm walking around town, I wonder why everyone seems so young. I think of myself as young, too. But when I notice that, I'm astonished to realize that I've grown older. In that case, rather than venting my own feelings in my writing, I end up using objective techniques and gimmicks to get things across.
As you grow older, there are some ways in which you can no longer talk directly to youngsters. Then you realize it doesn't work anymore. The moment I noticed that, I thought "Oh, my youth is gone." (laughs)
Recently, I've been interviewed a lot about my older works, and I'm reminded less about the works themselves than about the events of the time. I think that's good. When I remember the wildness of those days, it makes me feel I have no time to waste, and I have to try my hardest with all my energy.
Robot shows make up a big portion of my own work. That's because I was able to make a living doing that. I guess you could say it's proof that we survived.
At first, the robot shows we worked on were frowned on by society. They considered us minions of the toymakers. (laughs) But the desperate reality was that if we hadn't done that, we couldn't have survived. And by continuing to do it, my weak will was fortified. Well, I didn't make any money (laughs), but it made me who I am today.
How to put it? We weren't trying to pioneer the robot show genre, but we came at it wildly, and looking back I guess we paved the way for the robot show. The grand imperative of survival came first, and everything we left behind was merely the consequence of that. But without it, there'd be no Gundam, so in that case the fruits of our efforts were rewarded. Let's wrap this up by saying that if you work hard, you'll surely be handsomely rewarded. (laughs)
Looking at Zambot now, I feel I'd like to have the spirit of those days once again. If I had that power now, perhaps I could accomplish more in my remaining career. (laughs) You might call it the spiritual aspect. Moving wildly onward, onward. I want the drive to struggle desperately, rather than living a life where you knock off early for dinnertime drinks.
Of course I'm nostalgic about those days, and I cherish the memories. The work was really tough, though. (laughs)
PROFILE
Yoshitake Suzuki. A freelance scriptwriter who came from the literature department of Mushi Production, and a member of the Writers Guild of Japan. He sometimes uses the alias Fuyunori Gobu. He's been responsible for scripting many Sunrise works, including Votoms and the Brave series. Aside from Zambot 3, he's also credited for the original story on works such as Reideen the Brave, 0-Tester, and Blue Gale Xabungle.
(1) The Japanese term ダサい (dasai) means lame, uncool, or unfashionable.
(2) The Japanese phrase 直球勝負で (chokkyū shōbu de), literally "with a straight ball," is a baseball metaphor that means you're using a straightforward approach. Since Suzuki goes on to use several baseball analogies in this section, I've stuck with the literal interpretation here. ガムシャラに (gamushara ni) means recklessly, frantically, or hell-bent, and I've phrased it here as "wildly."
Mr. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko handled the characters and much of the guest setting for Zambot 3. As well as the production system at the time, his comments also discuss later works such as Gundam and Gorg.
Looking back on my career in anime, half or more of it was robot anime or things that fall into that category. Robot anime has made up a big part of my life. I neither love it nor hate it, but the fact is that at the time there was no other work. I did feel detached from my work on robot anime. But of course, I worked earnestly on any job that came my way.
On Super Machine Zambot 3, I said from the beginning I'd only be able to do the character designs. I was working on Space Battleship Yamato storyboards at the time, and I couldn't get out of it. So I couldn't do animation direction or key animation for the show itself, but I'd take the job if it was just designing the characters. As I was drawing them, however, I gradually got attached to them. And I started feeling bad that I couldn't do the animation direction.
When I started drawing the characters for Zambot 3, although there was a proposal, nothing more than a rough story had been created. They hadn't yet firmed up the detailed setting or the specifics of what kind of story it would be. But it was normal to draw the characters before it had been decided how everything would turn out, or what the work would be like.
With anime shows, especially robot anime, the designs usually come first. The first thing to be completed is the main robot, which is going to be turned into a toy. That's because the toymaker will already have finished it. Then the plan itself can be completed afterwards. Even with Zambot 3, the toy design was done first, and then we were just supposed to use it as is.
As far as cleaning up the mechanics, the animators can't draw it for you and make it move unless you've drawn something with that kind of performance. Because robots also have to work as toys, the three-dimensional form takes priority, and they aren't designed to move in anime. So when I'm doing drawings for reference purposes, I interpret the mecha like characters. I'll say that when you're giving it this kind of performance, you can cheat this part of the drawing like so, or this robot has a lot of lines, so it's easier if you simplify the lines this way.
I think everybody in every production site was doing the same thing. Back then, it seemed like there was no anime studio that wasn't making robot anime. I don't actually know how other people were doing it, but personally, on Reideen the Brave and Super Electromagnetic Robo Com-Battler V I was working under the assumption that everybody else did it that way. On Reideen the Brave, it was checked by the toymaker as we were designing it. After that, the toymakers just started creating the robots beforehand.
...The Zambot 3 had a smaller robot hidden inside it. That was the only part where I remember wondering whether it would really be okay. (laughs)
After the robot aspects were finalized, we'd start creating the worldview and characters. I'd list all the characters and begin designing them based on the rough story development. Typically, at the point when I received the orders, only the characters' general personalities and the relationships between them would have been decided.
There are still fans who tell me how much they love them, but it was Mr. Tomino who placed the orders, and the images came from him as well. I just had to figure out how to turn those into drawings.
It was also Mr. Tomino's order that the Zambot 3 characters should be in a manga style with shorter proportions, five or six heads tall. I also preferred the manga style to the gekiga style, so I enjoyed drawing them. (1) But I made the legs of the protagonist Kappei too short, and I remember Mr. Tomino asked for a revision, saying "Can't you make his legs a little longer?"
The family aspect of the Jin family was a little different, and I thought that was pretty good. Usually, when there are a lot of characters, that makes it harder for the designer. But being a family gives them some warmth, and it was interesting to break away from the formula of three or five heroes banding together.
Do the costumes in Crusher Joe resemble the combat uniforms in Zambot 3? Well, Zambot 3 came first, right? I think that's not a coincidence, and the similarity is deliberate. In the descriptions in Crusher Joe, the novelist Mr. Haruka Takachiho wrote something about "art flash," and it seemed like a curious overlap. (2) I liked the combat uniform designs from Zambot 3, so I guess I deliberately gave them a similar image.
I'm quite fond of the work Zambot 3 itself. I read the storyboards for each episode to make the guest characters, and they were interesting as well. That's why I have lingering regrets that I wasn't involved with the actual production site.
I didn't really watch any of the original broadcast of Zambot 3. I had doubts about Sunrise's production situation at the time, so I was being a bit stubborn. An "animation director" is a supervisor who maintains the drawing quality for each episode, and it's an really important position in anime production work. But when it came to Zambot 3, I declined to take on the animation direction as well, since I didn't have the capacity. They replied "That's okay, we just won't appoint an animation director."
As a character designer, I wanted them to properly appoint an animation director to maintain the quality. I was still young back then, only in my twenties, so I rebelled against this and refused to watch it.
Zambot 3 was Sunrise's first original plan as an independent company, so I wanted them to take better care of it. When you have an original work, it can become an asset for the company in the future. And indeed, even thirty years later, they're still putting out DVD software and books like this. It was such a wasted opportunity. They should have had some idea, even back then, that this was going to happen.
That was the point at which the Space Battleship Yamato boom started, and anime was becoming part of youth culture. That's why they shouldn't have been making such sloppy works.
It's true that Sunrise didn't have that many staffers at the time. Their main force was working under Mr. Tadao Nagahama on subcontracted Toei works such as Super Electromagnetic Robo Com-Battler V and Super Electromagnetic Machine Voltes V. Why did they assign their best staff to the Toei jobs, rather than putting resources into their own original work? If they didn't have the staff, why didn't they go find some? That's what I said at the time. It's not like they didn't have a choice.
Later on, Mr. Yoshinori Kanada's team came in, and they did some episodes that were so good people called them masterpieces. So you could say that was fortunate. Well, for the company, perhaps having no animation director made it easier to outsource all the animation to contractors... But I'm talking about Sunrise in the old days. The other day, someone from another production company was telling me that Sunrise is different now. (laughs) Nowadays, Sunrise is actually making high-level, quality works like Cowboy Bebop.
In that sense, I was able to do exactly what I wanted on Giant Gorg. If there were just 26 episodes, I thought I could do the animation direction for all of them. I wanted to try that just once, so they gave me a little extra time in the schedule. In fact, I also found some capable staff like Mr. Tsukasa Dokite who could help me out. So I ws very self-indulgent on Gorg. I shouldn't really have done this, but I left the postrecording work entirely to the episode directors, and I just drew the pictures. (laughs)
On the other hand, I think there are some misunderstandings about the film version of Mobile Suit Gundam... I collapsed during the Gundam TV series, and I couldn't touch roughly the final third of it. Normally they'd appoint a substitute animation director, but in this case, just like on Zambot 3, they left the position vacant.
I had regrets about that, so when they were making the Mobile Suit Gundam films, I said I at least wanted to fix those parts. As for the drawings done before I dropped out, I said "I'll fix those if Director Tomino wants me to," and I just touched those up. So we had no intention of making that a selling point for the Mobile Suit Gundam films. In fact, at the time I thought it might be forbidden to revise the animation. I thought so, and probably Mr. Tomino did too.
Since the film made by re-editing the TV version of Space Battleship Yamato had been so popular, the original plan for the Mobile Suit Gundam films was to copy that and do a similar re-edit. But they used it as a selling point, saying "New and revised animation has been included for the theatrical release!" After that, the same formula has been used everywhere. I don't like that.
PROFILE
Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Born in 1947 in Engaru, Hokkaido Prefecture. He joined Mushi Production in 1970, then became a freelancer, and attracted attention on works such as Reideen the Brave, Zambot 3, and Mobile Suit Gundam. He is now mainly a manga artist, as well as a novelist and illustrator.
(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 square explosives attached to the jackets of the Crusher Joe team members, known as "art flash," resemble the square decorations on the Zambot 3 combat uniforms.
Mobile Suit Gundam is copyright © Sotsu • Sunrise. Everything else on this site, and all original text and pictures, are copyright Mark Simmons.
