Anime Is Not to Be Underestimated: Tomino Yoshiyuki / Animation Director

"Direct Talk"

"Mobile Suit Gundam" first aired on TV in 1979.

The sci-fi anime revolutionized children's animation

and spawned series, movies, and more.

It's one of the most iconic anime franchises to come out of Japan.

Our guest today is Tomino Yoshiyuki,

creator and director of the original Gundam series.

At 80, he is as passionate as ever about producing new anime projects.

His sci-fi stories tackle real-life social issues

such as the depletion of natural resources.

Looking at the state of the world right now,

I could never do a story about a bright future.

The future points to annihilation of the human race.

Four decades on from the original Gundam series,

what does Tomino hope to convey through his depictions of the future?

Anime Is Not to Be Underestimated

Tomino's latest feature-length movie

was released in Japanese theaters in July 2021.

The film is full of excitement and is epic in scale,

with a plot that left audiences breathless.

I couldn't tell where it was going.

It was an experience unlike any other.

To borrow a quote from the anime: Genius. It was utter genius.

Tomino has been one of Japan's top anime directors for 40 years.

A career-spanning retrospective entitled

"The World of Tomino Yoshiyuki"

has recently been on show across Japan.

As a young boy, he became fascinated with outer space.

He was sketching rocketships

and putting together reports on space studies

years before human space travel became a reality.

He rose to fame as a director

after creating "Mobile Suit Gundam" in 1979.

It set the template for robot anime shows

with sponsorship deals with toy manufacturers.

Tomino made it a point to ground his stories

by incorporating the latest science and social issues of the day.

Take this space colony, for instance.

Unlike other robot anime or the children's robot anime

up until that time,

he drew inspiration

from the cutting-edge technology available at that time

to depict outer space and to predict a likely future.

Early robot anime series revolved around simple, moralistic tales.

Tomino elevated the genre to true science fiction.

I'd been working on giant robot anime for a few years,

and I thought there was no reason the bad guys had to always be aliens.

So I wanted to make a battle action show

that didn't involve hostile aliens.

That ended up becoming a chronicle of war.

(Amuro! Hurry!)

(Are you all right, Amuro?!)

(Fraw Bow!)

The series is centered on a teenager named Amuro Ray,

who joins a war between the Earth Federation

and a nation of space colonists seeking independence.

The weapons are these mechanical behemoths.

Weapons of that scale couldn't be developed by a single scientist.

They wouldn't have the resources to produce hundreds of them.

I thought about how these robots would be manufactured,

how resources would play into that,

as well as the problem of energy.

Then, you're faced with the notion

that it became necessary for them

to mobilize even high school girls for the war effort.

The story teaches the ramifications of industrial production.

I followed how all of that would play out over a decades-long story arc.

Tomino's work is marked by an air of reality.

His stories also focus on complicated human drama.

In episode 13 of the original series,

Amuro reunites with his mother for the first time in years,

only to find she is angered and saddened

by how military life has changed him.

Leaving his mother again, he returns to the battlefield.

These human elements were greatly inspired by Tomino's own father,

Kihei.

During World War II, Kihei worked in a munitions factory

doing research and development for the military.

(Space suits Kihei helped develop)

The documents he brought home

would spark his son's interest in outer space...

but they would also make him question the nature of war and humanity.

My father was also involved in the development

of a type of incendiary balloon bomb.

(Japanese balloon bomb, A secret weapon by the Imperial Japanese Army to attack North America)

They were working on using a paste made from edible konnyaku

to glue together the material for the balloon.

I believe there was one specific incident

where one of the balloon bombs exploded.

It ended up killing a few people,

and the news made the papers in the U.S.

But it was ineffective otherwise.

Still, it did kill civilians,

so it was considered a weapon of murder.

In that sense, he showed me what path not to take in life.

So in the Gundam series the character of Amuro's father

is greatly influenced by him.

The fictional character is portrayed in clear-cut terms.

This is Amuro's father, Tem Ray, from episode one.

He's an engineer who worked on developing the robot weapons.

He was consumed by his work, to the detriment of his family life.

A very believable scenario.

(Dad!)

(The Gundam must go before the evacuees.)

(Take it up to the White Base and prepare it for battle.)

(Yes, sir!)

(Dad!)

(Dad, are mobile suits more important to you than human beings?)

(Move it out.)

(Dad!)

Engineers and researchers and scientist,

they excel in very specific areas, in particular fields.

But when it comes to using their intellect and foresight

in the service of society,

they're almost completely unable to switch gears.

You could have all the smarts in the world,

and yet somehow, it's all led humanity down this path.

In the anime, Amuro's father is sucked out into space in an accident,

and the effects of oxygen deprivation rob him of his faculties.

Tomino is currently working on the latest installment in the franchise,

"Gundam Reconguista in G."

The TV series, which aired between 2014 and 2015,

is currently being compiled into a five-part film series.

At first glance a thrilling adventure featuring robots

and teenage protagonists,

Tomino's story is actually centered on the issue of energy.

For about 20 years now, in not only science fiction but in our reality,

it's become hard to imagine a bright, hopeful future

when you consider the arc of human history.

We have energy crises, the problem of global warming,

and recently we're learning more about

why we're getting these extreme weather events.

In short, I believe the general public

is coming to the realization that over the 20th century,

humans ravaged the surface of the Earth

to the point where there is no longer a way for us to restore it.

Looking at the state of the world right now,

I could never do a story about the promise of a bright future.

So this new series is about how humanity might rebuild itself

after it reached the cusp of annihilation.

Only in that scenario could I imagine young people

being able to thrive once again.

The series depicts a world where certain technology is forbidden

and humanity relies on energy batteries delivered from space.

(It's not a debt I can ever repay,)

(but I'll do my darnedest to try!)

(That kid...)

From the perspective of energy, this series is set in a time

when humans can no longer dig for coal and oil on Earth.

Instead, they must rely on solar energy.

They've managed to develop the technology

to store solar energy in battery form.

And in this world, they've decided to

not allow the production of these solar-charged "photon batteries"

on the Earth itself.

They know if they promote industrialization,

it will lead to using the Earth's resources.

So they do it in space.

In this new series, space colonists that live near the moon

manufacture the photon batteries,

and they lower them down to Earth via a space elevator for distribution.

In other words,

humans have decided to leave the Earth's resources alone.

They've made the planet a habitat for preserving nature's resources.

That's the setting I came up with.

But no one, not even the fans,

describes the story from this perspective.

(Really?)

Nope. Viewers have yet to truly pick up on that aspect.

They don't expect anime

to deal with theories of civilization and culture.

It's "only" anime, after all.

In November 2021, Tomino was honored by the Japanese government

as a person of cultural merit for his groundbreaking animation work.

It's precisely because anime is seen as entertainment for children

that Tomino has dedicated his life to the medium.

I've come to feel that

humankind will persist through generational change,

and in that sense old folks should just buzz off already.

I've realized that our fate is likely not to simply die and perish.

Death does not mean the end of things.

It's about passing the baton to the next generation.

If we can believe in that process of succession,

then maybe, just maybe, humankind will invent a way to save the Earth.

So my audience is not my current viewers or Gundam fans.

It's the children.

I want my work to provide food for thought for kids under ten.

I want to inspire them to think,

"What was that old bald geezer rattling on about?"

(Do you have any words to live by?)

It's a ring, a circle.

This is the approach you should take toward everything.

If you limit yourself to your subjective view,

you will never be able to get a balanced view of the whole picture.

If you want to understand the world as a whole,

you have to approach it in these abstract terms.

It's difficult to fathom and to convey in words,

and that frustrates me to no end.

It comes down to the limits of my own intellect.

So there's nothing I can do about it.

But I'm in my twilight years, and this is the only path I know.

It takes me about ten years to produce a single film.

Even if I make it to 100, I only have 20 years.

I'll be lucky if I have two more in me.