Yoshikazu Yasuhiko On ‘Gundam,’ ‘Giant Gorg’ And Making Manga

After many years, I have finally managed to sit down and talk with the legendary animator, artist, director and manga author Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. From his amazing work on the original Mobile Suit Gundam to being a hugely popular and influential creator of manga, Yasuhiko is a truly fascinating and a remarkably humble individual.

Before moving into anime and manga, Yasuhiko’s start in life was in rural Hokkaido, but manga was still a huge part of his life even then.

“I was born in Hokkaido in a very rural area. It was very cold. My family were also farmers. Even from a young age, I loved to draw manga. Due to where I was living, it was very hard to get any kind of information from the outside world, on top of that my family wasn’t rich. We were in fact quite poor. This meant I wasn’t able to get the latest books or manga, though some kind people used to give me them. So I used to look at these and wished I could draw like that. That was my childhood.

“One of my favorite manga as a child was Oda Nobunaga by Mitsuaki Suzuki and was probably my biggest influence growing up. It was a manga about Japanese history and it was so interesting, and I tried to imitate and copy that as a kid. I think this was around the third grade of elementary school.

“Up until I entered into junior high school my dream was to become a mangaka, but when I reached high school, I realized that I didn’t have any real talent and I gave up. I also started to think that maybe I should become a teacher instead. With that in mind, I went to university to pursue that but I was unable to graduate. So I quit university and moved to Tokyo, without any plan. I didn’t know what to do, nor did I have any dreams or aspirations. However, through pure chance and coincidence, I managed to get a job at Mushi Productions. Of course, I knew of Osamu Tezuka, but I didn’t pick Mushi Productions because it was Tezuka’s company, it was just a complete coincidence.

“After joining Mushi Productions I became a trainee animator and started my work in animation. However, three years later, Mushi Productions went bankrupt and I became a freelancer. From that point on I worked for about twenty years in animation.

“Around ten years after I started as a freelancer, I came to work on the first Mobile Suit Gundam as an animator. It ended up being a big hit so after that Tokuma, who were publishing animation magazines at the time, contacted me and asked if I was interested in making manga. It was this that made me think that I may be able to become a mangaka. This is around the time I started working on manga. This meant for the following ten years I was both an animator and someone that made manga. At the end of that period, I decided to stop working in animation and focus solely on creating manga.”

Working At Sunrise And Creating Giant Gorg

While the original Mobile Suit Gundam is one of Yasuhiko’s seminal works, as he was a key member of the creative team, we started talking more about his standalone anime work Giant Gorg. An anime that has gone on to find an all-new international audience in recent years.

“For the original Mobile Suit Gundam, I worked as an animator and as an animation director. However, in those days the role of an animation director had the nuance that you directed the work of other animators. So I wanted to do both my own animation work and act as the director of the work. In fact, the team was very small.

“Sunrise is now one of the biggest animation studios in Japan but at that time, there were very small and powerless. That meant the team for the original Mobile Suit Gundam was small as well. That meant we were also crazily busy every day and I actually got sick as a result of that. Obviously, as this was the first big hit that I worked on, it was great fun to join such a team but I was overworked and got sick.

“Following the original Mobile Suit Gundam, I worked on Crusher Joe and then came Giant Gorg. So around this time, I felt that I wanted to work on my own project based on my own ideas, along with design and planning. I also wanted to do a mecha anime. That meant Giant Gorg was a new kind of challenge for me.

“While Crusher Joe had been successful, that was Haruka Takachiho’s work and he is my friend. It was his work though, so I feel that Giant Gorg was my next work after Mobile Suit Gundam. Unfortunately, Giant Gorg wasn't a success at the time and after that, I worked on various titles that also didn't turn out to be very successful. Ironically, when I was a child, I gave up the dream of being a mangaka as I didn't think I had the talent for it, but at this point in my career, I didn't feel I had the talent to direct animation. That's when I moved back into manga, as I thought it would be a better fit for me.

“Anyway, there is a famous novel called Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and it is very popular among Japanese children, not to mention that I like it as well. So I wanted to do something like Treasure Island but also with robots. That meant that if I was to do a story like Treasure Island, then there needed to be some treasure, but I thought something like gold and jewels was too typical. So what could be the treasure in a modern context, and I thought maybe something like alien technology. In the ‘80s, science fiction movies like E.T. were very popular and people were excited by the idea of having first contact with aliens. However, I don't believe in UFOs but if you expand the timeframe to around 30,000 years then maybe one UFO could have visited the Earth in our distant past. That meant I also had to conquer the gap of 30,000 years somehow, and while a timeslip was too easy I thought a long sleep might be better. That meant that the aliens could leap through time and meet someone in modern times. In that way, the first contact with aliens could be the treasure.

“At that time during the ‘80s, the most important thing for robot animation was play value for toys, as they were the main type of companies sponsoring it. Every time you would come up with a new robot anime, the sponsor would ask about how you could play with that robot. Did it transform? Did it combine? Did it have a rocket punch? Things like that. So I wanted to do something new, that didn't have this kind of typical play value. That meant that Gorg would be a straight-up robot, as well as having Yu go inside the robot and communicate with Gorg with just his mind or heart. So I wanted to have something that didn't have the sponsor-induced play value, and I explained this to them. Thankfully, the sponsor understood what I hoped to achieve and was willing to let me do it this way. Unfortunately, the toys didn't sell. The ratings for the anime itself at that time wasn’t great either. In all honesty, after doing Giant Gorg I felt defeated and that I failed.

“It’s also worth explaining that there are often two types of robots in Japanese animation, one type is something you can control remotely, with the most popular being Tetsujin 28-go. These also tend to include things like Mazinger Z or a Gundam, which are instead piloted and are expressed as a weapon. The protagonist can also enter its body or chest. Once inside they can then sometimes communicate with the robot mentally and then it will fight for them.  The other type of robot is something like Astro Boy, which has its own mind, heart, and life. Sometimes people can communicate with them, and other times they cannot. For Gorg, I followed the style for a giant robot, like Tetsujin 28-go and for the mind communication part, I followed the style of Astro Boy.

Directing Crusher Joe And Venus Wars

The shift into directing anime movies with things like Crusher Joe and Venus Wars is something we then moved on to in the discussion, which also shed light on his close relationship with the team at Studio Nue among other things.

“Haruka Takachiho is my friend and I couldn't refuse his request for the Crusher Joe movie, as I also do the cover art for his novels. Takachiho also said he wanted to write the very first space opera from Japan and he was very passionate about this particular dream of his. However, I didn't really get what was so fun about space operas, but I respected Takachiho’s passion and I tried to make the Crusher Joe movie as fun as I could. At the time, I wasn't confident at all that I could make it as fun as Takachiho expected. Even now, I am not sure if I took the right approach. At least Takachiho told me he was happy with it and it was great, so maybe it was okay in the end.

“Since the Crusher Joe novels were written by Takachiho, it was almost decided that Studio Nue would do the setting and designs for the movie version. Back then, there were only two groups that could do mecha design, one was Studio Nue and the other was Design Office Mecaman, which people like Kunio Okawara and Mitsuki Nakamura were a part of. So in the case of Mobile Suit Gundam, I had to decide which one to work with and since I was already so close to people at Studio Nue, which is why I wanted to try something new and I picked Mecaman and Okawara in the case of Gundam. That was my decision and I think it was the right one, but in the case of Crusher Joe, it felt more natural that Studio Nue should handle the mecha designs. Around then, Kazutaka Miyatake was the main mecha designer at Studio Nue but Shoji Kawamori was also working there, so we ended up with Kawamori on Crusher Joe.

“As for doing any more Crusher Joe anime, I'm too old and I don't think I am a good fit for space operas, so it’s a no. When it comes to the cover art for the new Crusher Joe novels, if Takachiho keeps on asking me to do them then I will.

“With Venus Wars though, it was the same case as with Arion. In short, it is very difficult to convince sponsors and movie companies to start a new movie from scratch. So I came up with a strategy to work on a manga first and once that was commercially successful to some extent, then you could start talking about a movie. That was the impetus behind creating the manga for Venus Wars.

“As I am not a specialist when it comes to mecha design, I didn't think I could handle very impressive mecha design for movies. I felt that when I was working on the manga for Venus Wars, that when it came to doing the movie I should outsource this part to a specialist. So I picked up Kow Yokoyama as the main designer, backed up by Makoto Kobayashi.

“Although the story is set on Venus, the story is actually a reflection of the real world. So many wars, with young people suffering in these conflicts, as well as the expectation that the future may not be particularly bright. In that regard, this is a very different situation to that of a space opera.

“As for the music in Venus Wars, even before Nausicaä, when Joe Hisaishi became popular and famous, one day he visited me saying that he wanted to work with me. At that time, Hisaishi was totally unknown. Also around then, there was an arranged album of Arion’s music, using synthesizers. When Hisaishi visited me I asked him what he thought of the album. He said it was not good and that I should have hired him to do it instead, as it would have been much better. However, as we had just done the album, we didn't have the money to do another straight away. So I told him that when there is another opportunity, let’s work together. Not long after that, Hisaishi became very popular with his music for Nausicaä. It was then that I realized “oh, that guy is actually talented”. So when the movie for Venus Wars came along, I visited Hisaishi's management team and said that now it was time for us to work together.

“As I have worked on a lot of manga over the years, there are many which are my favorites. When it comes to Venus Wars though, when I started that manga I was still working as an animator. The point of that manga, as I explained, was to allow for an anime version to be made of it. So this was completely a business decision and the manga I wrote after that obviously had a different intent behind it. In that, as I was an animator back then, I made the manga to facilitate the creation of an anime. After leaving the animation business, I made manga purely from an expressive standpoint.”

Working On Mobile Suit Gundam And Creating Gundam The Origin

When we finally got to discuss Gundam, we did so in a pretty holistic manner. As much of what happened on the original Mobile Suit Gundam would impact later works such as Gundam F91, Gundam Unicorn and eventually Yasuhiko’s manga of Gundam The Origin.

“When it comes to my favorite work from that period as an animator, it would be the original Mobile Suit Gundam. It was commercially very successful at the time of its release, but after that none of my animated work was commercially successful. My opinion on this kind of thing is that if something is not successful at the time of its release, then it is a failure. Obviously, I am happy to hear that there are all these new fans of my work but I feel that something cannot really be a success unless it is accepted by a real-time audience.

“Right before the release of Mobile Suit Gundam, there was another hit series called Space Battleship Yamato. As I'd worked on that a bit beforehand, Yamato opened the door to a new type of fan. These new fans then came to watch anime like Yamato or Gundam, and other fans that like the traditional giant robot anime. So with the original Mobile Suit Gundam, these two groups came together and that was very fortunate.

“Getting to work on Gundam F91 was somewhat complex. After the first Mobile Suit Gundam, I decided that I didn't want to be involved in any of its sequels. So I intentionally distanced myself. However, for Gundam F91 I was very strongly asked to join the team and the other reason was that Gundam F91 was totally different from the previous Gundam installments. In that, Yoshiyuki Tomino tried to make it a completely new story, separate from those that had gone before, like Zeta Gundam. This emphasis on doing something new changed my mind about working on Gundam.

“During the original Mobile Suit Gundam, my relationship with Tomino was very positive and productive. After the success of the series though, Tomino shut out everybody else and acted as though he was the only person responsible for its success. So there was almost no communication between him and I after this, which made it very hard to work on Gundam. After all, if you have to work together, there needs to be communication. This changed with Gundam F91, as communication was reopened. However, I only worked on the character design for Gundam F91, as I had retired from animation at that point.

“With the Gundam Unicorn novels, the author Harutoshi Fukui is someone I regarded highly. Despite being so young, he writes with a sharp perspective on social situations. I heard that Fukui would write these new Gundam novels and because I liked his work so much, I asked if he’d want my help. However, as I was working on the Gundam The Origin manga at the time, I thought I’d only be able to work on things like cover art and character designs, as well as some other artwork. That way, I made it clear to Kadokawa and Sunrise that I could not be heavily involved in the Gundam Unicorn project but could still help Fukui.

“Gundam The Origin began with Sunrise wanting to bring Gundam to an international market, especially that of the US. However, the problem was that the animation for the original Mobile Suit Gundam TV series and movies was just too old. They felt that just releasing those as they were wouldn’t work. In addition, comics are very popular in places like the US, so a new manga could act as a bridgehead. My initial reaction to the request to reboot Mobile Suit Gundam as a manga was quite an unpleasant one. Sunrise was very keen on this idea, so they kept on coming back to me repeatedly about it. I told them I didn't care about bringing Gundam to the US or any of the money they were offering. At the same time, I did feel a degree of responsibility towards this new project, as I was a member of the original Gundam team. In that sense, I felt responsible that we hadn't managed to make an anime that could endure for 40 years or so. Obviously, I was no longer an animator, but I still wrote manga. I thought that if it did happen as a manga, it would take a very long time to do. So I spoke with the head of Sunrise and said that if I did a manga of the original Mobile Suit Gundam it would take at least three years. I was told this was far too long. In the end, it took me ten years to do. The manga of Gundam The Origin was also successful commercially, so I was happy about that.

“We all knew back when we made Mobile Suit Gundam, that some of the story elements weren’t exactly the best they could have been. I also felt that I didn’t have to follow the story of the original so closely. I was there when we made it, I knew how we made it within that crazy tight schedule and very limited resources. There were so many unnatural or illogical things that ended up in the anime. There is also the argument that if I were to remake Gundam, I should do so by respecting every small part of it. Personally, I think that’s wrong. When I eventually took on Gundam The Origin, I spoke with the head of Sunrise and secured the condition that if I felt an element of the original anime was wrong or illogical, I could fix or change that at my discretion. Some fans think I should have respected Tomino’s original story and outline more, but I felt that even Tomino regretted elements of the original anime.

“In regards to the first episode of Mobile Suit Gundam, I think it is a great episode. In only 20 minutes there is enough story to get everything going. I also think that this was one of the masterpieces of Tomino’s writing. At the same time, it’s only 20 minutes and the lack of explanation is apparent. That’s why in the opening of Gundam The Origin I added more volume and explanation on what happens and how it happens. In context, this was quite a small change, later on, I made bigger changes. Probably the most controversial change in Gundam The Origin is how I interpreted the meaning of Newtypes. In that, in the original anime, the concept of Newtypes appears very suddenly towards the end of the series, without much explanation on what they are and what they can do. So I added more about what I thought Newtypes meant for the human race and arranged it differently within the story.

“I also added a new part in Gundam The Origin, which was the past of Char and Sayla. So 6 volumes out of 23 are about this. This part was completely original and done by me. So once the manga became very popular, Sunrise began to think about a possible anime adaptation but they were also reluctant to re-animate content from the original Mobile Suit Gundam without Tomino’s involvement. Instead, the safest landing point for Sunrise was to animate the new part I added to the manga, as that didn’t involve Tomino in any way and also wouldn’t disrespect his work.

“While I had already retired from animation by this point to work on manga, but I felt that if my manga was to be adapted into animation, then I wanted to do that. So this is why I accepted the offer from Sunrise to handle the animation of Gundam The Origin.

“However, if Tomino suddenly said that he’d want to re-animate the original Mobile Suit Gundam, then no one would be able to stop him. His presence is so huge when it comes to anything related to Gundam. That said, if this remake were to happen, that would be done by the present-day Tomino. It would be very different in terms of the atmosphere when compared to the original. So I’m not overly keen to see something like this happen. That said, Tomino is old like me, so I doubt he would want to do this anyway.

“When it comes to the episode Cucuruz Doan's Island from Mobile Suit Gundam, this was effectively a side-story. So when plans are made on doing digest-type movies, these kinds of episodes are prime candidates. During the production of the original anime, this episode was outsourced to a completely different team to give the main team more time to focus on the core story. This meant the episode’s animation quality was bad, but it still had a great story. That means when I went to the head of Sunrise and asked if I could re-animate it and he said there were no issues with that.”

Fostering Younger Talent And His Respect For Yoshiyuki Tomino

Having interviewed lots of people in Japan over the years, one of the recurring elements I’ve come across is almost universal praise for Yasuhiko as a creator and a champion of younger talent. People like Katsuhiro Otomo and Mamoru Nagano cited Yasuhiko’s help as being hugely important in their careers. I shared this information with Yasuhiko, as I wanted to know why he has helped so many people over the years.

“Honestly, I don’t think I really helped anyone or taught anything useful. Instead, I was actually helped by all these amazingly talented younger guys. As a manga creator, I do everything on my own. I don't have an assistant. The same goes for animation, as I don't have any apprentices either. So the fact that all these people made a point to thank me in your prior interviews is definitely surprising. Anyway, back when I was working in animation, I felt we needed to hire and foster new talent. With this in mind, I convinced people at Sunrise that we should hire young and talented people. One of these is Kumiko Takahashi, who was the chief animation director for Gundam Unicorn. She may be called an apprentice of sorts, but even so, these are rare I think. This is also why I watched Gundam Unicorn, as this was her work. As I said, I am surprised people like Mamoru Nagano and Katsuhiro Otomo mentioned me in this way. If anything, when these guys first started out, I thought they were so amazing that I should just quit the animation business. That I wasn't needed any longer. So it's very kind of them to think of me in this way.

“It’s interesting to hear what people outside of Japan think of my older work too. As when I look at my older works, I see so many problems and mistakes. Due to the tight schedule and the limited amount of people. So once I see one bad point, then it’s hard to watch the rest. In that regard, I feel that the international fans must be so generous with my older works.

“I think this is something that the new people in animation have to consider. That they have to understand how their work is appraised internationally. It might be difficult for them to understand what resonates with global audiences. Not to mention that since many Japanese animation productions outsource a lot of their work to China or Korea, it means those countries now have the know-how on how to make anime. In that regard, young people working in entertainment now need to think about what makes their work unique. So while they might be hearing good news about their work from foreign audiences, they might mistake this to mean they are some kind of great creator. I think this might be very dangerous. We don’t have a special secret recipe, so it can be stolen very easily.

“As for Tomino, he is a unique and a great creator, but he doesn’t communicate clearly or has logical consistency. This means his stories or explanations can be hard to follow. Respecting him as a great creator is one thing, but handling his charisma is something else entirely. I think looking only at Tomino’s charisma is the wrong thing to do. He is very easily misunderstood this way and is often misquoted, which then gets out of control. Focusing on his charisma then is dangerous and misleading. So the whole aspect of the original Mobile Suit Gundam being untouchable without Tomino is part of this worship of this charisma. People sometimes think that I look down on Tomino, or even hate him. This is not true. I feel I am the one that respects Tomino's talent the most. By contrast, I feel I am very easy to understand, but I think that is probably indicative of me not being that great a creator.”

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