1.Prologue
So far in this series on internationally renowned Japanese animation filmmakers, I’ve written about the childrens’ manga and anime pioneered by Tezuka Osamu and Tatsunoko Production (CINEMA & THEATRE #039) and the Studio Ghibli films of Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao (CINEMA & THEATRE #040).
In this article I’ll be writing about a genre beloved by fans of Japanese anime: the robot/mecha genre. Defined liberally, Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy and Tatsunoko Production’s Time Bokan series can be considered pioneers of this genre.
In recent years, a number of different Japanese manga/anime properties from this genre have been given the Hollywood treatment: Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow, Ghost in the Shell, and Alita: Battle Angel, to name a few. There have also been films like Pacific Rim, which are essentially love letters to the genre. Some of these have been modest critical successes; others seen as interesting failures; others have been readily derided. While some successfully reached beyond the community of diehard anime fans and sci-fi/action junkies, none have been a bona fide masterpiece.
In this article we’ll take a look at two of the leading figures in the robot anime genre: Tomino Yoshiyuki and Anno Hideaki.
2.Tomino Yoshiyuki and the Mobile Suit Gundam Franchise
Tomino Yoshiyuki was born in 1941 in Odawara City in Kanagawa Prefecture. As a kid he fell in love with Ambassador Atom—the predecessor to Astro Boy—and he would aspire to become like Tezuka Osamu.
Tomino originally hoped to become a painter, but realizing that his work was not good enough to become a professional artist, he decided to explore filmmaking. After graduating from Nihon University College of Art, he sought out work in the movie industry, but found studios were not hiring new college recruits at the time. After much internal debate, he ended up joining Tezuka’s animation studio, Mushi Production. At the time, anime was still seen as something for kids, and Tomino felt embarrassed about making what were seen as essentially promotional films for children’s toys.
Tomino started as a production assistant on the Astro Boy anime, and was eventually given the opportunity to write scripts and direct. Somewhere along the line, he realized that he was surrounded by people who were much better at drawing than he was, and resolved to develop a skill that would set him apart. So he trained himself to create storyboards more quickly than anybody else. After Astro Boy ended, he left the company, and started working freelance on a variety of projects including Tezuka’s Princess Knight, Tatsunoko Production’s Hutch the Honeybee and the seminal sci-fi anime Space Battleship Yamato. He came to be known as sasurai no konte-man—the vagabond storyboard artist. While working on Space Battleship Yamato, Tomino decided to tweak the story, which he deemed subpar. The producer was furious, and would never hire Tomino again; years later, when Tomino was asked about what drove him to make Mobile Suit Gundam, he jokingly answered, “I wanted to crush the Yamato."
In 1974, Tomino worked on the TV anime Heidi, Girl of the Alps, under Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao. He was greatly impressed by their work ethic, and resolved to rise to their level. Takahata would say of Tomino’s storyboards, “There’s an ambition, an energy that leaps off the page—something you don’t see with storyboard artists who take a more systematic, impersonal approach to their work." One time, when Tomino drew storyboards for Miyazaki’s show Future Boy Conan, Miyazaki completely redid them himself. (To be fair, Miyazaki did that for practically everything.) In any case, Tomino would quietly resolve to one day “crush" his rival. That being said, Tomino was heavily influenced by both Miyazaki and Takahata. Touched by the realism that Takahata had brought to Heidi, Girl of the Alps, an idea began to formulate in his head: what would happen if you brought that same realism to the robot anime genre?
Following in the footsteps of Space Battleship Yamato, Mobile Suit Gundam established the so-called “real robot" genre. Up until that point, robot anime mostly involved superhero-like robots in the vein of Astro Boy and mythical behemoths that were instilled with some kind of supernatural power. With Mobile Suit Gundam, the robots were not symbols, but tools—literally, battle suits for humans to wear. That was largely thanks to the work of robot designer Okawara Kunio, who had previously worked with Tatsunoko Production. Following the shows’ initial run, Bandai released a series of Gundam models—plastic scaled model kits depicting the vehicles from the Gundam universe—which became a breakout hit, propelling the franchise to stratospheric heights.
Side note, the series is also known for a military tactic known as the colony drop, where a space colony orbiting Earth is shot down and “dropped" onto a target. During a military operation refered to in the story as Operation British, a colony is shot out of orbit, and blown apart using nuclear warheads. Its massive central cylinder hits Sydney, Australia, causing a huge explosion—the equivalent of 3 million Little Boys—that eradicates 16% of the Australian continent. It seems depicting Australia as a nuclear wasteland is a common trope in sci-fi.
●Tomino Yoshiyuki Picks
3.Anno Hideaki and Neon Genesis Evangelion
Anno Hideaki was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture in Western Japan. He fell in love with manga, anime, and tokusatsu (a Japanese term for live-action film or TV that makes heavy use of special effects, such as Godzilla or Ultraman) from a young age, and learned how to draw. He has said that during his middle school years he read a ton of shojo manga—manga aimed at a young female demographic, characterized by a romanized vision of young Japanese women. This would greatly influence his portrayals of women in his work. After graduating from high school, he took a year to himself before applying to Osaka University of Arts. In preparation for his application, he studied the storyboards of anime artists like Miyazaki Hayao.
Anno would begin producing his own anime projects while attending university. Disgusted by what he perceived as the lack of creative energy among his peers, he decided his time was better spend focusing on his own projects instead of attending classes. One day, he came across an ad in Animage—a call for animators to work on Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Anno headed to the film’s studio and showed Miyazaki some of his drawings, and Miyazaki was so impressed that he hired Anno to draw some of the most complicated scenes near the end of the film. Anno has periodically worked with Miyazaki ever since, including on several short films that have been shown at the Ghibli Museum. He also voiced the protagonist Horikoshi Jiro in Miyazaki’s 2013 film The Wind Rises.
Anno would subsequently co-found the animation studio Gainax, and he would continue to hone his skills—specifically, battle scenes and scenes involving rocket launches and explosions. He also began to direct TV anime. In 1990, NHK—Japan’s public broadcaster—hired Anno to produce a series from an original concept by Miyazaki, which became Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water; however, he was given little creative control, and after the project wrapped he fell into a four-year depression. He would return to the director’s chair with his masterpiece: Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Neon Genesis Evangelion, set in a futuristic Tokyo in 2015, follows a group of teenagers who pilot giant bio-machine mecha called an “Evangelion" to face off against alien invaders called “Angels".
On its surface it’s a “real robot" anime in the same vein as Mobile Suit Gundam, but it was revolutionary in its focus on themes like Shinto, Judaism, Christianity, human psychology, depression, and war. The series was immensely popular in the 90s and aughts—the controversial last episodes notwithstanding—and became a full-blown cultural phenomenon in Japan. It has also become the entry point for many anime fans outside of Japan. The series has been streaming on Netflix since early 2018.
Since Evangelion, Anno has begun to produce live-action films in addition to his anime work. Especially notable is Shiki-Jitsu (2000), a semi-autobiographical art house film about a movie director who returns to his suburban hometown, where he meets an eccentric young girl who is struggling with psychological issues. Anno was initially skeptical about the film’s commercial appeal, but Tokuma Shoten head Tokuma Yasuyoshi convinced him to press forward. The protagonist is played by independent filmmaker Iwai Shunji, who essentially plays a version of Anno himself. Iwai, as a director, is known for his dreamy visual style, as well as his portrayals of young women—making him an ideal collaborator for someone with Anno’s aesthetic. Anno would play the husband of the protagonist (played by Matsu Takako in Iwai’s 2020 film Last Letter.
Anno would achieve his greatest box office success with 2016’s live-action film Shin Godzilla, which is said to have been inspired by the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster—much in the same way the atomic bombings of World War II inspired the original Godzilla. The film became the highest-grossing live-action film in Japan that year. In the U.S., premieres were held in both L.A. and New York, and on opening weekend it came in at No. 10 on the box office charts, ultimately making approximately 1.5 million dollars.
●Anno Hideaki Picks
4.Other Robot/Mecha Anime
First is Tetsujin 28-go, known in the U.S. as Gigantor. The series, created by Yokoyama Mitsuteru, was one of the first Japanese anime series to feature a giant robot. It follows a young boy named Kaneda Shotaro, who controls the titular giant robot, which was originally built as a secret weapon during World War II. Kaneda uses the robot to battle evil robots and maintain peace in Japan. Along with Astro Boy, the series would pave the way for the robot anime genre. (A direct translation of Tetsujin 28-go would be “Iron Man No. 28”, but Marvel Comics debuted the Iron Man character before the series was introduced in the U.S., so the producers decided to name it Gigantor instead.)
In the 70s, Nagai Go would introduce the first robot piloted by a human operator from an onboard cockpit in his manga series Mazinger Z, which would subsequently be turned into a TV anime by Toei Animation. Taken in a cultural context, robots like Mazinger Z and the mobile suits of Gundam are an extension of the idea of samurai armor. It’s no coincidence that the protagonist of Mazinger Z is named Kabuto Kouji (kabuto is the Japanese word for samurai helmet).
In the 80s, the animated series Voltron became a pop culture phenomenon in the U.S. The series was adapted from the little-known Japanese series Beast King GoLion, heavily edited to conform to the conservative standards of children’s television in the U.S. Voltron is about five teenage pilots who command 5 robot lions, which combine to form the titular mythical robot. This conceit would be carried on by Toei’s live-action tokusatsu Super Sentai Series.
Speaking of tokusatsu, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Kamen Rider series, which generally center on a motorcycle-riding superhero with an insect motif who fights against villains called kaijin. During the Showa period (up until around 1989), the Kamen Rider heroes were often depicted as “transformed humans”, that is, cyborgs with cybernetically enhanced bodies. However, from the 90s onward, the series discarded the cyborg concept, as producers were afraid of the psychological effect on those who had gone through life-altering surgeries in real life, as well as the potential stigma they were attaching to the surgical profession. Japanese society has a complicated relationship with physical disabilities.
5.Epilogue
Why are the Japanese so obsessed with robots, and why are so many manga/anime stories about robots?
Historical context provides us with the answer: technological innovations have spurred Japan’s rise as a global economy in the postwar era. The anime I’ve introduced in this article are technological fantasies—a way for Japanese viewers to live the dream that technology will save humanity.
Also, it’s important to note that so many robot anime properties begin with a large-scale war, natural disaster, or alien invasion. In other words, the stories serve the purpose of helping Japanese people process traumatic national experiences like the Second World War and 3/11. Whenever it seems the Japanese public may be losing touch with its complicated past, a new anime will arrive to ask the question, “What if...”
One important robot anime I haven’t mentioned is the Transformers series. This Japanese-American franchise was created by the American toy maker Hasbro, which rebranded a line of transforming toy robots from the Japanese company Takara’s Diaclone and Microman toylines. The series became so popular that it was even imported back into Japan, but the franchise remains far more popular in the U.S., where multiple anime series have been produced over the years. In the 2000s, director Michael Bay gave the series the Hollywood treatment—meaning the films lost all trace of their Japanese roots and instead became jingoistic exercises celebrating American brashness.
Hollywood adaptations of Japanese anime have a rough track record, and every time a new project is announced anime fans around the world find themselves torn between wanting to feel outraged while also hoping against hope that they will finally get it right. In that regard, the biggest question in people’s minds right now is what will come of the live-action adaptation of Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira. With Taika Waititi currently rumored to be in the director’s seat, fans seem to be cautiously optimistic. But with the new coronavirus pandemic slowing Hollywood down to a halt, it’s hard to say what the future will bring.
In part four of this series, I’ll be covering Otomo Katsuhiro’s Akira.
