Production History
The following is a record of the planning and development of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series. I've done my best to organize key events and production materials in chronological order, drawing mainly on these sources:
I've tried to limit this account to facts confirmed either by original documents or multiple sources, so I generally haven't cited sources for individual details. One of the most complete accounts comes from Masao Iizuka of the Sunrise planning office, in Yosensha's "Gundam Age":
For more insight into the origins of Gundam, I recommend the 2019 NHK documentary "Making Gundam: The Inside Story" (available on YouTube) and the English release of Hideki Ohwada's manga "The Men Who Created Gundam" (Denpa Books, 2022).
☆ Click the image thumbnails below to see them at full size! ☆
機動戦士ガンダム| TV BROADCAST | |||
| Nagoya TV • Saturday 5:30-6:00 PM April 7, 1979 to January 26, 1980 (43 episodes) |
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| MAIN CREDITS | Planning | Nippon Sunrise | Original story | Hajime Yatate Yoshiyuki Tomino |
| Music | Takeo Watanabe Yushi Matsuyama |
Character design | Yoshikazu Yasuhiko |
| Mechanical design | Kunio Okawara | Art setting | Mitsuki Nakamura |
| Animation director | Yoshikazu Yasuhiko | Chief director （総監督） |
Yoshiyuki Tomino |
| Producer | Wataru Sekioka (Nagoya TV) Nobuyuki Okuma (Sotsu Agency) Yasuo Shibue (Nippon Sunrise) |
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| Production | Nagoya TV, Sotsu Agency, Nippon Sunrise | ||
| ADDITIONAL CREDITS | |||
| Setting manager | Tadashi Marui | Assistant producer | Yutaka Kanda |
Planning for the animated television series that would ultimately become Mobile Suit Gundam seems to have begun at some point between the end of Super Machine Zambot 3, the first original series by the animation studio Nippon Sunrise, and the debut of the followup series The Unchallengeable Daitarn 3.
Though the 1999 reference book "Gundam Archive" claims the planning of the new series began around April 1978, first-person accounts by Sunrise planning office chief Eiji Yamaura and his deputy Masao Iizuka suggest it was closer to June, when the broadcast of Daitarn 3 started. In 1999's "Gundam Age," Yamaura says the planning began in the summer of 1978, and Iizuka recalls:
We started work on the planning of Gundam right around the time the broadcast of Daitarn 3 began. Of course, the name "Gundam" hadn't yet been decided. At the time, we were doing both completely original works such as Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3, and also animation production as a contractor for other companies.
This new series would be Sunrise's third original creation. Like Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3, it was sponsored by the toymaker Clover and produced in cooperation with the Sotsu advertising agency and Nagoya TV. The previous "super robot" shows aimed at younger viewers had done well in terms of toy sales, but Sunrise had bigger ambitions for the followup. In a 2002 interview in "Gundam-Mono," Iizuka explains:
This was very profitable for Clover, and they decided to build a new company headquarters. "But if we keep going on like this," we said, "we'll always be just scraping by, six months or a year at a time." (laughs) The only way we could escape that cycle was to create a work that would make the Sunrise name itself a household word, rather than just a program to sell robot merchandise. To do that, we thought we had to make something like a long-running taiga drama, which would leave a strong impression on everyone. At the time, there was already a precedent for this in the form of Space Battleship Yamato (1974).
While the heroes of Space Battleship Yamato had been adults in a military setting, Sunrise's plan was to focus on boys and girls caught up in a space war, using Jules Verne's novel Two Years' Vacation as its inspiration. Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, who would later serve as chief writer on the anime itself, was recruited to help craft the series proposal—a role played on previous Sunrise works by veteran scriptwriter Yoshitake Suzuki. In "Gundam Complete Works 1," Hoshiyama recalls:
It was in the heat of summer. The planning chief, Mr. Yamaura, told me he wanted to do a show about a team who use robots. Honestly, I thought "What, another robot show?" But if I was going to do it, I wanted to do something different from before. No matter what, I had a strong desire to create at least one world that would break down the simplistic formula that anime meant programs for children.
The story began taking shape under the working title Freedom Fighter, with an initial planning team made up of Hoshiyama, Yamaura, and Iizuka. (The pen name "Hajime Yatate"—credited as co-creator of Mobile Suit Gundam and other Sunrise works—represents the collective contribution of Yamaura and the rest of the Sunrise planning office.) Though they were soon joined by other collaborators, it appears that at least one draft of the proposal was created by the original trio, and tantalizing excerpts from it appear in the back pages of "Gundam-Mono."
Summer 1978
Excerpts from Freedom Fighter Gunboy proposal written by Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, as reproduced in "Gundam-Mono: The Men Who Made Gundam." In this version, the "Gunboy" robot has recently been added to the original "Freedom Fighter" concept. The handwriting resembles that seen in later proposals, so this may have been transcribed by the Nippon Sunrise planning office.
Over the summer more creators joined the planning meetings, including Yoshiyuki Tomino, the director of Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3, and character designer and animation director Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. However, Yasuhiko wouldn't be available on a full-time basis until he was done with his story planning and storyboarding work for the TV series Space Battleship Yamato 2, which began airing in October 1978 and ended on the day of Gundam's broadcast debut. In "Gundam-Mono," Iizuka says:
Of course, no matter what, we wanted Mr. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko as animation director. Mr. Yasuhiko had shown his talent in Sunrise's first giant robot work, Reideen, where he did the character design and revised the mecha for anime use, so he was someone who'd laid the foundation for all Sunrise robot works. For this plan, we wanted him to demonstrate his ability to draw the trendiest characters of their time. Because we had him design the characters, Gundam gained many female fans as well as male ones, and it became a work that people watched for the charm of Mr. Yasuhiko's characters. This was a major reason for the initial enthusiasm of Gundam's fans.
[...]
The problem, though, was that Mr. Yasuhiko was still working on Yamato at the time. We asked him anyway, and though he couldn't leave Yamato until December 1978, we managed to have him come and join us in January 1979. Ultimately, however, his Yamato work dragged on until March. That made things really difficult, since the broadcast of Gundam began in April.
In an interview in the 1998 "Mobile Suit Gundam Memorial Box Part-1," Yasuhiko recalls:
Gundam wasn't something that was brought to me, but something launched from scratch with Mr. Tomino and Mr. Yamaura, who was the planning department manager at the time. It was the result of us all lounging around in the planning office—so it was called, but it was more like a six-mat room in an apartment—and sharing various ideas as we attempted to make an animation like nothing that had come before.
It was Tomino who eventually organized their discussions into a memo, more than 30 pages long, which became the first version of the series proposal.
Summer 1978
Summer 1978 Sunrise planning meeting, as recalled by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Yasuhiko is at lower right, and director Yoshiyuki Tomino at top left. I believe the figure at center right is Eiji Yamaura, and the pair at lower left are scriptwriters Hiroyuki Hoshiyama and Kenichi Matsuzaki. (Thanks to Evie for the latter identification!) The one with dark glasses at top right is probably scriptwriter Yuu Yamamoto, so Yoshihisa Araki, the only scriptwriter unaccounted for, should be in here somewhere as well.
This illustration appears in the Yasuhiko interview collection "My Back Pages," released in 2020 by Ohta Publishing.
Yasuhiko, incidentally, participated under a very specific condition. The Japanese job title usually translated as "animation director" is actually more of a supervisory role, which consists largely of correcting drawings by the rest of the animation staff. This time, Yasuhiko requested the English term "animation director" to reflect the larger creative role he intended to play. In his 2020 interview collection "My Back Pages," Yasuhiko recalls:
On Gundam, I made it clear at the very beginning that I wouldn't do it if I were only the animation supervisor (作画監督, sakuga kantoku). I'd previously directed episodes, and on Yamato I was also doing written setting, so I impudently declared that I'd no longer simply do the work of fixing the drawings. When we were wondering what to call this job, since I'd still actually be drawing pictures, I suggested "animation director" (アニメーションディレクター).
I think this wasn't really the first time I'd suggested the term "animation director." When the theatrical version of Space Battleship Yamato was being launched, the question arose of how to handle Mr. Noboru Ishiguro, who directed the TV series episodes. As we were working with Toei on the theatrical version, a new film director, Mr. Toshio Masuda, became involved. At that point the relationship between Mr. Leiji Matsumoto and Yoshinobu Nishizaki was getting pretty bad, and Nishizaki thought, "Since we also have (Toei's) Tomoharu Katsumata, we don't need Ishiguro, who's part of the Matsumoto clique."
I then said, "Mr. Ishiguro is someone who understands animation, and it's thanks to him that the TV series went so well, so we absolutely need him." In that case, Nishizaki said, "We've already chosen an animation supervisor, so what do we do with Ishiguro?" On a whim, I suggested "animation director." I said I wanted to put him in a position like the hisha-kaku role in shogi, where he could speak out and involve himself in various ways.
So on Gundam, I sought the position of "animation director" so I'd be involved in a way that let me intervene a little more in the overall work. This doesn't mean I couldn't share my opinions about the work even as an animation supervisor, but I wanted a stronger guarantee of my right to speak up. Of course, I'd still be taking the lead on fixing drawings and producing artwork, but I also wanted this kind of permission to exceed my authority.
In the anime industry, the director (監督, kantoku) is called a "chief director." I felt the term "animation director" conveyed the image of a kind of utility player underneath the chief director. But it wasn't like that once production began. The stories that were being created in script form were all really interesting, so ultimately I decided that wasn't my role, and my responsibilities would be limited to simply supervising the drawing.
At this point, a couple of different options were being considered for the mechanical design. One was Studio Nue, later known for Super Dimension Fortress Macross, and the other was freelancer Kunio Okawara, formerly of Tatsunoko Production. Both are listed in a September 8 series proposal, but ultimately the job was entrusted to Okawara alone. In the meantime, Okawara was commissioned to design the heroes' mothership Freedom Fortress, which was based on an unused design from Daitarn 3. In "Gundam Complete Works 2," Okawara explains:
I'd actually created a character close to this during Daitarn. We didn't use it in Daitarn, and it was just lying around in the planning office. When Mr. Tomino discovered it, he decided we should revise it and put it to use. It was a spaceship that separated into three parts, each of which transformed into an independent vehicle. In those days, when it came to spaceships you'd naturally think of the ones that appeared in Yamato, so Mr. Tomino thought it might be nice to have a spaceship like this instead.
Though the story didn't initially feature a heroic giant robot, it did include the fighting vehicles Freedom Wing and Freedom Cruiser, for which Okawara also drafted designs.
July 1978
Early Freedom Fortress designs by Kunio Okawara. Based on these illustrations, it seems the front "legs" of the first version straighten out during flight.
Early Freedom Wing and Freedom Cruiser designs by Kunio Okawara.
Around the same time, Yasuhiko created a first round of rough character designs. Although the character names would undergo many further changes, most of the familiar Gundam heroes were essentially complete at this point.
August 1978
Early character designs by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. The heroine Shima Hachijo will later be cut from the lineup, and the enemy Zeon are at this point extraterrestrial aliens rather than human space colonists. The character names written on the drafts match both Hoshiyama's and Tomino's versions of the Gunboy proposal, but their ages are consistent with the latter.
Left to right: Shintaro Hanabusa, Mirai Kitaru, Raizo Fuwa, Akira Kidomaru.
Left to right: Shima Hachijo, Ryu Mizuta, Azuma Hongo, Gerber & Gundry.
Of particular note is the character Akira Kidomaru, ultimately named Ryu Jose. Yasuhiko's original character sketch describes him as "Indio" (meaning the indigenous people of the Americas), and at one point he was intended to be Black. In a post-series conversation with Isao Takahata of Studio Ghibli published in "Roman Album Extra 42: Mobile Suit Gundam the Motion Picture," director Tomino explains how he abandoned his original plans for ethnic variety in the face of opposition from the TV station.
Takahata: For example, Black and Chinese people don't appear at all.
Tomino: Of course there aren't any Black people. When issues of racial discrimination are involved, if you tackle them poorly, you'll run up against the TV codes.
Takahata: That's not true. There were Black people even in 009, and they broadcast that on TV just fine. I'm not sure when Gundam takes place, but if they ever created something like an "Earth Federation," wouldn't it be more natural if the setting said that its membership encompassed all the world's races?
Tomino: That was part of Gundam's original setting, but there were issues with things like the TV codes I mentioned earlier...
Takahata: I guess I don't really understand that. But was there ever any discussion about the human composition of Gundam along the lines of what I was just saying?
Tomino: No, there wasn't. That was a failure on our part.
Takahata: I don't know about that, but if there were something like a world federation, it would seem strange to me if the races were disproportionately represented.
Tomino: Of course.
Takahata: It would be one thing if the situation and time setting were something like Conan, but... Even in that colony, I think it's called Zeon, it wouldn't be strange for people from various countries to gather there. And if not, perhaps you could say that Zeon was actually an old European power. Anyway, I felt it might be interesting to more deliberately make that part of the setting.
Tomino: Of course, in the basic setting, I assumed that the races had been uniformly distributed. But having said that, in terms of concrete assumptions, I thought it might be hard to make it that uniform in just a hundred years or so from now. And I thought I might want to directly address the friction that arises in situations where the races are more clearly distinct.
Takahata: Well, it could be an era where there's still discrimination in the world, or one where there isn't...
Tomino: Either way, since it's still a robot show, there's still the possibility you could have problems with broadcasting codes. There was no way racial issues would get through without comment, so we decided to leave them out.
Takahata: But if you leave them out, wouldn't it be fair to assume these racial issues haven't been resolved? You'd think it would be better if people appeared who were clearly Black or Chinese.
Tomino: Well, I think so.
Takahata: Otherwise, you'd assume these racial problems haven't been resolved after all. In Gundam, there are only Japanese and Europeans. You might wonder what's happened to all the other countries.
Tomino: That's an entirely fair point. In the end, Gundam avoided all those kinds of issues. In the setting, the character of Ryu Jose was originally supposed to be Black. But I'm telling you, Mr. Takahata, those TV codes are really in place.
For example, we had a lot of trouble when we were doing Jungle Emperor in the Mushi Pro days. Even though that work was set in Africa, at first there weren't any Black people in it. The TV stations self-censored after receiving letters saying "Don't show Black people," and that came back to the production side as a condition. Can you believe it?
Takahata: I can't believe it. (laughs)
Tomino: But it's a true story.
Given the preliminary colors proposed for the character, though, perhaps the TV station was right to be cautious.
August~September 1978
Cleaned-up character sketches with cel-painted colors. According to "Gundam Archive," these also date from August 1978, but the associated character names seem to have been revised relative to the September 8 proposal.
Left to right: Amuro Kai/Amuro Rei, Bright Noa, Shiden Kai/Choir Boy, Hayate Subayashi, Ryu Kyotai, Mirai Eiland/Mirai Kitaru, Shima Hachijo, Gundry, Gerber.
Around the end of August 1978, the project underwent an abrupt change of direction. Its main sponsor, the toy company Clover, felt that the Freedom Fortress had poor sales potential. (The company president reportedly called the ship a "wooden horse," giving the future White Base its nickname.) Clover requested that Sunrise add robots to its new series for merchandising purposes.
In the name of science fiction realism, Sunrise decided that these robots would fight with beam guns rather than rocket punches. From the concept of a gun-wielding robot operated by children, the project gained the new working title Gunboy. This new name was reflected in a Tomino memo titled "Gunboy Approach," dated August 28, 1978.
Gunboy planning materials by Yoshiyuki Tomino. The date of the robot sketch is unknown, but is presumably early in this stage of the project, as elements of this design can be seen in the early Gunboy designs below.
Left to right: Tomino's file folder, "Gunboy Approach," robot concept sketch.
In early September, Tomino completed a project proposal under the working title Space Combat Team Gunboy, whose content seems to have been largely similar to Hoshiyama's Freedom Fighter Gunboy draft. This proposal includes a detailed introduction to the story, set in the year 2XXX on the colony world of "New Earth" in a distant star system, and descriptions of the major characters and the main mecha. A full translation of this document can be found at Zeonic|Scanlations:
While "Gundam Archive" claims that this proposal was completed in November 1978, the original document appears onscreen in NHK's documentary, and we can see the date stamp "7898."
September 8, 1978
Space Combat Team Gunboy proposal by Yoshiyuki Tomino.
(As reproduced in "Gundam Archive.")
Images of original proposal documents from NHK's "Making Gundam: The Inside Story."
At the suggestion of science-fiction author Haruka Takachiho of Studio Nue, the staff looked to Robert A. Heinlein's 1959 novel "Starship Troopers" for inspiration in making their robots more realistic. In "Gundam Complete Works 1," Sunrise planning chief Yamaura recalls:
One day, I received some helpful advice. "The biggest shortcoming of robot anime is that they seem to have SF elements, but they actually have virtually none. The planners don't know much about SF, and they don't understand it. There's an SF book called Starship Troopers that features robotic mecha, so you should try reading it sometime..." Coming across this one SF novel was the thing that decided the creation of Mobile Suit Gundam. With the image now fixed, the concrete planning work progressed steadily.
Working from Heinlein's concept of Mobile Infantry wearing powered armor suits, they proceeded with the idea that these robots might be only 2.5 or 3 meters tall. The illustrations created by Naoyuki Kato and Kazutaka Miyatake of Studio Nue for the Japanese edition of Starship Troopers also served as inspiration for the mecha designs.
1977
Starship Troopers artwork by Studio Nue. Color illustration on right is by Naoyuki Kato.
It seems to have been around this point that Kunio Okawara was selected as the sole mechanical designer, largely on the recommendation of character designer and animation director Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. In a 2015 Japanese-language interview with The Sankei News, Yasuhiko says:
This has been discussed in various places, but Studio Nue (an SF planning and production studio that participated in works such as Space Battleship Yamato and Super Dimension Fortress Macross) had created illustrations for Starship Troopers, by (American SF author) Robert A. Heinlein. (SF author) Haruka Takachiho, who at the time was representing Studio Nue, recommended that we read it, and told us "there are also these kinds of concepts." Along with a plan by Yoshiyuki Tomino (the chief director), the planning of Mobile Suit Gundam proceeded with this as reference.
The natural flow would thus have been for Nue to do the mecha design. But at the time, as someone who was making the drawings, I said "I'd like to deliberately place the order somewhere other than Nue." TV anime should be about something, and it becomes awkward if you bring in too much logic. I'd had that kind of experience many times with Nue, and I was afraid it would be exhausting.
At that point, the only other place doing mecha design was "Mecaman" (a design studio established by Mr. Okawara and Mr. Mitsuki Nakamura). That's how Mr. Okawara came to participate. I'm still friends with Haruka Takachiho, but I think I did an injustice to Nue. Ultimately, though, I feel it was the right decision. As an animator, nothing beats a simple design. Compared to the many lines of Nue's designs, Mr. Okawara's designs had a simpler image, so I was pleased when we settled on Mr. Okawara.
Though both Okawara and Yasuhiko submitted designs inspired by the powered suit concept, none of their initial ideas were deemed suitable for the main hero. In a 2019 Japanese-language interview with Oricon News, Okawara recalls:
Regarding the Gundam's design, the animation director, Mr. (Yoshikazu) Yasuhiko, first proposed a robot inspired by the powered suits that appeared in Robert A. Heinlein's SF novel Starship Troopers. The design I came up with was based on a space suit, but neither of them were suitable for the main robot. So I made Mr. Yasuhiko's draft the Guncannon, and proposed a robot with a "samurai" motif which became the first draft of the Gundam. Mr. Yasuhiko cleaned it up to create the current Gundam.
As the sponsor requested a team of three robots, Yasuhiko's design was adopted as a supporting member. While earlier "super robot" works such as Getter Robo featured robots specialized for environments such as ground, sea, and air, the Gunboy staff envisioned a team of robots designed for different combat ranges, with a long-range tank type completing the lineup. (For some further discussion of this, see this typically superb Kunio Okawara profile by Ollie Barder.)
September 1978
Early robot designs by Kunio Okawara and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Yasuhiko's contribution, at top right, is dated September 21, 1978.
Left to right: Gunboy, Assault Type Mobile Infantry, Heavy Artillery Type Mobile Infantry (by Yasuhiko).
Left to right: Heavy Armor Type Mobile Infantry, Heavy Artillery Type Mobile Infantry.
With the robot lineup expanding, the Freedom Wing and Freedom Cruiser—developed for the earlier Freedom Fighter story, and retained in Tomino's Gunboy proposal—were refashioned into support vehicles. The Freedom Wing would ultimately become the Core Fighter escape capsule, while the Freedom Cruiser evolved into the transport aircraft Gunperry.
September 1978
Gunboy Wing designs by Kunio Okawara. The version at lower right is close to the final Core Fighter concept.
While the heroic robots and vehicles required commercial evaluation and approval from the sponsor, there were no plans to merchandise the enemy mecha, and so Okawara was able to design these with relative freedom. His only constraint was a request from Tomino that the enemy robots have a single eye, which is the subject of a truly impressive investigation by Sean Moran-Richards. In "Super Robot Generation," Okawara recalls the creation of the enemy Zaku.
The part of Gundam where I had the most freedom was the Zaku. I thought "When it goes up against the Gundam, it'll look cooler if it seems as different as possible," so I based it on German soldiers from World War II. I did the design in about one week, but my faithful Zaku has kept on working hard for twenty years. (laughs)
According to "Gundam Archive," Okawara's initial designs for the Musai warship and the powered-up Gouf were completed around the same time.
September~November 1978
Zaku and Gouf designs by Kunio Okawara. The Zaku, and the first version of the Gouf, are dated September 1978.
Musai designs by Kunio Okawara. Color sketch on left is dated September 1978, and semi-final draft on right was drawn in November. Okawara claims that the Musai was originally oriented the other way up, and then turned upside down for the sake of dramatization.
Meanwhile, Okawara continued working on the three main robots, producing a new design for the Gunboy which was closer to a traditional super robot. In "Super Robot Generation," he explains:
At first, the main mecha was going to be a robot with a design like the Guncannon. Ultimately it became pretty toy-like, but even though it was a giant robot, it still had the image of a powered suit. Our earnest intention was to make a work that felt more grown-up, which would be a genuine SF anime.
The overall silhouette feels like a samurai with a chonmage topknot, but I wasn't especially conscious of that. The thing we notice most as being robot-like is the yoroi helmet, which incorporates all the elements of a robot show. With any giant robot, giving it a horn decoration makes it look heroic, and I think when Japanese people design robots they tend to give them something resembling a helmet.
The design of the Gunboy, later the Gundam, is often likened to a samurai—for example, by Okawara himself in the above quote. But compared to previous Sunrise super robots, it's arguably more reminiscent of an ashigaru, the lower-ranking infantry of feudal Japan. Okawara makes this point in the 2017 Winter issue of "Great Mechanics G."
Since the Daitarn 3 and the Zambot 3 had helmets, I figured this time I'd do an ashigaru foot soldier, as Mr. Yamaura hadn't told me specifically what it should look like.
In place of the combination and transformation gimmicks used in Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3, this time the robots would be based on an interchangeable Core Block system, allowing their upper and lower bodies to be swapped around. In "Kunio Okawara Walker," the designer comments:
My initial vision for the products was that the Gundam would be centered on the Core Fighter, and the upper and lower parts could be interchanged. So in my design the Core Fighter was exposed, but when the animation direction Mr. Yoshikazu Yasuhiko cleaned it up, he changed the design so that the Core Fighter was completely stowed away.
According to Masao Iizuka of the Sunrise planning office, the Gunboy's trademark beam sabers were inspired by the light sabers of Star Wars, which was released in Japan at the beginning of July 1978. And in a 2022 column for the Magmix website, former planning office staffer Yoshie Kawahara claims its shield was based on those used by Japanese riot police.
October 1978
Gunboy designs by Kunio Okawara. Note that first version lacks the "chonmage" crest. At this stage, the color schemes under consideration are mostly classic "super robot" patterns made up of primary colors and metallic silver.
Guncannon and Guntank designs by Kunio Okawara. According to "Gundam Archive," Guncannon colors on right are dated December 1978, but the design itself dates to October.
A new take on the Freedom Cruiser by Kunio Okawara. Sketch on right, which shows all three robots packed into the same compartment, may reflect the original concept of smaller powered suits. According to "Gundam Archive" these were drawn in September and November 1978 respectively, but details are almost identical and robot designs closely match the October versions above.
By October, the designs for the main robots and their mothership were almost finalized. Working closely with the sponsor, Okawara began designing extra weapons for the toy versions.
October 1978
Gunboy, Guncannon, and Guntank toy designs by Kunio Okawara. The captions, which use the final "Gundam" name, were presumably added at a later date.
(Courtesy of ZeonicScans.)
Revised draft of Freedom Fortress by Kunio Okawara, created for sponsor presentations and toy design reference. The ship is now known as the "Pegasus" and has been given wings.
As the toys took shape, the story and world setting continued to evolve. In an October 10 memo, Tomino rejected the original idea of humans versus aliens—partly because it was thematically inappropriate, and partly because there were already too many alien invasion stories. Instead of aliens fighting over a distant planet, the enemy became humans living in space colonies around the Earth.
As for the early idea of the robots being small powered suits, this was never depicted in the design drawings, so it's hard to say exactly when it was under consideration. (One imagines it would be hard to combine this with Okawara's Core Block concept.) In any case, the idea was eventually rejected on the grounds that big, powerful robots would be more appealing to children. The final size of the Gunboy was established as 18 meters, identical to the classic super robot Mazinger Z. In an interview in "Mobile Suit Gundam Memorial Box Part-1," Tomino recalls:
When it came to my proposed height of 20 meters, it was Mr. Yamaura rather than the sponsor side who asked whether we really needed to do this. Surely if it were bigger it would seem more impressive, and thus be easier to merchandise. I remember an extended exchange of views in which we were asked to make it a little bigger. To make it easier for Mr. Yamaura to explain this to the sponsors, I prepared a comparison chart to a human being to show how big it would be if it were 20 meters.
This decision created a new problem. At the time, much of the story was meant to take place in space stations, which would be too small for such large robots. The huge space colonies recently proposed by American physicist Gerard K. O'Neill—which were to become an unforgettable icon of the Gundam series—were adopted purely to provide an environment large enough for 18-meter robots to battle in. In "Gundam Age," Masao Iizuka explains how this came about:
Tearing my hair out, I looked around everywhere for something we could use. Then I came across a space-related book published by Sanseido in Kanda, and created by the editorial department of Asahi Shōgakusei Shimbun. I looked inside, and after Space Island 1 and donut-shaped stations, it introduced some cylinder-shaped thing. Thought up by Mr. O'Neill, it seemed to be three to six kilometers in diameter. Oh, an 18-meter robot could fit inside this!
I bought the book and came back, but in fact, our art director Mr. Mitsuki Nakamura already had some Western books on this area of interest. That was really a lifesaver, and we had him design a space colony right away. Now everything was finally in place, and we'd reached the point where it seemed things would work out somehow.
Visualizing the space colonies was the job of art director Mitsuki Nakamura, a former Tatsunoko Production employee who had mentored Okawara and then co-founded the independent "Mecaman" design studio with him. Nakamura recalls his experience on Gundam in an interview in "Gundam-Mono."
My connection with Mr. Tomino began when I chatted with him in the parking lot in my Tatsunoko days, and continued up until Gundam. I don't know whether I was called in by Mr. Tomino or by somebody on the production side, but on Gundam, Mr. Tomino had already created the world inside his head. He came to us with roughs, asking us to give this part that kind of image, and all we did was clean it up. Mr. Tomino even drew a rough diagram of the White Base's operations room, saying that people sat at the end of this arm, and he'd decided they should be in this kind of position.
But it was difficult. The setting people had created a plan for the space colonies as well, and we were supposed to paint it, but it was hard depicting a world like that. When you looked upward inside the giant cylinder of a space colony, you should be able to see the world on the opposite side of the cylinder, but that would be really tough. So we ended up leaving it blank. (laughs)
Also, there were an absurd number of featured characters, so it was hard to remember their names. (laughs) That was always a bottleneck, and during meetings Mr. Tomino would keep pressing ahead without hesitation, so there was no time for me to figure out what he was talking about. Mr. Tomino's handwriting is also what they call "cursive," so even looking at the storyboards, I couldn't really tell which character was which. (laughs)
After producing some elaborate painted visuals, Nakamura set to work designing locations and interiors for the story's complex science fiction world.
Late 1978
Space colony and asteroid base concept illustrations by Mitsuki Nakamura.
A November 5 planning memo reproduced in the "World of Yoshiyuki Tomino" exhibition catalog includes many familiar elements of the final Gundam setting. A partial translation of this document can be found at Zeonic|Scanlations:
This memo includes details of the space colonies, the idea of including "espers" in the story, and early drafts of the chronology leading up to the main story. The story itself is now set in the year 2066.
November 5, 1978
Gunboy planning memo by Yoshiyuki Tomino.
Left to right: Title page, "Considerations on introduction of espers," conceptual diagram.
Left to right: Story chronology, Side 7 setting, character comparison chart (stars indicate esper characters).
Though the character names were revised from one draft to another, the original lineup of heroes was largely unchanged. New characters, however, were being added to the cast. The Pegasus crew now included a noncombatant later known as Fraw Bow and a trio of war orphans, as well as the mysterious Asiria Mass, the disguised daughter of Zeon Zum Deikun.
The enemy Zeons were led by the tyrannical Zabi family, and their forces included a masked ace named Char, modeled on the charismatic Prince Sharkin from 1975's Reideen the Brave—an early Sunrise co-production on which both Tomino and Yasuhiko had worked. In "Gundam Age," Masao Iizuka claims that Char's name was an homage to Sharkin.
Speaking of masked rivals, we had Sharkin in Reideen, so we removed the "kin" to get "Char." Since there was a chanson singer named Charles Aznavour, we made his full name Char Aznable simply as a pun. There's a lot of punning and wordplay in Sunrise's naming.
As noted below, however, Tomino has his own alternative explanation for Char's name...
November~December 1978
Rough character designs by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Char sketch was completed in November, and based on their names, the others seem to date from the same time period.
Left to right: Fraw Bow, Katz, Letz, Kikka.
Left to right: Asiria Mass, Lieutenant Char, Garma Zabi.
Left to right: Kycilia, Dozle, Gihren, and Degwin Zabi.
Char's mask appears to have been Yasuhiko's own invention. Tomino describes the character's creation in a 2018 NHK special called "Secret History: Gundam Historia"—see the the "Char's Blog" website for a Japanese-language transcript of his interview comments.
I gave the villain the name "Char." Char is a cool name, isn't it? But why is it so cool? He's Char because he comes in with a "whoosh" (shaa). That's all I came up with. And then that dummy Yasuhiko... he was a villain who came in with a whoosh, so I never imagined he'd have a mask. That mask!
In "Gundam Great Complete Works," Yasuhiko comments:
If I'd known from the beginning that he'd be burdened with such an unhappy destiny, I wouldn't have given him such a manga-like costume. I guess it's completely out of place.
And in his "Memorial Box Part-1" interview, Tomino describes his reaction to Yasuhiko's designs.
I recall a sunny day when Mr. Yasuhiko first brought in character sheets for Kycilia and Char. They were wearing masks! He'd turned them into manga characters! I remember thinking that was unacceptable. I suppose I'd been imagining a fairly serious war story.
In "Gundam Age," Masao Iizuka claims that Char's complex back story was extrapolated from the mask itself.
Putting a mask on Char, the enemy ace, meant we had to give the enemy's ace pilot a complicated back story. Thus he was originally the orphan child of Zeon Deikun. If we didn't include factors like that, we couldn't stretch it into a long-format drama.
Tomino elaborates further in his "Secret History: Gundam Historia" interview:
If a character has a face beneath their mask, and you give them a really humanistic setting, then the mask will have to come off. When you're telling a vivid story where they have a blood relative nearby, and they meet in person, I thought there should be a moment where they remove the mask. That's the truth.
I think the setting about Sayla being his sister was actually something I only created after I started drawing the storyboards. It wasn't originally part of the setting. In short, he had a sister on the heroes' side, so the enemy character Char was involved with the heroes. Setting that involved the enemy was something I'd never done in this kind of work before. It was worthy of a stage character, and I thought I really could have been a playwright.
In his own "Memorial Box Part-1" interview, Yasuhiko recalls:
As for Char, I joked that when he took off the mask he'd be a pretty boy. But while I laughed about it, I didn't expect he'd show his actual face for the time being, so I didn't give it any thought. Then we saw it right away in the second episode... It was like the director was plotting against me. (laughs)
The unveiling of Char in the second episode, in which he's reunited with his long-lost sister, proved to be unexpectedly complicated. The initial plan was that he'd have a facial scar beneath his mask, but as Tomino explains in his conversation with Isao Takahata in "Roman Album Extra 42," this had to be changed at the last moment due to objections from the TV station.
The truth is, this is the reality when it comes to Japan. This is the sort of thing that happened with Gundam. We had a masked character named Char, and the original plan was that he'd have a scar on his forehead. We figured nobody would be that shocked by a scarred forehead, because that had already been more or less accepted in Mr. Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock.
But when we sent the first draft of the character to the TV station, they immediately put a stop to it. "That forehead scar is associated with physical disability," they said, "and it'll provoke those people." That was the end of it.The main robots were also receiving their finishing touches. In his role as animation director, Yasuhiko stepped in to refine the design of the former Gunboy (and future Gundam), smartening up its proportions and giving it an impassive mask instead of a humanoid "super robot" face. He also did the final pass on the Core Fighter which served as the central core of the three main robots, as well as the transport aircraft which carried them into the battlefield.
November 1978
Revised Gunboy head designs by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
Refined Gunboy design by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, Guncannon and Guntank designs by Kunio Okawara. According to "Gundam Archive," these were drawn for an official proposal shared with sponsors and broadcasting stations.
Core Fighter drafts by Kunio Okawara.
Core Fighter design revisions by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
Freedom Cruiser design revision by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. This was eventually renamed "Peligun," and then "Gunperry."
Though the mothership Pegasus—previously known as Freedom Fortress, and eventually renamed "White Base"—was no longer central to the toy merchandising, Okawara seems to have devoted considerable effort to its design, producing several minor revisions and different views.
November 1978
Pegasus design drafts by Kunio Okawara. Additional views below were drawn for the official proposal.
By December, the project had undergone yet another name change, this one inspired by the 1978 American movie "Convoy." This involved a slight change to the Japanese spelling—from ガンボーイ to ガンボイ—and consequently I've spelled it here as Mobile Steel Man Gunvoy. The change was reflected in Tomino's updated setting notes, drafted on November 14 under the Gunboy name and then revised on December 1 to reflect the new title.
December 1, 1978
Gunvoy setting notes by Yoshiyuki Tomino.
Left to right: Title page, series information, history and space colony setting.
Left to right: Space colony location setting, Zeon attack, Gunvoy and Pegasus crew information.
Left to right: Minovsky particle, beam cannon, and learning computer setting.
With the character and mecha designs now largely complete, it was time to decide their colors. This task was normally left to a professional color coordinator—in this case, Hiroshi Hasegawa, who went uncredited until the later theatrical films—or the Sunrise planning office, when it involved collaboration with the sponsors. It was animation director Yasuhiko, however, who established the main robot's distinctive color scheme. In "Mobile Suit Gundam Memorial Box Part-1," Tomino recalls:
I wanted to differentiate this from the kind of multicolored 100-meter-tall giant robots that were flourishing at the time. So at this point, Mr. Yasuhiko suggested that we go ahead and try making the hero mecha a uniform white, while I made a proposal that it should be it about 20 meters high. [...] When we actually presented a sample of the white Gundam to the sponsors, it was decided that we had to include the tricolors after all. Mr. Yasuhiko was angry, but that being the case, he said it might be good to incorporate them at some eye-catching points and he did his own color scheme.
At this point, Yasuhiko literally took matters into his own hands. Longtime planning office staffer Yoshie Kawahara recounts this moment in the 2016 Spring issue of "Great Mechanics G."
Around that time, the planning office managed by Mr. Iizuka was relocating from a Japanese-style apartment building to the location that had been Studio 3 up until the dissolution of the Zambot team. I don't remember what kind of work I was doing, but one day, I was on my own at the former Studio 3. Then Mr. (Yoshikazu) Yasuhiko made one of his rare appearances, and asked whether the finishing desk (a desk used for finishing cels, with a glass tracing stand and a drying rack) was free. He said he was in the middle of finalizing the colors for the hero robot in some new work.
The test colors that he showed me for the new robot were the same old tricolors as before. This worked as it was, but he didn't like it, and he wanted to try painting it himself. Mr. Yasuhiko picked up the finishing brush, and a little later he held up a painted cel and said "I want it to look like this. Not bad, huh?" Honestly, I was a little surprised when I saw it. I'd never seen a robot with colors like that. And besides, it didn't look very strong...
Mr. Yasuhiko had painted the robot's whole body in white. You can probably guess, right? Though its official name hadn't yet been decided, this would later become the first-generation Gundam. "Okay, that's fine. It doesn't have to be strong." Looking more or less satisfied, Mr. Yasuhiko smiled and got up from his seat.
As Kawahara explains in a 2024 column for the Magmix website, the Gundam's color scheme required the creation of a special "blue-white" paint.
TV images are created with light, not paint. The "white" created with light is basically just light itself. It's the same thing as when the sun is at its zenith, and it looks white rather than red. When you have white on the screen, it will sometimes be overlaid by lighting effects that make it invisible, so as much as possible, you need to avoid using it over a wide area.
At the time, it was also common for manga characters to be printed on household goods for children, such as cups and handkerchiefs. These already had an underlying white color, and manufacturers would be reluctant to simply print lines on them.
Thus a special order was placed with Taiyou Color, the company that made the cel paints, to create a new color for the Gundam. This was seldom permitted due to the expense and extra labor it required. The color was white with just a little blue mixed in, and this became the Gundam's blue-white.
Mr. Hiroshi Hasegawa, who was responsible for the main color coordination on Gundam and later went on to found Studio Deen, was the one who came up with this color. There's also information to the effect that Mr. Yasuhiko chose this blue-white, but this can't be accurate since it didn't exist when he was originally painting the Gundam.
In these early color designs, the Gundam's trademark antennas are colored in yellow rather than white. According to Kawahara, this color was retained in the toys because pointed parts had to be made from soft materials that were available only in specific colors, and was also used in licensing art that was supposed to match the toys.
December 1978
Color designs by Sunrise planning office, dated December 1978. The Gundam, Core Fighter, and White Base are now approaching their final form.
Towards the end of the year, art director Mitsuki Nakamura was also working on interior locations such as warship bridges and hangars, as well as space colony and asteroid base setting that would be featured in the opening episodes.
November~December 1978
Rough Pegasus catapult and hangar setting art by Mitsuki Nakamura, dated November 1978.
Rough Musai bridge setting art by Mitsuki Nakamura, dated December 1978.
Rough setting art by Mitsuki Nakamura, dated December 1978.
Left to right: Pegasus gravity block, Luna II base, Side 3 space colony.
At the very end of the year came one final round of title and name changes. Seeking a more powerful-sounding title, Yamaura took inspiration from the popular "Mandom" fragrance commercials starring Charles Bronson. As in the earlier working title Freedom Fighter, the second syllable of "Mandom" was written as -damu in Japanese, which also suggested a powerful protective dam. In "Gundam Age," Masao Iizuka of the Sunrise planning office explains the reasoning behind the final rounds of name changes.
A cosmetic product for men called "Mandom" and a trailer truck movie called Convoy were also popular around this time. And, ever since Mazinger Z, there had been a superstition that things wouldn't become hits unless they included an "n" syllable. That's why we used that for Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3. When we wrote "Gunboy" and "Gunvoy" in the proposal, we were just following the trends of the time.
"Gunboy," however, was tricky in trademark terms, so we decided to give it one more push and tinker with it a little more. Then Mr. Yamaura said, "Can't we make it a bit stronger, like Convoy or Mandom?" So we went back to the original name "Freedom Fighter." There was something nice about the "dom" in "Freedom."
Now we had "Gundum," but spelling it with two "u" letters in a row made it hard to read. So we changed it to "dam," adding the meaning that it was protecting the Earth. This could be used in the sense of a structure that held back floods or generated electricity. Thus "Gundam" was decided!
On December 25, the series title was changed to Mobile Suit Gundam, with an optional "3" appended to connect it to the previous Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3.
December 25, 1978
Title and naming memo. In addition to the new series title, "Peligun" is changed to "Gunperry," "Pegasus" to "White Base," and "Asiria Mass" becomes "Sayla Mass."
(Courtesy of ZeonicScans.)
Roughly two weeks later, Tomino made one last update to his setting notes. Though it retained the occasional reference to the "Gunvoy" and "Pegasus," otherwise the document reflects the final character and mecha names, and places the story in the new calendar era of Universal Century 0079. This version of the setting notes has been widely reprinted and reproduced, making its first public appearance in Sunrise's "Mobile Suit Gundam Complete Works 1." A partial translation of this document can be found here:
Images of the original documents appear in the 2013 Blu-ray Memorial Box and in NHK's 2019 TV documentary, where the series title is written as "Mobile Suit Gundam 3" and "Mobile Suit Gundam" respectively.
January 6, 1979
"Mobile Suit Gundam 3" setting notes by Yoshiyuki Tomino, as reproduced in Blu-ray Memorial Box.
Left to right: Historical and space colony setting, main character organization, Pegasus mecha organization.
Images of original setting documents from NHK's "Making Gundam: The Inside Story."
The final setting art for the main characters and mecha was apparently completed around the end of the year—all the basic character and mecha setting featured in the "World of Tomino Yoshiyuki" exhibition, for example, is dated 1978 rather than 1979. Also included in the main cast was Haro, a robot mascot designed by Okawara. As Okawara explains in "Super Robot Generation":
And then there's Haro. That was actually a candidate for a small mecha called Mechamaru from Daitarn 3, but Director Tomino said we should save it for a different work, so we ended up using it as a pet in Gundam. It's just a circle with a few dots, but it's doing its best. (laughs)
A package of initial model sheets was later released for sale by Animec, with handwritten annotations by Masao Iizuka of the Nippon Sunrise planning office.
December 1978
Semi-final setting art for Mirai, Fraw Bow, Katz, Letz, and Kikka by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. These versions have some minor differences in the costumes, such as Fraw's skirt and Kikka's top. In the final setting, Mirai and Fraw are wearing similar uniform jackets.
Character comparison charts by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
Final hero character setting art by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. Note that Mirai's name is still written here as "Mirai Eiland."
Final enemy character setting art by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
In addition to the Gundam, animation director Yasuhiko also did the final setting art for the Core Fighter. In "Kunio Okawara Gundam Design Works," Okawara comments:
Actually, the Core Fighter was mostly Mr. Yasuhiko. I just tinkered a little with his finished design, and Mr. Yasuhiko also drew the final draft, including the transformation gimmick.
I think the final draft of the Guncannon may also be Yasuhiko's handiwork, but it's hard to find confirmation of this.
December 1978
Final mecha setting art by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Kunio Okawara.
Since the colors of the character and mecha colors had already been established, art director Mitsuki Nakamura and his background art team had to select the colors of the warship interiors so as to complement them. In "Gundam-Mono," Nakamura recalls:
The characters' colors were already decided, so after that the backgrounds were calculated so that enemy and ally could be clearly seen. If the character and the background were both green, they'd be as invisible as a chameleon, so we'd have to make it blue or something. We had detailed discussions about that. The most important thing was that they be easy to see.
In "Gundam Complete Works 2," Nakamura provides a detailed explanation of how the backgrounds featured in the opening episodes were painted.
First, I'll write about the design of the White Base's interior. I envisioned the control room as a dark space where the shining screens of the computers would stand out. I also made the entire thing dark because I figured the bridge of a warship should be dark during battle conditions. I gave the other passageways and rooms the same uniform dark tone as well, because the backdrop was a state of war.
[...]
As for the bridge of Char's Musai, there were no particular constraints, so I had a lot of freedom in doing it. But it ended up becoming the final draft because they decided it was interesting as it was, and that made it hard for those of us who had to paint it. With things like engines, the more detailed the depiction, the more it brings out the mechanical feeling. If I gave the hangars for the mecha characters the same color scheme, it would be hard to understand the scenery arrangement, so I had to vary the colors for each of them.
Since outer space is an absolute void, we thought it would be most appropriate to make it all pitch black. In general there aren't any bursts of bright, warm color, and we made the colors uniformly cold in order to intensify the story with a dark overall image. I think that ultimately worked out.
Art setting for the locations featured in the first few episodes appears to have been drawn at the beginning of 1979.
Late 1978~Early 1979
White Base and Musai bridge setting and final background art by Mitsuki Nakamura.
Side 7 colony and Luna II setting art by Mitsuki Nakamura. Luna II setting is dated January 22, 1979.
As production began in earnest, Gundam was entrusted to Nippon Sunrise's Studio 1, which had produced the previous The Unchallengeable Daitarn 3. The new program naturally inherited most of Daitarn 3's production staff, including Sunrise producer Yasuo Shibue and assistant producer Yutaka Kanda. Takeo Watanabe and Yushi Matsuyama once again provided the music, while Masao Iizuka of the Sunrise planning office served as setting manager, under the alias "Tadashi Marui."
Nippon Sunrise's Studio 1 during the production of Mobile Suit Gundam, as depicted by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and published in "Mobile Suit Gundam Complete Works 5." Featured here are:
On April 7, 1979—three months after the final draft of Tomino's setting notes—Mobile Suit Gundam debuted on the Nagoya Broadcasting Network, in the same 5:30 PM Saturday time slot previously occupied by Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3.
The opening song "Tobe! Gundam" and the ending "Eien ni Amuro" were composed by Takeo Watanabe and arranged by Yushi Matsuyama, with lyrics by Yoshiyuki Tomino (under the alias "Rin Iogi"). Vocals were performed by the actor and singer Ko Ikeda, plus the choral group Feeling Free.
April 1979
Scenes from Mobile Suit Gundam's opening, "Tobe! Gundam." According to former Sunrise planning office staffer Yoshie Kawahara, Amuro's pilot suit was colored blue in the opening so that the lyrics in the subtitles would be easily readable.
The Gundam, Guncannon, and Guntank are introduced in a barrage of quick cuts...
...and then the Core Fighter transformation and the Gundam's main weapons are showcased. During the docking sequence, the Core Fighter is exposed at the Gundam's waist as per Kunio Okawara's original design, rather than being covered by armor.
The image of the crew all raising their hands is reminiscent of episode 3, "Attack the Enemy Supply Ship!"
Scenes from the ending, "Eien ni Amuro." Here, Amuro's pilot suit is depicted in its regular white colors.
The first episode, "Gundam Rising," was scripted by Hiroyuki Hoshiyama, who had been with the project since it was launched as Freedom Fighter. The episode was storyboarded by Tomino under the pseudonym "Minoru Yokitani," with Shinya Sadamitsu serving as episode director and Yasuhiko as animation director. Tomino would go on to storyboard or co-storyboard a total of 26 episodes—more than half the series—while Yasuhiko served as animation director on 16 episodes before he had to leave the production due to a sudden illness.
The episode begins with a brief montage of scenes depicting the outbreak of war between the Earth Federation and the Principality of Zeon, culminating in the memorable spectacle of a space colony falling onto Earth. In "Gundam-Mono," art director Mitsuki Nakamura recalls:
What I thought worked very well was the scene where the space colony falls on Earth. I spent a lot of time discussing that with Mr. Tomino. Since it's a huge object, we weren't sure how we should make it fall. Should it fall in scattered pieces, or as a ball of light? We wanted to concretely convey its size, so we decided that having it fall intact would be easiest to understand in visual terms.
This striking introduction represents most of the onscreen explanation we're given about the previous events of the war. As it doesn't appear in Hoshiyama's script, it was presumably added by Tomino as he storyboarded the episode.
April 1979
The introductory sequence of Mobile Suit Gundam episode 1 begins with a panoramic view of a space colony interior.
Narrator: "Half a century has already passed since humanity migrated its excessive population to space. The huge artificial cities around the Earth became humanity's second home, where people bore children, and raised them... and died."
According to Tomino's storyboards, and the final recording script, the space colony here is surrounded by nuclear explosions.
Narrator: "Universal Century 0079. Side 3, the space city furthest from Earth, began a war of independence against the Earth Federation government under the name of the Principality of Zeon."
Tomino's storyboards and the final recording script describe the colony drop location as "somewhere resembling New York." Tomino's original notion was that there were multiple colony drops, but eventually the consensus view became that there was a single drop on Sydney, Australia.
Narrator: "In just over one month of fighting, the Principality of Zeon and Federation Forces caused the deaths of half the total population. People were horrified by their own actions. The war reached a stalemate, and more than eight months have now passed."
Tomino also reworked the beginning of the story itself. While Hoshiyama's script began with a mission briefing and launch sequence, the animated version jumps into the action with no exposition. As Eiji Yamaura observes in "Gundam Age":
The first episode initially didn't have that feeling. It was a very orthodox script in which the conflict between the Federation and the Principality of Zeon was more fully explained from the beginning. But we cut all of that, saying that it should begin with Zakus suddenly entering the colony without any explanation. We started with a bang, feeling that it would be better to create a sense of tension around the children being caught up in the war. Mr. Tomino said it would be good to show scenes of carnage from the beginning.
Aside from mechanical sounds and eerie breathing effects, the new sequence that Tomino storyboarded is largely silent. In the first minute and a half of the story, there are just two brief lines of dialogue and no incidental music.
April 1979
The opening scenes of Mobile Suit Gundam episode 1, "Gundam Rising." It's not until the Zakus have infiltrated the Side 7 colony and human pilots emerge from their chests that the actual scale of the enemy machines becomes clear, and we see that these are giant robots rather than armored space suits.
According to "Gundam Archive," the setting art for the first ten episodes was completed before Gundam's broadcast debut, which suggests the design work was generally running about two months ahead of the broadcast.
Early 1979
Episode 1 guest character setting art by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
Left to right: Amuro's father Tem Ray, White Base captain Paolo Cassius.
Left to right: Char's aide Dren, Zaku pilots Denim and Gene.
Civilian and military electric car, or "ele-car," setting art by Kunio Okawara.
As of episode 6, the action shifted to Earth, where the White Base would remain for the next two dozen episodes. As well as various terrestrial locations, this meant the introduction of various Zeon land and air weapons to supplement the standard Zaku mobile suit.
Early 1979
Dopp fighter, Luggun reconnaissance plane, and Magella Attack tank setting art by Kunio Okawara.
Setting art for New Yark City and Garma's frontline base by Mitsuki Nakamura.
In addition to his duties as series director and storyboard artist, Tomino also created rough sketches for many of the vehicles and enemy robots as the show continued, with Okawara refining these into final designs.
Mecha concept sketches by Yoshiyuki Tomino. These machines appear in episodes 16 to 22, and based on the visible dates—April 13 for the Adzam, April 24 for the Fat Uncle—it appears these sketches were drawn about three months before the corresponding episodes were broadcast.
(As reproduced in "Mobile Suit Gundam III Story Book.")
Before the start of broadcast, Tomino had drafted a story structure for the first six episodes, which is reproduced in the 2013 Blu-ray Memorial Box. This roughly matches the animated story, aside from the abrupt death of Garma Zabi in episode 6. In his 2020 interview collection "My Back Pages," Yasuhiko recalls:
In my very earliest days as animation director, I did speak up a little bit. Just after we began production, Mr. Tomino wrote something like a synopsis of the first five episodes. His pacing is really fast, and he crams a lot in, so he got as far as depicting Garma's death in only five episodes. When I read it, I couldn't understand why the contents were so dense. So I said, "Isn't this a little overstuffed? I wish the length were twice as long." At that time, Mr. Tomino really listened to me, and in fact he did turn it into ten episodes.
After this, Tomino's attention was devoted mostly to supervising the production, and for the rest of the series's first half—roughly episodes 7 through 21—the story was left mostly in the hands of the scriptwriting team. In an interview in the 2013 Blu-ray Memorial Box, Tomino explains:
While we were producing this block, as I was having the scripts written, I was also drawing storyboards and working on episode direction and animation production. This was a time when we had momentum and couldn't imagine the program being cut short, so I left the writing of scripts to the scriptwriters. Of course we held meetings, but I didn't have any time to write the story.
For that reason, this became a period in which the story had a high degree of independence, where distinctive characters appeared and ridiculous developments took place. I was burdened with the hardship of having to apply my energies to dramatizing this as a single storyline centered on the White Base.
In a post-series interview in the March 1980 issue of Animage magazine, Tomino notes that—due to production issues—episodes 13 through 15, which include Amuro's reunion with his mother and his infamous adventure on a mysterious island, were created as "extra episodes" which would work no matter where they were inserted in the story. Indeed, most of the character setting art for "Cucuruz Doan's Island" indicates that it was drawn for episode number "?"
Character designs for "Cucuruz Doan's Island" by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. The original handwritten episode number reads "#?"
M'Quve design by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and Adzam design by Kunio Okawara. Note that the original handwritten episode numbers are different from the final production order, presumably due to last-minute schedule changes.
As the broadcast continued, the TV stations began receiving mail from the show's fans. In the 1999 interview book "The Complete Works of Yoshiyuki Tomino 1964-1999," Wataru Sekioka—who represented Nagoya TV as one of Gundam's producers—recalls:
What struck me the most was that it was Char, not Amuro, who was popular in this program. Everyone was drawing Char on the postcards they sent us. (laughs) He was supposed to be the bad guy, but he was the one drawing the viewers' attention.
—In that case, were there also requests asking that Char's appearances be increased?
There certainly were. And then, when I talked to Mr. Tomino, he told me he was getting rid of Char after about ten episodes. (laughs) I don't know whether or not he intended to kill him, but characters often die in that person's works, so Char was probably his number one target. Anyway, I told Mr. Tomino directly that would be a bad idea, and that Char was the one person he couldn't kill.
This was around April or May, but since the animation work was already in progress, he told me that even if Char returned it wouldn't be until around October. I thought that was pretty late, but it would have to do, so I decided I wanted him to come back. That was the entirety of my order. By the time he reappeared, the viewers must have had high expectations for Char's long-awaited return.
Meanwhile, the sponsors, broadcasters, and sales agents were starting to worry about its low viewer ratings and toy sales, and around June they requested a bigger variety of enemy robots for the heroes to battle. Instead of the "monster of the week" format of previous robot shows, the Gundam staff had planned to limit the enemy forces to Zakus, but the series would undergo a change of direction in its second half. Clover also requested the addition of a "power-up" mecha for the Gundam for toy merchandising purposes.
June 1979
G-Armor, G-Fighter, and Dom designs by Kunio Okawara. The final version of the Dom, at lower right, was revised by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
It was around this time that Tomino drafted his "Gundam Third Cours Story," an updated story outline filled with new enemy mecha that covered the planned episodes 22 through 52. (We'll discuss this more below.) The appearance of the G-Armor and Dom in episodes 23 and 24, which aired in mid-September, were the first signs of this new approach. In an interview in "Mobile Suit Gundam Memorial Box Part-1," mechanical designer Kunio Okawara says:
After the Dom, Mr. Tomino began sending a large quantity of detailed sketches. It was probably around that time that the image of the mobile suit and mobile armor became fixed in his mind. I recall that he drew pretty detailed roughs for the Gelgoog, Zock, and so on. But I think that was good. Mecha like mobile armors aren't really one of my specialties, so if the design had been completely entrusted to me, they'd never have appeared at all. It's because of Mr. Tomino and his detailed sketches that we could construct such a vast world of mecha.
After this, the Belfast story arc that began in episode 26 ushered in a flood of new amphibious mobile suits and monstrous mobile armors. From this point on, most of the mechanical design was based on Tomino's own rough sketches. In a 2009 Japanese-language interview with Mynavi News, Okawara recalls:
They really were pretty rough! At the time, I was working on four jobs at once, including Zenderman for Tatsunoko and The☆Ultraman for Sunrise. So as a matter of physics, I didn't have much time.
June~July 1979
Amphibious mobile suit and mobile armor concept sketches by Yoshiyuki Tomino. The machines in the top row, dated June 14, 1979, were intended for use in episodes 26~28 and 29~31 respectively.
Gogg and Z'Gok designs by Kunio Okawara, dated June and July 1979. The final version of the Gogg, at top right, was revised by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko.
Zogok, Agguy, Juaggu, and Acg designs by Kunio Okawara, dated June and July 1979. These were never used in the animation, but were released as plastic model kits in 1982, and are now considered part of the MSV (Mobile Suit Variation) series.
According to the "Art of Gundam" exhibition catalog, Tomino also drew rough sketches of some key locations from the later episodes of the series.
July~September 1979
"Image roughs" by Yoshiyuki Tomino. These depict Solomon, Texas Colony, and A Baoa Qu, and are dated July 28, September 20, and September 19, 1979.
Despite this effort, Gundam's ratings and toy sales continued to disappoint. In the 1995 book "The Legend of Gundam," Sunrise's Yamaura recalls,
Around August, after about four months on the air, we began getting lots of letters from teenage fans in middle and high school. The majority of the contents were saying that they wanted us to put out plastic models, not toys. But we weren't a manufacturer, so we couldn't just say yes. I tried proposing this idea to Clover, but unfortunately, the conclusion was that as a matter of policy they weren't thinking about anything other than die-cast models.
As autumn began, the sponsors were losing patience. In the "The Complete Works of Yoshiyuki Tomino 1964-1999," Nagoya TV's Wataru Sekioka recalls:
Because we were a Nagoya station, we didn't care that much about Tokyo ratings, but they were certainly the lowest of the low. I think they were about 2~3%. At the time, they said it was being canceled due to the low ratings, but I didn't feel they were that low, and I thought we'd be fine since we were getting 25% in Nagoya. However, the broadcast period ended up being a little short of one year. For Mr. Tomino and everyone else, it's become the accepted view that it was canceled for low ratings, but that wasn't the case for our station.
Clover, however, had had enough. According to Sekioka, the sponsors' representatives met—without the Sunrise executives or the show's director—to determine Gundam's fate:
At a certain point during the broadcast, the sponsor Clover decided to give up because their Gundam toys weren't selling. So Mr. Nagaura from Nagoya TV's Tokyo office called me in to a meeting without Mr. Yamaura, Mr. (Masanori) Ito, or of course Mr. Tomino. I said to Clover that since December to January was their toy-selling season, they should sell their Chogokin toys until then, but New Year gift-giving stops in January so we should end it that month.
The next toy-selling period was the spring break in March, and I thought that if we started a new program in February so they could sell the toys then, we'd manage to get through it. Regarding the program's time slot, I said we should adopt the pattern of starting in February and ending in January of the following year.
Thus the decision was made to end the series ahead of schedule, reducing it from 52 to 43 episodes. This was evidently decided prior to the Tomino interview in volume 8 of Animec magazine, which took place on October 8. In other words, as the broadcast run entered its second half, its fate was already sealed. In the 1999 book "Gunpla Generation," author Koji Igarashi writes:
It was decided that the broadcast would end with episode 43, a drastic reduction from the planned 52 episodes. This was largely because the previously mentioned problems with toy sales hadn't improved. But this doesn't mean that Gundam toys didn't sell at all. The end-of-the-year flagship item, the "Gundam DX Combination Set," had exceptionally strong sales, perhaps because of the reduced size of the production run.
As a result, after the decision had been made to cut the broadcast run to 43 episodes, it's said that Clover approached Sunrise about extending the broadcast once again. It goes without saying that this extension ultimately never materialized, but whether this was good or bad for Gundam as a work is a judgment that should be left to the individual viewer.
Winter 1979
Clover's Gundam DX Combination Set, priced at ¥5,800, was the surprise hit of the year-end toy-buying season.
In any case, as described in the NHK documentary "Making Gundam: The Inside Story," this decision came as something of a relief to the exhausted staff. Around this time, Yasuhiko was hospitalized with a severe illness, and the series limped to its finish without its hard-working animation director.
The final episode, "Escape," aired on January 26, 1980. In the closing narration, we're told that the year is now Universal Century 0080, and a peace agreement has been reached between the warring sides. But the story of Mobile Suit Gundam was far from over...
Mecha and character concept sketches by Yoshiyuki Tomino. These appeared in episodes 31 through 43.
(As reproduced in "Mobile Suit Gundam III Story Book.")
Byg-Zam and Zeong designs by Kunio Okawara. These are dated July and August 1979, respectively. As the Zeong is the final enemy mecha to appear in the series, I wonder how this timing relates to the decision to cut the series short?
Were it not for this early cancellation, what form might the story have taken? We can get some hints from the aforementioned "Gundam Third Cours Story," an outline which describes the director's planned story for the full-length series. The last part of this outline, covering episodes 37 through 52, was reproduced in Sunrise's "Mobile Suit Gundam Complete Works 5" in October 1980. It includes a number of new characters and enemy mobile suits that never appeared in the animation, some of which were later visualized as part of the MS-X series.
A more complete version of this Tomino memo was reproduced in the laser disc Memorial Box in 1998. This revealed that the original document covered episodes 22 onwards, with a brief summary of episodes 22 through 30—whose plot had apparently been largely decided before the memo was written—and then detailed descriptions of episodes 31 through 52. A full translation of this document can be found here:
Helpfully, the Memorial Box reproduction also included the memo's original date.
June 2, 1979
An excerpt from Tomino's "Gundam Third Cours Story," covering episodes 37 onwards.
(As reproduced in "Mobile Suit Gundam Complete Works 5.")
A more complete version of the outline, beginning with the summaries of episodes 22 through 30.
(As reproduced in laser disc Memorial Box.)
Original pages of the Tomino memo (as reproduced in Blu-ray Memorial Box), and Tomino's signature with "'79-6-2" date stamp (as reproduced in laser disc Memorial Box).
Meanwhile, Tomino was exploring a very different development of the story in a series of original Mobile Suit Gundam novels. The first volume, published in November 1979, very loosely followed the storyline of the animated series and ended with the destruction of the Pegasus, the Gundam, and Lalah Sune's Elmeth at Texas Colony. The second and third volumes, released in September 1980 and March 1981—and thus leading up to the first Gundam theatrical film—continued the story in a whole new direction, with a new Gundam and Pegasus, and some radically different fates for the major characters.
Original covers of Yoshiyuki Tomino's Mobile Suit Gundam novels. These were released in an English translation by Frederik L. Schodt in 1990-1991, and an updated edition is currently available from Stone Bridge Press.
During its original broadcast run, Mobile Suit Gundam had failed to win over the younger toy-buying audiences its sponsors were targeting, but its mature story and compelling characters had created a loyal following among older viewers. Starting in February 1980, the series was rebroadcast on a weekday schedule, and in the March 1980 issue of Animage magazine—published on February 10—Tomino discussed the idea of compiling the series into theatrical films as had previously been done for Space Battleship Yamato.
According to the plan Tomino outlined in the Animage interview, the television episodes would be organized into four separate films, with a total running time of ten and a half hours. The first film would cover episodes 1-12, the second episodes 16-25, the third episodes 26-36, and the final one episodes 37-43. Episodes 13 through 15, which were originally created as extra episodes that could fit in anywhere in the story, would be omitted.
Meanwhile, the toy company Bandai had negotiated a license to produce plastic model kits of Gundam's mobile suits. The first of these, the 1/144 scale Gundam, was released in July 1980. Bandai's "Gunpla" became a commercial hit, with particular appeal to fans of military-style scale modeling. Around this point in time, Sunrise and the film production company Shochiku agreed to turn Gundam into a theatrical film, and production began based on Tomino's idea of dividing the TV series into multiple movies.
February~April 1980
Gunpla blueprints by Bandai designer Masatoshi Muramatsu, dated February 7, February 20, and April 22, 1980.
Left to right: 1/1 scale Gundam, 1/144 scale Gundam, 1/144 scale Zaku.
News of the production first leaked via the newspaper Nikkan Sports on October 2, and one week later the Mobile Suit Gundam film was officially announced. Anticipation continued building in the following months, culminating in the "Anime New Century Declaration" on February 22, 1981, in which more than 15,000 fans gathered at Shinjuku Station to celebrate their love for Gundam. (Author Matt Alt describes this event in detail in his book "Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World," and in this 40th anniversary Twitter thread.)
February 22, 1981
Yoshiyuki Tomino greets fans during the "Anime New Century Declaration" event.
(Photograph from Asahi Shimbun article.)
The first compilation film was released on March 14, 1981. Its story reprised episodes 1 through 13 of the television series, combining or omitting some events and rearranging a few others. It was titled simply Mobile Suit Gundam, since there was still no official guarantee the story would continue, but with its immediate success the second and third installments were swiftly approved.
The second part, titled Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow and covering the events of episodes 14 through 30, followed on July 11 of that year. The production of the final installment, Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space, was more ambitious and time-consuming. Roughly 70 percent of this third film was newly animated, and Yasuhiko, who had been forced to withdraw from the last part of the original production by his illness, took the opportunity to show off his skills as a character designer and animation director.
New Gundam II mecha designs by Kunio Okawara. The powered-up Core Booster, introduced in Gundam II, replaced the infamous G-Armor in the film version of the story.
New Gundam III character setting art by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. This includes new designs for Dr. Flanagan, Twanning, and Asakura; an official uniform for Lalah Sune; and designs for Zeon Zum Deikun and the new characters Darcia Bakharo and Cecelia Irene, who first appeared in Tomino's novels.
Yasuhiko also created setting art for Char's horse.
The release of Gundam III on March 13, 1982, completed the film trilogy and firmly established Mobile Suit Gundam as a landmark of Japanese animation. In its newly added final scenes, a familiar silhouette appears in the window of a fleeing Zeon warship, and the movie closes with a tantalizing message...
Mobile Suit Gundam is copyright © Sotsu • Sunrise. Everything else on this site, and all original text and pictures, are copyright Mark Simmons.
