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Production Reference
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The Roman Albums published by Tokuma Shoten are a series of reference books devoted to various anime titles. The original Mobile Suit Gundam is represented by a total of four volumes, with the TV series covered by Roman Album Extra 35 and the three theatrical motion pictures by volumes 42, 44, and 50. Roman Album Extra 50: Mobile Suit Gundam the Motion Picture III, published in May 1982, includes an extensive production diary by Gundam III producer Masuo Ueda. The following text is copyright © 1982 Tokuma Shoten. |
Part I: Two hours, 19 minutes, 10 seconds, and 22 frames. Part II: Two hours, 13 minutes, 34 seconds, and 3 frames. Part III: Two hours, 20 minutes, 5 seconds, and 21 frames... There's no precedent for an anime work taking a single TV series and turning it into a grand work consisting of three theatrical films, totalling almost seven hours. What kind of hardships and trial-and-error did the staff go through to pull off this great feat?
Gundam, which has sparked a craze throughout Japan, finally reached its conclusion with the release of Encounters in Space on March 13, 1982. How did the on-site production staff who were the source of this craze manage to escape from Gundam? Mr. Ueda, who this time served as chief producer, will report on the situation for us.
Producer Masuo Ueda (Nippon Sunrise)
Let's decide where it began
It's very difficult to say exactly when we started. With Soldiers of Sorrow, it took a long time to get a decision, then we began in a frenzy and it was over in the blink of an eye. But when exactly did Encounters in Space begin? Was it when I discussed the handling of the Soldiers of Sorrow staff with Producer Iwasaki, and we concluded they should carry on to Part III, or was it when we shamelessly decided to stick a teaser for Part III onto the end of Soldiers of Sorrow? Could it be on the opening day of Soldiers of Sorrow, when I discussed the content of Part III with Mr. Tomino and Mr. Yasuhiko in a coffee shop as we were making the rounds of the movie theaters? Or could it even be when we decided to turn Gundam into a theatrical feature? Opinions differ.
Remembering things from the distant past is hard for an enthusiastically forgetful person like me, who has to think a while just to recall what I had for lunch yesterday—a lunch set at Aoyagi, tempura at Tamaya, or miso ramen at Koyoro? I wish I could just write in this diary that "Part II was over before we knew it, then Part III began quietly, overcame many difficulties, and successfully ended." But my (Roman Album) editor, the eagle-eyed Yutaka Ota, would never forgive me, so I'll take out my tattered schedule charts and seek out the views of the people involved as I write this. (That was a long preamble! In short, it's an explanation begging your forgiveness for my careless writing.)
It all began with the terrible misconception that we had lots of time in the schedule
On July 11, the opening day of Soldiers of Sorrow, Mr. Tomino and Mr. Yasuhiko took the stage at the Shinjuku Shochiku theater. They were there to greet all the fans who had come so early in the morning.
Tomino: Since we've been given another opportunity with Part III, I'd like us to do our best to make it a proper conclusion. Thank you for your support.
Yasuhiko: This time, we have plenty of room in the schedule, so I think we can make a lot of corrections. Please look forward to it.
That's right, I thought as I sat in the audience. But in later days, I'd come to realize it was a careless assumption. I'll write about that in due course, but that was also the day we first discussed Part III's contents. Somehow I, Mr. Tomino, and Mr. Yasuhiko ended up doing this at a coffee shop near the Ikebukuro Shochiku theater.
Tomino: As far as the structure of Part III, I think it'll be fine if we more or less follow the TV series. Even to my eyes, it seemed pretty well done. But then there's the Challia Bull storyline...
Yasuhiko: Let's cut that part. I don't think we need it. And also, I think that was a pathetic way to treat M'Quve. He should have been more of a threat to Char.
Tomino: At any rate, we need to trim the Texas sequence a little. That will help streamline it. But even if we cut the parts with M'Quve and Amuro, it won't really affect the length.
Ueda: What about the last scene?
Yasuhiko: I think it's fine as is. The storyboards for the final episode were really well done.
Tomino: Is that so...
That's how the discussion went. In concrete terms, we decided that Mr. Tomino would start working on the structure and storyboards.
The basic production parameters were set. It would be roughly two hours and 10 minutes long. Given the schedule, it was impossible to make a completely new work. With Mr. Yasuhiko's workload in mind, there would be about 1,000 cuts of new animation. But as for where and how the new parts would be added, that was entirely up to the director.
July 25: The director submitted a basic production plan. Within a running time of under two hours and 10 minutes, there would be about 100 minutes of new footage consisting of 1,000 cuts. The TV series footage would be blown up, and to keep the image quality consistent, the new parts would also be shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm.
Personally, I'd hoped the latter half would be entirely newly made. But given the volume of the latter half and the corrections needed in the first half (such as Amuro's meeting with Lalah), the amount of work would have been too exhausting, so I agreed to this plan.
Based on this plan, the Gundam crew's soldiers of sorrow who had survived Operation Odessa were rounded up again for their encounters in space. The Hell Scroll began with a handpicked production staff. Once again, we had Assistant Producer Yoshii who was popular with the animators, the production assistant Mr. Watanabe or "Nabekko" who boasted of appearing a record 183 times in Iogi's "Embarrassing Kids Notebook," the production assistant Mr. Nishikawa whose vocabulary seemed to consist only of "exhausted," "tired," and "sleepy," Ms. Matayoshi who provided production support and ended up marrying a telephone pole, and my own naturally cheerful (?) self. (1)
Then, right at the outset, a horrifying event took place. Somehow I now had the title of producer. Even I didn't realize this for a while. (No way, you must be kidding.)
I want to make my final request
Having so causally been made a producer, I was tasked by Producer Iwasaki, who already had his hands full with the TV series Dougram, to take care of the rest. From then on, I set to work with no particular rise in salary, just greater pressure and responsibility. The job of a producer is mainly things like setting the schedules for each department, establishing the budget, negotiating royalties, securing staff, and external negotiations. You're more or less the CEO of the work. (How arrogant!) So I immediately began by gathering the staff.
There was no particular problem with the main staff. I rallied them around me as if I were giving a campaign speech and made my final request. "This is the final Gundam. Welcome aboard."
August 3: I gathered the main staff—Mr. Tomino, Mr. Yasuhiko, Mr. Okawara, and Mr. Nakamura—to discuss the basic structure of Part III. The director gave the other three orders for new pieces of setting. He also proposed that they all create a poster together.
August 5: We asked Mr. Sekita to be the director in charge once again. He seemed pretty reluctant, but I stressed that a floor director wasn't just a tidying-up job, and won him over with money and alcohol.
August 15: This was the storyboard deadline, but they weren't even halfway done. (Because the director took a week off at the beginning of August!)
The three female animators Ms. Hattori, Ms. Kobayashi, and Ms. Barada, who were already installed in the studio, were pestering the production assistants as they waited for Gundam cuts to work on.
August 24: We couldn't wait any more. Mr. Yasuhiko threw a fit, saying he didn't want to start drawing until all the storyboards were done, but I talked him down and we had a meeting with Mr. Sekita.
August 29: The first animation meeting. Based on the first key animation Mr. Yasuhiko had completed, we discussed with the second key animators and the floor director how we should handle each cut. We decided to keep on meeting every Monday.
September 1: The storyboards were finally done. The final total was about 2,600 cuts, of which 1,000 would be newly made, with a running time of three hours. We needed to get that down to roughly two hours and 10 minutes of screen time, which would be a lot of work. But the director didn't want to tinker with the storyboards any more, so we started with that.
No fair, Mr. Yasuhiko! Predicting the schedule
I drew up a schedule for each part based on the quantity of new cuts. (In the industry, this is known as "pie in the sky.") (2) I fine-tuned the schedule with the people responsible for each part.
The problem was the drawing time. By its nature, this is the most time-consuming part of anime, and it's also one that never goes according to the schedule set by the production staff. Like spring and summer high-school basketball, it's an immutable tradition that will probably never disappear unless the animation department is revolutionized by computer anime, or the animators someday receive a divine revelation and achieve enlightenment.
Yasuhiko: Maybe we'll finish by the end of the year. (pretty negative)
Ueda: (emphatic) No, that would be a problem. The finishing won't be done, so we need to do it by the end of November.
Yasuhiko: (menacing) That's utterly impossible.
Ueda: (a little hesitant) I was thinking of getting some help with the key animation, so let's do that.
Yasuhiko: (unyielding) If you include corrections, it'll take till the end of the year.
Ueda: (with tragic resolve) Then let's say December 15.
Yasuhiko: (in a tone utterly lacking in conviction) We'll try our best.
September 11: I met with the art director Mr. Nakamura. I gave him job requests as an art director, and background art requests for Mecaman, Mr. Nakamura's company.
September 16: We commissioned Studio Deen to do the finishing and color coordination, and asked Mr. Hiroshi Hasegawa, Deen's president, to be color designer. He was a little anxious, because while he'd done the color coordination for the main characters in the TV series, he hadn't done any color coordination for Gundam after that.
We then decided on the rest of the staff one after another, with Mr. Katsuharu Misawa as photography director, Mr. Yasuo Urakami as audio director, Mr. Tomoaki Tsurubuchi as editor, and Mr. Michiaki Doi handling the special effects. They were all really enthusiastic since this was the final Gundam.
September 28: The final animation meeting of September. Mr. Yasuhiko's pace was adequate, but the second key animation and in-betweening were conspicuously behind schedule. Each cut also had a lot of frames. Perhaps Mr. Yasuhiko still held a grudge about not being able to use so many frames in the series, but he was animating down to the smallest detail. The floor director Mr. Sekita was getting carried away as well, urging the animators to add more and more frames. Our innocent production assistants were helpless against their insistence on increasing the frame count, and could only mutter "But the in-betweeners... the finishers..." (What cowards!)
Thus, the number of drawings was already approaching 10,000 frames.
Meetings, meetings, was there even one day without meetings?
As October began, the animation flow was becoming apparent. Meanwhile, I had to make arrangements for the subsequent steps. Here's a list of my October meetings.
October 1: Trailer meeting.
October 6: Finishing meeting (color meeting).
October 8: Tokyo Laboratory schedule meeting.
October 12: Poster meeting with Mr. Yasuhiko.
October 13: Theme song meeting.
October 14: Sound schedule meeting.
October 15: Poster meeting with Mr. Nakamura and Mr. Okawara.
October 16: Background art meeting.
October 17: Second finishing meeting.
October 19: Trailer title meeting.
October 20: Photography meeting.
October 23: Second background art meeting.
October 27: Optical meeting.
October 30: Effects meeting.
There were also weekly animation meetings every Monday, meetings about each part of the trailer, publicity-related meetings... If I listed them all, there'd be no end to it, so I'll stop here. Sometimes they ended in 20 seconds, and sometimes they took all day. Scheduling these meetings is also part of the production job, and they serve as a pipeline connecting all the staff.
An unforgettable event took place this month when President Kishimoto suddenly passed away on October 2. This came as a complete shock to all of us. To me, the president was already on a godlike plane, and now he'd suddenly ascended even further above us. There were so many things I'd wanted to talk to him about...
But we couldn't dwell on our sadness forever. It was a turbulent time in many respects, but we kept working away. A company funeral was held on October 22, attended by hundreds of people, and then we went back to work on the final Gundam with renewed determination.
Goodbye, plywood studio. We'll never forget you
As November began, the studio became even busier, as we were now working on the trailer in addition to the main feature.
November 2: Publicity conference. We held an official conference with the distributor Shochiku.
November 6: We moved from the Iogi studio, where we'd been for the past year, to Kami-Igusa where the company headquarters was located. (3)
The relocation was long overdue, and with help from the other studios, we were now sharing space with the crew of the Ideon theatrical features. (4) Before the move, I had a meeting with Producer Hasegawa, who was responsible for Ideon. During this meeting, we fought an ugly territorial battle, but I'll spare you the details.
Thus we moved from an old studio full of plywood to a newly constructed space, and our mood was renewed as well. And because we were working alongside Ideon, another theatrical feature, the staff were also fired up by a burning sense of rivalry. (However, there were hidden Ideon fans among the Gundam crew. One of our production assistants was secretly conspiring with Producer Hasegawa, and was rewarded with Ideon plastic models, but I won't mention his name here.)
I've been writing about trivial things, but the production was still progressing, and in November the staff expanded even further. Mr. Aohachi and Mr. Yamazaki joined as key animators, Studio Kuma as a finisher, and Take One, Apple, and Art Noa on background art. (5) I met with each of them despite my busy schedule.
November 9: We shot promotional stills from dozens of cuts that had been finished in advance, and set them aside for the specialized anime magazines.
November 12: The lyrics for the theme song were finalized.
November 16: The melody for the theme song, "Meguri Ai," was completed. Then...
November 17: More than 70 production staffers and media representatives gathered at Top Hat in the Shinjuku Nomura Building for a delayed launch party. We did this to encourage everyone for the long haul ahead, and to provide a little break in the middle of production.
November 19: Recording of the theme song "Meguri Ai" with Mr. Daisuke Inoue.
November 21: Post-recording of the teaser and trailer.
November 23: Dubbing of the teaser and trailer at APU studio. We gathered the voice actors Mr. Furuya, Ms. Han, Mr. Ikeda, and Mr. Nagai as a preliminary.
November 25: Teaser and trailer completed. The photography director Mr. Misawa put in a lot of work, and we incorporated some special effects as well, so the staff were proud of how well they turned out.
November 30: Roughly 700 cuts' worth of key animation had already been completed. However, only about 400 had reached the finishers. In addition to the sheer number of animation frames and the density of the content, the in-betweeners had to be meticulous since it was for a theatrical release, so they were overwhelmed with cuts. And the floor director Mr. Sekita, who's always restless unless he has a stack of cuts in front of him, was putting off checking the key animation.
The number of animation frames had now reached 20,000, twice that of Part I or Part II.
We were all together in gloom
My sense of unease intensified as we entered December, and the new year drew ever closer.
In terms of the schedule, Mr. Yasuhiko had done a considerable amount, but there were also some hidden problems. Since Mr. Yasuhiko himself wanted to revise as much of the last episode as possible, he'd started working on cuts that weren't scheduled to be newly made, in other words, ones where we'd meant to use TV series artwork.
I didn't mind that these corrections would make it better and better, but he wasn't getting much done on his main job, the cuts which were supposed to be newly created. Thus, while the total number of new cuts kept increasing, the number that remained never got any smaller.
According to the original schedule, we were meant to begin shooting at the beginning of December, but somehow that wasn't happening. To briefly illustrate the progress of this month...
Mr. Yasuhiko finishes first key animation.
→ But the number of new cuts hasn't decreased, and the cuts for the second key animators keep piling up.
→ The second key animation is finished.
→ But the floor director puts it aside. Or he gives the okay, but there are a lot of cuts that need Mr. Yasuhiko to correct the characters.
→ We'd like Mr. Yasuhiko to correct the characters, but we also want him to work on key animation.
→ The corrections come in, but the in-betweeners are backed up, so there's nobody to animate it.
→ When we send it out to to an unknown in-betweener, they send back terrible animation.
→ It piles up with Ms. Kobayashi, the in-between checker.
→ Thus the animation doesn't get to the finisher. And even when it does, it'll take a while to complete the finishing.
→ Since it's not getting done, we look for another finisher. They're hard to find, so we send it out to an unknown finisher.
→ Now it's done, but there are a lot of retakes. And when we try to send the finished cuts to photography, we can't because the backgrounds aren't ready yet.
→ The completed backgrounds come in, but we can't send them because the finishes aren't ready.
→ Now they're both done, but we can't send them to photography because the character colors are wrong, they don't match the backgrounds, etc.
→ The photography staff are fretting because they have nothing to work on.
→ In this situation, we production staffers can't go home.
→ Because we can't go home, we can't sleep.
→ Because we can't sleep, we keep making mistakes and get irritable.
→ Frustration builds up, but we can't take it out on the rest of the staff.
→ So we bottle it up.
→ And thus, we gradually become gloomier and gloomier.
→ We wonder what we should do.
→ Of course! We still have to finish the animation, so we go back to the beginning.
It's an extreme description, but that's what happens.
December 21: In the middle of this, Mr. Yasuhiko finished his key animation. His assistants Mr. Aohachi and Mr. Yamazaki, however, weren't yet done with their portions. And a mountain of cuts requiring character corrections was piling up in front of Mr. Yasuhiko.
December 31: The last of the key animation, Mr. Yamazaki's share, was finally completed early this morning.
At this point, there were about 1,300 new cuts, corresponding to 32,000 frames of animation. 7,000 of those had yet to be animated, and 12,000 remained for finishing. We'd only completed shooting 450 cuts. My God, how were we ever going to finish this?!
We realized we wouldn't encounter a day off until Gundam was finished
From the beginning of January onward, the studio became a disaster scene. Finished animation piled up around the in-between checker Mr. Kobayashi, Mr. Sekita's space in the pre-shooting room was filled with retake cuts, and every day somebody was coloring in the retakes. (6) At one point the Ideon production assistants Mr. Imanishi and Mr. Mochizuki, and Mr. Toike and Ms. Watanabe of the planning office, decided they couldn't just stand by and watch, so they pitched in with the coloring. (7) And then...
January 18 and 19: At last, we had a full rush. We assembled all the staff and gave them a preview of their finished work. It was pretty good. Naturally, given all the new material, the density of the artwork was very different.
January 23: Director Tomino, Mr. Sekita, and the editor Mr. Tsurubuchi trimmed the three-hour rush down to two hours and 20 minutes. However, between the main photography and the retakes, we still had another 500 cuts to shoot. Mr. Misawa and Mr. Saito were working frantically on the photography at Asahi Pro.
January 30 and 31: With the rushes still incomplete, more than 40 voice actors gathered at APU Studio for the post-recording. The familiar actors, as well as others completely new to Gundam, breathed life into the film with their own hands—or rather, their voices.
February 8 and 9: The background music was recorded at King Records. Both Mr. Watanabe and Mr. Matsuyama gave their all, since this would be the final Gundam.
February 14~16: The dubbing, which could be considered the finishing touch, took place at APU Studio. Director Tomino, Audio Director Urakami, the mixer Mr. Nakatogawa, and the sound effects engineer Mr. Matsuda accompanied it with lively debate and jokes.
February 18: The final shooting was completed. Now all that was left was the cutting of the negatives, and preview prints zero and one. (8)
February 24: Mr. Tsurubuchi struggled desperately to finish cutting the negatives, and at last we had preview print zero. The main staff headed for the screening room, filled with tension. "Good job!" Though we were all excited, we also breathed a sigh of relief. After this, we just had to fix the remaining errors and show preview print one to the entire staff, and then it would be over. Suddenly, my body went limp.
February 26: We screened preview print one, and the curtain fell to vigorous applause from the staff.
The ending is just the first step, right?
Gundam, which began as a TV series, received such overwhelming appreciation and has been able to reach a conclusion thanks to the efforts of many staffers and the warm, encouraging support of its fans. As a creator, I can't imagine any greater happiness.
I'd like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the staff who went through these hardships, to the fans who've been with us all this time, and to the Roman Album editors who gave me this opportunity. Thank you all for your longtime support.
(1) These are all recurring characters from previous production diaries. I don't know what the "Embarrassing Kids Notebook" reference means, but in a previous installment we learned that Tomoko Matayoshi had a habit of clinging to phone poles when she got drunk.
(2) The Japanese idiom here, 「絵に書いた餅」, is literally "mochi drawn in a picture."
(3) The Iogi studio, officially Sunrise Studio 4, had been the production site for 1979's Cyborg 0079.
(4) This shared space was the new location of Sunrise Studio 3.
(5) The key animators mentioned here are Yoshinobu Aohachi and Kazuo Yamazaki.
(6) The Japanese term 撮出し (satsudashi), which I've translated as "pre-shooting," is a stage in the anime production process in which the director checks the materials required for each cut before sending them out to photography.
(7) The staffers referenced here are Takashi Imanishi, Tomomi Mochizuki, Shoji Tonoike, and Yoko Watanabe (later Yoko Tonoike).
(8) The Japanese terms used for the preview prints are ０号 (zero-gō, "number 0") and 初号 (shogō, "number 1").
Mobile Suit Gundam is copyright © Sotsu • Sunrise. Everything else on this site, and all original text and pictures, are copyright Mark Simmons.
