[INTERVIEW] Zeta: Speaking of the Times (Patreon)

The gloves are off in this interview! I do have to wonder just what planning documents had him killing off Amuro that early!

ーーAt last, beginning with Episode 21, which airs July 27, the true star of the series, the Zeta Gundam itself, will make its debut. We'd like to ask you about the significance of the Zeta Gundam as the hero's machine.

Tomino: There is no significance. We are putting it in because we want to sell merchandise. That is the honest, unvarnished truth. What matters is what comes after that. This applies to everything, really: people have to do business in order to eat. The important question is whether you interpret the idea of “doing business” in a narrow, minor sense or in a broad, major one. Depending on which perspective you take, the essential nature of what you ought to be doing changes completely. In that respect, one could say that this time we made the Zeta Gundam specifically for Bandai.

Now, here's what troubles me most. Fans of the show, modelers included, tend to say things like, "You mustn't make it just for Bandai." But that is profoundly mistaken. That's the one thing I want everyone to understand with absolute clarity. What I mean is this: without a sponsor, a program will never, ever see the light of day, no matter how loftily you talk. People often treat it as though it's terribly virtuous for creators to make works fueled by nothing but their own passion. But the act of creating a work in the first place, whether it's film, television, theater, or music, costs an enormous amount of money, and if the production costs aren't recouped, you make one work, and that's the end of you.

To put it in terms of the structure of Japanese society today: like it or loathe it, this is capitalism. In other words, unless that give-and-take relationship is made fully functional, a work can neither be produced nor released. So I've reached the point where I can say it outright: "Why on earth shouldn't we be allowed to say we made this for Bandai?" That's where I stand now.

And I want all of you to carry that meaning with you as an important theme as you grow into adulthood. So you must never, ever treat “because it’s business” as something inherently negative. There is another important point. Being able to create a work commercially means, to put it simply, that the work is popular. And being popular means the work ought to be worthy of presentation to the public at that particular moment in time. Now, suppose a work just keeps going and going. Is that alone enough? No, I would never say that's enough. I do not believe it is enough for something merely to exist on a commercial basis. Unless a work possesses some additional value, something beyond the commercial element, it will not truly be accepted. And that, perhaps, is something you could say about the Zeta Gundam itself, among all the mobile suits.

And now, at long last, we finally arrive at the subject of the Zeta Gundam itself. (laughs)

Given that the Zeta Gundam has been granted the opportunity to appear on television, can it become a product of genuine value? Is it really a new mobile suit? I don't know. But let me tell you just one thing about how we got here: the Zeta Gundam is a character that was, regrettably, born under somewhat unfortunate circumstances. To be honest, I do harbor a certain amount of anxiety about it in that sense. What do I mean by that? The Zeta Gundam did not transform as elegantly as I had imagined, nor were we able to give it colors as new and distinctive as I had hoped.

So is all of that Bandai's fault? Absolutely not. I am one of the creators too. The simple fact is that I myself was unable to give the Zeta Gundam that additional value, something extending beyond the ideas required for the model itself. Fundamentally, it uses the same colors as the Gundam Mk-II and the original Gundam. When people ask, "Couldn't you have done a little better than that?" the truth is maybe we could have. But we were unable to do so. We painted it in dozens upon dozens of different color schemes. At some point, however, a final decision had to be made. In the end, we were frightened of painting it in any other colors. Everyone wrestled with this, Bandai's designers included.

But here's the great tragedy: creators and distributors are not themselves the people buying the product. And so there are things we simply cannot imagine from where we sit, and we settled on it the way we did. How will the market receive it? How will all of you, the fans, receive it? That, I cannot know. And because we can't know, everyone who had a hand in this work is terrified. To tell you the truth, from the moment the product reaches store shelves until roughly a week afterward, none of us really wants to be in Japan. We're that scared. (laughs)

If it hits, we'll be overjoyed; if it misses, we'll be crushed. That's only natural. So then, what do I want to accomplish within the work itself? We've built the thing the way we built it, so at the very least, to put it simply, I want to make it look strong, I want to make it look cool. And what does that require? It requires Kamille to grow up and become a proper adult, or we're in trouble. But for a boy who's supposed to come into his own, he spends all his time here falling in love, so he's not growing up at all. And in terms of the story leading up to the Zeta Gundam's debut, twenty episodes are already gone.

Which means that across those twenty episodes, Kamille has accumulated a mountain of experiences. And so the creators cannot simply have Kamille transform overnight, one fine day, purely because we want to make the Zeta Gundam look cool. (laughs) The reason I cannot give you a real answer to today’s question, “What will happen when the Zeta Gundam appears?” is that the only honest answer I can offer is, “I have no idea.” (laughs)

Right now, in that sense, we are genuinely at the make-or-break moment. There is the part that should read as a visible surge of mechanical power, and as for questions like what kind of upgrade the ability to transform actually amounts to, I do know that, properly speaking, we ought to stage it in a way that attaches some new sense of value to it. I understand all that perfectly well. But whether we can pull it off skillfully or not, we won't know until we try, so I can't answer beyond this point. (laughs)

ーーThis series introduces Cyber-Newtypes, artificial Newtypes. Could you explain the difference between them and naturally occurring Newtypes?

Tomino: Before we even speak of any fundamental difference between them, the principal reason I decided to introduce Cyber-Newtypes was simply the advancement of biotechnology during the five or six years following the previous Gundam. When I looked at those developments, it occurred to me that if you were to truly and completely put your faith in biotechnology alone, it seemed plausible that you could deliberately and artificially augment human capability. But this is Gundam we're talking about, so it shouldn't manifest as something ESP-like. In other words, I thought, wouldn't there emerge people who say, "Why don’t we create a human being who approximates a Newtype?"

I adopted the concept of the Cyber-Newtype in the hope that, before Zeta Gundam reaches its end, we might be able to raise this very real question, even slightly, “Human technology has already advanced this far.” But when you ask, “Then what is going to happen? What are you going to do with them? What does it all mean?” I cannot answer any of those questions.

And I can't answer not because I'm holding the answers back, but because I don't know. Gundam is a story that, in certain respects, has stepped into very real, very grounded territory, so, going forward, I intend to avoid letting it be driven by the creators' convenience. Whether I can truly do that well, I don't know. Let's see... Speaking to the mood of things leading up to the Zeta Gundam's debut, I suppose I would say that the footage we have produced over the past two or three months is not bad. But in the end, all I can say is this: once the work is out in the world, I want you to judge it with your own eyes.

ーーThe characters who appear in this series all seem to be carrying complexes of their own.

Tomino: I was conscious of that from the planning-document stage. What I mean is this: even if you take just the roughly twenty years from the time we were born, I don't believe there exists a single person who grew up and came of age entirely in peace. So I figured everyone must be carrying something you might call a negative condition or disadvantage. And given how many animated productions are being made these days, I felt it was about time that characters with mindsets (faculties) closer to those of real people appeared in a more tangible form. That said, and this is the same as everything I've said so far, I have absolutely no idea what will become of these people by the time the story ends. But watching today's voice recording session, I find myself thinking, "Ah, so this is how she sounds, so this is the kind of character she is. Then surely this girl will end up going down this path? And this fellow will probably turn out that way? And this one, he seems a bit oblivious; he pushes too hard, so is he going to get himself killed somewhere along the line? And even if he doesn't die, maybe he simply won't show up again?" I'm sensing all of this practically in real time as I build the next part of the story, and I've honestly waded in so deep that I catch myself thinking, "Hang on?! Is this thing actually going to wrap up in fifty-two episodes?" (laughs)

What genuinely frightens me now is my position as the man responsible for holding all of Zeta Gundam together. I can no longer be a director. (laughs) I am not a director at all. (laughs) That said, I am the one who has to pull it all together, so I do intend to make them listen to me somewhere along the way, but I can no longer manage them by plan on paper alone. That is, I can no longer say, "This one appeared in such-and-such episode, so let's retire him," or "Let's have him bow out." The one time I did that deliberately, well, I don't actually know whether she dies, but everyone insists she died. Everyone who's seen the episode, that is. I had absolutely no intention of killing her. In other words, the extremely ambiguous manner in which I removed the character Rosamia was about on the same level as Lyla, and perhaps a touch heavy-handed; I'll grant that much. But beyond that point, I'm hopeless. I simply don't know. I can't even control the characters' entrances and exits at my own convenience anymore. (laughs)

ーーPlease tell us about your intentions in bringing Amuro Ray, the protagonist of the previous series, back in the form that you did.

Tomino: It's this: even in animation, characters grow older. So yes, by my own design, I did sketch out a certain amount of the relationship between Kamille and Amuro in advance. But things blew far, far past those plans. Originally, I intended to bring Amuro out for about two episodes and then kill him off. That was at the planning-document stage. And yet, in the end, he's still alive. What does that mean? When you watch a boy looking at someone standing right in front of him, a senior figure, five or six years older, how is he influenced, and how does he change? You can simply say, “Because this particular event occurred, the character reacted in this particular way.”

But I felt that with Gundam, we must not do that. And the instant I felt that, the man who was supposed to die in three or four episodes, it began to feel as though the author was simply acting on his own selfish whims. And then Kamille says he hates Amuro, and Amuro says he hates Kamille. By the logic of the generations, the two of them were supposed to be enemies, and yet at last week's recording session, in the final scene, there they are shaking hands. And when someone asks me, "Well, what is that about?" All I can do is answer, in Gundam's own fashion (laughs), "Isn't that simply what it means for human beings to live?" And no matter how much praise we receive, these characters are all bustling about in places beyond their creators' control, so about half the credit doesn't belong to me. They're the ones who made it work so beautifully. I am nothing more than the coordinator. If we are praised, then I'll be happy. And to have been a member of the staff of a work that earns such praise, and moreover, one of the people who held its central concept, that, I will permit myself to boast about.

Speaking of the work as it stands up through today's recording session: borrowing the form of a business venture, I've been given the chance to depict something like a single, singular drama, and it has been a truly valuable experience.