Kei Shindo & Director Seiji Mizushima Visited GUNDAM Café TOKYO! A Report of the Special Talk Program Held on November 15th

A special talk program was held on Sunday, November 15th, at the experience-based entertainment restaurant GUNDAM Café TOKYO BRAND CORE (GUNDAM Café TOKYO).

The special program was split into two parts.
Part 1 was the full version of G DIMENSIONS EX DINNER SHOW CELESTIAL BEING SURPRISE PARTY, including actor staff members.
For Part 2, Kei Shindo, the voice actor of Wang Liu Mei from Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Director Seiji Mizushima and MC Hyori Takahashi appeared as special guests. The talk show focused on exciting topics around the Gundam 00 series.

Director Mizushima also took part in creating the menu for the CELESTIAL BEING SURPRISE PARTY. He emphasized that “instead of the meals being just food with extra details added to make it relate to the character, it should be something that the character themselves would eat”. He told us this was the idea they used to create the menu. Fans were excited about Setsuna’s “Ghalieh Mahi”, which brought up the fact that the creators had researched the meal. It was revealed that in a way, they reimported the dish.
Kei Shindo tried all three dishes from the main menu, saying the “Ghalieh Mahi” was her favorite. She didn’t have any idea what kind of food it was at the time of recording, but said: “It was delicious, and I’m glad I finally had the opportunity to try it”.

The main topic for the event was Mobile Suit Gundam 00. After it was mentioned that it’s been 13 years since the series aired, the guests felt “it went by in a flash”, and “it doesn’t feel like 13 years have passed”.

Kei Shindo also talked about her first interaction with Wang Liu Mei. To everyone’s surprise, she confessed to not knowing she was auditioning for a character on Gundam, and was only provided with some information on the character and didn’t even know who she was interacting with. Once the voice actors were confirmed, she realized for the first time who she’d be voicing from Director Mizushima at the launch party.
But Kei Shindo herself couldn’t quite figure out what Wang Liu Mei was about during the recordings, so she asked for advice from the other actors afterward. She reflected on her feelings at the time, saying she was “afraid of the director and couldn’t talk to him about it”.

Next, we were able to view the appearances of Wang Liu Mei from Gundam 00 Season 1. Kei Shindo commented on her first appearance in “Episode 1 Celestial Being”, saying “I remember this phrase had to be retaken so many times…” with a bitter expression on her face.
In “Episode 20 Blade of Reformation”, Wang Liu Mei’s true intentions began to shine through, with Kei Shindo commenting that “this phrase made me even more confused about who Wang Liu Mei is as a person”.
With this, Director Mizushima added “it’s hard to know what’s going to happen during a long TV series, so I made sure it’d be able to handle those kinds of situations. I trickled out

The last scene was from the last episode of Season 1, “Episode 25 Setsuna”. Director Mizushima spoke about the action-packed episode, revealing, “In the script meeting for season two, we put in scenes that weren’t planned initially into the last episode so it would create excitement for the next season.” Not only that, he also talked about the 0 Gundam’s design being similar to the RX-78. “I brought designs such as ones for Gundam Exia to Kunio Ookawara and asked if he could design something based on these, to which he agreed”, receiving shocked reactions from those around the director.

Lastly, Kei Shindo mentioned, “There were so many things I wanted to talk about, but I had fun delving into the world of Gundam 00 after so long”, with Director Mizushima adding, “I hope there will be more talk shows surrounding Gundam 00 at the GUNDAM Café.” And with that, the special talk event drew to a close.