A report on G-Reco's "Creators' Talk Night" packed with inside details!

A special "Creators' Talk Night" event was held September 5th at Shinjuku Piccadilly in Tokyo to conclude the theatrical run of director Yoshiyuki Tomino's new Gundam series Gundam Reconguista in G.

Present were character designer Kenichi Yoshida, mechanical designers Akira Yasuda and Ippei Gyoubu, design coordinator Shigeto Koyama, and Sunrise producer Naohiro Ogata.
Asked to discuss how they joined the project, Yoshida, who has been involved the longest, mentioned "When I was contacted in 2007, I'd planned on making it the last project of my 30s, but now I'm in my mid-40s." At first, when Aida and Bellri were described as "nearly-identical twins", he was "at a loss for how to express a man who could easily be seen as a woman. The character designs really fell into their current forms around the beginning of last year."
Yasuda mentioned that he "had been informally asked before being formally recruited to the project, and had begun independently gathering materials to work on a design". While Yasuda's focus has been on the G-Self, it's based on a design originally created for Gundam's 30th Anniversary.




Gyoubu, primarily an advertising illustrator who is creating his first robot designs, recounted meeting Tomino during planning of a different show. While that project was scrapped, "around a year later, late in 2010, I started receiving calls from an unlisted number, and after a month or two of ignoring them he came to my house only to be greeted by my wife, who was so surprised she accidentally turned him away!" He also laughingly mentioned "Tomino sees himself as a shoe designer, even though he's never designed any shoes"—and raised a chuckle from the crowd by continuing with "but if he works hard at it, there's still plenty of time to make it a reality."
Koyama, fresh out of another meeting, spoke of collaborating on character designs with Yasuda as soon as Yasuda joined the projects. One design stood out in particular: "Aida, we kept working on down to the finest detail, long after Tomino told us 'good enough'."

As a particularly impressive example of Tomino's sheer power, he told of Tomino's reaction to a new suggestion by Yasuda after the screenplay was completed, with the director's anger as if calling down lightning, "it was as if the laws of nature changed and he ascended as a god", "since last September or October he's been working as if possessed and we haven't been able to keep up with him."




While discussing the "Initial Design Sheet" given out to the audience, Producer Ogata explained that Yasuda's Sky Gundam was not in fact an early version of the G-Self: "Last summer, when Tomino was slated to appear in a Sky PerfecTV! commercial, I asked Yasuda to draw a design to cover up the actual G-Self design hanging on the wall of his study. However, it would've been a waste to never see it again, so we've also included it here."
He then let slip another MS detail: "The G-Arcane is designed to transform, and the model kit will transform, but Tomino forgot it could transform so there are no plans to show it transforming in the show."
Also revealed was the legendary Tomino naming process: "Bellri was originally named Beryl, but Tomino's scripts started calling him Bellri instead. When asked about this, he insisted 'I can't be wrong, it's got to be a problem with the name. Plus, if he's named Bellri we can nickname him Bell, right?'" and "Raraiya Monday was named after the day she fell to Earth, but also after Tomino latched onto the word 'Monday' while staring off into space and noticing a calendar on the studio wall."

Last, each participant was asked for a final comment.


Kenichi Yoshida
"Tomino himself is amazing, and G-Reco is great. I hope you all stay tuned to the conclusion."

Akira Yasuda
"Tomino's feeling even better than he did during ∀. He always does great things with Gundam, and I hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am."

Ippei Gyoubu
"It's an honor to have been asked, as an amateur, to create so many mobile suits. I'm still a bit nervous, but I'm looking forward to how it turns out. I hope you enjoy them."

Shigeto Koyama
"These 7 years feel like they've gone by in the blink of an eye, but I hope you'll keep watching to the very end."

Naohiro Ogata
"Tomino is just so powerful. He's said himself that this might be his last TV series, so as people who grew up on his work, I feel like we should all try to thank him, make him feel great by showing him how much we appreciate him. Next year, with 26 episodes safely behind us, I hope to be back here, this time by his side."




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The preview cut is available on d Anime Store from September 8th through September 30th.
The series will air as part of the Animeism programming block, starting late night October 2nd on MBS, October 3rd on TBS and CBC, and October 4th on BS-TBS. The premiere will be an hour-long special with back-to-back airings of episodes 1 and 2.
DVD and Blu-ray releases are also announced, with volume 1 available December 25th and a subsequent volume each month through August.