In the Japanese animation industry, there is such a company, it is they who created the unprecedented "hard science fiction" "Wang Li Cosmic Army", it is the originator of their first "girl" + "robot" model "Leap to the Peak", but also they produced the Japanese animation 20 years of sales champion "Evangelion"; Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, Mosayuki, Imaishi Yoyuki, these today's Japanese animation industry's top figures are from this company's door, the name of this company is GAINAX, They are the founders of Japan's "otaku culture", and they are also the last "sci-fi clear stream" in the Japanese animation industry that is now dominated by "dead houses".
Speaking of the development of GAINAX, we have to mention Japan's economic prosperity after the war, with the rise of the Japanese economy in the post-war period in the 1960s, the Ambition of the Japanese people to appeal to political power is also becoming more and more intense, reflected in cultural works such as "Space Battleship Yamato", "Gundam", "Chrono Fortress" and other works, filled with all kinds of huge space battleships, aviation weapons, humanoid robots, undisguised catharsis of the Yamato nation pride and enterprising spirit.
A generation that grew up in the context of such an era, who worshiped robots, machine combat, and loved close-ups and monsters (these kinds of science fiction works are collectively referred to as SF in Japan), among these SF enthusiasts were Okada Doshio, the leader of the so-called "Kansai SF Research Association Alliance" in Osaka, Japan, and three die-hards at the Osaka Academy of Arts in Japan, Hideaki Anno, Hiroyuki Yamaga, and Takami Akai. These future masters of Japanese animation gathered at the 20th SF Conference in Japan in 1981 to start with an animated short film, which finally established their goal of pursuing a future career in the animation industry.
It happened that in that year, the epoch-making science fiction work in the history of Japanese animation, "Time-Space Fortress MACROSS", began to be prepared for production, because of the outstanding performance at the SF Conference, Hideaki Anno and three others were invited by Ichiro Itano, the painting supervisor of the Time-Space Fortress, to join the production team of the Time-Space Fortress, and it was here that several fledgling young people had the opportunity to witness the birth of the fantastic "VF-1 Valkyrie Fighter" in the Time-Space Fortress.
In the "Chrono Fortress" drama, this fictional convertible fighter, the "VF-1 Valkyrie Fighter" uses a thermonuclear engine that is difficult for human technology today, the manufacturer of the VF-1 is named Rockbell, which is self-evidently a combination of Lockheed and Bell, and the engine manufacturer of the VF-1 is simply named after Pratt & Whitney/Rolls-Royce, and the VF-1's iconic variable swept wing also has the figure of the F-14. Under the careful examination of this fantasy fighter born of alien technology in the play, its design features are all from the epitome of real aviation technology, and the designer of the "VF-1 Valkyrie Fighter" is also a 24-year-old young man Masaharu Kawamori.
When Hideaki Anno and the three of them gained insight and honed their level of animation production in the crew of "Chrono Fortress", after going back, at the 21st SF Conference in 1982, they produced a higher-level opening animation "DAICON", in this short film of just a few minutes, the protagonist of the bunny girl image "cut off the horse" of those classic images in the history of film animation such as Gundam, Yamato, Transformers, Ultraman, Godzilla, Xenomorph, Marvel heroes, etc. There is no doubt that such content is not only the "ambition" of Hideaki Anno and others at this time, but also the common inner appeal of Japanese people in that era.
After this series of events, Hideaki Anno got the attention of Hayao Miyazaki, the number one person in the Japanese animation industry, and served as the original painter in Miyazaki's new work "Valley of the Wind", the classic passage of the "Giant God Soldier" vs. "King Worm" in "The Valley of the Wind" is also from his handwriting, and the acquaintance with Mr. Miyazaki is undoubtedly the most important point for Hideaki Anno's animation path, Miyazaki's family was engaged in aviation design before the war, which was directly reflected in the flying machines in his works. Miyazaki's cultivation of Anno is more like a inheritance, a inheritance of the sky and dreams.
In fact, Hideaki Anno did not live up to Miyazaki's hopes, in 1984 Hideaki Anno and Okada Dooso established the animation company GAINAX based on the old team of the previous SF Conference, the name comes from the japanese local dialect, meaning "to describe the most powerful thing", it is such a group of young people who want to do the "most powerful thing" with their excellent animation production level and the previous network of contacts in the animation industry, they actually persuaded Bandai, the top entertainment industry company in Japan. From Bandai, he borrowed a huge sum of 360 million yen as a sponsor to start the production of the anime "Wang Li Cosmic Army".
"Wang Li Cosmic Army" as a 1980s animation, it is about a scientific and technological level similar to the late World War II fictional world, represented by the protagonist of a group of "space army" in the low level of science and technology under the realistic conditions of the low level of science and technology, insist on the development of rocket research, explore the story of space, although the overall intention of the story is to focus on space, but most of its content is still carried out in the atmosphere, especially for propeller fighters, early jet fighters, early aerial refueling, Aircraft carriers, carrier-based aircraft ejections and landings, and fighter air formations have meticulous and meticulous considerations.
In the "Wang Li Cosmic Army" animation for air combat is particularly perfect, at the end of the animation, when the protagonist's country is about to launch a rocket, the enemy country uses advanced jet fighters to improve the range of the rocket launch site by means of aerial refueling, and abandons the auxiliary fuel tank before the air battle to improve the maneuverability of the fighter, when the old propeller fighter of the protagonist country uses the classic tactics of World War II air combat to dive down from the air, the jet fighter quickly throws it away with the speed advantage. In the animation, the propeller fighter also adopted a "Saatchi cut" tactic similar to that of the Chinese and American armies in World War II when fighting the jet, and so on, this series of considerations is extremely rare throughout the history of Japanese animation.
In addition, in order to restore the scene inside the rocket as much as possible, GAINAX even spared the main creative staff to visit NASA to visit the field, almost 100% of the mechanical structure and internal environment of the rocket engine, but since then, the entire animation of "Wang Li Cosmic Army" has finally cost more than 800 million yen, far exceeding the previous budget, and also exposed the problem that GAINAX has been bothering since then, that is, in order to pursue artistic effects and excessive sacrifice of funds, However, at present, such young people finally have a handy work, although they have lost money but have a lot of money, Bandai still expresses support for their next work "Leap to the Peak", and then the story we will put in the next article~