Original: Motherhood Dystopia
Original author: Tsuneki Uno
Translation: Nonnegative
Proofreader: Chai Lairen
Editor's foreword: It is best to read it together with the previous Miyazaki theory; in addition, the corresponding notes in the main text are not added this time, and they are added later when they are free. Tomino's theory will at least be published in separate articles [upper, middle, lower].
This article is based on CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 published, for personal learning only, if there is a violation of your Bourgeois legal rights, please contact and remind the owner to immediately practice the ethics of running away from the text
Yuki Tomino and the 'Motherly Enemy Oftopia'
The Declaration of the New Century and the Era of the 'New Humanity'
"We hereby declare that our era will be pioneered by animation, and the new century of animation will be unveiled from now on."
On February 22, 1981, Yuki Tomino, the father of Mobile Suit Gundam, made this declaration in front of a young audience. The location is in front of STUDIO ALTA at the east exit of Shinjuku Station. Later, as a show that lasted for thirty years, "Laughing and Smiling Is No Harm!" The live broadcast venue became the mecca of Japan's domestic television variety show culture, and in fact it also became a monument to post-war animation.
From this moment on, the animation boom that began in the late 70s ushered in its peak. Postwar commercial animation, which had been closed off within the framework of children's programming until then, gradually became part of youth culture, and with the popularity of "Space Battleship Yamato", the fan circle of teenagers and teenagers in the country grew, and animation magazines that targeted them were launched. Later, the work that produced a final effect on the trend of the era was "Mobile Suit Gundam", which began to be broadcast in 1979.
Although due to poor sales of derivative toys, this TV animation work was cut off at the beginning of the screening, but it was widely praised by young fans when it was re-screened after the end, and it became the protagonist of the animation boom. The theatrical trilogy of Mobile Suit Gundam was made to repay these fanatical fandom. The "Declaration of the New Century of Animation" was exactly the speech that Tomino encouraged at the publicity campaign of the trilogy.
The key point is that the young people of the time, the new generation that fully enjoyed the new media and subculture born in the consumer society with new sensibilities, coincided with the concept of "New type" that appeared in the work "Gundam".
Originally the protagonist of the general citizen, the young soldier Amro has grown into the ace driver of the army in just a few months, and the new human being is the setting that exists as the reason for its growth rate. It is an "evolutionary" force that human beings in the universe awakened to adapt to the cosmic environment after human beings entered the universe, which can be described as a superpower.
Due to the mystical phenomenon boom of the 1970s, when "superpowers" were mentioned, the mainstream at that time was power that could play a concrete role in the circulation of various magazines and television programs, such as telepathy and telepathy. However, the superpowers of the "new humans" created by Tomino in Gundam give a very different impression.
The superpowers that Tomino gives to the "new humans" are extremely general and the descriptions are very abstract. Awakened as a "new human" person is able to transcend distance and time, even beyond the barrier of speech, and unconsciously "feel" the existence and thoughts of other human beings. This can be said to be Tomino's extremely unique view of superpowers. I think few writers would come up with the idea that when humanity begins to adapt to the cosmic environment, its cognitive power will expand in this form.
And this concept of "new humanity" eventually coincides with a social movement outside the work. It has been suggested that one of the etymology of "New Humanity", which later became popular in various media, was "New Humanity", and I think the background of the close connection between the animation boom of the time represented by the "New Century Manifesto" and the generational theory mentioned above.
The young people of the time did not see post-war animation as a vulgar form of children's entertainment, but as an independent cultural genre, and Tomino's remarks were often considered to contain content that affirmed the sensibility of young people as the sensibility of a new generation. The "new humanity" depicted in the story at that time was both a human innovation and a perceptual metaphor for a new generation corresponding to a new medium in real society, as stated in the "Manifesto for a New Century of Animation.".
Needless to say, Tomino's series of speeches during this period also contained a certain ironic significance. As we all know, most of the TV animation at that time was essentially just a commercial film made to sell toys and recover production costs, and radish slices (robot animation) were a "vulgar" type of animation that blatantly put this commerciality in the first place. Tomino's strategy is to do the opposite, by making this type of radish slice to carry out surprise attacks, in order to seek the evolution of post-war animation and its social environment.
This not only means that Tomino's seditious speech is partly a self-made clown (道化として), but it also means that the animations he produces and the ideas expressed in them are more serious and solemn than anyone else. Tomino ironically played the role of a clown during this period, constantly stirring up trouble, precisely because he believed in the idea of "New type" and the sensibility of the new generation corresponding to new forms of media.
But from some point on, However, Tomino not only abandoned his own ideal of a new human being, but even made people feel that he had despaired of the "modern" era. Especially in the late 1980s and 1990s, he repeatedly expressed pessimistic and desperate perceptions of the status quo and prospects for the future, which was almost the same as the "Declaration of the New Century" period.
In short, people who are called ordinary people, fools, and people can only die one by one. Because human beings are still so young, I think this unsaved world will have to continue. [3]
Faced with the problems that befall them, people always like to delay the time to answer. This is how the solution to environmental problems is, so it seems troublesome. Reducing the production and not using energy is obviously a problem that can be solved by killing out the cause of the problem. Then there is the reduction in the number of people. Still, it was we who made laws like fastening seat belts, and it was really unsaved. [4]
The ideas expressed in These statements by Tomino are almost synonymous with those of the villains who appear in his works, namely the "national" villain, the "red comet" Shaya Aznapur.
In summary... Only sooner or later will grief spread, eventually destroying the entire planet. That being the case, human beings have to judge themselves—they must atone for their sins to nature, to the earth. (Mobile Suit Gundam Strikes Back at Shaya)[5]
Carosso despaired of the humans and died.
And those who survive will survive despite understanding that the number of humans is too large for the planet, they will still survive without a solution. (Yuki Tomino, Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (Part 2))[6]
Yes, for Tomino, animation is not something that separates fiction from reality, but exists as part of reality, creating a bridge between the individual and the world. Therefore, the ideas expressed by the villains led by Xia Ya in the anime are also Tomino's thoughts about the real world. Therefore, the conviction that "some realities are only fictional stories and only animations can depict" is the backbone of Tomino's work. This is not only a matter of commercialization as the main battlefield of Tomino, but also of post-war animation and even subculture itself. It is precisely because Tomino actively undertakes this task that he has lost the ideal of a new human being.
The question I want to raise here is how Tomino fell into despair and fought against it. Tomino used to promote the concept of "new humans" during the adolescence of animation and became the darling of the times. But after that, he faced the era when the "new human beings" were forced to be born and the difficult situation of the market, so he could not carry out creative activities in a favorable and leisurely environment. However, this also means that Tomino is confronted with problems that many other contemporaries of Japan have turned a blind eye to, only to deceive the audience by spreading lies that even they cannot believe.
Tomino's creative activity was an extremely radical movement to intervene and self-destruct the system of robot animation( an animation genre that directly undertook the issue of post-war animation). As one of the backbones of post-war animation, Tomino made a decisive contribution to the characteristics of subsequent animation and even the subculture in Japan. In other words, Tomino's (or rather, Xiaya's) despair is the tipping point of Japan's postwar imagination, and it means that it is a huge reef we are bound to face.
In the fourth chapter, I will follow the footsteps of the times to pursue Tomino's creative activities. Since a certain period, Tomino's creative activity has become a problem of trying to escape from the bottom of the gravity well he has created, and the old writer still has not found the answer. But by pursuing his work, we should be able to see where the walls and gravity that surround us come from.
The Man Who Defiled Astro Boy and The Prince of the Sea
The time when Tomino began working as an animation writer by Yuki can be traced back to the first domestic TV animation in history, "Astro Boy". After graduating from university, Tomino worked at Osamu Tezuka's Bug Productions Co., Ltd. and debuted as a producer during the screening of Astro Boy. After that, he became the person who directly directed "Astro Boy". Having said that, the later "Astro Boy", which was mostly headed by Tomino, fell into the dilemma of the production schedule, so it added a lot of story-thin routines such as "In short, let Astro Boy punish evil robots" to fool the audience. Tomino once recalled that at that time, the front-line production staff of the Worm Production Company were transferred to produce new programs, so the later "Astro Boy" could only be produced by the second-line personnel. As the main bearer of the later performance of "Astro Boy", he is a person who defiles Astro Boy.
People like me have also been performing in "Astro Boy" since then, and have become the longest-serving employees of "Astro Boy". And the result I don't think need to say more, because I made more and more films, and Astro Boy not only lost the lyrical style of Osamu Tezuka, but even the sci-fi spirit of Toyoda Yuheng no longer existed. This four-part astro boy lasted for two years, tarnishing the entire astro boy series.
No wonder Mr. Tezuka went crazy. [7]
However, contrary to his own recollections, there are also comments that tofuno's "Green Knight" and other episodes are excellent even in the deteriorated "Second Army" version of Astro Boy. Tomino's more than half-century career is not so much about making commercial animations like robotic action movies in response to market demand, but rather about using that demand to expand the form of animation. It can be said that this struggle has had a beginning since the beginning of his debut.
After that, Tomino quit bug productions and for a time moved away from animation to making commercials and other programs. After returning to the industry as a freelance producer, he also participated in a considerable number of animations in the 60s and 70s. Coincidentally, Tomino's first work as a director during his time as a freelance producer was Tezuka's original television anime Sea Prince (1972).
Producer Yoshiaki Nishizaki, who started the animation boom with the fire of space battleship Yamato, received an imaging license from Osamu Tezuka, and the tv animation version of "The Sea Prince" was the result. Due to the deterioration of the operating conditions of the worm production company, the visualization of this work was actually semi-mandatory. Considering this production situation, the content of the animated version of "Sea Prince" is under the sole responsibility of Tomino. At that time, TV animation was mainly for children, but Tomino's "Sea Prince" won the support of teenagers, especially women. Unprecedentedly, after the six-month screening, fans spontaneously created a national fan club. This movement, which Sasakigo called "animation adolescence", was also a prelude to the subsequent animation boom.
So, how is "The Sea Prince" different from the previous animation?
The answer is that Tomino has been very intentional in implementing two post-war animation issues in his work. That is, the symbolic body depicts growth and death (Astro Boy's proposition) and the reality that can only be achieved through fantasy (Godzilla's proposition). This is very rare in the TV animation of the same period.
For example, at the beginning of the story, the protagonist Ah Zhong, who is the last descendant of the Terry tong tribe of the seaman, is adopted by Japanese fishermen, but because of the difference in hair color, he is persecuted by other local villagers. At that time, animation was a world of so-called "conventions" full of children's coaxing, but Tomino did not follow this trend. At the beginning of the story, he simulates the descendants of the ancient sea people growing up in modern Japanese society.
Such performances take advantage of the sense of discord caused by the deliberate introduction of realism into animation as fantasy. By allowing things that were otherwise logically different to coexist in the same picture, Tomino succeeded in making the (= symbolic realism) body of the manga coexist with the film's (= natural realism) body. To be precise, although he superficially drew the symbol of the body, in essence, he performed the symbol as reality. It can be said that this is the Tomino-style pursuit of the "Astro Boy Proposition" undertaken by Osamu Tsuka.
Viewers are at a loss for the sudden realism when watching an animation that should have been made up of a children's show's "convention." At that time, the audience witnessed the moment when the highly fictional fantasy world (animation) clashed with reality. And the collision of fiction and reality also reveals the essence of the real world - the absurdity (disorganization), evil, and ugliness of human beings, which everyone wants to escape. Tomino's animation is like this, so that the audience has to face the reality that can only be depicted through fantasy. This is both Tomino's performance concept during this period and his thoughts on the form of animation as a form of expression.
Upon learning of the existence of Poseidon, the enemy of the Tribe of Terry, Ah Chung embarks on an adventure with his companions who have awakened to their mission to guard peace at sea from the Poseidon. However, at the end of this adventure, Tomino prepares a decisive value subversion ending that Tezuka's original works do not have.
In the final episode, Ah Zhong and his companions launch a general attack on the Base of the Poseidon and succeed in victory. The story is supposed to have a great reunion, but the surprising facts are revealed one after another. The Poseidon had originally established an urban hermitage in the depths of the sea to escape the persecution of the Triton, and the battles so far have been the Poseidons' self-defense war against the Terrys. In addition, the undersea city collapsed due to Ah Zhong's attack, and the Poseidon tribe, including ordinary citizens, did not survive. Then, in front of Ah Zhong's eyes were the corpses he had inadvertently caused in the wilderness—the citizens of poseidon, the undersea city of Poseidon, which had been completely destroyed. Ah Zhong learned that his hands were stained with a large amount of blood from the results, and he was stunned by this reality.
What does this value subversion mean? Ah Zhong is facing the reality that cannot be told (story). The Tritons and Poseidons, the composition of good and evil that has always surrounded these two races, is completely reversed in the last ten minutes of the final episode. This is not only the destruction of the premise of the whole story of "The Sea Prince", but also the destruction of the culture of post-war animation that presupposes (under the constraints of children's programs) the fairy tale of punishing evil and promoting good.
The story ends with Ah Zhong's victory, but it does not describe in detail how Ah Zhong faced the fact that he killed a large number of innocent citizens. Because it is no longer possible to depict the fairy tale world using the body of the symbol, in the fictional world of animation. This is an area of reality that cannot be told.
Importantly, Tomino explicitly sees his encounter with a reality that cannot be told as an opportunity for the young protagonist to grow up. Ah Zhong led his companions and disappeared into the sea wordlessly. At this point, the pure teenager who appeared at the beginning of the story no longer exists. Ah Chung, who left the fiction (= animation) of a fairy tale under the constraints of children's programs, plunged into the reality of intelligence and complexity that could not be told, and matured as a result.
Destroy fiction (the body of symbols/realism of the comic) by connecting reality (the body of naturalism/realism of cinema) and reveal the nature of reality. This was Tomino's methodology at that time, and Tomino created it through fiction = animation and knowing reality as a condition for maturity. Moreover, Tomino's methodology deepened after meeting the type of animation that developed greatly in the 1970s and determined the character of postwar animation, namely robot animation.
Animated robots and the "body" after the war
At the end of 1972, when "Little Flying Dragon" was released, a television animation that stirred up a huge wave in the history of post-war animation and children's culture began to be broadcast. At the beginning of the screening of Nagai's original "Demon God Z", it gained explosive support among boys across the country, setting a record for high-finish toys known as 'super alloy'.
Instead of "driving" with the robot setting inherited from Iron Man 28, the Demon God Z became a car and a motorcycle-like vehicle. This not only more directly caters to the teenagers' growing desires, but also imagines a huge and idealized body for them.
In this way, the mechanical body that consolidated its position among the teenagers living in the post-war society took root and became a new type of animation- robot animation. "Gate Robot", "Big Demon God" (also 1974~75), "UFO Demon God Gulandesa" (1975~77) - The 1970s were the era of robot animation for male children. The emerging form of robot animation was established step by step, both as a genre that was hated by Osamu Tezuka in the past, and as a masochistically described by Tomino, who later became his standard-bearer, as something "vulgar". Cookie-cutter protagonists drive righteous robots to destroy evil robots, thereby indulging young children in omnipotent feelings and emotional catharsis —these works do have more complex and diverse chapters, but for toy manufacturers and sponsors, this period of radish slices is at best a thirty-minute weekly commercial. Animation was already low in Japanese society at that time as a children's program, and radish slices were even more heavyweight, becoming synonymous with low-level programs.
At that time, tomino, a freelance performer who half-jokingly called himself a "wandering storyboarder" and "performed a storyboard [絵コンテ] Thousand Cuts", also became associated with the robot animation boom. For example, he was the director of Brave Raiden (BraveRyden) (1975-76). The creator of the work was an animation studio founded by the staff of the former Bug Productions Company (which went bankrupt in 1973) and was operating as an outsourcing company for a major production company. In this way, the creative studio called Tomino, who was also from the Worm Company, to be the director of "Brave Raiden".
However, in order to differentiate itself from the previous radish chips such as Demon God Z, Raiden adopts a setting linked to supernatural power (the protagonist is a royal descendant of the ancient Mu Empire, who uses superpowers to drive the ancient robot weapon Raiden). This clashed with the opinions of the TV station that was critical of the mysterious phenomenon at the time, and Tomino was forced to leave the director's seat about half a year after the broadcast.
Taking over to Tomino's place was Tadao Hama, the head of the show, who directed works such as Giant Star (1968-71). Nagahama then directed works such as Ultra Electromagnetic Man Kongpatra V (1976-77) and Super Electromagnetic Man Porugis V (1977-78), in which Nagahama's scripting successfully unfolded a high-density story within the framework of radish tablets being occupied by elements of toy propaganda [ pre-ed], coupled with the depiction of classical tragic American characters, which gained the support of young audiences outside the target group. He also became one of the people who built the foundation for the subsequent animation boom. After the change of director of "Brave Redden", Tomino accepted this arrangement as a performer and participated in the production of the same work and many other Nagahama works under nagahama's command. In his own book, Tomino expressed his distaste for the humiliation of the left move and his disdain for Nagahama's use of manga-like exaggerated performance style, he also admitted that he had been greatly influenced by Nagahama as a former performer.
With a new style of radish slice directed by Nagahama, Chuangyingsha, as an outsourced production company, became independent from Tohoku Shinsha in 1976 and established Sunrise (now SUNRISE) in Japan, and began production of the first original animation "Invincible Superman Zambo 3" in 1977. The director who was chosen for this work was Tomino, who was dismissed during "Brave Redden".
Zambo/Titan 3
Invincible Superman Zambo 3 is a feature of Tomino's work after applying the methodology he established during the Sea Prince period to the anime genre of the Evolution of The Strange [Evolution of the Strange Shape], the post-war robot animation.
The stage was in Japan at that time (70s). The enigmatic cosmic man Gaizok suddenly attacks Earth one day and begins to kill humans. They were able to compete with the last descendants of the Bian people who fled to Earth after their homeland was destroyed by Gaizok. The teenage protagonist, Kamikaze, and his family (the Shin clan) pilot the giant robot Zambo 3 inherited from their ancestors and begin a battle with Gaizok.
At first glance, this introduction may give the illusion that the game is an advertisement that is completely faithful to the commercial needs of the toy market at that time, but instead, Tomino tries to introduce stubbornness and strong realism into the robot animation that has been ridiculed as a "thirty-minute toy advertising film". In contrast to Nagahama, who used the form of robot animation to write about the classical tragedies of the pre-era era, Tomino directly applied the techniques he used during the "Sea Prince" period to "Zambo 3", directly allowing the formality and fantasy of the radish slices to collide tit-for-tat with reality.
For example, in this game, there is a scene in which a local police officer wants to ban the robot driven by the protagonists for violating the road traffic law. The significance of this scene is not simply to use naturalistic realism to criticize the various conventional routines in the turnip film. Because the Shen family was persecuted by the local residents to the same extent as the former Ah Zhong, even above it.
Although the Shin clan fought to protect the earth from Gaizok, rumors that they were the culprits of Gaizok's attack on the earth spread, and the destruction of the earthlings caused by them. The first half of the game repeatedly depicts the persecution of the Shin clan and the struggle to fight Gaizok at the same time. Therefore, Tomino deliberately introduced such a realistic approach as "banning giant robots for violating road traffic laws" in the radish film, which in a sense further magnified the ugliness and inferiority of human nature.
The ending of "Zambo 3" also subverts the composition of punishing evil and promoting good that has always made the story possible (in robot animation).
At the expense of most of his family, Kam katsuhei finally pushes Gaizok to a desperate situation, but at this time he learns the truth that it is like a thunderbolt on a sunny day. There is a program in the universe that obliterates the existence of intellectual beings with evil spirits, and Gaizok is actually a group of robots that follow the program's commands. Whether it was The Planet Bian in the past or the Earth in the present, it was only automatically attacked because it was judged to be a lifeform of a bad quality.
Even if Katsuhira rebutts the computer that controls Gaizok and says that "people who live on Earth are good people," it won't be able to reverberate in the hearts of viewers. The audience who has been chasing the ending has seen countless times the scene of selfish and violent earthlings persecuting the God Clan in order to exclude dissidents. The computer asks why Katsuhira sacrificed his family to protect such a nasty existence, facing the computer's "Why fight\Reason to fight?". This question, Shengping did not give a clear answer.
The story ends with Katsuhira, who survived alone on his way to the front line, returning to his hometown of Suruga Bay. Like Ah Chung before, the ending does not describe how Katsuhira confronts the facts he learns, or specifically how he goes on to get along with the earthlings who greet him warmly as a tool man who treats himself as a good tool ( DuHe よく). Because this is not fiction (= animation) but belongs to the realm of "reality". Katsuhira, like Ah Zhong, also bids farewell to his former teenager on the day he is thrown into the ocean of reality.
For Tomino, Zambo 3 is a battle for revenge for his own work in the past—the "tarnished man" who once turned his helm towards the deterioration of robot animation, and the countless toy commercials in the robot animation boom.
The creation of false and huge mechanical bodies in response to teenagers' desire to grow up is the essence of Japanese animation robots, and the robot animation boom in the second half of the 1970s was nothing more than a social phenomenon that combined it with the theory of commodity marketing. Tomino intervenes in this way, practicing the circuit of robot animation in reverse, stubbornly depicting the growth story of a teenager. To promote the maturity of teenagers by constantly piercing the flaws of self-realization brought about by the hypocritical body is the retrograde strategy adopted by Tomino in the robot animation.
Including the sales of toys, Zambo 3 achieved good commercial results, and Tomino was able to continue to serve as the director of the robot animation Invincible Steelman Titan 3 (1978-79), which was also led by SUNRISE. Titan 3 is an action drama with a comedic style.
Set in the future, the protagonist and his friends gorgeously tackle the crimes committed by the secret organization of the mechanized reformer [Cyborg], known as the MeccaNoyds— a cool film that is very different from the heroic previous game Zambo 3.
The protagonist, who bears the joke-like name of The Broken Arashi, appears as a mature man in the first episode of this game. With a long waist, a clear mind and a strong body, he can also act as a clown to ease the atmosphere if necessary - this is the perfect Superman. Then, the protagonists of past robot animations do not need to rely on fictional mechanical bodies to achieve a pseudo-mature Wanzhang why they should drive robots and why they fight.
The driving force behind the sunny Manjo is his revenge on his deceased father, the maker of the mechanical transformation man is his father who is plunged into madness, and his father not only kills Manjo's mother and brother in order to develop the mechanical transformation man, but also transforms Manjo into a mechanical artificial man - these settings are constantly revealed as the plot progresses. In order to take revenge on his father, he wants to destroy the mechanical transformation of people who are trying to rebel against humans and stop their plot. The protagonist's motives for breaking the sky are set in this way. At the end of the story, The Manju who destroyed the mechanical transformation man disappears after uttering an inexplicable line, "僕は, 疑だ (I, hate)".
There was a variety of discussions about how to interpret this ending during the screening. However, I am afraid that we do not need to look for answers from the perspective of the integration of the story. What really has to be considered here is the implication of the fact that at first glance it seems to be an "adult male" and therefore does not need to forge a mechanical body, but it is very likely that it is the same as the robot artificial man whom he despises.
That is, unlike past robot animations, titan 3's story doesn't allow the teenager to achieve a false maturity after gaining a hypocritical mechanical body, but rather forces him to keep dragging a mechanical body that can't be refused\ forced to obtain to pretend to mature.
In the final episode, Manjo hears the voice of his deceased father during a fierce battle with the leader of the Reformers. The auditory hallucinations allowed The man who was caught in the bitter battle to regain his strength, but this unfolding did not mean that manjo and his father had reached a spiritual reconciliation. Not only that, but Heranaka rejected his father's voice by saying, "Do you want to apologize to me?" and said to himself, "This is my strength," and single-handedly turned the tide of the war and won the victory.
This is a self-denial of Japanese robot animation as a vessel for boys' desire to grow up.
Grandfathers and fathers (depicted in most occasions as scientists or military cadres) gave the teenager a false mechanical body to achieve self-realization—it is clear that the existence of Manjo is a rebellion against this Japanese theory of robot animation. His motivation for fighting stemmed from his father and the body given by him (?). This is evidenced by the disgust.
Although the last sentence of the previously mentioned Manjō, "僕は, だ", does not have a clear meaning, the negativity contained therein is undoubtedly directed at the forged mechanical bodies of mechanical transformations of humans and robots. I am afraid that Wan zhang himself is also one of the objects.
If the concept of the previous game's "Zambo 3" is to take a realistic expression of contradiction [retrograde] that only animation can only be achieved under the constraints of radish slices, "Titan 3" is a war book against the formalized "adult males" in radish slices. The way Tomino depicts and elucidates the question of maturity and the "astro boy proposition" is to show in the form of irony the consciousness of the hypocrite (the mechanical giant body is) and the fact that only through the false body can one become an adult.
Zambo/Titan's constant groping is a guerrilla war, trying to counteract a wave of performance that only animation can do in the commercial constraints of turnip slices for children. The battle was both commercial (toy sales) and cultural (support from both teenage and adult fans during the anime boom). With these achievements, in April 1979, "Mobile Suit Gundam", the masterpiece of the production team centered on Tomino and also an epoch-making post-war animation work, was released.
Mobile Suit Gundam and the adolescence of the anime
The following week, the following show "Mobile Suit Gundam" began to be broadcast. Although it was cut off due to poor ratings and toy sales at its first screening, its popularity continued to expand as it was rebroadcast, becoming the core of the animation boom of the early 1980s. In response to the enthusiasm of the fan base, the theatrical version of the trilogy based on the content of the tv anime version was announced, and it was in this boom that Tomino issued the "New Century Manifesto".
As mentioned earlier, this was both the culmination of the intense animation boom of the late 1970s and the moment when postwar animation evolved from a children's program to one of the youth cultures that represented a consumer society. As Sasaki Said, due to the expansion of the age group of the audience, post-war animation really ended its infancy and ushered in adolescence. The social phenomenonization of Gundam is the pinnacle of "animation's adolescence".
More than half a century after humanity began to migrate to the universe due to overpopulation, side3, the farthest space colony from Earth, was renamed the "Principality of Gion", provoking a war of independence against the Earth's federal government. After the "SIDE7" where he lived was burned down due to air raids, the young Amro was recruited by the Federal Army, and he became the driver of the new weapon "Gundam".
Compared with the previous robot animation, the audience of "Gundam" has suddenly risen in age. Set against the backdrop of the Colonial War of Independence in the era of cosmic immigration, it launches a youth group portrait drama around the growth story of the young soldier Amro.
The autistic and naïve protagonist Amro is the doppelganger of the audience who is assumed to be a teenager. Troubled by self-awareness and a sense of distance from society, it hurts just a little friction with the people around you. Amro is neither a "righteous partner" like the protagonist of the turnip slices of the past, nor does he act with a certain ideological motivation like a military teenager/activist. He always sat in the cockpit of the Gundam with the idea of "being caught up in the war unconsciously", and if he was reprimanded by the commander, he would make a fuss and say awkwardly, "Who will fly the Gundam again!" ”。 Nevertheless, after his talents are recognized, he will think smugly that "I am the best person to drive gundam.".
What about Shaya Aznapur, who became the arch-enemy of Amro and the representative of the "national" villain of the post-war anime. Nicknamed "Red Comet", Chaya has a flawless setting, a genius warrior as the ace pilot of the Gion Army, and his true identity is the orphan of the founder of the principality who wants to avenge his father– but his interior is contrary to this excess setting, eroded by nihilism. Chaya fought and maneuvered magnificently against Gundam, but nothing could be trusted by him. Needless to say, he did not even believe in the value of his revenge until the end. What essentially drove Xia Ya was only the momentary desire for survival brought to him by the battlefield, and the interest in the unknown possibility of a new human being born on the battlefield. Like Amro's introverts, Chaya's nihilism was in tune with the atmosphere of the young people who were the people involved in the animation boom of the time, living in the era after the end of the "political season."
If "The Prince of the Sea" and "Zambo 3", depicted as a juvenile upbringing novel, expanded the form of postwar animation from fairy tales to real history, thus reflecting the end of the juvenile period of the Japanese animation genre, "Gundam" tells the story of a teenager in adolescence and bears the fiction of history. In other words, it undertook the adolescence of post-war animation by depicting the inner world of a realistic teenager living in an era without revolution. So how did the "animation adolescence" come about?
In the context of the entire animation boom at that time, the original Gundam was first recognized as a work that raised the level of animation depiction in both story and performance. Its images are rated as "real" by fans. Judging from articles in animation magazines at the time and testimonies of relevant personnel, detailed depictions of the performances of the characters, thorough simulations of future society based on imaginary history (cosmic century) and virtual scientific settings, and the use of robots as modern military weapons such as tanks and fighter jets (Mobile Suit) are all listed as "real" elements.
However, we should focus on why they get a sense of "reality" in these elements. Originally, animation, a strongly fictional approach to expression, was difficult to associate with "realism". However, because Gundam is an anime, it can acquire realism that plays a strong role in this era.
For convenience, I would like to summarize the innovation of Gundam here into the following three points. First, a unique realism based on the use of the characteristics of animation (precisely because it is the opposite way of doing it); second, it constructs a hypothetical reality against the background of the empty historical setting of the cosmic century; third, it invents a new robot image "Mobile Suit", which sets off a revolution in the domestic model market in Japan. It can be said that the intricate relationship between these three elements allows Gundam to update the standard of depiction and social function of post-war animation.
So, let's examine these three elements step by step.
Gundam as a movie
Now when I go back to the original Gundam, I am afraid that many viewers will be surprised by its performance, especially the detailed description of the relationship between the characters. I am no exception, the protagonists' every move is more vivid than the movies and TV series, which is the first impression of the elementary school students when I watched the original Gundam on videotape.
For example, Ryusuke Glacier analyzed Tomino's character descriptions and performances in detail in Gundam as a Movie. Glacier mentions in the article, for example, there are scenes of characters talking in the elevator of a warship for less than tens of seconds. Glacier points out that Tomino's simple dialogue and almost all of the characters on the scene are animated performances where they stand and talk, and the complex interpersonal relationships between the crew members can be said to be too detailed. [11]
It is precisely because of the "yes" that animation is possible to perform with such high precision. It can be said that Tomino has gained a dramatic realism that is more accurate than live-action films through the use of animation, the most easy-to-control way of visual expression. Generally speaking, in order to make it easier for stories to be shared by different people, the complexity and amount of information of reality are organized and integrated according to the author's intentions. To make a story real is almost equivalent to maintaining story-style organization and integration while obtaining a level of complexity and intelligence that rivals reality. If it is a live-action movie, to reflect this complexity and amount of intelligence, it is necessary to work the setting of the environment such as shooting location, scene layout, scene props, etc., and at the same time, it will also be influenced by the actor's acting skills and the performance plan formulated by the director. However, animation only needs to have the director's performance plan to decide all the other elements together. Animation is the most efficient way to obtain the expression of cinematic realism. Tomino took advantage of the maneuverability of the animation to show a performance that was clearer and clearer than the live-action image [high resolution].
In the 1970s, Takahata and others often used the director's unique high dominance in animation to acquire cinematic realism with higher accuracy. Tomino's achievement is to apply this technique to the genre of robot animation, which is far from naturalistic/cinematic realism, as if successfully constructing a virtual reality in which the characters live in a different history.
But at the same time, tomino's performance did go a step further.
For example, Tomino often asks the characters to speak their emotions as if they were acting in a play directly as a line. "I really don't want to admit it, those mistakes I made because I was young" "I'm sorry, I still have a place to go back." There is nothing more gratifying than that. Can you understand me? These representative lines are not inner monologues, but self-talk as characters, appearing frequently in touching and important storylines. At this time, the dramatic realism that directly tells the audience about the inner life of the characters into lines is involved in the cinematic and naturalistic realism.
As a result of this dramatic realism, Tomino's animations, which would have been more prone to deviating from being too accurate, were unified on a higher meta level. At the same time, this intervention allows the mood of the characters in Gundam to be directly expressed, so that even if they often say new words or special terms that are not detailed in the play (in reality), the audience can still keep up with the rhythm of the story.
In an interview after that, Tomino said that "the performance of the animation performance is actually very high." The so-called 'performance of animation' is brought about by the nature of animation, that is, only what the writer wants to express can appear on the picture / Everything that the writer wants to express can appear on the picture. Using his "performance", Tomino has successfully mixed different types of realism (mainly through the use of dramatic lines in higher dimensions) in the same shot. Such performances that use "the performance of animation" underpin a more "accurate" depiction than in live-action films. Tomino is in stark contrast to Hayao Miyazaki, who cycles between naturalistic realism and symbolic realism, emphasizing the joy of animation. Using the performance of animation, he deduced a clearer space than the reality depicted by naturalistic realism.
As another "cosmic century" of history
On the other hand, the fictional chronology "Cosmic Century" is set to ensure realism that uses animation performance at the level of worldview. The biggest feature of the Mobile Suit Gundam series is that it sets the fictional chronology as the background of the story and carefully constructs another history and society.
In this game, Tomino further implements the methodology of Zambo 3 and simulates the actual world of robots. The setting that makes this more thorough simulation possible is the fictional history of humanity's cosmic epoch = the fictional cosmic chronology.
In this fictional history, the characters are "born, grown, and then die", and the play depicts only one of the historical scenes - this is the way Gundam tells the story, with a more explicit description than reality. Established by assuming another reality, another history, in a virtual reality that thoroughly simulates the actions of the people who live there. Tomino assumed that the protagonist Amro Ray and his nemesis, Shaya Aznapur, were real characters, adding a large and detailed setting to them, writing the story while simulating "If it were them, they would have acted this way". Imagining another history and people's lives within fictional reality, and treating the characters as if they were real historical figures—is closely related to Gundam's strong claim to the function of fictional chronology.
This function refers to the function of a "grand narrative" that has gradually disappeared in the history of reality and gives meaning to the life of the individual. The "political season" is receding, and consumer societies are growing—in the 1970s, in developed society, the function of "grand narrative" has waned; however, Gundam's fictional chronology responds to the demands of the times that constantly pursue storytelling (= desire for grand narrative) in fiction when real history is de-storytelled. The men of the Clump Generation would joke that they would live like Sakamoto Ryoma if they were born at the end of the shogunate, while their children would say that if they were born in the Cosmic Century, they would be Shaya. The construction of the pseudo-history of the cosmic century has made possible a passionate society created by the "grand narrative" (which is difficult to establish in Japan's consumer society, but through animation, a highly fictional form of expression, through fantasy). Gundam was successful in confronting the postwar anime proposition of "reality that can only be depicted through fantasy" ("Godzilla's Proposition").
By introducing the concept of a "cosmic century", Gundam has undergone a huge change from Tomino's previous works on the level of fictional effects—especially about the function of post-war robot animation as a juvenile upbringing novel.
Ah Zhong and Shen Shengping are indeed the protagonists living in the story. They violently clash with reality, face the process of collapse from the inside, and become adults after accepting the reality that cannot be told. But Amro is different. Amro has been involved in the Cosmic Century from the very beginning. It is as chaotic and complex as reality, with a society and history that cannot be fulfilled by fairy tales that punish evil and promote good.
In this way, Amro lived in reality from the beginning — in the imaginary reality that was constructed in detail = cosmic century, to be precise. Therefore, the growth route of Ah Zhong and Shen Shengping (escaping from the story = animation) is non-existent for Amro. Instead, it was the history of the cosmic century and the internal growth of society. Amro, who was caught up in an air raid and naturally became a Gundam pilot, eventually grew into an ace driver. In his fictional chronology, he grew from an unknown young soldier to a witness to history. Tomino let the function of robot animation evolve from a story of punishing evil and promoting good in the face of reality = its own impossibility after bankruptcy through ritual circuits, to make up for the historical substitutes that gradually failed to give meaning to personal life in this era.
Tomino created a fictional chronology that was completely outside of reality, and based on this, he succeeded in establishing a modern parenting novel that could not have been established in the post-war consumer society. His guerrilla-like methodology uses the format of Japanese robot animation to depict reality in a way that is unique to animation. However, Tomino himself betrayed this attempt. Specifically, the concept of a "new human" was introduced later in the story of Gundam.
Mobile Suit as a deformed child
The concept of robot weapons = Mobilie Suit proposed in the Gundam series plays a pivotal role in the setting of the worldview along with the "Cosmic Century".
The robots in Gundam are thoroughly portrayed as military weapons on the same level as tanks and fighter jets. The inspiration for this design was inspired by the American science fiction writer Robert E. Lee. The Space suit-type robotic weapon (Powered Suit) appeared in A. Heinlein's Starship Paratrooper (1959) became the same illustration drawn directly by his prototype STUDIO NUE. Although it now seems to be a fairly orthodox depiction, it was an innovative idea at the time. By renaming the Japanese-style "vehicle" to "Mobile Suit," Tomino redefined the robot as a military weapon = an industrial product.
As mentioned in the second part, "robots" in Japan are fictionalized in response to the demands of male children growing up. The release of "Mobile Suit Gundam" in 1979 was on the extension line of the robot animation boom in the 70s, and Tomino also participated in the performance of many works in the boom, and also launched explosive works such as "Invincible Superman Zambo 3" and "Invincible Steelman Titan 3". In addition to Tomino, many members of the "Gundam" production team also took up the burden of robot animation in the 70s, so "Gundam" can be said to be directly related to the robot animation boom opened by "Demon God Z" in a sense. The problem is that this work, which conforms to the trend of robot animation, is also a deformed child in the same genre.
Amro, like the protagonists of previous robot animations (such as Shotaro Kaneda in Iron Man 28 and Tsukiko in Demon God Z), obtained a machine as a body expansion avatar from his existence as a "father". The "father" is sometimes a wall-like presence for teenagers, and in order to resist their pressure (father-killing) teenagers will mature. Sometimes the "father" will bring the truth that the teenager does not belong to the family and promote the socialization of the teenager. For Amro, the Gundam is a robotic weapon developed by his father in order to mature in the form of mechanical = fictional \ pseudo-design. However, Amro's father is in stark contrast to Shotaro's father, who embodies "a better future created by science," and Ko'er's grandfather, and appears as an embodiment of the impossibility of paternality that underpins this view of history.
At the beginning of the story, Amro encounters his father, a military technician, on his way to escape from an enemy air raid. After watching his father issue instructions to protect the Gundam as a priority over the sheltered civilians, Amro directly contradicted himself and said, "Does my father think that the Gundam is more important than a human being?" Amro and his father were then separated by a series of air raids. As a soldier but did not choose to protect the asylum seekers, the rejection of his father became one of The motivations for Amro to drive the Gundam. His father was caught up in the Gundam battle and remains unaccounted for until the second half of the story.
Amro grew into an ace driver as a junior soldier after that. On the other hand, his father suffers from a cosmic illness due to the accident in the first episode, and when he reappears in the second half, he has a mental illness and eventually falls to his death from the stairs due to insanity without being taken care of by his son (in addition, Amro's family is already torn apart, and his mother, who is separated from him, appears in the middle of the story).
Shotaro Kaneda and Tokako drive the unique "super robot" given by the "great father (grandfather)" to fulfill their desire to grow up. Amro piloted his "diminutive father" ignoring the "industrial products" his family had put in, and in the process he had become an adolescent narcissist character by abandoning his father.
Gundam is both the direct bloodline of the fictional mature Japanese "robot" with a mechanical body, and the existence of the masochistic idea that "as a machine that extends and expands the body, it is just an industrial product made by the 'short father'". This can even be said to be a self-critical redefinition of Japanese robot animation that assumed the role of a cushion for the distorted machismo of postwar Japanese men, the solace of "12-year-old boy".
As one of the parties to the robot animation boom in the 1970s, Tomino repeatedly emphasized in interviews that the robot animation at that time was actually a commercial advertisement for the sale of toys, mentioning that "Gundam" was a work that explored the road to independence in such restrictions. Tomino's critical awareness of the commercial limitations faced by television animation at that time gave birth to Gundam's transcendent approach.
Japan's "robots" fictionalize modern masculinity [masculinity] in consumer society, and Mobile Suit is its shaky embodiment. Therefore, if there is a self-awareness of such a background, it must be shaken while ensuring male identity. Mobile Suit is not the only body given to "children" by "fathers", but has to be mass-produced industrial products (= toys?). ）。 Therefore, the drivers of the Mobile Suit are basically male, and the female drivers are obtained with "non-" humanoid weapons, and this "law" is explicitly destroyed in the sequel.
For example, amro piloted the Gundam test machine with only one – considering the level of the game – and although it was a setting that lacked realism, it ensured that it was a special (unique in the world) "body" even though it was an industrial product. In other words, Amro is set up as an existence that can acquire the recognition of his identity even when he uses industrial products given by his diminutive father.
It is the "New Type" that makes this setting possible. This concept defined gundam's worldview, but it also imposed a curse on the huge sequel group that followed, and even Onano himself.
There is no revolutionary world with the idea of "NewType"
The "New Human" was originally a setting added to justify Amro's rapid growth into an ace driver in a short period of time. Depictions of this ability are heavily influenced by the "Force" concept of Star Wars (released in Japan in 1978), while the explanations in the story show the shadow of the mystical phenomenon boom, the American hippie culture of the 70s, and the New Era movement. Specifically, it is possible to communicate directly through telepathy without using language, so that you can intuitively understand others without difference, and obtain a (Buddhist)"- "enlightenment" experience. In addition, the blossoming of human potential as a result of entering the universe is a pseudoscientific theme. After the defeat of the revolutionary story, the concept of "new human beings" came into being in the midst of the global trend of "changing the world rather than changing the world than changing oneself".
Importantly, Tomino defines this superpower as an expansion of cognitive ability [cognitive power] and describes it. The NewType that appears in Gundam is a being that transcends space and correctly perceives the existence of others and even their unconscious levels based on non-verbal communication. This is the evolution of human beings in order to adapt to the cosmic environment, and it is the expansion of human cognitive ability. Although the depiction of the "new human" in the subsequent huge Gundam sequel group has changed dramatically, its basic nature, that is, the non-verbal communication ability that transcends space, has remained the same. Even at an overwhelming distance in the vast expanse of space, new humans can transcend, perceive the presence of others, and directly interact with their hearts [meaning と意が直接に触れ合う]—as if anticipating the contemporary society covered by intelligence networks, I think I am not alone in this way.
In fact, the "new human" is indeed interpreted as a metaphor for the younger generation that held up new sensibilities at that time and adapted to a new intelligence environment and consumer society. Tomino became aware of this fact in the anime boom and actively participated in it.
The concept of the new human being also refers to a new generation that participates in society without reaching maturity in the context of consumer society without robots (= fiction = medium). Therefore, Amro did not become an adult after awakening to the new human, but still defeated the senior pilots (= adult males) of the enemy army as a teenager. In a self-critical form, Gundam inherits the irony of robot animation nurtured by postwar Japanese culture, while also providing another ironic path, that is, a new generation that evolves (not mature but awakens) through industrial products (≒ new mediums) = new humans.
Zambo 3 uses the utopian fantasy of robot animation to express naturalistic realism, while Titan 3 ironically depicts mature images through self-denial of the Japanese view of the robot body. These manifestations are in other words "negative" forms, but the concept of "new humanity" proposed by Tomino in Gundam appears for the first time in the form of "affirmation".
Ah Zhong and Shen Shengping instead face reality in their fantasies, escaping from the fairy tale (robot animation) world of punishing evil and promoting good to the outside (reality) = gaining growth. In contrast, Amro, who lived in the fictional cosmic age of the century, could not follow the same path to the outside. In its place is an awakening to the transcendental [transcendent] existence of the new human being.
Re-reading, it is precisely because the new human being was introduced to explain the rate of Amro's growth rate that it becomes something that determines the nature of Gundam as a growth story. Thus, the first half of Amro's socialization is contrasted with the second half of his awakening to a new humanity (a gap that is more pronounced if the first two and last parts of the theatrical trilogy are compared).
In the context of the animation boom, although the new human concept of Gundam coincides with the zeitgeist of the "New Century Declaration", many people have doubts about its form. For example, many fans have rated the second theatrical version of the Orthodox Coming-of-Age Story (Lamentations, Warriors, 1981) higher than the conceptual [idealistic] third theatrical version (Encounter universe, 1982).
Moreover, Yasuhiko Ryowa, who is the main artist in charge of the work, considers the concept of the new human being and its depiction to be a repetition of the form of Marxism. Yasuhiko, who had participated in the All-Communist Movement, may have smelled from the New Humanity the New Era Movement as an alternative to Marxism.
As he personally proves in the first half of Gundam, Tomino should be able to portray the coming-of-age story of a teenager in a carefully constructed fictional chronicle with the same level of realism as realism as real society. But Tomino didn't do that. Amro did not grow into a modern adult male, but awakened as a transcendental "new human" who transcends transcendence. The transcendent concept of "new humans" allows Tomino to re-transform animation into a device that depicts things that do not exist in reality, rather than a substitute for real history. In other words, the "new human being" is the pseudo-history, fictional chronology, and fantasy that play a role as a substitute for real history and society, as the initial concept of the juvenile growth story "Gundam" directly destroyed from within.
As a risk factor, the "New Human" destroys the two fences that protect the safety of the Box Court, Cosmic Century and Mobile Suit, and connects them with the real world. And Tomino himself will be bound by the power of the concept of the "new human" he created.
Let's call it "Lara Sheen's Spell" for the time being. Lara Sim is a new human girl who appears at the end of the original Gundam. Her talents were discovered by Chaya and she appeared in front of Amro as the strongest enemy. On the battlefield, there was a resonance between Amro and Lara, who were also new humans, and Shaya, as a crippled new human, was disgusted by them. Lara is torn between her empathy with Amro and her love for Shaya, and fights to the death to protect Shaya. The plot and depiction of Lara directly guide the direction of the development of the new concept of humanity. Consciousness transcends space and engages in direct, non-verbal communication without misunderstandings—for Amro, Lara's existence represents the possibility of a new human being. Amro transforms the possibility of a new human being discovered in resonance with Lara into a familial community.
In the final episode of the original Gundam, Amro speaks directly to his companions through the power of the new humans, rescuing them from the battlefield one after another. Amro himself returned to his companions. "I'm sorry, but I still have a place to go back." There is nothing more pleasing to you than this"—Amro's final line also indicates the end of the story.
This passage begins with the loss of family, the loss of "father", the irony that the body given by "father" is only the end of industrial products, and expresses the desire for a quasi-family community beyond family things. The new human being is the existence that makes communication between time and space and language possible, and Tomino shows this new way of communication as a symbol of transcending the family. Not bound by blood relations, able to choose to use the familial community as a "place of return" – this is the posture that the new human being should have. Considering that post-war robot animation is essentially based on the impression of paternity, the comparison of families and suspected families in Gundam can be said to be an inevitability. From the unique body given by the "father" = the giant robot, to the industrial product obtained after losing the "father" = mobile suit (the change of the world structure). From maturity as a modern "human" to an awakening (adaptation to change) as a new human being. From the family, to the imitation of the family, beyond the constraints that restrict the human world, to obtain the possibility of resonating at the end of the world (the ideal that should be realized after adaptation). This is the idea of the new era that Tomino presents in the concept of the new human.
But the essence of Tomino's writer is that he doubts the ideals he proposes more than anyone else. Specifically, the despair of another protagonist, Shaya Aznapur (and the huge group of sequels made after that), is a manifestation of this.
The significance of Lara's existence and departure is very different from That of Amro for the mutilated new human Shaya. Neither the revenge of the deceased father nor the independence of the cosmic settlers could give Xia Ya any meaning after all. The only breakthrough that Shaya, eroded by nihilism, saw was the human possibility inherent in the new humanity. However, Chaya herself is incomplete as a new human being, and it is Lara's presence (and dependence on her) that fills the gap. For Shaya, lara's existence and the possibility of a new human being are rather remedies by constructing separate [one-on-one] closed sexual relationships. The possibilities of the new human Amro are different, and Lara causes the restoration of family relations. Lara's death also deprived Chaya of the possibility of relief. What dominates the world of the cosmic century and the writer Tomino Yuji is not the hope that Amro seizes, but the despair that Shaya falls into = the curse of Lara Shin.