Original article: Maternal Dystopia
Original author: Uno Tsunehiro
Translated by Ud Trn, Zero
Proofreader: Chai Lai Ren
Editor's Foreword: It is best to read it together with the Tomino theory above. Corrections will also be proofread after release.
This article is based on CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 and is for personal learning only, if there is any infringement of your bourgeois legal rights, please contact and remind the owner to immediately practice the ethics of the wanderer's deletion and running away
Aspirants are welcome to join or submit (translated or original) by private message: [email protected]
From "Newtype" to "Ide"
The social phenomenon of Gundam made Tomino the darling of the era. Tomino and Gundam were at the heart of the anime craze of the time, and his reviews appeared in every issue of specialized magazines, and the man who once self-deprecatingly called himself "Astro Boy's defiler" and "performance storyboard thousand chopping" is becoming a charismatic being. At the same time as the social phenomenon of Gundam, Tomino was working on another work, the legendary giant god Idian (1980-81). The work began airing on other TV stations immediately after Gundam ended on television, but it was also cut due to poor ratings and toy sales. However, influenced by the reputation of " Gundam " , the film became increasingly famous in the fan world, and two film versions were released in 1982, including a TV version of the collection (" Contact " ) and a new ending ( " Launch " ) , which were screened in 1982 , becoming one of the works representing the anime craze. And "Yi" is not only Tomino's work, but also as a post-war animation, it is also very special, almost unprecedented.
The story begins on a colonized planet (Solo) in the distant future, when humans have begun to colonize outer space. There humans have discovered the remains of an alien species (the Sixth Civilization) that is thought to exist in prehistoric times. The ruins consist of a spaceship (Ship Solo) and a giant robot (Idian), powered by an unknown infinite energy called Ide, and wielding the ultimate weapon with immense power to destroy the entire universe. Unable to grasp the full contents of the ruins, the Earthlings enter a state of war when they encounter the Bafkrans, aliens who appear to be investigating. The protagonist Cosmo and his investigation team on Solo take the initiative to launch the Solo ship and Idian, and while trying to understand its system, repeatedly escape from the space fleet of the Bafkrans. In the process of fleeing, it was discovered that the "Idie" had its own will and survival instinct, was evolution-oriented, and the sixth civilization that created the "Idie" failed to control them and perished. It is a system that transforms the collective unconscious of human beings into energy, in a constant demand for intelligent life forms with higher spirits to achieve their own evolution. Presumably, the Sixth Civilization was probably destroyed by Idie, as it failed to evolve to the higher level required by the Idieh it created. Cosmo and others realized that they were on the same path of demise as the sixth civilization, but guided by fate, they continued to flee and struggle. Idieh is triggered in the final war with the Buffkrans at the end of the universe, and both the Earthlings and the Buffkrans are exterminated. Unlike Gundam, which depicts the cognitive evolution of humans in the form of a new type in a hopeful way, Tomino depicts a story in which humans cannot become new humans (NewType) and perish without overcoming the trials of God. The higher level of spirit that Idie requires of humans is probably something like Newtype. This is evident in the Yi, where the final battle leading to the destruction of mankind has a distant (indirect cause) to human karma—from the joy of destruction and killing to the familial emotions of love and reproduction. The final war between humans on Earth and the Bafkrans is sparked by the love story of an unruly girl named Carrara. The escalating war comes against the backdrop of her father and sister's inability to forgive Carrara for being pregnant with an alien child. Just as in Gundam the "new human" is separated from the family and associated with a quasi-family community, so in the I, human karma is represented by the familial imagination such as blood and reproduction, and the "Idie" requires humanity to transcend these. The new human being – defined as a being whose expanded cognitive abilities enable communication and mutual understanding beyond the level of intentionality and language. As we have repeatedly pointed out, this is a concept introduced for narrative purposes. This means that the theme of human evolution is only questioned in this film, in which the concept of "Idie" is established from the very beginning of the story. This can be seen in the description of the film. In the film, the will of "Idie" causes two humans – Earthlings and Buffcolans – to meet repeatedly under the guise of "coincidence", ignoring the enormous size of the universe, which is thousands or tens of thousands of light years in diameter. Just as Newtype new humans transcend space and become aware of the existence of others through nonverbal communication, Idie transcends space, bringing two races together—by chance—in a way that weaves clues of cause and effect and amplifies the flames of war. Of course, this is just a way to develop the story by bringing two races into contact with each other. However, Tomino gives meaning to the setting of "Idie" as required by the story, just as he did with "Newtype". That is, it portrays "Idie" as a god—a system that "attempts" to encourage humans to evolve into "Newtype". The so-called "Idie" is the destructive force that requires humans to evolve to Newtype, and the system that causes war, and "Yi" is a work about human struggle in this God-given ordeal. Two points are worth noting here. The first is that the film decisively departs from the syntax of post-war robot animation. The change from "Newtype" to "Ide" meant that Tomino shifted his focus on solving evolutionary problems from man's inner life to the world's systems. Thus, in Idian, the robot loses its meaning as an extension of the human body. It has been repeatedly pointed out that post-war robot animation played the role of a prosthetic disguised as machismo by losing artificial intelligence and becoming a being controlled by boys. However, Ideon, a giant robot over 100 meters tall, whose design was spearheaded by a toy company, was instilled with a will known as "Idie". More precisely, it is a robot powered by the energy generated by the collective unconscious of the once destroyed humanity, and the story follows the process of destruction of humanity after the final war because they cannot control the power of Idean. At this time, Tomino expressed it as the collective unconscious (the outburst of the collective unconscious) = Idian. Accumulating the impersonal system of the collective unconscious – at the time this should have been the bloated consumer society and capitalism itself, today it strongly reminds us of information networks. Tomino may have been the first person in history to portray robots as autonomous systems with collective unconsciousness. A huge system that humans create but cannot control, and it grows on its own—this is the emergence of Ideon, the giant robot as an artificial god. To this day, Idian has no rightful successor. Although Idian appeared in the heyday of post-war robot animation, it was a bizarre being that distinguished it from all robots before it and continues to this day. The other is Tomino's use of the theme of returning to the mother's womb in the conclusion of "I", "Idie" is depicted as something that is not transferred by human will, but unconsciously, especially to the child's defensive instinct, from then on, Tomino tends to view the pure unconscious of children as sacred, placing it at the other end of human self-consciousness and stupidity, and in the latter part of the film, "Initiation", a child born to the Bafklan, Carrara, and the earthling, Beth (Messiah, was given the name of Savior) led the human soul after the destruction of mankind. The film ends with the impression of reincarnation in the newborn universe. The main characters, Cosmo, and the rest of the characters are liberated and reconciled, as if they have forgotten their egoistic and stupid character traits through death and becoming astral. Here, Tomino should have aimed to break away from the family, but instead associates his transcendence with his "mother". It can be said that humans cannot control Idian, a robot that breaks free from the twisted masculinity of the post-war period (through an awakened new human), and can only be saved by returning to its mother's womb. At this point, Tomino connects the "NewType" presented in the first Gundam film with the hope where Amuro lands (the family in disguise) and with the despair that Char fell into (returning to his mother's womb). In Tomino's later works, motherhood, especially pregnancy and newborn, is linked to transcendence in a fairly direct way. Men continue to crave the love of a "mother", women aspire to be a "mother", and those who cannot be a "mother" are shrouded in hatred. Pregnant women are portrayed as unconditional, absolute, and eventually the pressure exerted by their presence invalidates even the enemy's powerful Newtype abilities. From 'Newtype' to 'Ide'—Tomino's quest for a transcendence of post-war robot animation in his work – is a mature vision different from 'growing' into a modern (male) subject. In the process, however, Tomino links the act of "mother" sex with transcendence. The self-evolving structure of a self-generated but uncontrollable system, and returning to the mother's womb to face this system, will decisively announce the end of Tomino and the post-war robot animation.
Real is the era of robot animation
Tomino then returned to directing during the same airtime slot of "Gundam", and served as director of robot animation for five consecutive years, from 1982 to 1986. All are sequels to Gundam, as well as real-life robot animations that depict robots as human-piloted weapons such as chariots and fighter jets. Films directed outside Tomino include Chrono Fortress Macross (1982–83) and Panzer Cavalry Votoms (1983–84). To sum up, due to the influence of the social phenomena of Gundam, this period ushered in the climax of real robot animation.
Some of these works, such as Macross and Votoms, strip the machine of the meaning that it is an extension of the body and direct it in the direction of depicting it as a tool for more "reality". In these anime, robots are thoroughly portrayed as industrial products that can be mass-produced, while in Gundam, the robot's idealized body as a boy and the half-believing side of the robot as a dependent are largely thwarted. For example, in "Macross", the story of a boy's socialization and growth is relatively marginalized, and the protagonist is troubled by the choice between the idol character and the beautiful boss, such romantic comedy elements are highlighted, while in "VOTOMS", a tough guy story featuring an already mature man is developed. In other words, the real robot animation of the first half of the 80s expanded the scope of the story by weakening the meaning that the robot was given.
However, Tomino himself did not turn in this direction. Tomino intends to expand the field of expression of real robot animation by updating the "meaning" of robots. Specifically, "Mech Safingal" (1982-83), "Holy Warrior Dan Bein" (1983-84), "Heavy Fighter Elgem" (1985-86) all belong to this genre. All of these animations are due to sponsor intervention due to poor commercial performance, as well as incongruity among the staff, including Tomino himself, resulting in intricacies and blurs at the script level and performance level. At the same time, however, these works are also ambitious attempts to expand what can be expressed using real robot animation techniques. For example, in Safingal, Tomino tries to combine the symbolic/manga-style realism he once abandoned with the aforementioned Tomino-style realism, while in Elgem, expanding the fictional chronicle setting of the "cosmic century"-style centered on Nagaim's design work is also one of the concepts attempted. Tomino's most important work of this period is the Holy Warrior Danbein.
The 'Aura fighter' and the inflated self-fantasy "Holy Warrior Danbein" are best known for introducing robot animations to the vast fantasy world of medieval Europe, which was still unknown to Japan at the time. (I am afraid to say that "Dan Baien" was one of the first works to popularize fantasy in Japan.) A brief introduction to the content of "Dan Bein". The stage is set in the world of swords and magic known as "Byston Will". This is the conceptual setting of "located between the sea and the earth" and "the world created by the human unconscious and imagination". At some point, this otherworld has been connected to real society (known as "Earth"), and the story begins when the people summoned from this "Earth" have invented a robotic weapon powered by human spiritual power (Aura Power/Aura Power) through the fusion of modern engineering and otherworldly technology, the "Aura Warplane".
As a result, the people of Bystonville summoned many powerful above-ground people of Aura as the pilots of the fighter (holy warriors) and started the war, and the story revolved around the Japanese youth (Shozama), one of the summoned "holy warriors", as the protagonist. Due to the lack of acceptance of heroic fantasies in Japan at the time, Dan Baiin struggled commercially. As a result, the toy manufacturer, who was the sponsor, asked Tomino and his production team to change the content of the film. Specifically, the heroic fantasy elements in the film are required to step aside and strengthen the mechanical elements of modern warfare, so in the second half of the story, all the holy warriors come to the above-ground world and get involved in the international situation under the Cold War between the East and the West, while in the world of the 80s, the forces of the other world continue to war, ushering in such a bizarre unfold. At this point, Dan Baiyin's coherence as a work almost collapses, but Tomino's view of the body/robot is expressed in an unexpected way because of this collapse. As mentioned above, Otherworldly Bystonville is a world formed by the collective human unconscious. The power of the Aura Fighter, powered by the human mind, is strongly suppressed in Bystonville. However, in the above-earth world (reality), the power of the Aura Fighter is unlimited. Therefore, it can function as a super weapon with overwhelming combat power in the above-earth world. The barrier created according to the driver's mental power can even prevent a nuclear explosion, and eventually (this mental power) will become huge (super) and run out of control. "Invincible Superman Zambo 3" tells the story of the post-war robot animation whose worldview collapses due to conflict with reality. It was an installation where children faced reality through animation. In contrast, Gundam is an installation based on a fantasy world that is accompanied by an equal to reality... No, it is a sense of survival on top of reality, constructing a meticulous and storytelling overhead chronicle, closing the audience in such an animation to make it simulate \ grow \ awaken. However, the work "Dan Baiin", which was supposed to be planned as a variation of "Gundam", turned out to be something that was not either. What was supposed to be like the cosmic century of Gundam and ended in the fantasy world (Bayton Well) turned out to invade reality. The imagination possessed by humans, the embodiment of fantasy worlds - Byston Weir was a rapidly developing form of animation at that time. And the "Aura fighter" powered only by human spiritual power is the ultimate robot that anyone can exert the power of the "New type". At the same time, if "Idie" is a system that guides humanity to awaken to a new human, then the Aura fighter is like an expanded body that gives the current old humans a plausible new human power. And Tomino believes that like the humans who were tested by the "Idie", the (current) humans will also be destroyed if they gain that great power through the Aura fighter. However, this image of destruction is not absorbed by the huge/invisible system of "Idie", but becomes something brought about by the increase of personal power through technology. Before the route change in the second half of the film, in a plot in "Dan Baiin", the protagonist temporarily returns to the overground world (his hometown of Tokyo) with his fighter. There, the protagonist, Sho Zama, is confused by the overly powerful Aura fighters of the above-earth world. After that, due to the persecution of human society, Shoya gave up the idea of returning to his original life and returned to Bystonville. At this time, Tomino described animation-style things and robot-like things as things that should be separated from reality. He portrays the otherworldly world of Byston Weier as the same "other reality" = imaginary reality as the cosmic century. "Dan Bein" was originally a work that focuses on depicting karma and nature between human beings through the protagonist's travel between reality and the isolated world. But commercial needs forced a forced connection between the two worlds. As a result, "if an animated robot like the Aura fighter were realized in the real world"—something that was originally inserted as a simulation element in the aforementioned Tokyo chapter and only as an embellishment in the middle of the story—was pushed to the foreground as the main story in the second half of "Dan Baiin". At least for Tomino so far, the "new type" thing is an evolutionary image presented in virtual reality, a fictional world cut off from reality. The intrusion of the "New type" into this reality means the re-emergence of a unique realism by exploiting the friction between fiction and reality, which has been confirmed in "The Sea Prince" and "Zambo 3". As a result, Tomino had to depict the robot animation in the second half of the story, using the real world as a stage, repeatedly depicting the destruction caused by the loss of control of the "Aura fighter" and its operators. The Aura fighters that appeared in the above-earth world and the holy warriors who operated it were like being led away by an expanding body, some reveled in the sense of omnipotence, some could not suppress their revenge, and some realized that they had an excessive sense of mission. Their mental runaway is out of control. The story ends with the destruction of all Aura fighters and the inhabitants of the other world (manifested as the "return" to Byston Will). "Dan Baiin" is a completed form of Tomino's redefined post-war animation robot. First of all, the robot Aura fighter that appeared in this film is almost completely masculine, and the humanoid machine, as a metaphor for male masculinity, barely survived in the MS (Mobile Suits) of the original Gundam, and almost disappeared on the Aura fighter. Since the last "Fighter Mech Safingal", female pilots have naturally ridden humanoid robots, a tendency that is more thoroughly expressed in "Danbein". On the other hand, the robot Aura fighter, which is completely driven by human spiritual power in this film, has expanded and enlarged its sides as a self-expanding robot and a robot that relies on it. The so-called Ola fighter is a device that has made mankind free and liberated in all aspects. But Tomino concludes that once the old humans now possess the devices to express their spirits freely, the inflated self will run out of control and conflict between the selves. Today, such a description seems like a foresight of the expansion of the ego in social media, but what is important is that Tomino's view of the body during this period, the fear of the expanded self and the body—things that cast a huge shadow on the concept of "new type" that he once advocated. In "Dan Baiin", the intrusion of fictional, imaginary reality, medium, "new type" things into reality is driven by commercial needs, and ultimately unfolds as an internal setting of the animation. However, as a result, the reality that the self-fantasy that expands due to the expansion of the body is out of control has led the writer Yuki Tomino to take a big step forward. The era – the rapid development of consumer society and information technology in the 80s – is realizing the "New Type" invasion of reality. So, in the face of this reality, Tomino let the concept of "New type" deteriorate. Tomino has been working on and off Gundam sequels since 1985, constantly updating the fictional chronicle of the cosmic century. For Tomino, this is the beginning of a bitter history between his transformed robot = expanding his body and the concept of "New type" that he advocated.
Why did Camus go crazy?
"New Gundam? New humans? New series of animations? "Needless to say. I also know that this project has made previous Gundam fans frown. However, young people will become adults. They become adults even if they don't want to, and even if they don't want to, they are forced to think in rigid ways within the organization. Well, lie or joke. Do you want to say an emotional line like "Let's make the new type"? Doesn't it matter if you repeat it again for this? Gundam again, he told himself, it was this new Gundam. It's Zeta Gundam. Zeta Gundam's world is set 7 years after the previous game, close to 8 years. Naturally, the characters of the previous Gundam are now much older. It's not a question of whether it's interesting or not. I want to get a story that says, 'That's how the times are. And because it was a cruel time, I hope they find themselves able to cope with these problems (*15).
(*15) This is an article Tomino wrote for a magazine at the beginning of Mobile Suit Z Gundam in 1985. In the torrent of real robot animation, the core of the animation boom in the early 80s of the 20th century, Tomino, as a creator, has never been able to achieve the same success as Gundam in terms of both business and reputation. In this way, what happens in production is the sound of anticipating the sequel to Gundam. Then, in 1985, Z Gundam officially debuted, and Tomino positioned it as a response to the demands of the times. The attitude of the first Gundam is to present the virtual reality of the cosmic century as a substitute for real history, and it is a work that plays its role as a response to the times. Six years later, however, Tomino doesn't see it that way. As can be seen from the Declaration, Tomino no no longer sees the cosmic century as a virtual reality, but as a metaphor for the reality of our society. He positions the New type as an idea whose function is a response to contemporary consumer society. In the virtual reality of the first Gundam film, the cosmic century served as a container for the twisted youthfulness of postwar Japan, but became a tool for this subculture to expand the era of the times, and the concept of New type, which was proposed as an evolutionary theory, expanded the level of thought that transcended the difficulties of the times.
What caused this change?
Perhaps because the concept of "New type" connects the world of Gundam as a fiction (virtual reality) that was originally disconnected from reality with reality. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the concept of "New type" foreshadowed the vision of social informatization that later developed, even more than Tomino realized. Human consciousness transcends space and clashes constantly, and we live in such times now. What happens in this new type world is not the mutual understanding and harmonious domination shown in the first Gundam movie, but the chain destruction caused by bloated self-conflict as depicted in "Dan Baiin". From "Idian" to "Dan Bein", Tomino's imagination detects this change in reality more accurately than anyone else. Yes, Yuki Tomino's imagination fundamentally foresees the development of the consumer/information society and the changes in humanity. However, due to the accuracy of his predictions, half of Tomino's animation is surpassed by reality, and as virtual reality, it is losing its function as a fantasy independent of reality. The loss of its function as fiction and disconnection from reality gives the story a powerful critical power, but also implies the self-destruction of the post-war (robotic) animated grammar. Another claim of post-war animation ("Godzilla claim"), that only fictional animations could depict reality, began to cease to work due to changes in the information environment at this time. As a result, the first part of Gundam – is transformed from a story about human innovation that heralds the hope of the beginning of a new century for anime, Z Gundam tells the history of the tragedy experienced by people living in the cosmic century, and depicts the desperate fate of the New type. The story is set seven years after the first Gundam. Characters from previous games such as Amuro and Char also appear at the corresponding ages. In 1985, the young people who participated in the social phenomenon of "Gundam" at that time had grown up, and the young people who awakened the new type and presented the possibilities of human innovation in the film were also portrayed as adults who had completed adolescence. Tomino endowed a bitter youth with heroes such as Amuro and Char, who became national characters in the social phenomena of Gundam. For example, Amuro, the protagonist of the previous game, was enshrined as a hero of the last war in the era of Z Gundam, and on the other hand, was alerted by the government as a New type ability and was transferred to an idle position. As a result, the 24-year-old Amuro is almost completely destroyed as a person, and in the play, Amuro tries to recover mentally by participating in the anti-government movement. On the other hand, his archrival Char is now 28 years old. In the previous work, Char blocked Amuro with overwhelming force and survived the war. Char became the nucleus of the anti-government movement. However, while ostensibly pursuing ideals, in fact, because he lost Lala, he was more consumed by nihilism than the previous work, and he hesitated to stand on the front as a leader. Despite this, Char continued to fight, anxious about the nature of the organization that positive the hypocritical theory and the excessive demands of the military industry that used it to support him, and Char eventually lost to a young new human who exceeded his abilities and disappeared.
Replacing Amuro and Char, who have lost their luster, the new type of Z Gundam appears as the protagonist of "Z Gundam", Camus Vidan. Unlike Amuro, who appears as a frank and natural image at the beginning of the story, Camus, who shows the characteristics of New type at the beginning, is portrayed as an eccentric teenager with mental instability. Unlike Amuro, whose home was burned down in an air raid and had to become the driver of MS during the evacuation, Camus, because of the instability of adolescence, impulsively joined the anti-government movement launched by Char and others. And during the war, Camus's spirit gradually broke down, so that he finally went crazy in the last episode (naturally, the ending of the protagonist's madness was extremely rare even in TV cartoons at the time, and I remember that I was a schoolboy when I was broadcast and was strongly shocked). In the process that leads to Camus's insanity, the vision set out as hope in the previous work - mutual understanding without misunderstanding through the mutual induction of the New type - is completely rejected in Z Gundam. For example, at the end of the first Gundam movie, Amuro experiences a New type induction with the enemy's new human, Lala Singh. Here, through non-verbal communication, Amuro transcends space in brief moments and experiences mutual understanding without misunderstanding, an experience that is presented in the story as an ideal image of how humans should evolve. And like Amuro in the past, Camus also experienced induction with the enemy new human (Harman Kahn). However, unlike the previous series of anime, they prefer to deny each other's existence through induction. Harman rejects the affair with Camus as an "act of trampling on the hearts of others at will," and Camus reaffirms his hatred of her. What comes with induction between new humans is a direct non-verbal contact between human minds that transcends time and space, not complete mutual understanding without misunderstanding, but the opposite - the recognition of the existence of incompatible others, and the negative chain that begins as a result, which is the realistic consciousness worldview of Z Gundam. If humans are connected too directly without mediation, it can only have a negative ripple effect – an overwhelming view of the real world for those of us who live in an era when the world has been over-connected by money and information networks. However, while Tomino demonstrates his prophetic imagination here, he also self-destructs the new concept of humanity that he himself promotes. In the second half of Z Gundam, the supernatural powers of the new humans deviate significantly from the "expanded cognitive abilities" presented in the first Gundam and regress to something closer to telepathy and séance under the influence of the early mystic craze. Specifically, the depiction of restraining enemies with psychic barriers to repel beam weapons and summon the will of the dead is considered a major departure from the realism maintained from the first Gundam to the first half of Z Gundam. In the final episode of Z Gundam, Camus demonstrates these "regressive" New type abilities and confronts the enemy New Type (Paputimus Hirok), but from now on, the dialogue between Camus and the undead with whom he communicates is shocking. In this scene, Camus is with the soul of the deceased. "It is precisely because the real world is bound to life and death that it will be rigid everywhere", "The person inside (Shirok in the cockpit of Tieao) will soon merge with you." Here, Camus and the dead affirm that taking the life of the enemy in front of them is a salvation.
This idea is almost close to the Powa thought of Aum Shinrikyo (wiki: Late Esoteric thought, the transfer of consciousness to the Pure Land by killing others for mercy or redemption). As mentioned earlier, Aum Shinrikyo propagandists later said that "Aum is like a New type thing," and Tomino had already formed the idea to prove it in his own work ten years before the sarin gas incident in the Tokyo subway. In the end, as the price of the implementation of Powa, Camus suffered a nervous breakdown and became a waste, and the story ended tragically. The concept of the new type of new humans "regresses" back to the common mysticism, New Age view of spiritual power, similar to the later Aum Shinrikyo, which occurs because Tomino does not have the ability to describe the expansion of human cognitive abilities in a positive way. When the Aura appears in the real world, a ditopia formed by the collision of a chain of conflicts between bloated selves appears, and Tomino has no choice but to describe the cosmic century of new human life in the form of a ditopia. The expansion of cognitive abilities has instead created a decisive rupture between humans. This is Tomino's view of reality in Z Gundam.
Spoiled "new humans"
The expressive structure of post-war robot animation that gives the boy a mechanical and false body and satisfies his desire to grow up in a simulated way, does the opposite, and uses the unique methods of animation to effectively depict the evil and irrationality of human beings and their world. This is the past - Yuki Tomino's strategy before Gundam. Because the original Gundam fictionalized the cosmic century, Tomino turned his direction to constructing another controllable reality. Specifically, it is to replace the lost function of real history with "the performance of animation"—to give meaning to the life of the individual—no, to construct a fictional chronicle that has a sense of reality beyond real history and resonates with the individual's heart. In other words, Tomino's concept of expression changes from the contradiction between fiction and reality through anime to the construction of a reality that is more real than reality in fiction. Simply put, Tomino's depiction of maturity and aging in this carefully constructed fictional chronicle (using reality that is sometimes stronger than real history and social functioning) are things that anime has never been good at ("Astro Boy Proposition"). However, Tomino introduces the transcendent concept of New type in Gundam, depicting a protagonist awakened (as New type) rather than mature (as an adult). If you consider that "New type" was originally a fabricated setting for the rapid growth of young soldiers, it will be clear that the awakening of "New type" and the maturity of adults are a set of opposing concepts. By introducing the concept of the New type, Tomino eschews the story of humans maturing in a forged body (Mobile Suit) and fictional history (cosmic century). Considering that the subsequent Gundam series made by people other than Tomino, and the many Gundam Fanwai (OVA) works that were heavily produced during the boom of the 80s, all repeat orthodox coming-of-age stories in fictional chronicles with a stronger war story tinge, think about what he did, and you can see how abnormal it was.
Originally, post-war robot animation was a form of expression that expressed the boy's desire to grow up. By introducing fictional chronicles, Gundam allows the boy to acquire the false body of a mechanical device and enjoy a coming-of-age story that is more realistic than the post-modern reality experience. But Tomino actively avoided that possibility. Looking back at Tomino's remarks at the time, it is strongly clear that Tomino did not use Gundam as a form of expression that replaced what was lost in the era in reality, but preferred to express it in line with the era. So, what was Tomino's attempt to use the concept of "New type" to describe the "cosmic century" with a sense of reality beyond reality?" "New type" refers to the evolutionary form of human beings that appear in the work, and it is also a metaphor for the young generation who had the sensibility to adapt to the new information environment and consumer society at that time. However, as symbolized by the rampage and self-destruction of the inhabitants of the fantasy world that appears in the real world in the second half of Dan Baiin, Tomino is no longer able to hopefully depict the expansion of human cognitive abilities as presented in the first Gundam. On the contrary, Tomino's repeated worldview during this period is that the expanded human consciousness of technology will produce a deeper rupture, which is Tomino's imagination to understand the times by using the "performance of animation" to construct a sense of reality beyond reality. For example, in the Gundam series that began with the Z Gundam, artificial new humans known as "enhanced people" often appeared. Through dosing, hypnosis, and biomodification, these people were artificially endowed with new human abilities. At this point, the existence of the "new human" is burdened by reality, and its nature has changed. Beginning means not an evolutionary form of humanity, but a semi-technical response. Starting with "Z Gundam", Tomino repeatedly describes the story of their destruction due to loss of control. The image of the New type changes in technology, i.e. Aura fighter = enhanced man-Tomino is still pessimistic about expanding human cognition (abilities) through technology to obtain abilities similar to New type, rather than through spiritual evolution. During this period, Tomino slowly made negative statements about the sensibility of the times he advocated in the New Century Declaration, not only in his works, but also in the animation boom. As a result, Tomino persistently and repeatedly described the tragedies of new humans who could not grow up in the huge sequel to Gundam. Amuro and Char's bitter youth, the tragic ending of the new protagonist Camus, and the successive artificial new humans (enhanced humans), humans living in the box court of the space age, can neither grow up through the paradox of fiction and reality, but they cannot grow up in the box court of overhead chronicles (this despair is even in the relatively comic third series, Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ) (1986-87) The fictional UC Chronicle was introduced to allow Tomino to maximize the performance of his anime, but creating a sequel to Gundam in the cosmic century meant a recurring tragedy in which the New type, which embodied the zeitgeist, could neither mature as a person nor be liberated as a transcendent person. This means a repeat of the tragedy of survival. This meant that Tomino updated the "Astro Boy proposition" held by Osamu Tezuka to a contemporary one, thus holding it more deeply in his heart. After that, Tomino dissolved the circuit of post-war robot animation that he had constructed.
Char of the Counterattack and the "Maternal Enemy Topia" The Mobile Suit Gundam Char released in 1988 is not only the first theatrical version of the entire Gundam series, but also a very special existence even as a movie. Most first-time viewers will be shocked by the content. In the nearly 2-hour release time, most of the characters who appeared in the scene have been fighting while driving mobile suits, and in the end, on the basis of the fact that most of those characters died, an extremely unreasonable miracle occurred, and the plot unfolded without half the audience and ended without permission. Moreover, director Tomino probably knowingly committed it, because this practice is the same as Char's behavior in this work. Char, who has been hesitant to stand in front of the scenes in Z Gundam, finally becomes the leader of this game, gathering anti-government forces that advocate the rights of cosmic immigrants and launching a large-scale rebellion against the Earth government. In the name of promoting the righteousness of human innovation, he was determined to launch the unprecedented horror of dropping meteorites on Earth to trigger a nuclear winter. Amuro, on the other hand, confronts Char as a government pilot. Then, in contrast to Char, who hypocritically carries the sinful karma of humanity and radically pushes for revolution, Amuro is portrayed as a hypocritical idealist who advocates moderate internal reforms.
Char argues that "the earth cannot swallow all human selfishness (*16)", while Amuro counters that "human intelligence is sufficient to overcome it". Later, to Amuro's "Whoever is not as impatient as you will not despair of mankind", Char retorts that "what qualifications do people have to say this about those who are exploited by fools". Amuro's views lacked practical effect, and Char's was too radical. The audience will most likely not be able to fully agree with either side, but importantly, Char asserted in this debate that "I never wanted to fix the world". Char, despite such a large-scale rebellion and unprecedented terrorist attacks, did not believe that humanity could be redeemed. In the play, Char is enthusiastically supported by cosmic immigrants, but after all, politics is only his means and not his end. Char believes that "sooner or later only such sadness spreads - and then crushes the earth", and he has been acting alone from beginning to end, but in fact, Char also considers that his actions will not change anything. Char's purpose is to impose his worldview on others, the despair he harbors on all humanity, and nothing more. The sinfulness and folly of mankind have made the history of war repeat itself, even to the end of the earth, and Char's purpose is to express this reality through terrorism – Char's shocking of the world is his own purpose. Char's motives are probably infinitely close to Tomino's creative motives. Mamoru Oshii, who once criticized Miyazaki's "manga movie"-style realism, said of Char of the Counterattack: "If I were to do the same thing, I would definitely not express [my own] true thoughts so bluntly." That approach can wipe out the fictional world and characters that you have carefully created before.
I think Tomino is really an unscrupulous person. Especially in "Char of the Counterattack", isn't the distance between Tomino himself and the work infinitely close to zero. [Omitted] Because the cognition of 'Gundam' as a robot animation can cover everything that is said, it can say anything.
But it is precisely this status quo that can only be said, which makes people feel more tragic. Knowing that if he said it in this way, he probably wouldn't be heard by anyone, Tomino still made "Char of the Counterattack". And its content is overwhelming at a glance (*17). ”
In this commentary, Oshii first points out the "closeness" between Char of the Counterattack and Tomino himself. Then on this basis, it is revealed that Tomino made "Char of the Counterattack" only to express his thoughts and world view. Oshii believes that just as Char rebelled only to express despair, Tomino also made this work only to express despair.
In the 70s, Tomino, as a stalwart creator of the robot animation boom, took advantage of the extraordinary evolution of postwar robot animation, and succeeded in acquiring the realism and coming-of-age novel-like structure unique to animation. It's a guerrilla war that guarantees freedom of expression (more than usual shows) by connecting with the market for giant robotic toys and doing the opposite. However, with the social phenomena of Gundam and the proliferation of imitators, coupled with Tomino's own commercial demands for the sequel to Gundam, the environment in which the robot anime is located has changed, and the genre can no longer function as a free venue as before. At the same time, it became increasingly clear that Tomino's own creations in terms of stories, such as the Cosmic Century, Mobile Suit and New Humans, gradually limited Tomino's creation. The fictional chronology of history "Cosmic Century" decisively cuts off the connection between animation and reality by replacing people's desire for real history, while the idea of mobile suits loses their gender significance by adding their sense of reality as a military weapon to the absurd concept of giant robots. As a result, Tomino tries to distort the concept of the new human and put the criticism of the times on the surface in order to resist the separation of animation and reality. It is also an attempt to break the virtual "cosmic century" from within by connecting it to reality. But the result of the connection is that as Tomino himself pursues the possibility of a new human, a concept that expands around human cognition/consciousness, his attitude toward the process of human evolution to self-expansion shifts from affirmation to denial.
The sequel to "Gundam" "Z Gundam", born under such a change of thinking, became a cruel reality cognitive story, and the subsequent "Counterattack Char" became a desperate self-denial story. It became clear that for Tomino, robot animation was no longer a place for freewheeling guerrilla warfare using commercial restrictions with a backhand, but rather an unfree world that was asked to defend the world it had pioneered while having to wrestle with a concept that had swelled to the point where it could barely control it due to revolutionary inventions. The (first/second) animation boom of the late '70s/first half of the '80s is a thing of the past, Gundam supporters have shrunk to just toy model boys (my generation) and remnants of the old animation boom, and the social phenomena of the "New Century Declaration" have completely disappeared. Whether it's robot anime or Gundam, except for elementary school students who like models and loyal fans who existed ten years ago, they have lost their appeal to the general audience. Therefore, Char = Tomino took decisive action just to shock the world on the premise that he could no longer convey information and did not have to change anything. So, what is the despair of Char and Tomino depicted here? It is precisely the despair of the very ideal itself that the concept of "new humanity" symbolizes and that it has established. Char's ideal can be said to be the "thought" of the "new human" that Yuki Tomino has been portraying in the 80s, and as mentioned earlier, this is an extremely philosophical thing about human cognitive ability.
As we have already mentioned, there is another aspect of "new type", which is that the word has gradually become a metaphor for the young sensibility adapted to the new medium in the animation boom. Tomino transcends the physical space depicted at the time, allowing human consciousness to collide directly with each other, and the way in which New type abilities communicate with each other is strongly reminiscent of communication on the Internet today. In the setting of the problem of technology expanding human cognitive abilities, Tomino Yuki's thoughts and imagination propose a very deep and essential image.
However, at this time, Char = Tomino did not believe that human beings would change, and even seemed to hate such change. The world of the second half of the 20th century did not show the (spiritual) evolution that Tomino idealized through the term New type, but only through the evolution of the information environment, which made it possible for humans to communicate beyond space. This does not mean that humans become New types for Tomino, but rather that they are on the path to becoming holy warriors/artificial enhanced humans. Tomino also repeatedly expresses despair in "Ideon" and "Denbein" about the enhancement of the human spirit caused by "system". As a result, "Char of the Counterattack" has become a story that completely denies the story of adolescent girls and robot animation as a youth group drama and coming-of-age novel. Mamoru Oshii also said in the article I quoted earlier: "[Char of the Counterattack] takes away all the drama, sweetness and bitterness of the adolescent teenagers that existed in the previous Gundam and becomes a very 'middle-aged' work." When the drama of adolescence is removed, what is the essence of the remaining work of Gundam? I think the counterattack Char is a work that can make people completely understand this answer. "In Char of the Counterattack, as in previous robot animations and previous Gundam shows, adolescent girls still appear and play important roles in the story. This is the case with the young Hathaway and the girl Aoisi, who appeared as a new type of new era. Aoisi, who has extremely high New type qualifications, was used by Char and sent to the battlefield. Hathaway steals a mobile suit to rescue Aoi and goes to battle. Char's young driver, Qiuni, also has a crush on Aoisi, approaching awkwardly while also acting as a protector. According to the grammar of the 80s robot animation, the actual protagonist of the work should be Hathaway, and his love triangle with Aoi Si and Churchney should be the center of the story. However, Tomino probably deliberately arranged such a post-war robot-animated adolescent drama while destroying it in a brutal way. First of all, Aois, who has a strong Oedipal complex, has no interest in either Hathaway or Churchney, and she only cares about the other two adult males - Amuro and Char. However, Amuro only thinks about how to stop Char, and Char only thinks about how to take Aoisi and Qiuni as his own combat power with a three-inch tongue.
In the play, although Aoi goes to the battlefield for Char, when facing Amuro's new Gundam, she can only listen to the crude words "How can I play with children here (*18)". After that, Qiuni, who has always wanted to protect Aois, is easily shot down by Amuro, and Aoi is also killed in battle while protecting Hathaway, who has strayed into the battlefield, and in the end, the insanity Hathaway kills Amuro's lover Jen, who is supposed to be friendly. Such a story development has gone beyond the level of revealing, almost uncomfortable and disgusting, but it is also intentional. At this moment, the post-war robot animation was destroyed by the hands of its biggest contributor. No, the robot animation as a juvenile coming-of-age novel actually collapsed when Camus fell into madness, but in "Char of the Counterattack", the configuration of the sweet and sour youth group portraits of adolescent girls is bare and cruelly destroyed. Since robot animation was first developed as a means of depicting children's narcissism (Tetsujin 28/Majin Z), and then expanded by depicting the end of childhood (Zambert 3) and the fluctuations of adolescence (Gundam), this denial of the story of a teenager is tantamount to a judgment on oneself. The boy socializes by acquiring a false body of a machine, then goes to war in order to get the girl or kill his father, and finally loses many things to mature - this story route of the post-war robot animation (Tomino himself contributed to its establishment) is destroyed by Yuki Tomino himself.
So, what is the outcome of the adults and middle-aged people who are left behind? At the end of the story, Char is defeated by Amuro's Gundam and is captured herself. Amuro grabbed Char like that, giving it a final fight to stop the meteorite fall caused by Char's rebel army. In the end, the death of the two men is exchanged for the "miracle" in the work that saves the earth with almost no explanation, but what is even more shocking is the conversation between Amuro and Char before his death. Char, "It's so nice to say, it's quite cold to Aoisi!" "Amuro" I'm not a machine! Can't replace Aoisi's father! So it is? That's why you use Aoisi as a machine..."Char", right? It turned out that Aoi Si was looking for her father. So...... I was confused by this, and I saw Aoi Si as a machine "Amuro", how can a man like you be so small! "Char" Lara Sinko is a woman who may become my mother, how do you have the face to say this when you killed Lala! ”
The above Lara Sin is one of the heroines of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, and first appeared as a girl soldier under Char. The relationship between Amuro, Char and Lala is a suspected love triangle, and although Lara, who stands between the two old enemies, is attracted to Amuro and finally dies in order to protect Char, Lala's existence is more than that. Lala, who only appeared near the end of the story as a New type that can rival Amuro, actually shakes the essence of New type to a large extent in the play. In the original Gundam, the New Type is primarily depicted as an expansion of human cognitive abilities, linked to a new mature model that does not become a "father": a farewell to Amuro's (in the beginning) "family" and a family-like community. The original Gundam ended with Amuro using the power of the New Type to help his companions escape the battlefield. "I still have a place to go back, and nothing makes me happier than that." Amuro says this to Lala's undead, and the story ends. A robot that was passed down from father to son, fictionalizing a mature false body = post-war animation, at which time evolved into a social body obtained through its own power = mobile suit. At the same time, however, the relationship between Lara and Char embodies a new type that has other different meanings. In the play, Lala completes Char, who is positioned as an incomplete new type, which is a kind of existence that stands in the position of a guardian. It is Lala's dependence as a "mother" and Char as a frustrated revolutionary (who failed to exist as a "father") that instead leads the New type to something "family".
Since then, Tomino's huge sequel to "Gundam" has appeared in front of the teenager as even the girl soldier who should be called "Lara's Children", and hints at the possibility of becoming a "father" for each teenage protagonist—the unfortunate girl soldier who has been deprived of his humanity by the state always appears in front of the boy as a being who should be saved. In pseudo-history, in fiction, "Lala's children" embodies the possibility of teenagers becoming suspected "fathers". However, as has been repeatedly pointed out, Tomino's quest is not to become a fictional maturity in the overhead history, but to evolve into an existence that no longer needs this modern maturity. Tomino originally did not pin his hopes on Char, but saw the ideal form of New type in Amuro. That's why Lala had to die, and the girls who were the "Lala's children" also had to face a tragic death. For Tomino, the idealized New Type Amuro represents hope, and the imperfect New Type Char represents reality. But by this time, Tomino had lost hope and was deeply desperate for reality.
In this way, "Gundam", "Cosmic Century", and Tomino are no longer attracted to Amuro's hopes, but are dragged into Char's despair. He cannot lift Lala's curse and can only be dragged to the bottom of the gravity well. Tomino's New type, from the expansion of human cognitive abilities in the original Gundam and the suspected family-like community that combined with it, has been greatly regressed by the time of Z Gundam, and the original cognitive characteristics have been reduced to superpowers and psychic, forming a symbolic dependency with the girl soldiers named "Lara's Children". The reason is simple: in the process of pursuing the idea of "New type", Tomino can no longer actively and affirmatively think about the image of his future deserved, and in the process of moving from "New type" to "Edie", Tomino abandoned the position of futurists. So, under the hopeless worldview that he finally arrives, Tomino reluctantly hints at the last remaining ethics by making Camus mad, repeatedly brutally killing the enhanced girl soldier who is the "Lala children", and rejecting the soft landing of the young protagonist's desire to become a "father". Therefore, "Char of the Counterattack" depicts Amuro and Char, who are still trapped by Lala's ghost after more than 10 years. Around them, although there is Aoisi as another Lala who seeks a symbolic "father" from the two, however, both reject Aoisi. Amuro and Char, as the two protagonists of adolescence who supported the Gundam series and supported post-war animation, became middle-aged, refused to become "fathers" and died.
Char cannot become a "father" because he has lost his "mother" named Lala. What does this mean? Tomino is talking about the world of post-war (robotic) animation, the world where a teenager becomes a "father" by acquiring a false body in an imaginary reality (such as Amuro's "turning into a machine"), but in fact it is a world dominated by the "mother" power. Amuro and Char, two new types, lost their "mother" named Lala, and could not achieve imaginary maturity (becoming "fathers") by acquiring the false body of a mobile suit in imaginary reality.
This discourse, considering that the concept of the New type can function as a substitute for post-war (robotic) animated mature images, is also a natural consequence. In the pseudo-history of the cosmic century, as a substitute for becoming adults = becoming "machines", the possibility of young girls awakening to become a new type is hinted out as hope. However, starting with Z Gundam, "New type", which has been caught up by the real society and information environment, is no longer necessarily a concept of hope. As a result of Tomino's simulation, the expansion of human cognitive abilities has a negative effect.
As a result, the cosmic century was presented to us as a time of great suffering. There is only a box court, in which the young people display their machimanhood, like children who have been unconditionally recognized in their mother's womb. This is the cosmic century for Tomino, the post-war (robotic) animation for Tomino. What is set up to span the possibilities of the mother's womb, pseudo-history, and box court is the concept of "new type." But Tomino's imagination began to discover the negative possibilities that the New Type brings. Clearly, Tomino hates the fictional maturity of the hypothetical reality achieved by postwar (robotic) animation—that is, the soft landing of Japan's postwar machismo. However, Tomino gradually became unable to believe in the ideal of the concept of New type, which was introduced as a circuit that broke through the imaginary reality and connected to the real reality. It was also Char's despair - unable to obtain a "mother", that is, unable to "turn into a machine" and obtain a short fatherhood under the enlarged and inflated motherhood - so that he could no longer believe in the ideal of New type and ushered in death. In this way, the possibility of the New type is paradoxically presented and ended in "Char of the Counterattack": one is to give up the miracle that persuaded the audience to forcibly save the earth, and the other is that the two protagonists, Amuro and Char, die while saying their obsession with "mother".
Tomino's approach to "mother" is very different from Miyazaki's. As discussed in Chapter 3, Miyazaki argues that the existence ("mother") that guarantees the existence of "flight" (self-actualization through the pursuit of male romanticism) is necessary for it. Miyazaki's male protagonist cannot continue to "fly" if he does not assume that he is unconditionally recognized as a "mother" even if he is worthless to the whole world. Instead of the men who cannot fly, it is the heroines of Miyazaki in the 80s who fly in the sky. In the change of the anti-system theme of "from red (left-wing movement) to green (environmentalist movement)", Nausicaa flew by believing in that possibility; Kiki discovered the positive side of urban capitalism and flew. However, Miyazaki gradually ceased to find out the possibilities of the world, so the girls were depicted as beings who flew up in order to make men who fell into nihilism in the womb and could do nothing = mother. Miyazaki presents this matriarchal world as a utopia (as an anime should depict a "beautiful lie"), while Tomino portrays the world as a dystopia that curses, binds, and kills teenagers.
Flying freely in the world of the box court supported by diminutive fatherhood and fat motherhood, Miyazaki's male characters boast of "this is handsomeness." In reality, however, it is not a free sky, but only the depths of the ocean as a gravity well. In contrast, Tomino Yuki's New Type does not ignore that the world is the bottom of the maternal gravity well, but despair about that depth, and Char suffers the most. The postwar subcultural imagination represented by Miyazaki developed from the idea that he would directly become a "father" as a "12-year-old boy" by possessing a young girl in fiction. And in the world depicted by Tomino, the girl = "mother" who should have been possessed instead devours men, killing them instead of making them mature and grow into "fathers". In this way, Tomino allows the horror and charm of bloated motherhood to dominate the world of his work.
Tomino Yuki proposes that the world in which fictional maturity is possible through false history and false bodies, and the world dominated by the grammar of post-war robot animation (the spirit of post-war animation) is the "maternal ditopia". Postwar robot animation is the most solidly constructed thing in the essence of postwar animation, and Japanese postwar animation is (as discussed in Chapter 2) a portrait of Japanese postwar society itself. Just as the Gundam series, from the New Human Generation [1961-1970] to the Second Baby Boomer Generation [団塊ジュニア代, 1971-1974], established the status of the national literature of the present era, the fictional mature world through false history and false bodies = the cosmic century is exactly – the "maternal dystopia" is exactly - the long time itself called "post-war".
Note 15 "A book to enjoy Mobile Suit Z Gundam 10 times" (Kodansha, 1985) 16 "Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack" supra. Hereinafter, "... It was Char's purpose." Same until. 17 Animage (Tokuma Shoten, April 1991) 18 Ibid., Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack. Hereinafter, "... What could I have told you for killing that Laraa!" Same until.