How Age of Yamato condensed 52 anime episodes into 90 minutes
An interview with Harutoshi Fukui and Yuka Minakawa
Published June 8, 2021 by Gigazine
(see the original article here)
How does an “Astro Warrior” work?
Age of Yamato is a special compilation of the TV anime Yamato 2199 and 2202, packed into just 90 minutes. It will be released in theaters on June 11, 2021 (Friday).
Harutoshi Fukui, who wrote the series composition and screenplay for 2202, felt that a mere “compilation” would be pointless. This work was created to show all of society the remake version of Yamato for the future. Yuka Minakawa, who worked on the 2202 novelization, was deeply involved in its creation.
Before the film’s release, I had a chance to talk with Mr. Fukui and Mr. Minakawa about how they made this film, and how they met each other in the first place. I asked them a variety of questions, both related and unrelated to the film.
Interviewer: First of all, I’d like to ask what interests you, Mr. Minakawa. I saw a tweet of yours that said, “If you work like an astro-warrior like this, you’ll go bankrupt.”
Novella by Yuka Minakawa: “That My Heart Should Be This Way”
Published as a bonus item with the Age of Yamato
limited-edition Blu-ray.
Minakawa: So you’ve been checking it out. (Laughs) I was talking about the bonus novel for the Age of Yamato limited edition blu-ray. It was supposed to be a short story, about 30 to 50 pages, but I ended up writing 150, so I missed the deadline and caused trouble for people in various fields. I thought, “If I keep doing this, I’m really going to die.” This is what I mean by “astro-warrior.” One game is a complete burnout.
Fukui: The Astro team, right?
Minakawa: I thought it would be about 50 pages, but the number kept increasing. I thought I shouldn’t be doing this kind of work. It took more than three times longer than I planned.
Interviewer: It sounds like you’re working yourself to the bone…
Minakawa: I feel like I’m going to be separated from my body. (Laughs)
Interviewer: That doesn’t mean you work like an astro-warrior on everything, does it?
Minakawa: Most of the work I’ve done so far is like that. I did the same thing when I worked on Gundam Officials. I’ve concluded that it’s not good to keep doing that.
Interviewer: Even though you think that, will you still end up becoming an astro-warrior?
Minakawa: My body can’t take it and my mind can’t take it, so it’s time to find a way not to do it. (Laughs)
Interviewer: I see. (Laughs) I’ve interviewed Mr. Fukui-san twice, for 2202 Chapter 1 and again for Chapter 7. At the time of chapter 7 (March 2019), he said, “Even if you think ‘it ends cleanly with this,’ you can’t say for sure.” When the sequel was announced afterward, I thought, “I see…” Where did this work, Age of Yamato, and its sequel Yamato 2205 start?
Fukui: This work started in earnest in 2019. I was wondering what it would take to proceed in parallel, and this astro-warrior was there. I thought, “This is just perfect.”
Minakawa: The first time I talked to him was on the day of the Chapter 7 preview. When we were having dinner afterward. Mr. Fukui joined in and we were whispering in secret. He said, “We’re going to do a compilation.” I was like, “How are you going to do that?” (Laughs) But then I found out they were going through with it.
Interviewer: So it wasn’t, “we’ll do the compilation and then 2205,” but 2205 was planned first, and then the compilation was made for that?
Fukui: Yes, we started preparing 2205 first.
Interviewer: When 2199 was finished and 2202 was to follow, Mechanical Designer Junichiro Tamamori got the offer and said, “If it’s a hit, we can assume that there will be another one.” [See that interview here.] (Laughs) How did you feel when you heard about “2205“?
Fukui: This kind of filmmaking is not a dream, nor is it romantic. From the beginning of 2202, we had already been talking about, “This is the direction we should take next.” Once we had the numbers, we just had to decide whether to go for it or not.
Interviewer: So that’s how it was.
Fukui: The other thing was whether I would do it or not. However, as you can see in Age of Yamato, I’ve taken the characters out of the yoke of “character” and made them just “people who are there.” I had a strong feeling that they would probably fall apart in someone else’s hands. So I knew it would be hard, but I had to do it. This is true for the production committee as well. I could see it on the faces of everyone involved.
Interviewer: So, you decided to participate in the project as a scriptwriter?
Minakawa: I was in charge of the novelization of 2202, and Mr. Fukui asked me to help him with 2205. That’s how I ended up working on the script for this film. When he originally decided to do Yamato, he said, “If something comes up, I want to get you in.” That’s how it eventually came about.
Interviewer: Hmmm…
Minakawa: I think it was a regular meeting for 2205 held in May 2019. I heard, “We want to focus on Sanada.” At that time, I didn’t think I’d be doing it, but I thought, “Good, Sanada. That’s an interesting way to start.” Then they said, “Please put a document together about him.” I was asked to compile materials on Sanada’s arc from 2199 to 2202. When it was put together, I gave it to Mr. Fukui. In June, I got an invitation from Mr. Fukui and the staff.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to do the script?”
And that’s how I decided to do it.
Interviewer: Ah, I see. Then this film is based on the “arc of Sanada” that you compiled.
Minakawa: I thought, “It’s going to be hard for someone to do, using this as a base,” and then it turned out to be me.
Interviewer: So, from your point of view, Mr. Fukui, Minakawa is the only one who can do it?
Fukui: I already found some words I needed in her summary. I thought it would be better to use them as they were. In the process of asking for help with 2205, I knew she had a good sense of visuals. I thought it would be pointless to ask someone else to do it again, so I decided to ask her.
Interviewer: In this work, Sanada talks about the story with narration by Miyuki Sawashiro. It’s a little different from a “compilation” that summarizes a work in a digest.
Fukui: It’s more like a documentary than a compilation.
Interviewer: At what stage did you come up with the idea to make it that way?
Fukui: At the very beginning.
Interviewer: What, from the beginning?
Fukui: When I think about “the meaning of making a compilation” in this age of visuals, it doesn’t make sense. In an era where you’d have to wait for a rerun after something was first broadcast, then there is a purpose to making a movie. Before we had home video, it made sense just to listen to the audio portion on a record. But now we can see everything, so we have to reconnect it and make it compact. For example, if you could “see the whole thing in 30 seconds,” it might still make sense.
Interviewer: Hmm, I see.
Fukui: But Yamato will continue as a series in the future. There are already 52 episodes, and it would be a hurdle to make people watch them from scratch. If this is the case, rather than just making a compilation of 2202, it would be meaningful to show all of society the remake version of Yamato. It would also be meaningful for the sequel. If you have the chance to see it all in one package, even people who are not interested in Yamato itself would be able to see it. This work was my solution to that problem.
Interviewer: This film is a combination of 2199 and 2202, plus some new shots, and the total length of the film is less than two hours. In an Akiba Research Institute interview for 2202, you said, “26 episodes is not long for me at all. Instead it’s like, ‘is this all you can give me?’ (Laughs) It’s always a battle.” I’m amazed that you were able to pack so much into this work.
Fukui: That’s why it was absolutely impossible to summarize it in the form of a drama or a story. 2202 itself was sort of made like a compilation, crammed tightly into 26 episodes with no room for anything extra.” (Laughs)
Interviewer: (Laughs)
Fukui: There was no chance to put it all together, so I filled in the bits and pieces of history with narration and Shiro Sanada’s emotional words. By alternating between information and emotion, I was able to create a sense of drama. The way it’s made, though, is to truncate the story.
Minakawa: When I first heard about this project, I thought, “Let’s just connect the two.” I tried to connect 2199 and 2202 with the parts where Mr. Sanada appears. I thought, “What am I going to do with two and a half to three hours of that?”
To begin with, Mr. Fukui had written the scripts for the theatrical screenings. The “synopsis so far” was about 10 or 15 minutes each time. It would be useless to simply calculate how much those would add up to. I even thought I would have to cut the story into two halves, but I was told to do it all in 90 minutes. It was hard for me to understand how Mr. Fukui thought it would fit into 90 minutes.
Interviewer: 90 minutes, what an absurd request. (Laughs)
Fukui: Once you understand it you can do it, you just have to cut things out between the lines. But I didn’t do it that way because no one would be happy with it. You’d feel like you’ve already seen it. There wouldn’t be much point.
Interviewer: (Laughs)
Fukui: What you see on the screen, the lines and the narration, don’t necessarily have to be facing the same direction. It’s okay if they’re different. The narration may tell you what happens next, or the picture may go to the next scene before the narration has finished. There’s a chemical reaction that occurs when images and lines contrast with each other, and there’s a moment when they connect well.
In the case of Gundam Unicorn, I thought about how to keep it within the time frame. That’s how we came up with the idea of “talking about very important things, but there’s fighting all the time on the screen.” At first, I thought, “Normally you can’t do that in a movie because it won’t get into your ears, but it’s something I can do because this is a film that is supposed to be watched more than once.” When I saw the speed of the movie experience, I realized that I could understand it.
When I first saw Char’s Counterattack, I couldn’t understand it because the tempo was too fast. But now I can watch it just fine. Everything you need is said in it somehow, somewhere. I think the way human beings concentrate now when they face a visual is different from when we were children. Nowadays, I think people are more attached to the images while watching them.
Minakawa: And if the axis is simple, instead of saying, “I don’t get it! I’ll be left behind!” you’ll follow the narration with Sanada and you can understand the story on the surface. It’s not structured in such a way that you have to look at every corner of the picture and imagine what’s going on. Of course, you have to think about what’s hidden behind the scenes by looking at the visuals as well. But I think that for this amount of information, I was able to make it so that there was little sense of being left behind.
Fukui: Sanada is the most appropriate person to look at the whole picture objectively, isn’t he?
Interviewer: This time, as we can see in the trailer, you mentioned the Apollo project and added a lot of details about the history of the human race up to the battle against the Garmillas in the 2199 part.
Fukui: Since it’s in a documentary style, it wouldn’t look cool unless the “month and day” were shown. So I did my best on that part.
Minakawa: We were going to have only the year, but we decided to include all the dates. I worked for a long time on an Excel spreadsheet that says, “This happens on this day in this month.”
Interviewer: In the past, it was just, “what year did it happen?” And if specific dates were given, that was the official answer.
Minakawa: In that regard, these decisions have been controversial among fans. At the beginning of the meeting, we said, “We’re about to get into a lot of trouble.” And I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Fukui: We gave a date for Apollo 11, so I thought, “Why stop showing dates there?”
Minakawa: It brings a sense of unity. I understand that feeling, but I felt like I was going to throw up from the pressure. However, I thought that if I respected the information that had been released so far and kept working hard, the fans would understand. For example, the date of Pluto’s Operation M is almost confirmed from the depiction in 2199, so I could count backwards from there.
Interviewer: I see.
Minakawa: Mr. Tamamori was very helpful with the whole chronology. It was thanks to him that you see text caption, “The 200th anniversary of the End of World War II.” He said, “I want it to be a world where humanity has solved its problems, and although there will be major problems again, I want it to be a world where we can have hope for the future because humanity has overcome the hardships of the past 200 years.” That helped me to see the direction of the world.
Fukui: After that point, 70% of the human race will die, but after 200 years of overcoming various obstacles, we were able to restore the Battleship Yamato. After that, we went into space and the bubble collapsed. In the 2190’s, we were divided into two planets and fought against each other. The arrival of Garmillas was the 9/11 of the 22nd century, the Great Recession, and Corona all rolled into one.
Interviewer: When 2202 started, you said, “This is the right time to make it.”
Fukui: That’s right. I never wavered on that point.
Minakawa: On the other hand, even though it’s in a bubble, human beings still manage to restore the bBattleship Yamato. We’ve maintained peace for 200 years, and we’ve solved many problems. But now we’re facing a much bigger problem. They may be going in a bad direction now, but I’d hoping those people would think, “Well, that’s not going to happen to us.”
Interviewer: Indeed, if you think of them as such people, it may be natural for them to make that choice at the end of 2202.
Fukui: And they pay for it in 2205…
(Everyone Laughs)
Minakawa: You’re always adding a punchline. (Laughs)
Interviewer: I understand that Mr. Fukui asked you to participate in this project. How long have the two of you known each other? He wrote a comment in your book, A Critical Biography of Char Aznable, which came out in 2006.
Fukui: That’s when we first met, I think.
Minakawa: When Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden: The Blue Destiny was published by Kodansha, the person in charge of the paperback said to me, “Let’s ask Mr. Fukui to write a comment.” So I asked him, and he wrote the first comment for me.
Fukui: That was before Gundam Officials came out, right? [An extensive encyclopedia of the Gundam universe.]
Minakawa: That’s right. But we didn’t have any contact at that time.
Fukui: I knew of her and I was like, “The one who made that awesome thing?”
Minakawa: We met in person when I was working on Critical Biography. It was right when you were starting Gundam Unicorn, right?
Fukui: It was right after it started.
Interviewer: In a talk event you two had at Waseda Festival 2013, Mr. Minakawa talked about seeing Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3 and said, “I remember my past life, when I was in the second grade.” Mr. Fukui was surprised and said, “That’s how my brother was.” When you talked about finding Yamato, Mr. Fukui said the first movie was broadcast on TV the same year Farewell was released. Mr. Minakawa, you’re a little older than Mr. Fukui, so are you in the generation that was directly hit by Yamato?
Minakawa: In my previous life (Laughs), the TV series started when I was in 4th grade. I watched the movie version in the first year of junior high school, Farewell in the second year, and The New Voyage in the third year. In that same year (1979), I watched Mobile Suit Gundam and Space Carrier Blue Noah. It was a dense three years, three years of Yamato.
Interviewer: That’s a lot. (Laughs)
Fukui: So when it came time to do Yamato, I had something like “Yamato instructions.” (Laughs)
Interviewer: Instructions?
Minakawa: Like, “You have a tough job to do.” (Laughs)
Fukui: It was, “Put your heart into it.”
Interviewer: It was going to be a difficult job.
Fukui: Yes.
Minakawa: I’m halfway through my generation. The generation of Mr. Izubuchi, the General Director of 2199, first saw Yamato in junior high or high school. For me, it was three years with Farewell in the middle, and for Mr. Fukui it was another three years starting with the TV series Yamato 2 with Be Forever in the middle. For me, the first work of Yamato belonged to my older brothers and sisters.
Interviewer: Oh, it’s not like it’s “our own.”
Minakawa: That’s the way it was, and when Farewell came out, I realized that it was for my generation. The subtle difference of three or five years is huge, and I think there are many ways to look at it. Besides, there was a lag in information depending on whether you lived in Tokyo or the Kanto region, or in a rural area.
Interviewer: I see. Earlier, you mentioned “Yamato instructions.” Did you have any advice during the production?
Fukui: After that, I asked Ms. Minakawa to write the novelization, and she would come back with, “I thought of this concept.” 2202 had already been created by adjusting various concepts. So when she came up with a new one, I was like, “What do you want me to do?” (Laughs) So I kept thinking, “The next time I do this, let’s put it in from the beginning.”
Minakawa: When I gave it to him, he said, “You can’t put this in anymore” or “I’ll use this later, so don’t write it in here.”
Fukui: I had written a concept that would lead to 2205, so I told her, “I’ll use this next time, so please don’t put it in the novel.”
Interviewer: So rather than, “You can’t do that,” it was, “This is good, let’s save it.” (Laughs)
Fukui: Yes, that’s right, and we could use that basis to explore it more deeply. Though some of that exploring was done while we were talking in a bar (Laughs)
Minakawa: Yes, deep exploration in a bar (Laughs)
Interviewer: That kind of talk is fun. It usually goes, “Is this a better concept, or this one?” Do you work on it like that?
Minakawa: Not really, but when I think about it, I get into it. Then I hear the voice of the universe.
Interviewer: The voice of the universe! (Laughs)
Minakawa: I don’t know if it’s the voice of the universe, Zordar’s voice, or Teresa’s voice. (Laughs)
Interviewer: I see. I heard that when you were working on Gundam Officials, there weren’t just piles of materials, but more was also kept under the floor.
Minakawa: I was sitting on top of the Gundam. (Laughs) Since then, I’ve moved the stuff under the floor to another room, but now I can’t get to the back. Mr. Fukui-san came to my house the other day, but that was as far as he could go.
Fukui: Is that so?
Minakawa: There was a room you couldn’t get into, wasn’t there?
Fukui: The one that wouldn’t open. (Laughs)
Minakawa: It’s a scary room with only a Buddhist altar, books, and a copy machine. I also collected materials on the history of anime around the time I worked on The Rise and Fall of Japanese Animation: The New Tezuka School, so it was pretty tough. I’ve digitized a lot of things, but I have to get rid of a lot of stuff. It’s physically putting pressure on my life.
Interviewer: Have you ever thought of making something like Yamato Officials?
Minakawa: The old series and the remake series are different from each other.
Fukui: Yes, you’d have to separate the old series from the remake series.
Minakawa: It would be difficult because I’d want to put them together in a stylish way, as a book, as a world view. I’d like to be able to systematically manage all the information in the remake series. I’m not sure who would do that (Laughs), but I think it would be very useful.
Fukui: I think this work is the first step toward something like that.
Interviewer: The history of mankind’s expansion into space has been sorted out, hasn’t it?
Fukui: For people in their twenties and thirties who have seen the Gundam series, it is very important to have a chronology, or a type number on the mecha. It feels like reality. So the biggest barrier for people who don’t know the old Yamato is that it’s the Battleship Yamato. “Why is something in that shape flying in space?” That’s probably what we’re talking about. It’s the same thing as, “Why does Tetsujin 28 have eyes, a nose, and even black eyes?”
Minakawa: It’s a tragedy that we had to come up with a reason for Gundam to have arms and legs. When people asked, “Why does the universe have an up and down in Yamato?” there was no solid followup on the official side, so the fans tried their best to fill in the gaps. This has been reflected in the remake series since 2199.
Fukui: That’s right. The most important thing to overcome in order to break through that is for them to see, “This is how it happened based on the surrounding history.”
Minakawa: Rather than, “Isn’t it strange that it’s shaped like the Battleship Yamato?” it’s more fun to think about, “What’s the meaning of the shape of Battleship Yamato?” When Mr. Tamamori explained why Yamato is still a ship with weapons on the top and armor on the bottom, it was a revelation to me. The turret is vulnerable to bullets, so the thick part on the bottom of the ship is for protection. It’s a spear and a shield.
Interviewer: I also learned his theory of the third bridge, and it was an eye-opener for me. [See interview linked earlier.]
Fukui: But if you go by the theory of the shield and the spear, you have to roll over while you fight. I’m sure that’s part of the “cool laugh,” but the point is that we can actually see a world in the future with a real feeling of where our space development will end up. It may be strange that Yamato is built inside the battleship’s body and flies in the sky, but you can understand the earnestness of the people depicted there, can’t you? That’s how I made it. So I think this film may be less of a hurdle than watching the main story.
Minakawa: There are a lot of hooks in this film, so something in there might catch your attention.
Fukui: I think it would be great if people follow up and watch the whole thing again.
Minakawa: I think it would be interesting if it got people into the old series, or other derivative works, or the decades-long history.
Interviewer: Atsuki Sato is the director of this film. He’s been making trailers since 2199. What do you think of him from your point of view?
Fukui: He has a natural talent for connecting images. Usually, when I do this kind of work, I have to tell them, “6 more frames, drop a little,” or “12 more frames, start a little earlier.” But when I tell him, “Make it feel good,” he gives me the perfect result. The first thing that comes to mind is that there are no deviations. He is a person who “knows the right answer.” The type who has his own “body clock.” When I was thinking about who to ask to edit this film, I thought of Mr. Sato, and my work was almost half done.
Minakawa: His opening montage for Ark of the Stars was amazing. I was like, “No problem with this guy.” I was relieved when he was introduced at the beginning. I thought, “He’s the one who can do it.”
Fukui: I’ve known him for a long time. It was like, “Oh, I remember you did the trailer for Yamato.” And from time to time, I would hear conversations like, “You remember everything, you must really like Yamato.” In this compilation, the background music for the scene where Yamato first breaks the bedrock and rises to the surface is the same as the launch scene in the original TV version.
Minakawa: Gathering the Fleet.
Fukui: He really wanted to use that piece. We couldn’t use the version from 2199 for various reasons, so when we used the same piece in 2202, we re-recorded it, but we didn’t have it. We were so passionate about it that we asked them to record it anew.
Minakawa: When the special report came out, there were some fans who noticed that the music was a little different.
Interviewer: I didn’t know that.
Fukui: It was a new recording.
Minakawa: I realized it was a new recording just from the special report.
Interviewer: The last question is a bit strange, but in a talk event you guys had once, there was a question, “Which character in Gundam is similar to you?” Mr. Minakawa said Full Frontal, and Mr. Fukui said “Camille at the time it aired, but after 30 years, It’s Ryu Jose.”
Fukui: That’s a clever thing to bring up.
Interviewer: In the case of Yamato, who do you think is similar to you?
Fukui: Not who I like, but who I am like. I see. Well, I guess Keyman. He came on board later with Yamato and started to verbalize things that no one had been able to verbalize before. He died in the end, though. (Laughs)
Minakawa: I think I’m Gelhen. He says something he shouldn’t and gets dropped. (All laugh)
Interviewer: I see. Thank you very much for your time.
