Terebi anime front line — a 17-year history of anime (Yamato Shobo), written by Ishiguro Noboru together with voice actress Noriko Obara. The flow of anime history is described in a unique style, which is very interesting.
Noboru Ishiguro
Super B-grade work Yamato
“I don’t intend to make an A-grade team. What I want to make is a super B-grade team.” This is apparently the line that Mihara or Tsuruoka, a pro baseball player, once said when he became the manager of his team. I love the term “super B-grade.”
The same goes for movies. I prefer B-grade movies to A-grade literary masterpieces. I used to go to the cinema like crazy in my high school days, which was also the heyday of Hollywood’s B-grade pictures, but when I ponder it, I can’t sleep at night thinking about how much B-grade movies are contributing to the current business.
Among them, horror and science fiction are the most representative of B-grade movies, and they were never shown in regular roadshow [first-run] theaters. I rushed to see Harryhausen’s The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms on its opening day, but the theater was the Shibuya Tokyu. They definitely didn’t show it at the Pantheon. Although The Eye of the Tiger was shown at the Pantheon a few years ago, it seems that a B-grade movie doesn’t suit a fancy roadshow theater.
By the way, among the B-grade movies that are produced one after another like a magazine that you can read and throw away, there are times when a masterpiece pops out that leaves its mark on film history. I call them super B-movies. For example, War of the Worlds is a great super B-movie. (Many people may think it’s A-grade, but I think George Pal is a B-grade movie director. For the same reason, 2001 A Space Odyssey is an A-grade movie. I woouldn’t put it in the B-grade category.)
There is also a famous super B-grade movie in Japan. It’s Godzilla. Who among the staff at the time would have thought that one day in the future this name would become synonymous with Japanese tokusatsu monsters? The staff made a desperate effort to make something interesting. When it reaches a certain level, or when it is given just a little push (it’s easy to understand if you know what this is), it produces a wonderful crystal like a diamond. I think this is the true essence of super B-grade.
I feel that Star Wars was made into a super B-grade movie by force, spending a lot of money. Spielberg’s Duel was originally a TV movie, but it was such a hit in theaters that it’s a proper super-B-grade. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is super-B-grade in the first half, and A-grade in the second half…but I’ve gotten too engrossed in movie talk. Let’s move on to the main topic now.
“Terebi anime front line — a 17-year history of anime”
(Yamato Shobo), written by Ishiguro Noboru together with
voice actress Noriko Obara. The flow of anime history is
described in a unique style, which is very interesting.
Japanese TV anime is actually B-grade. A-grade anime refers to the kind made by Disney or socialist countries, and in Japan, I think all of it is B-grade, except for a few of the feature films that Toei used to make. The major works have a small number of productions, are popular and interesting, and are mass-produced, so they match the various conditions of a B-grade movie.
So, although they’re not Duel, I think Yamato and Gundam, which swept through movie theaters all over Japan and did not hide the secret of their origins as TV anime, are proper super-B-grade works.
In recent anime magazines, it’s become popular for the people involved in a work to share their feelings about the content and theme (although most of them are quite embarrassed and can’t speak well about that sort of thing). But when Yamato was released in theaters, I was really surprised and impressed to hear that the theme was love. Because when we were making the TV anime, we had never even heard about it.
Of course, there was a lot of love in each episode, like love for humanity and Yuki’s crush on Kodai-kun, but for us, it was just a prop, a means to make the story more interesting. In other words, our theme was a subtle B-grade spirit of how to make a work as interesting as possible.
At that time, I was itching to show everyone that the first full-scale SF anime set in space (in other words, a full-scale B-grade work) could produce such dramatic visuals, because there was a jinx about anime saying that space and undersea stories were not popular, so I wasn’t able to do such a fulfilling work.
As you know, it ended with low viewer ratings, so the jinx was not broken, but it seems to have been well-received by experts. In other words, it had a strong impact on my colleagues. At the time, I heard rumors that various companies were planning similar projects, and when I met a young director, he excitedly said, “I watched Yamato every week!” I was so touched that I got excited too.
To be honest, when Yamato was canceled, it was quite a shock for me. I wondered if SF and space stories were not suitable for Japanese people after all. As a lover of SF, I wondered if I would no longer be able to bring my hobby into my work.
People often ask me why I like science-fiction so much, and when I think back, the reason is my war experiences as a child. I was alive during the war when it ended, so I was exposed to air raids. Every day, whether it was day or night, my mother would take me by the hand and we would run to a bomb shelter carved into a nearby mountain, and I didn’t think it was strange.
During the Great Tokyo Air Raid, my house was quite far away so we were lucky to escape, but the sight of it from afar was not so much horrific as it was a kind of fantastical beauty, and it still remains in my mind. A quarter of the night sky was colored in vivid orange and red, and if you just looked at that, it was a magnificent sight.
The air battles in the night sky were also memorable, like sparklers scattering. The only scary memory I have is running away under the light of flares, but everything was fantastical, beautiful, and extraordinary, like the world of anime. Because we didn’t know when the air raids would come, we were always made to sleep with our clothes on. That’s why I still sleep with my clothes on.
There’s no doubt that my SF roots lie in wartime, but on the other hand, I never had a chance to see or hear what war is. So even now, I don’t get excited by war movies. When I think of war, I can only think of air raids, so I’m a “bomb shelter” type. I couldn’t stand it when Yamato became more and more like a war anime as the sequels went on. Because what I was trying to make was Yamato, a big B-grade SF anime.
Yoshinobu Nishizaki
I think it was Yamato that determined the direction of SF anime today. The man behind this, Yoshinobu Nishizaki, speaks for the first time about the secrets behind the Yamato series and Gundam.
Talking about “SF anime” Yamato
Interviewer: At the time of the first Yamato TV series, you took a unique approach to depicting science-fiction in anime. The appointment of staff members, such as Leiji Matsumoto, Aritsune Toyota and Studio Nue, who did not appear directly on the surface, was refreshing, but where did that come from?
Nishizaki: First of all, I think it’s better to think of me as a producer who likes the kind of sci-fi that has a rather superficial meaning, rather than as a writer with a maniacal [otaku] approach to sci-fi. I didn’t create Yamato by thinking about sci-fi in that way. The idea of a battleship flying through the air and the story that would ensue was all down to the producer.
There were books that I used for reference, such as Escape from Earth, which were helpful. I had a better knowledge of science-fiction and space than most people, but I still didn’t know much about it. So we gathered people with specialist knowledge of sci-fi and did some brainstorming.
The first person to join us was Mr. Toyota. Based on the original story and knowledge he had, we brought in writer Eiichi Yamamoto and scriptwriter Keisuke Fujikawa, and then I joined in and the first concept for Space Battleship Yamato was formed.
From the very beginning, it was clear that the aim was not to create a full-length animation like the ones Walt Disney had already completed, or animation aimed at a younger elementary school age group, but to use animation to create a work aimed at an age group that would understand the story to a certain extent. The human drama structure and sci-fi knowledge were set, but now we needed a visual aspect.
This wasn’t going to be done by Mr. Toyota or me, so we first appointed Leiji Matsumoto as art director and designer. The reason we chose him was that at the time, science-fiction films were very unpopular, and he was more involved in serializing works like The Four and a Half Tatami Mat Stories [a manga series about characters in poverty]. I happened to be working at Mushi Productions at the time, and he was drawing covers for Mushi’s COM magazine. I really liked the mechanic designs he drew. I had liked him personally before, and the female characters in his drawings really appealed to my own sensibilities, and when I thought about them in relation to outer space…these two points led to the decision to hire Mr. Matsumoto.
As for Studio Nue, our assistant producer was close to them before this, so it wasn’t my own idea. I think Nue appeared when I was looking for someone to support Mr. Matsumoto.
Interviewer: As you made the sequels, I felt that the SF sensibility of the first work, such as the appeal of the mecha, gradually disappeared. What was your awareness as a producer?
Nishizaki: In a very broad sense, as was written in the first proposal, the starting point for me was that I wanted people to always walk forward with a positive attitude. In other words, the basic stance of this work was that it was an action drama with a male protagonist and a female presence of love, a story of the actions and behavior of the male protagonists and their goals, a mecha that is involved with these people, and that at the end of it all there is individual love and a broader love of humanity.
So, if there had been 39 episodes instead of 26, there would have been no need for Farewell to Yamato. The first Yamato ended like a story with a single goal, so I think that the 13 unproduced episodes would have expanded on the love that was seen at the end, between Yuki Mori and Kodai, into something bigger, something like universal love. It was a point where I was under a lot of stress and couldn’t depict it properly. That’s why we did Farewell to Yamato. That makes sense, right? So it really ended with Farewell.
I think The New Voyage was created not so much because of the requests of the fans, but because of the basic philosophical differences between Mr. Matsumoto and myself. People often say that we don’t get along, but that’s not true. (laughs) If the artist and producer can’t understand each other’s intentions and sensibilities, they can’t work together.
In Farewell, one of the Kodai lines I came up with myself is expressed in the words, “I’m not going to die. I’m going to start a new life.” That’s my own personal philosophy of life. It means death in this world, but if you look at it from a broader perspective, human life doesn’t end there. The idea that, as time goes by, we are reborn and continue to live in an eternal cycle is at the root of my own beliefs, so I thought it was acceptable to kill the main characters in order to convey two things: the act of love, in which one risks one’s own life for the sake of another, and the fact that there are times when one must fight to the bitter end, risking one’s life against true evil.
Another of Mr. Matsumoto’s ideas is also correct. Once a young person or a human being is dead, that’s the end of them, so they have to live their lives to the fullest while they’re alive. I wanted to express that you can’t give up. TV and film are fundamentally different, so the way they’re made is also different. Ultimately, Farewell was finished at the producer’s discretion. I had already told Mr. Matsumoto that “if it’s made as a TV show, we’ll bring them back to life”.
It seems like I brought them back to life by cynical calculation, but that’s not the case. It’s a different world. I finished what I wanted to do with Farewell. That’s why I wrote that I wouldn’t do it again. But the reason I was able to make The New Voyage and beyond was because I had to think about how to bring the characters back to life and what ending to give them. When I made The New Voyage, I was already prepared for the fact that I would have to make the next one.
As a result, I want to bring the story to a conclusion with The Final Chapter. So, since I was focusing on the human element in my work after Farewell, it may be true, as you said earlier, that the way I depicted the mecha and its relationship with humans became more superficial.
Interviewer: What is your honest evaluation of works that came after Yamato, such as Gundam?
Nishizaki: I’ve seen all 43 Gundam episodes. I think there are many things to admire about the mecha process and the SF-like aspects, as well as the new human race. I often said that the interesting thing about Gundam was the way it depicted the process of strategy. I feel that Gundam has depicted things that were lacking in Yamato in a very different way, because it’s difficult to depict strategy in a short work like a movie.
I don’t want you to think I’m saying this out of spite (laughs), but to put it in extreme terms, I feel that it is a derivative work and a TV-style production.
To give you the good points, the part I mentioned earlier, the strategy, is carefully depicted because of the TV format. And the fusion of humans and mecha that I always talked about in Yamato…that was depicted in the first Gundam movie. The reactions of the characters to the incidents are depicted, not just for the main character, but for everyone. I think these two points are the reasons why Gundam is so popular. Also, the attention to detail, such as always having the characters wear space suits in outer space. But on the other hand, I’d like them to stop waving around cheap humanism.
Interviewer: What do you mean specifically?
Nishizaki: If you ask me, I think there’s a lack of dramaturgy in the process of the main character’s trial and error. What is the philosophy and dramaturgy that runs through the whole of the work? If you are going to assert humanism and humanity from that standpoint, that’s fine, but it still seems reactive.
To be honest, I was disappointed that the pattern had been established after the first dozen episodes or so. I’m sure that the relationships in each episode were depicted with a lot of care, but for example, when the rebels rose up, the lines that the children were made to say seemed a little contrived to me. I think things like that should be depicted through their actions and behavior, rather than through logic.
I think the mecha and other parts of the story are well-developed, but the use of new terms for atmosphere and the way the mecha are named are just for the sake of adding a certain feel, and I’m sorry to say that they didn’t connect the meaning of the mechanism and the human drama of a person turning a single screw.
The only thing I was disappointed about in the first Gundam movie was that it wasn’t made in the way that a movie should be made. If you do that, you’ll ruin everything you’ve worked so hard to create. I think they should have at least started to make it as a movie, rather than just cutting and pasting TV scenes together.
You might think the first Yamato movie was also made by cutting and pasting TV scenes together, but that’s not the case. The shot composition was actually made like a feature-length movie. That’s why there are so many wide shots. We used 35mm film for the TV series, and the screen composition was made with that in mind, so there were no problems when it was put straight into theaters. The best example is the battle in the Rainbow Star Cluster, where the fighter planes fly toward you. On TV, they’re just dots. But that was something that Takeshi Shirato painstakingly drew in. So if you take something like that and put it straight into a movie, it has a sense of reality. In the case of Gundam, there were probably budget issues, but if you just take the shots as they are, it’s a waste of good material. That’s my honest opinion.