Thanks to Ollie. He talks about literally everything in has career, from Zeta Gundam to Dragon's Heaven to Yamato. Worth a read.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2016/06/25/makoto-kobayashi-on-mecha-design-and-the-importance-of-red-and-blue-paint/#12a343a32495
>>14425817
This is fucking fascinating. Lots of crazy, interesting trivia.
>>14425887
Yeah, the parts where he talked about Zeta Gundam were interesting.
>"While there are many names listed on Zeta Gundam in terms of the mecha design, the truth of the matter though is that at the time there weren’t that many mecha designers around. For instance Mamoru Nagano wasn’t all that known at the time, Kazumi Fujita likewise and while Kunio Okawara’s name was included he was only really involved with the prior series but not so much on Zeta Gundam. So that meant they got as many people as they could that were able to draw and ran a sort of competition. In the case of Kazumi Fujita, he drew very well and was quickly added. However, he also left the project mid-way through production. So to finish his work we had to approach various manga artist assistants, so as a system I must say it was pretty broken."
The more I read about it, the more I realize that Zeta's production staff and sponsors had no idea what the fuck they were doing.
>The Giant Robo OVA was done at the same place where they were working on Yamato back in the 80s. At the time, they were working on the story for Yamato Resurrection and the producer bought an awful lot of red and blue paints to prepare for the project. Then suddenly Nishizaki cancelled the whole thing, which meant there was a lot of leftover blue and red paint. So they approached me about whether they could do something with Giant Robo, as the main mecha was red and blue. So this was around 85 or 86 and TBS were going to do this as a TV series. Again, this got cancelled but it resurfaced as an OVA and they took around two years to do the first episode. So to put it really simply, Giant Robo was a byproduct of when Nishizaki tried to resurrect Yamato and failed.
That's pretty funny.
>Forbes
wow, didnt see that one comin
>>14425817
>Kobayashi thought Zeta Gundam would fail because of the transforming robot craze
Kinda explains why his original Baund Doc design does not look transformable.
>>14425817
Hell fucking yes.
I don't get why people hate Ollie when he brings us stuff like this.
>>14425910
If you look at the Japanese Culture Ministry's report on robot animation, you can see that Zeta Gundam was pretty much a desperation move to try and shackle the fandom of Gundam to a new project by using the property once original anime ideas were starting to flag.
http://mediag.jp/project/project/images/JapaneseAnimationGuide.pdf
>>14425817
Oh, this is fascinating. I'll give it a good read when I have the time.
>>14426989
It's like the only useful thing he's ever done.
Bump because this is a good thread and contains actual useful information behind it
>>14426880
how is it that this looks so cool, when the one in the show looked so bad?
>>14425817
Really good interview.
That part about Giant Robo was quite funny.
I quicly checked the blog of the author and it looks good too.
>>14427976
The Kawamori and Voltron interviews were good
>>14432274
Because Bandai wanted marketable toys that won't drain the budget and give the animators a heart attack.
bamp
>>14425817
>his magnum opus, Dragon’s Heaven
Is this finally becoming less obscure?
Maybe we'll get proper subs and a DVD release?
This was really interesting, bump to help keep this information in circulation on this board and easily accessible
>>14434820
It does have a DVD release. They even talk about it in the interview.
>>14425817
>Yamato 2199
>>14434820
The DVD raws got ripped, but it doesn't have a committed resubbing effort yet. I think someone did put up the initial subs on it and uploaded the result to Mega, though.
>>14434870
The sad thing is that most people here will never read this because they would rather follow fake rumors and stupid memes instead of actually learning the facts.
Why is Forbes hosting a lot of anime and Japan related stuff in their site? Not that I'm complaining...
>>14432803
It would be fantastic if he could get his hands on Katoki and Nagano, though I imagine those two may be too high-profile for these types of interviews.
>>14434977
More high-profile than Kawamori? Seriously?
>>14434995
Kawamori welcomes any kind of interaction with Gaijins he can get because Harmony Gold blocked him off from most of the west.
>>14425817
I am glad people liked the interview, as with all these things it takes a lot of work to organise and get them printed.
Kobayashi was a lovely guy too and very easy to talk to. He gave me a big hug afterwards as well, which I wasn't expecting at all.
>>14435001
Not sure about that, as it took around a year of groundwork to organise those Kawamori interviews, I wouldn't call that overly eager.
Generally speaking, these interviews take a lot of work to set up but I am happy that a lot of that is beginning to pay off. Got a lot more interviews on the way!
>>14437266
>Got a lot more interviews on the way!
Glad to hear. Don't know what the rest of the faggots in this thread have against you, but since you're contributing more than them, I would take you over any one of them any day.
So do you actually speak Japanese or did you have a translator with you?
>>14437266
D'awww :3
>>14437266
Thanks for the interview, that was a great read
>He gave me a big hug afterwards
Kobayashi a cute.
>>14437266
well sir, thank you for preserving the image of one hell of a person then.
>>14437266
Thanks for your hard work!
>>14437266
As others have said, thank you for all the hard work. I'm looking forward to seeing more interviews from you.
Some interesting stuff about Yamato in there. He didn't seem to like the live action film. While I admit it wasn't perfect I didn't think that movie was that bad.Pretty hilarious that Giant Robo only came about because a Yamato project failed though.
>>14425817
Nice read....
Fine fine I'll open it with my clean browser and click on a few ads.
http://archive.is/EA1O1
>>14437266
Thanks, bro.
