It's Good to Be the King
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ANIMERICA EXTREME CLOSE-UP otaku: (oh-TAH-koo) n. Term Th Ci 6 Th , used sl to fanatical devo- é OTLSCLETLCE O é tees of anime or manga. i ss a Japanese speakers mightuse this < 4 term in a pejorative sense to lenote someonelacking in social graces and breadth whois obsessive abouta certain subject. —The Complete Anime Guide Tonaka from OTAKU NO VIDEO (aka Toshio Okada) As MelBrooksoncesaid, “It's good to be the King.” In our exclusive four-part interview, ANIMERICA talks with Toshio Okada, the otaku of otaku...the Otaking! Join us for the royal saga of the rise andfall andrise again of super-studio Gainax and moreindustry buzz than Robert Altman’s THE PLAYER.Interview by Carl Gustav Horn Ys may know him through his animealter ego, “Tanaka,” in (1988), NADIA: THE SECRET OF BLUE WATER(1989), and OTAKU “YW OTAKU NOVIDEO. Butthereal-life man is hardly less of a char- NO VIDEO (1991). Conversant with English, Okada was oneof the key 4 acter—goingto college only so he could join a sciencefiction planners of AnimeCon ‘91, one of the first major U.S. conventions to be club, heformed a small group of fan amateurs into Daicon Film, which devoted entirely to anime. But in 1992 heresigned the presidency of amazed fanson both sides of the Pacific with their “garage video” Gainax and made his way to Tokyo University, where the former anime productions and superbattle-team live-action shorts. On dropout now lectures on multimedia. Returning to the U.S. for Otakon Christmas Eve, 1984,the former DaiconFilm group went pro as Studio 'n 1995, Toshio Okadagavehisfirst-ever interview to the English-lan- Gainax, the zealot heretics who made ROYALSPACE FORCE: THE guage animepress. This four-part accountgives a rare and controversial WINGS OF HONNEAMISE(1 987), AIM FOR THE TOP! GUNBUSTER inside angle on Gainax, the most iconoclastic ofall anime studios. | MISFITS DREAMING OFA BETTER _ | WORLD IN OTAKU NO VIDEO. | NOTE OKADA’S ALTER EGO IN THE | CHAR AZNABLE OUTFIT (BELOW). x es = FJ4 iSFS 9° s A iS a s a Sd S = re) PLAYERS CLUB for this Ins stallmentnit oF the ANIMERICA int Yoshiyuki Sadamoto Kenichi Sonoda. Hiromasa Ogura Haruhiko Mikimoto Shoji Kawamori ANIMATION DIRECTORTHE WINGS OF CHARACTER DESIGHERO snr onEcTORPATLABOR1: THE CHARACTER DESIGNERMACROSS, MECHA HONNEAMISE DESIGNERMACROSS, VIDEO, BUBB UM Ch nova LABOR 2, GHOST MACROSSII, MACROSS7, PATLABOR,GUNDAM 0083 CHARACTERDESIGNERTHE WINGSOF GALLFORCE creator RIDI! "INTHESHELL GUNDAM0080,AIM FOR THE wrirer/oiRector HONNEAMISE,NADIA: THE BEAN, GUNSMITH CAT ee TOP! GUNBUSTER MACROSS PLUS SECRET OFBLUE WATER, NEON ons EVANGELION M INTERVIEW WITH TOSHIO OKADA, ‘ PART TWO ( In Part Two of the ANIMERICA interview, NADIA & FRIENDS FROM y= Toshio Okadadiscusses the origins of THE SECRET OF BLUE WATER Gainax as an animestudio, the genesis of HONNEAMISE, and how Gainax’s “chaos strategy” worked for GUNBUSTERbut not NADIA. ANIMERICA: Your journey into the anime industry all sort of started after you quit col- lege in 1981, after only three days. Why? What happened? Okada: Well, after just three days I’d met Toho « the head of the science-fiction club. After that there was no needfor me to go to Sogovision school, because | only wentto college in ¢ the first place so | could join a science-fic- NHK « tion club. In those days, Japanese high schools never had SF or animeclubs.| Gainax ° didn’t really want to go to college...1 just wantedto join their club. So once | did,| Sadamoto never went to my classes again. Then the college sent me a letter asking me if | want- Yoshlyuk! © ed to quit. [LAUGHS] So | said okay. ANIMERICA: What college wasthat? Okada: Ahhh...Osaka Electrical College?...uh...! forget. [LAUGHS] They taught economics, business and computer science. But | never went to any such classes. ANIMERICA: And howwasit that you came to meet Hiroyuki Yamaga? CONTINUED ON PAGE 22 Animerica (mg) ANIMERICA FAQ: 7Please Save My Earth workinginshifts, so that there’s always someone watching overthe quest for keywords) is eventually droppedin order Earth.” SS to tell the story of the series’ interlocking charac- /// Though they are in frequent contact with their superiors, messages ters and their intertwined destinies which are, MOODYISSEI about one year to reachthe isolated moon after all, the reason we’re watching PLEASE if rom thehomeworld take oe = \| base. After an incident which caused their communicationsto go SAVE MY EARTHin thefirst place. In the manga, welearnthat ie \\down,the base team checked their messages and found they had receivedtwomessages, one warning them that war wasbrewing,the the research base where the nextwith amore dire message of imminent destruction. No more mes- seven scientists are stationed sageswerereceived, and the group realized that their homeworld was also has a fearsome military gone, leaving them stranded on the moon. Following this, in both the capability. Alien technology, comic and video welearn, is so advanced that stories, the scien- even a modest outpost such tists debate among as the one on the moonis themselves about capable ofutterly obliterating going downto the the Earth. To preventthis Earth. In the occurrence, accessto the sta- mangaversion, tion’s military defensesis restricted the deciding voice by the use ofindividually chosen =F againstthe trip is passwords. Each of the seven scientists has team leader and his or her own keyword; each keywordis linguist, Hiiragi selected on the basis ofits meaning to its owner; (but only after -each keyword is changedseveral times by each char- Gyokuran raises acteras the story progresses. the first dissenting In the anime version of PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH,Rin menaces voice,if only to Takashi, the son of the man in charge of renovating Tokyo Tower, so thwarthis rival that changeswill be made according to-his specifications. What those Shion’s desire to specifications are or how he plans ta sevit to destroy the moon base (as he explains to Haruhiko in the thirOAV episode) is something we SHION AND MOKUREN AT WATCH OVER THE EARTH FROM THE MOON BASE’S ARBORETUM leave the moon for the Earth). In never find out in the animeversion;infact, after securing several of the the animated version, the scientists begin to be struck down by the necessary keywords, Rinseems-toloseinterest in the project and drops virus while the discussion is still raging, thus making it a moot deci- it entirely. fr SR sion. In the manga, however, wefindout that Rin plans to modify Tokyo Towerto allow Him to-use it\as\ \sort of psychic amplifier, estab- : Where doesthe virus come from?Isit just sponte- lishing contact betwWeeh hé/and the mn in computeron the deserted neous, or...? moonbase. “/ inten todestreythemognbase,” Rin says. “I don’t want Earth to repeat\ourvailed history,,Ourcivilization made many Ai As far as we can tell, it’s just spontaneous. Creator Hiwatari real- mistakes, andit paiddeaclyforthem'm goingto try to save the Earth, ly doesn’t dwell on the details, neither in the manga nor in the if | can.” In the anime, Rirnéverfollows up on this intention, but in the as anime. manga,he notonly rigs Tokyo Towerto his specifications (chosen, he explains, because he’s “always had a specialliking for Tokyo 0 Why is Rin so interested in Tokyo Tower? Tower’), but actually establishes contact with the moon mainframe and initiates his nefarious plan. : One ofthe criticisms often made : Why doesHiiragi say in the third episode, “Should we against the animated feature-length epic have gone downto Earth while we had time”? Isn't it i alAMlRA t AKIRAis that there’s too muchstory in we “7 by thatpointfor the alien scientists to seek a cure on oheyecain Pa Tenure creator Katsuhiro Otomo’soriginal art works for the wealthy Matsudaira family as comics to fit comfortably in the a guardian to their rebellious young son, approximately two hoursalloted : Actually, the decision to go or not go downto Earth was one Takashi, Loozo Matsudaira, Takashi’s father, is for the video version. In some which had beenbitterly debated responsible for the renovations to Tole Tower. ways, PLEASE SAVE MY EARTH amongthe scientists for some te Tamura’s deep sense of obligation both towardhis pay- ing job of looking after the “young mas- suffers from the same problem; time before the virus struck. _ ter” Takashi, andhis lonely frien! i.e., 21 tankdbon or compiled Shion, for example, was Haruhiko, slem from the death ofhis povnge brother by suicide, for which volumes of writer/artist Saki the first to suggest that famura blames himself andseeks to Hiwatari’s original Japanese they desert the moon atone by protecting his ward Takashi comics, which somehow must base and relocate on and his friend Haruhiko with be made to fit inside six half- Earth. Gyokuran, Shion’s longtime rival, his life. hour OAVepisodes. Whichparts of the story opposed Shion’s idea go? Whichparts stay? on principle, while the Essentially, it’s the otherscientists were torn. screenwriter’s task to After all, there was a strong condensethoseless- sense of duty among them—felt essential parts of the moststrongly, perhaps, by overall saga to bet- Mokuren—thatthe destruction of ter focus on those their homeworld didn’t negate crucial story and plot their essential mission; i.e., to elements which justify observe and analyzethe Earth. the financing of the pro- Nowthat the homeworld has been ject as an animatedseries destroyed, Mokuren reasons,it’s in the first place. Althoughit’s more important now than everthat given great emphasis in the they continue their work. early episodesof the animated Shortly after Hiiragi makes the decision series, the Tokyo Towersubplot as team leader that everyone will remain on the (as well as the details of Rin’s moon,the virus begins infecting the scientists one ol 4, No.