I’m currently in the middle of my trip around Japan and I obviously couldn’t miss the chance to go watch the new Gundam —Studio Khara’s Gundam— movie, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-, as it got released in the theaters here just a few weeks ago. I wasn’t planning on posting anything on the blog during these first three months of 2025, but listening to the Creators Talk featuring Director Kazuya Tsurumaki, Chief Mechanical Animation Director SeJoon Kim and Producer Yuki Sugitani, that premiered on Studio Khara’s official YouTube channel the evening of the 26th (right as I left the theater after my first rewatch of the movie), I couldn’t contain my excitement and started live-translating on Twitter some of the more interesting exchanges they had. Unsurprisingly, most of the exchanges ended up being very interesting, so I decided to collect all of the fragments I translated into a longer blogpost, and share it on here as well. As a result, the goal of this post isn’t to cover the entirety of the interview (like I usually do), but only a few excerpts that I personally found particularly valuable and noteworthy.
Original interview from Studio Khara’s official YouTube channel, conducted by Mafia Kajita and released on January 26th 2025.
— I hear working on Gundam is too heavy a cross to bear for many, but what about you, did you accept promptly to direct this new project?
Tsurumaki: No. I also said this to Producer Sugitani at the time, but I wasn’t confident I liked Gundam enough to be able to direct it…
Sugitani: That’s true, and my answer was, “the fact that you’re worried about that to begin with means it’ll probably be okay, don’t you think?“
Everyone laughs
Sugitani: Yeah, rather than being a “prompt” decision, it took some time to get an answer back, and I sort of had to beg the Director to take on the role.
Tsurumaki: I love it, I really love Gundam, but there are so many people in the world who love Gundam, and compared to them, I couldn’t say I had the confidence to direct it.
[…]
Kim: What about you Sugitani-san, did you accept right away when you got the offer from Sunrise?
Sugitani: I said, “alright, I’m gonna talk about it with the company tomorrow”.
Everyone laughs
Sugitani: I was having a meal with Sunrise’s Ogata-san, and he asked, “would you be interested in making a Gundam with Tsurumaki-san?“, and I was like, “are you for real?“.
Everyone laughs
Sugitani: “If you’re serious about this, I’m going to talk to the others at the company right away“, and, well, he said he was serious about it so the next day I came up to the others and said I had to talk.
[…]
Sugitani: Since I joined Khara, I basically got assigned to the “Tsurumaki Unit”, and since about Eva Q [ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:Q, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, 2012] I’ve always worked together with him like this, so I thought, “with Tsurumaki-san [directing it], he’ll definitely show me something new that I can’t even begin to imagine“.
— […] personally, [GQuuuuuuX] is a Gundam project I’ve always wanted to see realized.
Tsurumaki: Oh, is that so?
— Yeah, really!
Tsurumaki: Well, at first I believed Sunrise would reject my proposal, and if they did I would have been fine with that and called it a day.
Everyone laughs
Tsurumaki: To be honest, since it was a pretty heavy burden after all, there was a part of me that hoped Sunrise would reject my proposal and the project would end there, like, “I’m sorry it turned out like this Sugitani-kun” and move on. But then they unfortunately said it was all good so…
— So, when you got their answer back, your reaction was something like, “what, really?!“?
Tsurumaki: It was more like, “are we really going to do this then…?”, and then I started to feel a bit scared, I thought the fans would think, “what the hell are you doing?“
[…]
— During the production, were there any points in particular you absolutely didn’t want to negotiate on, and wanted to insist on no matter what?
Sugitani: We really like Gundam, but we really love Evangelion too, right? When I first talked [about this project] to Tsurumaki-san, I asked him to make something only us could. And, well, this is a co-production between Bandai Namco Filmworks and Studio Khara, so we’re creating it as a project made by “the company that made Evangelion” together with “the company that made Gundam”. After Eva Q, there was a time when within Studio Khara we worked on a very intimate project, Nihon Animator Mihonichi [日本アニメ（ーター）見本市, Japan Anima(tor)’s Exhibition, 2014], where the plan was to create many 5-minutes anime short according to everyone’s likings and visions, and in the context of that project, there was one work directed by Yamashita Ikuto-san, Guuzou Sen’iki [偶像戦域, Iconic Field], right? Yamashita-san was in charge of the direction and the original plan for that short, while for the animation direction, we asked Gundam Unicorn’s [機動戦士ガンダムUC, Mobile Suit Gundam UC, 2010] Director [Kazuhiro] Furuhashi. We also had Kim-san for the mechanical animation direction, and for the character animation direction, we asked [Iwao] Teraoka-san, who had too previously worked on Gundam Unicorn as an animation director as well. So, basically, that time, Yamashita-san created something very “Eva-like” working with the Gundam team, while on the other hand, at the same time, again for the Nihon Animator Mihonichi project, Tsurumaki-san worked on I can Friday by day!, and the character designer for that short was Take-san, the same as this time. So, for this project [GQuuuuuuX], it’s like the staff members of those two shorts came together and merged.
— It sort of feels like their fate was decided during that project.
[…]
— What about you, Kim-san? Were there any aspects you wanted to insist on no matter what?
Kim: I really wanted to work together with Director Tsurumaki […]. My big brother is very into anime, and before I came to Japan, he said to me that if I wanted to study anime, I had to watch one show in particular: FLCL [フリクリ, 2000, Kazuya Tsurumaki is FLCL’s director TN].
Tsurumaki: (laughs)
— Oh, he really is a good brother.
Kim: And when the songs by The Pillows started playing… wow… I thought, “so anime can be like this, huh”. Thanks to that, I love FLCL and I really love music too, and I’d say I have a pretty good music sense as well […]. So, yeah, Director Tsurumaki is a person I’ve always really looked up to, so my focus for this project is to support him; if there’s something he wants to do, I want to help him achieve it… to the point I’m ready to die together with him. […] So, rather than a personal focus of mine, I wanted to support the director, helping this project fit into his vision.
[…]
— Okay then, what about you Director Tsurumaki? What points you did you want to absolutely insist on no matter what?
Tsurumaki: Well… directing… planning a new Gundam project necessarily involves planning new Gunpla models as well —they’re synonyms. It’s not like I’m personally into building Gunpla all that much, but I do understand they’re a huge, important part of the franchise, so I wanted the new Gunpla models to be fascinating and attractive. I told Yamashita Ikuto-san that I didn’t want him to be overly influenced by the other Gundams’ designs, to the point the new design line-up wouldn’t feel “Yamashita-like” anymore; I wanted a Gunpla like nothing I’d ever seen before.
— I’m sure everyone who drew fan-arts had a pretty hard time wrapping their heads around how to move and draw this thing [the GQuuuuuuuX] (laughs)
[…]
— Sugitani-san mentioned this earlier, but there’s this fan-service-like element where the world [of GQuuuuuuX] feels like it’s linked to Evangelion, right?
Sugitani: Well, that’s probably just because the director really likes that kind of atmosphere I think…
Tsurumaki: Yeah, exactly! (laughs). It practically feels like they share the same setting and world, but it’s actually absolutely nothing like that. It’s really just fan-service —or rather, since it’s a production by Studio Khara, I thought I could have had some fun with it. There are some aspects of Gundam that feel pretty stiff and strict, like the pre-determined, “official” setting for instance… but well, since Studio Khara is the one producing it, I thought it was fine if I played around with that a bit.
[…]
— Kim-san, earlier you talked about the troubles you had working with the complex designs and materials created by Yamashita-san, but were there any points in particular you had specific difficulties with?
Kim: This time, we’re using an hybrid approach where both 3D and hand-drawn animation are mixed and blended together —there’s no clear separation between the two. Considering a few consecutive cuts for example, cut #1 and #2 might be 3D, cut #3 might be hand-drawn, and then cut #4 might be 3D again. So, we had to make sure it all felt as natural as possible. 3D animation is very efficient, but we were worried that if, when watching consecutive cuts, the distinction between the two techniques was too clear and noticeable, it would end up looking like a mess in the eyes of the viewers. I believe it’s still somewhat possible to vaguely distinguish between 3D and hand-drawn, but we wanted to make it so that the contrast between the two was as subtle as possibile. In order to achieve that, we had various discussions with the 3D team to make sure the shading looked like that of a drawing. This was, at first, one of the more critical aspects I was worried about and paid particular attention to.
[…]
Kim: This is something I think about all the time, but I really believe the emotions and love you feel while drawing are always reflected onto the paper, isn’t that so? And I believe that this time, the passion and love for this project from the many people of the various departments is really showing.
— That’s truly fascinating. After all, working with this hybrid approach as you explained, there really is a meaning behind the choice of not going full-CG and instead including hand-drawn animation as well. There really is a meaning in using hand-drawn animation, right?
Sugitani: The director expressed this intention as well. Like, “this cut will look better in 3D, this one is more suited for hand-drawn”; he decided on when to use either of the techniques. Like with the poses, for example…
Tsurumaki: …and the shooting scenes as well; there’s this cut where the Police Zaku raises the machine gun and shots, and animation-wise, it’s a bit dishonest. If we used 3D, it couldn’t lie —it would have been a more stiff and truthful movement, but with hand-drawn animation, we could lie a bit, making it so that its shoulders would somehow enter inside its torso. I thought it would have looked cooler that way, so I asked for that cut to be hand-drawn. Like in this case, there are ideed cuts better suited for hand-drawn animation, and others where 3D might be more appropriate instead, and I hope I made the right choices.
— Animation-wise is a very interesting technique, choosing which of the two to use for every cut.
Sugitani: It has that [Yoshikazu] Yasuhiko-san feeling to it…
Tsurumaki: Yeah! Originally, in the first Gundam, Yasuhiko-san’s animation itself, especially looking at like the waist, the hands or the shoulders [of the mobile suits], has a pretty different form compared to the solidity and truthfulness of 3D. It’s something you just cannot replicate with 3D.
The interview concluded with the staff deeply thanking all of the fans for the huge success of the movie, explaining how all the support they’re receiving is the fuel that enables them to work harder. Please look forward to the release of the TV series, and enjoy the unique experience of the theater as many times as you need to catch all the details, even the smaller ones!
Part 2 – Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-: Creators Talk vol.2 – Interview Highlights
SHINSEIKI 