For quite some time now I’ve had in the back of my mind the idea of a bigger, more substantial project (by my standards, that is), involving both translation work and writing in some capacity. Something that I have access to a large (or perhaps the largest available) amount of content of, and I’m both passionate and decently knowledgable about, would be what possibly is one of the most ambitious entries in a massive and massively influential franchise: the 1988 movie Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack.
I’ve already covered one long interview with director Yoshiyuki Tomino about CCA last year, even before actually getting started with this blog altogether (being one of my earliest translation works when it comes to interviews, it’s definitely not perfect and I should find the time to review it from start to finish someday). My goal with this article is to make use of all the knowledge I put together around this movie, be it through countless rewatches or thorough research, to translate and comment on the various production materials and notes collected in the Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack Complete Collection of Official Records ―BEYOND THE TIME―, specifically the “Making of” chapter, that I hold dear on my Gundam themed shelf.
For the structure of this write-up, I followed the same order in which the production material is arranged in the original book, thus dividing this article in four main sections: Mechanical Design, Character Design, Other Designs and Background Art. Lastly, a short Notes section at the end features the content included in the last few pages of the chapter.
The scope of this project is not a broader look at the production of Char’s Counterattack as a whole, but rather a narrower look into very specific parts and aspects of it.
(The production material showcased in this article is only part of what’s included in the book, and not all of it for obvious copyright reasons. However, the comments and notes, or at least the most relevant ones, have all been translated and are directly quoted or integrated in each corresponding section).
Mechanical Design
This section features various drafts of the mechanical design works, along with commentaries by their respective artists, starting with the early drafts by Mamoru Nagano, who was originally appointed as the main mecha designer for the movie, then moving to Yutaka Izubuchi, who took over after Nagano was taken off the project. Additional commentary on the development of the mecha design by producer Kenji Uchida and Sunrise Planning and Viscial Design team members Kouichi Inoue, Nobushiki Tsukada and Shigeru Horiguchi is also featured throughout this section.
My intent is to present all this as one organic sequence, just occasionally quoting the commentaries directly, and instead incorporating them within the reconstruction of the working process. To keep things in order, this section is divided in sub-sections, each dedicated to a specific artist and his respective designs. The reconstruction tries to follow a chronological order based on the information included in the Official Records Collection itself, as well as in some other sources that I’ve listed at the end of the article.
Mamoru Nagano
Hi-S Gundam (and the E.F.S.F. Mobile Suits)
In a similar fashion to the original book, this reconstruction starts off with the very first design for the then-called “Hi-S Gundam“, likely named so after the title of a concurrent (at the time) project, the 1987 novel Mobile Suit Gundam High-Streamer, by the initial main mecha designer, Mamoru Nagano.
Nagano‘s involvement with Gundam is a rather intricate one; he originally widely contributed to the designs for Mobile Suit Z Gundam, and then stepped down around the end of 1984, just a few months before the first half of Zeta started to broadcast, likely due to the mixed (internal) reactions his work got, considering the heavily commercial context of TV mecha design of the time.
Possibly around the spring of 1985, producer Kenji Uchida reached out to Nagano again, with the intention to bring him back in the production to design the “main robot” for the second half of the show. Consequentially to his return on Zeta, director Yoshiyuki Tomino asked Nagano directly to work as the main mecha designer on Gundam again, this time for the “next entry”, that would later be titled Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ. And so, by November of 1985, Nagano was already working on the rough designs for the ZZ and the new Zeon Mobile Suits, but despite initially getting the green light from the sponsors, he was fired right before the production began in December of the same year.
As a result, Nagano distanced himself from Sunrise and Gundam for some time; not too long though, since in late 1986, following a request by (again) Tomino himself, he was already working on the designs for Char’s Counterattack, as reported in the 1996 winter issue of comic Newtype (as further confirmation of this dating, we also have Nagano‘s signature on the design sheets, “Mamoru Nagano 86“).
Char’s Counterattack (which was already the tentative title at the time, according to the Official Records Collection) being a movie and not a TV series like Zeta and ZZ were, was convincing enough of a factor for him to return on the franchise once again; as Tomino pointed out in his invitation, “this time around” Nagano supposedly would have had “fewer pressure form the outside” and could have created “the final Gundam as he envisioned and pleased”. Unfortunately, that ended up not being the case that time either, as Nagano was taken off CCA as well (at least as the mecha designer), and Yutaka Izubuchi took his place.
Despite the unfortunate turn of events, Nagano‘s initial design works for CCA are still included in this collection (which indeed reaffirms itself as “Complete“), and specifically this Hi-S Gundam didn’t make its appearance to the public until relatively recently.
Nagano intended to pour his very own design concept and vision into this design for the Hi-S Gundam (and for all the other mobile suits as well). Even though it ultimately ended up not being used in CCA, Nagano says he partially brought this same design concept of his over to Five Star Stories, which he was simultaneously working on at the time. An example of this is the design of the GTM Hi Rhiannon, which reused some of the concepts present in this initial version of Hi-S. This sharing of the same concepts and vision between the two works wasn’t just one directional though, as the opposite is true as well; for example, the designs for the Hi-S and the Psycho Doga were in turn influenced by the designs that were supposed to be used for the Mortar Headds in Five Star Stories instead, but given the “importance of the title ‘Gundam’” he was well aware of at the time, Nagano decided to prioritize the mobile suits‘ designs over the ones for his “own personal work”.
On a more technical note, Nagano remarks that the three rough designs on the right (which are dated “87.27.1“, so supposedly after he made the initial Hi-S design) were not solely meant for the Hi-S Gundam, but rather as a general concept for all the Federation‘s mobile suits, as he was asked to work on all of them. Those “unfinished concept designs” were in fact later used as the basis for the RGM-89 Jegan, which does indeed look reminiscent of them. “The designs are so vague” he adds, “because [at the time I was working on them] the visual presentation [of the movie] in terms of direction hadn’t been decided yet”. A majority of the times, it was director Tomino himself who asked Nagano directly what was it that he personally wanted to do with the designs (this is to say, Nagano wasn’t pressured with a predetermined vision or some specific requests for the designs at all), and the two of them gradually figured things out together.
That was about the same working methodology they’ve adopted ever since Zeta, or perhaps it’s more correct to say Tomino adopted, as Nagano recalls, aside from some minor adjustments or questions on his designs like the RMS-099 Rick Dias‘, he ultimately was the one who had the final word on them; director Tomino on the other hand, instead of focusing on the designs themselves, primarily thought of “how he would use them in the storyboards or the scenario”. And the same was true not only for the mechanical designs, but also for Yoshikazu Yasuhiko‘s character designs.
Talking about Zeta, Nagano notes how the mobile suit referred to as “Zeta Gundam” in the design sheets (which are dated December 1986) was his own version of the Z, later used in CCA as the basis for the RGZ-91 Re-GZ, and it’s supposedly also the version that is “the true Z Gundam” to director Tomino.
Nagano was also responsible for the initial designs of the Hi-S Gundam‘s cockpit and the Psycommu Helmets. Unfortunately, he doesn’t remember much if anything at all about the cockpit, as he stated he “doesn’t even remember having designed it in the first place”. What he does remember though, is designing the Psycommu Helmets to be “stupidly big”, so that it would have been clear at a glance that the pilot was a newtype. When he submitted this idea, director Tomino responded with a bitter smile and Nagano immediately understood it didn’t appeal to him at all, and felt somewhat frustrated about it.
Nightingale (and the Neo Zeon Mobile Suits)
The other main mobile suit Nagano designed in the initial phases of CCA‘s pre-production is the Nightingale (or, the “Naitiengeaile“, as Nagano himself wrote on the design sheet), that initially shared its name with its counterpart in the 1988 Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack – Beltorchika’s Children novel, and later evolved into its final iteration for the movie, the Sazabi. It’s interesting (but also unsurprising to some degree) that the initial tentative names for the two main mobile suits for Amuro and Char were much more akin (if not straight up the same) to the ones that were featured in both the previous and subsequent novelization related to CCA instead. Or, to put it another way, it’s cool to see how for the novel versions, especially Beltorchika’s Children that perhaps could be seen as a more “true to Tomino‘s vision” rendition of CCA, it was decided to feature these original names for the mobile suits in some capacity.
Much like with the Hi-S Gundam, the design concept for the Nightingale influenced (and was influenced by) some designs in Five Star Stories. Specifically, Nagano says its concept was then used for the Boowray MH, which does look strikingly similar.
Going back to the context of Gundam, Nagano says the only instruction Tomino gave him was to create something new, that “diverged from the mobile suits made up until that point”, but at the same time that “unified the technological backing and confusing design lines of Zeta and ZZ“. In short, the overall idea for CCA‘s mechanical design was to create something that felt fresh and new but also coherent to the technological advancements shown in the previous Universal Century installments.
Aside from Char‘s Nightingale, Nagano also worked on the initial designs for two other Neo Zeon mobile suits: the “Killah Dooga” and the “Psycho Doola“, later reworked (seemingly from scratch, as their lack of resemblance is remarkable) as the AMS-119 Geara Doga and (possibly) the MSN-03-2 Psycho Doga (which makes its appearance only in the aforementioned novel version of CCA, Beltorchika’s Children) respectively. Despite not remembering much about these two designs at the time of the commentary, he recalls how the idea was to create consistent designs for Zeon, using a silhouette similar to the Dom‘s and Gelgoog‘s (which coincidentally are the mechs that to Nagano best express the essence of a mobile suit, together with the original Zaku) in order to create an immediate and high-level visual distinction to the “Gundam side of mobile suits“.
Some of the concepts from these two designs as well were then partially brought over to the Five Star Stories‘ MHs, and Nagano remarks how both of the Killah Dooga and the Psycho Doola were drawn in the exact same and raw way he originally envisioned in his mind.
Battleships (Ra Cailum & Rewloola) and others
Regarding the battleships for both the Earth Federation (the Ra Cailum on the left) and Neo Zeon (the Rewloola on the right), Nagano explains how at the time he initially wanted to remove “traditional battleship elements” like the gun turrets and the bridges from the designs, as he couldn’t imagine such a futuristic and advanced war technology still held back by antiquated concepts like those. However, since “by that way of thinking even the mobile suits‘ presence would ultimately seem odd”, he decided to stick with a design more consistent with the mechanical world of Gundam.
The last piece of production material related to Nagano‘s mechanical designs that’s included in the Collection, are these additional sheets with poses for the two main mobile suits drawn by animation director Hidetoshi Omori. As he remarks, these drawings have “fewer lines” compared to Nagano‘s design sheets, in order to make it easier for the animators to understand the models and animate them.
To bring to a close this section dedicated to Mamoru Nagano, the dates on his design sheets allow us to make a more educated and precise guess on when he started working on Char’s Counterattack and when he ultimately left the project.
Most of the designs are dated simply with “86“, but some include a full date, or at least a month written next to the year. The earliest date seems to be December 1986 (“86 Dec.“), on the Zeta Gundam and the Killah Dooga designs. We know for a fact that ZZ‘s pre-production was in its final phases by November of 1986 (or at least, that the latest documented piece of production material, the main cast character setting for the final episodes by Hiroyuki Kitazume, is dated as late as November 19th), so it might be safe to assume the CCA‘s conceptual phase, in which Nagano‘s involvement as the main mecha designer is inscribed, started around December of that same year.
It’s interesting that the design of Hi-S Gundam is dated a generic “86” (much like the Nightingale‘s), but the general concept designs for the E.F.S.F. mobile suits are instead attributed to a later date, January 27th 1987 (“87.27.1“). The same goes for the Ra Cailum, as two different designs are included in the collection, one dated a generic “86“, and the other dated a generic “87“. Many other designs are also dated “87“, like the Hi-S‘ cockpit’s, the Psycho Doola‘s and some more in-detail views of the Nightingale. The latest design, the Rewloola‘s, is dated as late as February of 1987 (“87 Feb.“). The last clue we have are the dates on the proposals re-designs for the main Gundam, drawn consequentially to Nagano’s departure from the project by various artists, the earliest one being April 8th 1987.
To sum everything up, we can assume that Char’s Counterattack‘s pre-production began somewhere between late November and early December of 1986, with Nagano (naturally) already on the team. It was then around late February or early March of 1987 that the decision was made to take him off the project, and just a few weeks later, various other designers and artists submitted their aforementioned redesigns for Amuro‘s “new Gundam“.
Yutaka Izubuchi
νGundam
Following Mamoru Nagano‘s departure from the project, around early spring of 1987, many other artists were tasked with creating their own designs for the new main Gundam, setting up an actual “Design Proposal Competition” as the Collection labels it. Among the artists who participated in this “competition”, were animation director Hidetoshi Omori (from whose comment we get to know that from around this time director Tomino wanted the new Gundam to “have a cape” on its back), Sunrise Viscial Design team members Kouichi Inoue, Shigeru Horiguchi and Nobushiki Tsukada, Masahisa Suzuki, Kazunori Nakazawa and notably Hideaki Anno, whose design are the first ones to refer to the mobile suit not as “Hi-S Gundam” but as “N Gundam“. By this time, Yutaka Izubuchi was appointed to work on the designs for Neo Zeon-side mobile suits instead.
According to Inoue, it was hard to effectively put together all the requests made by Tomino and the sponsors for the new Gundam‘s design; in order to make the overall design concept clearer, director Tomino asked the designers to “go back to the original Gundam” and to make “something simple” in direct opposition to the complicated and transformable designs from the latest (at the time) installments, like ZZ‘s. Inoue reveals also that one of their inspirations were the Formula One machines, and that they tried to incorporate into the Gundam‘s designs the multi-layered structure of components like the SuperTrapp mufflers. What ultimately helped the team to get closer and closer to the simplicity requested in the design concept though, was a much more straightforward process: tracing over Kunio Okawara‘s designs and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko‘s perspective drawing sheets of the original RX-78 Gundam.
A detail that may prove particularly interesting for those enthusiasts who are especially into the technological evolution and progression of the U.C., is that during these early stages of the designs for this new Gundam, the psycho-frame was supposed to be installed all over its body, like in the later RX-0 Unicorn Gundam, instead of just around the cockpit.
The initial idea to use a “plate-shaped funnel” to make up the cape director Tomino asked for, which Inoue adds was not meant to be a “typical cape that covered one’s whole back” but rather something asymmetrical, “hanged on only one of the shoulders”, was conceptualized by the Viscial Design team. Reportedly, to convey their idea more intuitively to the producers and the director, instead of simply drawing a design sheet for it, the team used a 1/60 scale Gunpla and attached a cut-out cardboard panel on its back left side. That same plastic model was then shown directly to director Tomino by producer Uchida. Upon being approved, the task to refine such design for the Fin Funnels was handed over to Shigeru Horiguchi.
Horiguchi says he drew and redrew the funnels over and over several times, until he finally came up with an idea he was incredibly confident in: what he describes as the “bamboo-sushi-mat-like” funnels in the picture. He was so confident in fact, that on the final design sheets he showed director Tomino, carried away by his enthusiasm, he wrote unprofessional and self-admiring comments like “good!“, comments he refers to in the commentary as the “mistakes of one’s youth”, quoting Char‘s famous line from the original Mobile Suit Gundam. What surprised and pleased him the most though, was Tomino‘s immediate approval of the design.
When it comes to his design for the Proposal Competition (dated April 29th 1987), Izubuchi states he was very supportive of director Tomino‘s idea of returning to a simpler Gundam; the rough sketch on the left, he says, was likely a “study to integrate the overall simpler silhouette of the original Gundam into the new design”. His is also the very first design to have Amuro‘s logo printed on its left shoulder, albeit much more complex compared to the very minimal final version. As reported earlier, Izubuchi worked on the νGundam‘s design separately from the other artists and the Viscial Design team, this also explains why his designs are dated a few weeks later (some of the previously discussed designs are dated as early as April 6th). He knew how the other proposed designs looked like, but wasn’t in direct contact with any of the other artists, as producer Uchida acted as an intermediary for everything. Because the schedule was so tight, Izubuchi says he was kind of a “pinch hitter” for the project, and has been one since the time he was working as a “guest” mechanical designer on Aura Battler Dunbine. As another consequence of the pressing schedule, Izubuchi recalls that director Tomino didn’t provide many of his opinions or comments on the final νGundam design.
On a more technical note, as already partially described, some of the features in Izubuchi‘s final design were borrowed from the work of other artists, like the Fin Funnels “cape” concept ideated by the Viscial Design team, and the piece of armor that protects the ankle that was “suggested to him by producer Uchida and originally came from one of Masahisa Suzuki‘s designs”. Another detail he really liked but likely comes from another artist’s idea, is the double V antenna on the νGundam‘s head that thus has four spikes instead of the classic two.
Re-GZ
The RGZ-91 Re-GZ, as mentioned earlier in Mamoru Nagano‘s section, is meant to be a variant of the Zeta Gundam, specifically, a mass-produced (and lower-price, according to Izubuchi) version. The name Re-GZ stands in fact for Refined Gundam Zeta. One key point in designing the Re-GZ was to make it look like the Zeta, but at the same time not “too much like a Gundam“; basically, to make a simplified and stripped-down version of the Zeta. For this exact reason, some Gundam-like elements of the original design were removed or repositioned, like the V antenna that was changed into a simpler non-V antenna-like shape, and instead of being positioned on the front of the mobile suit‘s head, was attached to its top, pointing backwards.
Izubuchi just drew the overall rough design and a sketch of the transformation mechanism, and then entrusted the rest of the work to assistant designer Kouichi Ohata, as he was already busy designing the other mobile suits. Izubuchi says that at the time he had Ohata work in his home studio, so communication between the two was very quick and efficient. Ohata is also responsible for the original concept of the mobile suit‘s B.W.S. (Back Weapon System), that Izubuchi later polished and refined. He then asked mechanical designer Yoshinori Sayama to do the final clean-up for the whole Re-GZ.
Jegan
The RGM-89 Jegan is another of the E.F.S.F. mass-produces mobile suits, Izubuchi says, the successor to the Nemo line rather than the GM‘s. In the early rough designs, the Jegan has indeed overall slimmer proportions and a taller build, additional signs of it being initially inspired by the Nemo. The Vulcan Pod installed on the Jegan‘s head is a reference to the Zeta‘s Gundam Mk-II, and in general the design tries to incorporate many elements of the main machines from the previous (to CCA) Gundam installments.
According to Izubuchi, due to their similarity, many people compared the Jegan to the Ingram in Mobile Police Patlabor, that was released in April 1988, around the same time as CCA.
The initial rough design (on the left of the picture, complete with Tomino‘s corrections) was somewhat heavily revisited, following the instructions director Tomino and producer Uchida gave to the designer. For example, Uchida asked to remove the waist armor, a decision that ended up making the suit feel more sturdy and solid overall (but also “more similar to the Ingram“). Director Tomino, on the other hand, asked to revise the head which originally made the mobile suit look “too much like a weakling”, and also directed to make the nozzles on the backpack bigger in size.
The Jegan‘s a “long-lasting” mobile suit, appearing in following works like Mobile Suit Gundam F91, and whose variants have appeared even in more recent titles like Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn and Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway’s Flash. In this regard, Izubuchi believes it was a successful design for the Earth Federation‘s new “flagship” machine.
Sazabi
Not strictly related to its mechanical design, but much like what happened with the νGundam, the Sazabi too went through various renames during the pre-production phase of CCA. The very first name Char‘s new (and last) mobile suit was given was apparently “Nightingale“, as it was indeed referred to during the early stages of the project, when Nagano was still on board (and, as already pointed out earlier, as its counterpart in the Beltorichika’s Children novel ended up being called). The next name it was given (even though it’s not clear as to why “Nightingale” was changed) was “The Knack“, but ultimately this name too was changed to the final “Sazabi“, due to trademark issue.
One thing that didn’t change in the process, unlike with the νGundam, was its overall design concept, that was most definitely solidly established ever since the early stages.
Izubuchi says that what he wanted for this design was for it to “inherit the Zeon-style traits” from the other mobile suits of the Principality. “Rather than being just a Zaku-type mobile suit” he intended it as “the successor to the Dom and the Gelgoog“, and this inheritance is seen in elements like the “wide skirt-like armor and the verniers on its shoulders and legs”. The head was instead inspired by the helmet Char himself wore during the One Year War, its design being replicated “as is”; the horn-like elements and the lines of the helmet were both incorporated in the head’s design. It was a motif intended “to make the impression upon people that the Sazabi was indeed Char‘s personal machine”.
A rather troublesome aspect of Sazabi‘s design, Izubuchi explains, was the placement of the cockpit. He initially thought it was placed in the mobile suit‘s torso as usual, but in director Tomino‘s boards it appeared to be placed on the mech’s head instead. The schedule was too thigh at the time, and Izubuchi says he regrets he couldn’t really think this through as much as he would have liked to: his original idea was to place the spherical cockpit directly inside the Sazabi‘s head, but it would have been way too smaller than it should have. Tomino then proposed to move it under the mobile suit‘s neck, but even in that case, Izubuchi says, the proportions didn’t really make full sense, and thus when towards the end of the movie the νGundam holds Char‘s cockpit in its hand, “it’s obvious that the cockpit’s size is wrong”.
Another interesting aspect of the design were the funnels. They were originally designed to be an evolution of the MAN-08 Elmeth and the AMX-004 Qubeley‘s remote-controlled bits, and as the name “funnel” suggests, they were also supposed to have an overall simple cylindrical structure. That would have been way too uninteresting however, so Izubuchi added a little “gimmick to them”, so that when launched, “their outer shielding would spread out like wings, making them look like cross-shaped objects from upfront”.
Lastly, various notes on the design sheets remark how, as opposed to the νGundam‘s, very few steps and corrections were required for the Sazabi‘s design, since its concept and design line were very clearly outlined from the beginning stages, and the first rough sketches were consequentially already really close to what ended up being the final design.
Jagd Doga
The Jagd Doga was initially supposed to be called “Pyscho Doga” (or “Doola“, as seen in Nagano‘s drafts). The reason its name was later changed to the on we know today is strikingly simple: Izubuchi says he “didn’t like the name Pyscho Doga at all”, so when he submitted his design proposal, he “submitted is as the ‘Jagd Doga‘ instead”, and that ended up being used as the final name for the Neo Zeon‘s mobile suit.
It was designed as a “Newtype-exclusive version” of the Geara Doga, and its image was to overall resemble that of a knight; its head’s shape was in fact meant to be similar to the the face guard of a knight’s armor.
An interesting thing to note is that the Jagd Doga‘s colors, that look like yellow and gray in the final movie, were instead supposed to be gold and silver. As Izubuchi explains, “with today’s CG it would definitely be possible, but it was quite hard to recreate that effect at the time”. In this regard, he regrets that he could have made it look better overall.
This time too, the design hardly changed at all from the first rough drafts; aside from the head, the overall balance of the mobile suit was basically left unchanged. Around the same stage the head of the Jagd Doga was refined to look more like a knight’s armor, Gyunei‘s Beam Assault Rifle was also designed. The mech’s design itself wasn’t too difficult to put together (having the Geara Doga as its base), and the real highlight were instead its weapons, especially Quess‘ unit’s Mega Gatling Gun and the Heat Knife attached to its Beam Saber. The latter (“unfortunately”) ended up not being used in the movie, although “not very practical”, says Izubuchi, “it’s an interesting shape that was never quite used before” in Gundam, so it would have been fun to see how it could have worked in practice. The Mega Gatling Gun on the other hand was used in the story, and even though he didn’t know the extent of it (that is, the scene where Quess ends up killing her own father by blowing up the bridge of the battleship he was riding on), Izubuchi designed it as a flashy and brutal weapon. Unlike Gyunei‘s Beam Rifle, which wouldn’t have had quite the same impact, “making it a Gatling-type gun” allowed the scene to be even more brutal in its presentation.
Geara Doga
The Geara Doga is admittedly a mobile suit Izubuchi really likes. It was supposed to be the successor to the Zaku II, and it was quite successful in that regard, as the mechanical designer himself remarks. The whole idea was simply to make a “modern day Zaku“, and also embed in its design a little more of the “Spartan imagery” it already had.
As the Geara Doga is a mass produced, general-purpose suit like the Zaku II, a wide variety of weapons were designed for it to use. Another trait that extends not only to the Geara Doga and Zeon-side but also the the Earth Federation-side of mobile suits as well, that was conceptualized around this same time, was the idea for each side to have a distinct type of manipulator with peculiar differences on their mobile suits. For instance, the Zeon suits having rounded fingers and the E.F.S.F. suits having squared ones also is a “trend” that started in that same period. Both the Geara Doga and the Jegan are “long-lasting designs” as Izubuchi says, “but in that sense, the manipulators’ designs are even more long-lasting”.
α Azieru
In Tomino‘s original scenario, Quess was supposed to pilot only the Psycho Doga (Jagd Doga) until the very end. Izubuchi however, wanted a “more impressive, gigantic and monstrous enemy to appear” in the movie, so he made and submitted the design in the picture. At that time, the name “Psycho Doga” was already replaced by his “Jagd Doga“, so he proposed this additional design to be the “new Psycho Doga” instead, even though its inspiration was clearly and integrally the MSN-02 Zeong (whose name was also written on the first design Izubuchi submitted). Admittedly, he never thought a mech actually by the name of “Neo Zeong” would have appeared in later installments (it in fact appeared in the 2010 Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn first, and in its sequel, Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative later), but that was indeed the idea and concept Izubuchi had in mind when conceptualizing his α Azieru for CCA.
The α Azieru was designed to be a “last-boss-like monstrous entity”, and its silhouette was meant to look like a cross from the distance. Talking about silhouette, it was around the same time he was figuring out how it would look (or should have looked) from different perspectives that Izubuchi decided to add a mechanism to detach the long propeller tanks from below the suit and have its silhouette drastically change as a consequence. Although it wasn’t prominently featured in the movie, a lot of thought was put into designing the mobile armor‘s transformation mechanism, as many sketches and corrections seem to suggest, both by the mechanical designer Izubuchi himself and by director Tomino, who, I guess, ended up liking the idea of adding this enormous mech to his story.
Its funnels, unlike the Sazabi‘s and the Jagd Doga‘s ones, are not in the newly established cylindrical shape, and instead look like the more classical remote-controlled bits. That was because if he were to enlarge the cylindrical-shaped funnels to match the α‘s size, “it would have then been difficult to properly convey the right sense of size” overall.
Hobby Hizack
There’s not much to say about the Hobby Hizack; as Izubuchi points out, it’s basically just “an Hizack stripped of all its weapons”. All its hand-held weapons are gone, the spikes on its shoulders are gone, and it’s just the same mobile suit with its edges rounded and softened. Interestingly, Izubuchi didn’t directly trace the Hizack‘s model drawings, but instead drew it from scratch. He didn’t really understand what a “civilian-use mobile suit” was supposed to be like, so he went with a sort of “amicable and gentle” design. On a more fun note, he adds that the gaudy final color scheme for the suit really surprised him.
Med
The Med is a small mobile worker, that is, a machine whose primary purpose is work rather than combat. “As the name suggests”, says Izubuchi (“Med” apparently comes from “met” from “helmet“), “its whole designed is centered around its head”, or rather its cockpit, that makes up basically all of its body. It was based on a similar machine, the ZZ‘s Petit Mobile Suit, but instead of the focus being on the legs, it was on the “head”.
Ra Cailum
When it comes to the designs for the battleships, many more artists were widely involved in creating them, and not primarily just Yutaka Izubuchi. Many of these “side” mechanical design works, including also elements like the space shuttle, the base jabbers etc. were handed off to Gainax.
The Ra Cailum design in the picture in particular was drawn by art director Shigemi Ikeda; he recalls producer Uchida directly asking him to clean up Mamoru Nagano‘s early designs for the ships. What Izubuchi ended up doing on his hand, was just drawing some really rough sketches which he explains he doesn’t even remember drawing at all, as he was so busy with the other designs at the time. If he had designed the battleships (and all the other mechanical objects) himself, as he admittedly wishes he could have, Izubuchi says he wouldn’t have had enough time for the mobile suits, which understandably were the most central part of his work.
The (Gainax) designers ultimately responsible for the Ra Cailum‘s design were Hideaki Anno and Shoichi Masuo. The details that were adjusted or changed from Nagano and Izubuchi‘s rough sketches following the instructions by director Tomino, include making the turret longer and the Mega Particle Cannon larger (a correction that the director has presumably drawn himself). The design then evolved to have more angular lines, reminiscing of the Earth Federation‘s Salamis-class cruisers, and was later slightly changed again with the lines around the bridge and the bow being more curved and gentle.
Rewloola
A similar fate befell the Rewloola, with Ikeda (eagerly, as he recalls having had much fun drawing these spaceships designs) cleaning up Nagano‘s early designs under request of producer Uchida. Ikeda‘s drawing were then used as a reference by the Gainax designers to refine their own, more conceptual designs. For the Neo Zeon‘s battleship too, Izubuchi barely had the time to draw rough sketches; interestingly, he says that for both the Rewloola and the Ra Cailum, he hadn’t seen Nagano‘s early designs, and created his drafts totally on his own.
The Rewloola‘s design too was handled by Anno and Masuo; the design was likely inspired by Zeon‘s previous cruisers such as the Musai-class and the Gwadan-class ones. By the time the Gainax artists submitted their first rough drafts, ideas like the shape of the hull were already part of the design. Concurrently to the Rewloola, the Musaka-class was being designed as well, but contrary to the former’s design, which got changed a lot in the process, the latter’s one was basically left unchanged since its early stages.
To conclude this section on the mechanical design, I think it’s worth noting that all the design were made between late April and late June of 1987. A lot of roughs for the Neo Zeon-side mobile suits are dated sometime in April, which lines up with Izubuchi being tasked with them early, when everyone else was working on the redesign for the Hi-S Gundam. Several of those very rough designs (“sketches” would be a better word perhaps), including one for the so-called “Berge Doga” based on the WWII German tank “Bergepanzer“, ultimately didn’t make their way to the final product, but that’s most likely by design, as they were intended just as a conceptualization of the design vision for Char’s Counterattack as a whole. By the first half of May, all the drafts and rough designs for both the Earth Federation and Neo Zeon mobile suits were completed, and between late May and late June, all the designs (including the weapon’s) were refined and cleaned up. The latest design sheet is the Med‘s final one, and is dated June 26th 1987.
Character Design
This second major section of the article, dedicated to the character design, aims to explore some of the drafts that were drawn by character designer Hiroyuki Kitazume before the designs were ultimately finalized. Much like the previous section, this one too will feature a commentary by the artist himself, but it won’t be divided in sub-sections. Instead, I’ll present the various character designs and corresponding commentaries in one longer, continuous piece.
In the Records Collection book, this chapters starts off with several different design sheets for Amuro Ray, the last one dated as late as April 11th 1987 and, while the first one is not explicitly dated, based off some other early designs (notably, the earliest Char Aznable one) we can assume it was made around March 13th of the same year.
Rather than directly commenting on Amuro‘s design, Kitazume starts with talking about the “overall picture”, that is, the overall concept and vision behind Char’s Counterattack‘s character design. Director Tomino started by simply asking Kitazume to “try drawing Amuro and Char in a new way, not just as an extension of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko‘s work” in the previous installments. Despite how simple of a request this may (or may not) sound, “Amuro was still Amuro, and Char had to still look like Char“, so the point of several different designs for the main characters being made was to find the correct “style” and design line by a trial-and-error-like process. Kitazume‘s first work as a character designer (for Gundam, and second in general) was ZZ, but that time he was asked to do things quite literally the opposite way; the concept for ZZ‘s character design was to continue on the same line and legacy left by Yasuhiko, and not only that, but another core point of the whole show was to lower the age of the target audience, so Kitazume “deliberately created designs that were easier to understand”. As said earlier, Tomino didn’t provide any specific instruction for Char’s Counterattack‘s designs, but the overall concept he outlined was not to make the characters “look like manga’s”, since his goal was to depict a “human drama”. As Kitazume explains, the director requested the character designer to refrain from creating what he describes as “deformed” designs, with “big heads and eyes”; aside from Quess, who being the “heroine” was allowed to be slightly deformed, all the other (main) characters had to convey real “human expressions”. In this regard, Kitazume‘s design process (for Amuro in this example) involved imagining how the character would have looked like when acted by voice actor Tooru Furuya, how expressive would it have been and whether or not it would still have looked like Amuro.
Right next to Amuro‘s character design, there’s one you may be a bit surprised to find here, or perhaps one that you did expect to find, if you instead know something about the original scenario for CCA. I’m talking about Beltorchika Irma‘s character design of course, dated March 13th 1987.
For those of you who’re unfamiliar with this topic, let me digress from the character design to clear things up a bit here. When it was decided for Char’s Counterattack to finally become a movie, the first script director Tomino submitted was somewhat quite different from the one that ended up being adapted in the actual movie. Which might sound reasonable, as it’s not so unlikely to change a thing or two about a movie’s script this early in the production. However, when it comes to CCA, Tomino‘s initial script was completely rejected. As for why that was, a more thorough answer was given by Tomino himself in the interview I mentioned before (which, by the way, is also featured in the Records Collection book just before the “Making of” chapter), but in short, it basically comes down to the presence of Beltorchika as Amuro‘s love interest, or to put it bluntly, actual partner. The relationship between her and the Gundam pilot seemed unappealing and unsuited for the “hero of a robot movie” in the eyes of the sponsors at the time, and since her role was pretty relevant and quite central in the narrative, the original script had to be rewritten almost from scratch. Fortunately, you can still experience that initial version of CCA through the 1988 novelization I’ve brought up quite a few times up to this point, Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack – Beltorchika’s Children (or, if you prefer, its subsequent 2014 manga adaptation), but the takeaway here is that ultimately Beltorchika Irma didn’t make her appearance in the movie version. I thought it was interesting nonetheless to spend a few words to her character design, which was drawn in the earliest stages of the production alongside Amuro‘s and Char‘s as the date seems to suggest, even though the book doesn’t offer any comment on it.
Following Beltorchika, there’s Chan Agi‘s design; a choice that feels rather deliberate, as she was the new character introduced to take Beltorchika‘s place in the story. Chan‘s very first design is dated April 3rd; this information allows us to place the revision of the script during the second half of March 1987, since Beltorchika’s design is dated March 13th.
As Kitazume explains, Chan‘s design direction was hard to put together at first. He’d drawn many different sheets like with Amuro and Char‘s designs, but none of them matched what the director’s wanted for the character. Tomino (presumably, as the character designer says he’s not entirely sure it was actually Tomino) then asked Kitazume to approach her design from a different direction: he suggested to use a “real, living person as a model” and “incorporate that aspect in the design”. Of course, he didn’t mean to simply copy the look of an actual existing person and draw it as is, but rather to integrate the image of a real person into the character design.
As a result, around April 20th, Chan‘s design started to look like the one we know from the movie, and with some minor adjustments to the hairstyle and the eyes, by April 23rd Chan‘s design was completed.
In regard to all his character design work (for CCA) in general, Kitazume remarks how director Tomino warned him about the length of the character’s necks. “If you think of Hollywood actors, their necks are longer than the average Japanese person’s one”, so in order to properly convey the right proportions in the character design, even if the character was “wearing military uniforms with stand-up collars, their neck lines had to be clearly visible”. Kitazume payed much attention to these details when working on the designs, and since Tomino reportedly wanted this attention to details and precision to be present in the actual animation as well, Kitazume remembers warning the animation directors too about this particular request.
Noticeably, one feature of Captain Bright Noa‘s earliest design that didn’t make it to the final product is his beard. And by “the final product” I specifically mean the movie and the movie only, since in the Beltorchika’s Children manga he does still feature a beard.
Anyways, Kitazume explains how his intent behind this choice (to add the beard, that is) was to “make his presence even more important considering the passage of time”, as Bright had always been a character with “great presence and dignity” since the very first Mobile Suit Gundam. The idea was to make him look more like Blex Forer from Zeta, with a beard and also a larger waist. Kitazume says he was “just a young man around 24” by the time he drew this design, and admittedly “didn’t understand what it meant to be in one’s ‘prime of life’ yet”. Bright was just in his thirties, and “had no business looking like an old man like this”, so in the final design he looks a fair bit younger. Kitazume admits that at the time he had little knowledge and didn’t know “finer techniques” to draw adult characters, so he ultimately used to simply add a beard or mustaches to achieve the effect of making the characters look older.
This initial rough design for Hathaway Noa, dated March 19th, was drawn exceptionally early, when the general direction for the character design was yet to be decided altogether. It’s no surprise then that it looks nothing like the final, refined one. Quoting Kitazume‘s own words, “it doesn’t look like Gundam at all”.
To make Hathaway look more like Bright and Mirai‘s son in his later design, Kitazume tried to replicate and incorporate in his design some of the facial features of his parents, like the eyes being smaller than usual. Hathaway is by no means a new character, for he was introduced as early as in Zeta, designed by the then-character designer Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. However, aside from the overall concept of not strictly sticking to Yasuhiko‘s designs, “the age difference was too great” for Hathaway‘s original design to serve as any kind of reference when making this new one.
Char Aznable‘s initial design proposals, says Kitazume, were probably influenced by the ZZ character design style, that is, as explained earlier, a character design aimed to a younger audience. Evidence of that influence can be seen in the “Neo Zeon uniform or in the long hair”.
“The character design in anime started with Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom, 1963), then was developed further in Space Battleship Yamato (1974) and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), and later evolved even further in Macross (1982) and Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985)”. At that stage, character design in anime “had stepped up a gear”, as the demands and requirements for the designs for both the clothing and the characters themselves evolved significantly. That was “exactly what director Tomino wanted [for CCA]: to create characters suited to act out a ‘human drama'”.
Of course, that same concept and vision were applied when working on Char‘s character design as well, including his military uniform, which played an integral role in establishing the overall “sense of realism” in the design.
The slicked back hairstyle that ended up in the final design, Kitazume recalls, was also one of his ideas. He thought it would have been rather odd for the leader and commander of Neo Zeon to have “long hair with a 7/3 haircut”. So, he proposed a hairstyle with a “more mature feel to it”, but that still retained some semblance of wildness. The final design ultimately featured an even more slicked back hairstyle, as the goal was to “get totally rid of the anime-like impression” in it, and since it was common back then for adult men to expose their foreheads more, it was decided for a more mature and dignified design for Char.
Mirroring the arrangement of the designs for the Earth Federation side of the characters, following Char there’s his lover, Nanai Miguel. Much like what he was suggested to do with Chan‘s design, Kitazume used a real person as a reference for Nanai‘s design as well; he recalls using Japanese actresses as models for Chan‘s design and Hollywood actresses for Nanai‘s. Since he already established this very design direction when creating Chan, Nanai‘s design was pretty easy and straightforward to work on.
The amount of drafts and how different the character looks in each of them clearly shows how much Kitazume struggled with Quess Paraya‘s character design. Director Tomino didn’t give him any specific instruction, which in a sense made things worse for the character designer, as he admits he “didn’t really know what kind of person the girl called Quess was”. In the very vague instructions the director gave to Kitazume, there was no mention of her appearance nor of her personality whatsoever.
“She’s not like Lalah, nor like Four, nor like Ple, but she’s a newtype girl”, that was pretty much it. Therefore, the very first rough design (on the left) Kitazume drew gives off a faint impression of a mix between Four and Ple; what’s not faint in the slightest is the “vivid depiction of how lost” he was. He’s not sure it’s something he purposefully intended to depict at the time, but Kitazume thinks “the asymmetry in Quess‘ design was a way to convey her dual nature”. Looking at it now, the asymmetrical hairstyle and clothes serve really well to express her inner instability, but at the time he probably drew it just as an aesthetic quirk.
Quess‘ clothing changes a lot every time she appears, so it was especially difficult to come up with all the design variations. Her clothes are “often frilly” which, looking back, may have been a way to convey “Quess‘ elusive girly side”. When working on the character design for ZZ, director Tomino often scolded Kitazume and told him to further study clothing design, advising him to use western children’s clothes as a reference.
Gyunei Guss‘s name in the original script was Grave Guss, the same name that (unexpectedly at this point) was later used in the Beltorichika’s Children novel, but his role and status in the story remained unchanged (for instance, he was always meant to be a cyber newtype from the start). Like with Char‘s, Gyunei‘s initial design (on the left) was somewhat reminiscent of the ZZ‘s style; “he had a villain-like feel” to him that was no good for CCA. An advice (or direction) director Tomino gave Izubuchi in this regard was that “bad guys shouldn’t have a bad face. Just because they play the role of the bad guy there’s no need to make them look bad”; the Zabi‘s faces in the original Gundam were those of bad guys, and it was fine at the time, but it ultimately “ends up making the design look too much anime-like”. So, consequentially, Gyunei‘s designs changed fairly drastically.
Towards the end of the animation process, Kitazume recalls a small talk he had with producer Uchida, who told him how his designs “were generally hard to draw”, seemingly in terms of consistency, “but Gyunei looked like Gyunei no matter who drew it”. In that sense, he believe it was a successful design, and personally he also thinks Gyunei‘s appearance really matched the voice and acting of voice actor Kouichi Yamadera, an aspect that consequentially greatly helped the character leaving a strong impression overall.
Kitazume describes Gyunei, Neo Zeon‘s Rezin Schnyder and the E.F.S.F.‘s Kayra Su as characters with “different vectors” that were all clearly outlined in the designs.
Gyunei‘s a “cyber newtype, a rival-like character impulsive and ambitious at his core”. Rezin is a “professional fighter”, even though she’s an oldtype, she’s not too wary of the little things and gives off the impression of being a real “warmonger”. Lastly, Kayra too is a soldier and a pilot, but she’s “the polar opposite of Rezin“, being more of a naive girl. “She deeply values the greater cause” and moral aspects of war, while Rezin “cares solely about the combat”. Although they’re both highly skilled pilots, their stances are in complete opposition, and Kitazume believes he was able to reflect this aspect of their character in the designs.
Concluding the character design section, there are a few comments on the remaining side characters’ designs. In Quess‘ father, Adenauer Paraya‘s early designs, he appeared either “too wide or too thin”, since the initial idea was to draw him as being at either one of the extremes. In the end, Kitazume settled with a more average build, he explains, as “it would have been out of place for a minor bureaucrat like him to have a body too well-built”. The other supporting characters weren’t at all difficult to draw, as the overall design direction had already been well established by that time. For characters like Cameron Bloom, who’d already made their appearance in previous entries, there was little to no trouble either. Kitazume admits that when it came to side characters, he’d exhausted his “design repertoire” with the Gaza Squadron trio in ZZ, but “older characters appeared all the time” and thanks to the experience he got drawing them in different ways, he became “more confident when it comes to designing supporting characters like these”. It’s generally hard to portray each character’s peculiar traits in their design, but thank to how much director Tomino had trained him in designing characters with specific roles, Kitazume says he hardly had any trouble with drawing all the different variations.
All the character designs were drawn starting early March of 1987 with the designs for the main cast, to early June for the supporting characters, the latest one being a cleaned-up and refined sheet for Cameron Bloom. The “oldest” character model included in the Collection is a variation of Nanai‘s design, in which she’s wearing a shirt instead of the usual uniform. This sheet is dated August 13th 1987, but as Kitazume explains it’s not, in fact, the “final design” (that was instead already refined by late April), but rather just one of the specific variations.
Other Designs
Besides mobile suits, battleships and characters, many other designs were necessary to support an immersive depiction of the Universal Century. Rough designs for elements like the normal suits, small props, and the display interfaces are featured in this section.
Providing the commentary for this section, there’s again mechanical designer Yutaka Izubuchi.
A huge amount of sketches and roughs for the normal suits were drawn by various artists, but as Izubuchi explains, he doesn’t really remember under what circumstances each of the designs was used. Gainax artists by the likes of Shoichi Masuo were appointed to design the normal suits, but their initial results were “too realistic”, whereas the expectation (likely of the producers) was for the designs to have “more character to them”. Consequentially, Izubuchi tried to incorporate elements reminiscent of the designs generally used for the “heroes in tokusatu“, and upon being approved by director Tomino, the new designs were then used for Char‘s and Quess‘ pilot suits.
In the final product, many different types of normal suits were used: those for the Earth Federation soldiers and pilots, those for the Neo Zeon soldiers and pilots, Char‘s and Quess‘ ones, and even the shuttle suits for the civilians. The majority of the rough designs were drawn by Gainax members, remarkably including the name of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto.
Other elements that needed to be designed were the firearms carried by the soldiers, Izubuchi recalls, since Amuro and Char used them in the story. All the rough designs in the picture were drawn by Izubuchi himself; he remarks how there was no actual final design sheet for the rifle, as it was just carried by a Neo Zeon soldier guarding Beverly Hills Station in the Sweetwater space colony around the halfway mark of the movie.
Some other “minor” designs he worked on were the ones for the marks and logos for both the E.F.S.F. and Neo Zeon, specifically the one that ended up on the Sazabi‘s shield.
The images displayed on the monitors of both the spaceships and the mobile suits were drawn by hand instead of being made in CG like they are today, so reference drawings and concept designs were necessary to ensure a proper level of consistency throughout the movie.
Background Art
This last major section features rough sketches and preliminary drafts for the background art and setting, as well as some of the material and drawings used for the three-dimensional model of space colonies. Char’s Counterattack was the first Gundam entry to feature space colonies in CG. Art director Shigemi Ikeda provided the commentary for this section.
The Sweetwater space colony, base to Neo Zeon, has an irregular shape clearly “outlining the unstable condition its inhabitants are forced to in”. With this premise, art director Shigemi Ikeda opens his commentary on the background art for Char’s Counterattack.
The space colony is divided in two sections, the “open-type” one and the “close-type” one. The close-type part, as the name suggests, is a closed cylinder in shape, with just one line in the middle that serves as the main light source. The open-type one, on the other hand, to let the outside light in, has three giant mirrors on the outside wall, which can be opened and closed to simulate day and night. Give its peculiar appearance and functioning, Ikeda had to draw even specific parts and elements of it, like its mechanical joints.
The art director is personally “really fond of things like the space colonies”, so he recalls having had much fun drawing it. Director Tomino explained to him how in order for people to live inside of a space colony, which is an enclosed and thigh space, “it’s necessary to scrupulously recreate the scenery of Earth”, and a considerable “cost” is spent to achieve such a result. The reason why the inside of a space colony has to look somewhat old-fashioned, is because “people [living inside of it] would go crazy” if that wasn’t the case. Thus, Sweetwater inside looks like a “slightly old-fashioned New York cityscape”, a scenery Ikeda was able to depict only because he had actually traveled to America to do some research. He believes he wouldn’t have been able to recreate such a scenery, like the monorail and the train station, if he “hadn’t seen them with his own eyes”.
Londenion, on the other hand, is a typical “open-type” space colony. What helped Ikeda the most while designing it was “a miniature model someone in the studio had made”. It wasn’t too sophisticated of a model, rather, it was something very simple, made out of a rolled up piece of animation cel with cut-outs corresponding to the mirrors. Still, it made “the way the inside of the colony was reflected on the mirrors” much easier to understand. Unfortunately, pictures of this miniature model aren’t featured in the Collection, but it remains a “very useful reference”, whose impact was then reflected in the final designs for the space colony, as well as in the movie’s actual visuals.
Rough sketches for the mass driver installed on the moon’s surface and the shuttle pad in New Hong Kong are also featured in this section of the Collection; all of these minor designs that blend between mechanical and art direction, were made by Gainax artists.
Back then, the internals of mechanical objects like the battleships were not part of the mechanical designer’s work like they are today, but rather it was “common sense” that “the mecha designer would draw the exterior, and the art direction team would do the interior”. Perhaps it was considered background art as it’s used as such in the final product, explains Ikeda, but since he particularly likes drawing battleships anyway, it was a fun work for him to create this kind of designs.
The overall image for the interior of the Ra Cailum (and the other Earth Federation ships in general) was for it to be “straight-lined, regular and symmetric”. This visual theme was present not only in the bridges, corridors and civilian-use rooms, but also in the design for the seats.
The idea to have not just one, but two bridges – a regular one and a combat one – inside the Ra Cailum came directly from director Tomino, who, according to Ikeda, is actually knowledgable about the “real military”, and thus requested him to add the combat bridge in addition to the regular one used for navigation.
When it comes to the internals of the Neo Zeon‘s ships, the visual motif is opposite to the one for Earth Federation, prominently featuring curved lines. This visual trope was actually present since the original Mobile Suit Gundam, with the Zeon‘s Musai-class battleships. Ikeda explains how working on Gundam was something he wanted since the very beginning of his career, so perhaps he put “everything he wanted to do” in his work for CCA.
The Rewloola is characterized by the use of vertical space in the bridge, and the mobile suits deck features a more “organic” design as opposed to the “straight-lined one of the Earth Federation-side” of battleships. Coming up with these kind of differences for each military side was reportedly a “fun task”.
Lastly, Ikeda concludes his commentary talking about the realization of one of the last scenes towards the end of the movie. The scene he’s referring to is obviously the one where the T-shaped “psycho-frame sample flies away, leaving behind a trail of light”, with a 3D earth rotating in the back. As many of you may already know, that 3D model of the earth wasn’t in fact a 3D model at all, instead it was an actual sphere that was rotated and filmed on set. Ikeda had peeled off the surface of an actual, roughly 20cm wide, earth globe, then painted the sky, clouds and land on it himself. He’d been taking care of that same earth globe until “recently” (that is, sometime around 2020 or 2021), keeping it with him in his personal office.
Notes
An additional document full of notes and warnings about the various aspect of the production, including mechanical and character designs, backgrounds and animation itself, is also part of the production material collected in the Making of chapter of Complete Collection. Animation director Hidetoshi Omori explains some of the main points discussed in this document.
One interesting note director Tomino left specifically addressed to Omori himself was to stop using solid black shadows since as a result, the shape of the mecha itself becomes invisible or hard to grasp. Such a style of shading is just the “preference of adults”, and wasn’t allowed in Gundam, which was intended as a product aimed at all ages.
Despite the warning, Omori ended up using solid shadows in Char’s Counterattack, but just in one scene, admittedly because it was indeed his own “preference”. The scene he’s referring to is the one in the second half of the movie, when the propeller tanks are detached from the α Azieru, and a shadow, outlined with solid-blacks, falls on the Jadg Doga.
Animation director Omori contributed in writing some of the notes in the document himself, especially (and unsurprisingly) the ones related to the animation itself. An aspect he particularly focused on were the explosions. He explains, he’s always admired the explosions in the original Gundam, and when he had the chance to inquire Yoshikazu Yasuhiko on how they came about, the former character designer and animation director said that on his hand he really liked the explosions in Lupin the Third to the point he wanted to try something like that for himself. Up until that point, the explosions in anime were just a simple “boom-like” effect and Yasuhiko didn’t like that, so he tried to do something different. In a similar fashion, Omori wanted to create his own proper effects for the explosions, so he left some notes specifically in that regard.
Always concerning the animation, but this time coming from director Tomino instead, are some notes about the difference in speed between the mobile suits and the funnels. The director wanted to emphasize and highlight the dynamism of the funnels, so Omori took care of all the scenes where the funnels appear himself. He explains, the fin funnels in particular have a different shape, and the position of their thrusters, being all “concentrated in one place”, greatly alters the way they move. The animation director was also very particular about the change in direction and how the funnels moved consequentially to firing a beam.
Another important point Tomino put special attention in, was the fact that the fin funnels are a beam weapon, not a laser weapon, hence he wanted to emphasize the mass of the particles that were fired by the funnels. To achieve this kind of emphasis, Omori thought of casing a shadow on the muzzles of the funnels every time a beam was fired, since particles, as opposed to lasers, do cast a shadow. To highlight the fact that the beam of light traveled in one specific direction, as well as to further emphasize the beam’s speed, he had the opposite, outer side of the muzzle in the dark. However, Omori believes that at the time not many people understood his choice in this regard.
One last note, again written by Omori himself, is that when two beam sabers clash, the impact forms a sphere of energy. That is to show that the beam saber with the greater power between the two is canceling out the opponent’s beam. This is exactly what Char meant when he said “my saber is weaker than his?!” while fighting Amuro during the final sequence of the movie, and this same effect was used in the animation.
Before wrapping up, I’d like to write a sort of bibliography, listing all the sources (both internal and external) that I’ve used while writing and researching for this post.
- Ultimate Mark – Gundam Production History (specifically Zeta and ZZ‘s)
- FSS Freak – 永野護氏デザインＭＳ大全 – 機動戦士ガンダム逆襲のシャア (HISガンダム88)
- Gundam Around 50 – 逆シャアの没デザインのHiSガンダムに続いてF91没デザインのメドザックまで公開されて感動。
One “internal” source was the aforementioned interview with director Tomino, and another one, as obvious as it sounds, was the Complete Collection of Official Records itself (which, by the way, I believe you still can get a copy of yourself if you look in the right places).
Lastly, a major source of both information and inspiration was The animation of Char’s Counterattack from Animétudes, a post I’ve made extensive use of especially to check the consistency of what I reported with the timeline of the production, specifically when writing Mamoru Nagano‘s section.
This concludes “The Making of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack“; as I mentioned at the very beginning, it was my first time working on a project of this scale, and (expectedly) it’s the post that took me the longest to make on this blog, as well as the longest one to date in terms of word and characters count. That’s to say, I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I hope this comes across as a useful and informative article to every fan or enthusiast, or everyone in general who’s researching on this movie.
SHINSEIKI 