Original interview from Monthly Newtype (May 2025), original text by Hisashi Maeda and Makoto Ishii; cover image: official character design sheets from the “Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: -Beginning- MATERIALS” pamphlet by Yumi Ikeda.
My number one goal is to create an interesting and enjoyable work
What Director Tsurumaki wanted to do
— Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is the first TV series directed by Director (Kazuya) Tsurumaki, so what was your approach in gathering the staff?
First of all, both the Director and I had already decided to ask Ikuto Yamashita-san for the mechanical design. As for the character design, when I asked the Director if he had anyone in mind, he immediately answered “I want Take-san”. We went with the first choices without any trouble.
Previous to this work, there was this project called “Nihon Animator Mihonichi” [日本アニメ（ーター）見本市, Japan Anima(tor)’s Exhibition, 2014], where many different creators made a short animated movie each. In that project’s context, Director Tsurumaki made the short titled “I can Friday by day!”.
— It was re-released on YouTube just the other day, right?
Exactly. Take-san did the character design for that work too, and it’s a short I personally really like as well. The concept behind the “Nihon Animator Mihonichi” project was to have the creators make their animated shorts as freely as possible, exactly the way they liked and envisioned. So, once again, I had the confirmation that Director Tsurumaki really likes Take-san’s designs (laughs).
For the rest of the staff, I basically picked the people who I knew could truly understand and realize what the Director wanted to do. As a result, a lot of them naturally turned out to be people who had already worked with him in previous occasions.
— What’s your personal understanding of Director Tsurumaki’s vision and intentions for this work?
Well… at the stage when he told me about Take-san, I figured the characters would take on a pop direction. Defining the scenery and backgrounds is largely up to the art director’s discretion, so I asked Hiroshi Kato-san, who always deeply understands Director Tsurumaki’s taste and intent. Rather than making something entirely new and unique, I believed this project should go for the “usual Tsurumaki imagery”. Last time I asked the Director to “create something exactly the way he wanted” the result was “I can Friday by day!”, after all.
Even if it’s Gundam —so it slightly leaned into the “real” direction— I interpreted the director’s intent as going for that very pop and stylish kind of imagery.
— Sugitani-san, you temporarily worked under Sunrise [now Bandai Namco Filmworks] and were involved in the production of “Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn”. Did you intend to carry the “Gundam-ness” you felt back then over to this project?
Being involved in the production of a proper, legitimate Universal Century Gundam work like Unicorn, was really a great experience for me —it was like a dream coming true. Now, I want to make sure readers understand this clearly; my desire to “work on a Gundam series” was entirely fulfilled that time. So, for this new project, my original aspiration was to have Director Tsurumaki create something beyond my expectations, like anything I’ve seen before, that wouldn’t be bound to the same outline and framework of the past Gundam entries. While of course being approved by Sunrise, I wanted to create something with a totally new and fresh approach that only Director Tsurumaki could come up with, something that could be only made at Studio Khara.
To put it bluntly, I believe that if another company were to make a Gundam series trying to incorporate elements from Evangelion in it, the chances of it being received poorly would be very high. On the other hand, I thought it might actually work if it were the very studio that created Eva attempting to put its unique elements into Gundam, in a way only they were capable of.
In that sense, when we were planning the project, I remember telling Director Tsurumaki that “I wanted to create something that could be only made at Studio Khara”.
— Going back to the previous topic, what about the other members of the main staff, aside from Yamashita-san, Take-san and Kato-san?
In the initial phases, the first person I contacted was Hajime Ueda-san. Director Tsurumaki told me that before starting the new project, he wanted to have a talk with Ueda-san. I didn’t know about it, but it seems that the two of them had already discussed a project with a girl as the protagonist in the past. That was the first meeting with Ueda-san; then, during the second or third meeting, the Director already proposed his idea of a story set in a world where Zeon had won the One Year War, and the direction for the project was decided. After that, we invited Yoji Enokido-san to join as the scriptwriter.
— I’m starting to see how it came together now.
That was how the story came about, so now I guess it’s the visuals’ turn. With Yamashita-san as the main mechanical designer, I thought the mechanical animation designer and chief mechanical animation director couldn’t be anyone other than Sejoon Kim-san. For him too, “Nihon Animator Mihonichi” was the occasion where we first met. There, he did the mechanical animation direction for Yamashita-san’s short “Iconic Field”, then he worked again as the mecha animation director for “Shin Evangelion Movie:||” [シン・エヴァンゲリオン劇場版:||, EVANGELION:3.0+1.01 THRICE UPON A TIME, 2021], and besides, he’s been heavily involved in Gundam before. GQuuuuuuX’s mecha designer is Yamashita-san, and it’s a Gundam series, so there was no one more fitting than Kim-san. To be honest, I was really hoping for him to accept, or I would have been in big troubles (laughs).
— And what about the animation character design?
For the characters, it might have been audacious, but we held a competition aiming to find someone who would cover both the roles of animation character designer and chief animation director at once. Out of the people who took part in the competition, the Director selected Yumi Ikeda-san and Shie Kobori-san. These two were hired as douga staff at Studio Khara, and are what you’d call homegrown members of the studio. As someone who has worked with them since the days of production management, I was truly happy to be able to ask them to join this project. Actually, Director Tsurumaki has been looking over their drawings since their very first days as douga animators.
— What do you mean by that?
When douga staff are hired at Studio Khara, Director Tsurumaki is the one to first review their portfolios at the document screening stage, and he’s also responsible for the hiring exam. He oversaw the exams to promote douga staff to key animators as well. And even aside from all that, he’s basically responsible for the guidance and supervision of young animators at Studio Khara. Having gone through that process, these two were originally members who Director Tsurumaki had recognized for their talent —what you might call the “Tsurumaki children” (other members of GQuuuuuuX’s staff who joined the studio around the same time include Gen Asano, now working as the mechanical animation director, and episode director Touko Yatabe).
It feels like the seeds Director Tsurumaki has been steadily and carefully sowing have finally started to sprout.
— There’s a real sense of continuity with the studio’s history.
Also, the CG for every episode is directed by Khara’s in-house member Takashi Suzuki-san, and the color design is made by Wish, who we always work together with. T2 studio is in charge of the compositing, and I believe the experience and know-how accumulated during Eva’s production are being put to excellent use.
— As the producer, what are your personal goals with this project, Sugitani-san?
I’ll be repeating the same things from earlier, but what I wanted the most was to see what would happen if the staff who worked on Eva made a Gundam series. Fortunately, I’ve been involved as a production manager and producer in both franchises, so seamlessly merging together the good elements I found in each of them was also one of my goals. This aspect was emphasized as the tagline for the work, wasn’t it?
I hope this will also be an opportunity for those of the younger generation who don’t know “Mobile Suit Gundam” yet, to experience the franchise for the first time. But ultimately, my number one goal is to create an interesting and enjoyable work. I’m a huge, huge Gundam fan myself. That’s why I’d be incredibly happy if we managed to create a Gundam series that the viewers would find “interesting” too. And if it becomes an opportunity for more people to approach Eva as well, I’d be even more grateful. After all, both Gundam and Eva are extremely important works to me.
SHINSEIKI 