Gundam Age interview shit on/with Hino

Translated these for /m/ some time ago. Some people keep reposting some random post from some shit forum I've never heard of which just copypasted parts of them without mentioning the source, but FYI they were on /m/ first, translated by me, so there.



Model Graphix 2012 November issue
Cover story: Interview with Bandai hobby department regarding Gundam Age

Original thread: http://archive.foolz.us/m/thread/8269756

-Hino is a new type of person that has never been involved with Gundam before
-Usually when enemies show up all of a sudden inside a space colony, people try to explain why. Hino however thinks this is unimportant. What he thinks is more important is the TIMING of the enemies showing up: He has a tendency to think of a story as a sequence of in-game events.
-The staff working on the show had to take Hino's ideas and add the missing logic to them.
-They purposely left holes in the setting so that the fans would bite and speculate, and thought they would use those for getting ideas, but unfortunately this did not work out at all.

-At first they did not find the bad response to Age especially surprising, as this had happened with other Gundam series countless times before.
-However, about three months in (around December) they started to feel that something was wrong
-With other series, this is the point that the viewers start to say positive things, but this was not the case with Age. Even though there were positive things said, the negative things overwhelmed them drastically.
-Even so the staff tried their best to make the show interesting.
-They started to get confidence around the time HG AGE-2 went on sale. Sales also stabilized around this point.
-They found it interesting how many users played around modifying Age kits (more than usual).
-One of Age's unique qualities was being able to see a lot of modded kits while the show was airing.

Stuff from Ishigaki (Vegan MS designer)
-He has participated in other Gundam series and knew from the beginning that the Vegan designs would be unpopular with Gun-ota
-The Vegan designs were order-made
-He remembered how unpopular Zanscar's designs were and himself wondered if it would be a good idea to go with these

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Interview with Hino from Newtype November 2012
Original thread: http://archive.foolz.us/m/thread/8314904

-Now that the show is over, tell us what you feel about it.
Hino: Well, honestly I think we could've used more episodes. For example it would've been nice if there were say another ten episodes for Asem's school part. In the project phase we were originally going to broadcast Age for a year and a half (6 cours = 78 episodes), so the whole show would've been better if we just had more time.

-Each generation was unique in its own way
Hino: Flit's a stubborn old man, Asem's a regular guy, and Kio is a child striving for his ideals, and each of them has their own different volume of emotions. I took Flit's "stubborn old man you can't understand" character from an old drama series with Kobayashi Asei.

-What is your image of the three main characters?
Hino: Flit's a father. He's stubborn and has his way, but you can rely on him. I think Asem is the one the fans can relate to the best, being jealous of his best friend and facing his barriers and limits he's pretty much a normal person. Kio's desire to stop the war and get everyone together is a valid way of thinking, I believe, but is a type of fantasy.

-Did you think of changing the balance of having one cours for each generation?
Hino: As it's a family drama, having the last cours star all three characters was necessary. Also necessary to link up to the three of them joining forces was the theme of Kio, at first fighting the enemy as if playing a video game, meeting Izelcant and eventually growing to disapprove of war. As a result Kio required more episodes and we had to compress Asem's story a bit.

-Looking back, are there any particular episodes you liked?
Hino: I liked them all, but the one I liked the most would be Wolf's death. He left the words "Super Pilot" to Asem, but if you think about it those words are kind of ridiculous and compared to X rounders have no substance to them at all. But Asem took those meaningless words and turned them into a status, and used them to become strong. The visuals in that episode were great too so it left a really strong impression on me. I think it was a mistake to have Wolf die so early though, I really wanted to have an episode where the older Asem visited him.

-What do you think of the conclusion?
Hino: It was great because we managed to tie up the endings of all three generations. There was the feeling that we had to settle things between Asem and Zeheart once and for all. Also, the story of two forces fighting and eventually coming to accept one another is pretty standard for Gundam, I believe.

-How Flit who had spent his entire life wanting to destroy the Vegans stopped at the very last moment left an extremely strong impression on us.
Hino: The opinion that it wasn't that good to have him leave the final decision to a woman who isn't even his wife. I mean, he married Emily, has kids, yet in the end it's Yurin. But you have to remember that he didn't just part with her, he lost her at a stage of growth when he was at his most sensitive. Even though he's married he can't forget her. This kind of stuff happens in real life too, not just cartoons. The female staff on the team didn't understand at all, but I personally feel it was extremely realistic.

-Was bringing new elements into Gundam such as the three part format done for the sake of bringing new elements in?
Hino: The personality of the show I wanted to display the most was family drama with the passing of time. Aside from that we strove to keep a Gundam-like image. At the base of the whole thing is the history of Gundam, and we wanted to show that to the children. The designs of the Gundams evolving as if tracing the history of Gundam was done on purpose.

-Was that done to keep the "Gundam-like" image?
Hino: While we wanted to keep in line for the most part, there were also parts where we wanted to step out of line. We wanted to go crazy and put in really interesting stuff. But with Gundam you have to think about a lot of other factors, including the merchandise, so we couldn't really do everything we wanted. In exchange we at least managed to keep the balance in the games.

-In what way did you feel Age was "Gundam-like"?
Hino: I always had that feeling of "Gundam-like"ness even before I started creating Age. Basically it's the concept of humans pitting their thoughts and emotions against each other through the medium of Mobile Suits. What was difficult was whether to depict the Gundam as a hero or a weapon. The tuning there is what determines Gundam, I think. For example in one of the scenario meetings we discussed how the weapons and war need to be depicted more realistically, while in another meeting the opinion of how it should be a more crazy super robot thing turned up. This stuff changed every week. Everyone, even among the stuff and fans, has different experiences with Gundam, so not everyone has the same image.

-That's the difficulty of working with something that's been going on for 30 years, yes?
Hino: There are many different groups of Gundam fans, and I found that it's extremely difficult to please all of them at the same time. I never actually thought about that before we started creating Age, and now that it's over I'm not sure if that was for better or for worse. "What is Gundam?" is going to be the eternal theme for all future creators of Gundam as well as myself from now on. If you have a chance to discuss Gundam, I'd be happy if Age would be the subject of the conversation.

-What is your straight opinion on working with Gundam?
Hino: Gundam has strong influencing power, and I received a lot of advice and criticism from the fans. But even so I really enjoyed myself each time. I think the reason I managed to find this to be so much fun even though it was really difficult is because the DNA inside me received the influence of Gundam as a child.

-Finally, a message for your fans please.
Hino: I really love Gundam and was truly glad to be able to stay with the project to the end. I feel that we managed to achieve the concept of depicting protagonists of different generations, and that Age can be lined up alongside the other past Gundams. While I'm not sure if it managed to fulfil everyone's expectations, I created Age with the opinion that this is one way that Gundam can be great. Also working in the field let me feel the power of Gundam, and interacting with the fans showed me how big Gundam is. I will definitely use this experience to better whatever I work on from now on, and if I have a chance to work with Gundam again, I would love to.