'Mobile Suit Gundam' Writer Yu Yamamoto Passes Away

The anime community is coming together to honor one of mecha’s prolific talents. According to new reports, Yu Yamamoto died earlier this month at 71 years old.

As reported by Anime News Network, Yamamoto passed away on November 25. The news was announced via Twitter when the original anime Galaxy Divine Wind Jinraiger paid tribute to the writer as Yamamoto was overseeing the project.

For those of you who don’t know Yamamoto, you may very well know about his stories. The writer is best-known for working on series like Mobile Suit Gundam. Yamamoto made his screenwriting debut in the early 1970s and was eventually tapped to pen 11 episodes of the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime. Yamamoto was asked back to the mecha franchise to pen the Mobile Suit Gundam — The Movie Trilogy, and the writer continued to oversee other scripts.

After Yamamoto finished his work with Mobile Suit Gundam, he moved on to J9 Series. He was tapped to be the project’s head writer, giving Yamamoto the chance to work with mecha titles like Galaxy Clone Braiger, Galactic Gale Baxinger, and Galactic Whirlwind Sasuraiger. The writer decided to continue work with the franchise with Galaxy Divine Wind Jinraiger, and Yamamoto began work on the anime in 2014. The series was slated to debut in 2016, but the show was put on hiatus due to Yamamoto’s busy schedule. Now, the future of the series is uncertain following its writer’s passing.

Taking to social media, mecha fans are paying tribute to Yamamoto and thanking him for all he did for the genre. His work on Mobile Suit Gundam may have ended decades ago, but his assistance on the original anime helped it spawn the international franchise fans know today. Recently, Sunrise confirmed it has at least five new anime projects for Gundam in the works, and a brand-new film will join the canon this month in Japan. You can read up on Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative, or Mobile Suit Gundam NT, below:

"U.C. 0097. The year the Laplace's Box was opened. Despite the revelation of the original charter for the Universal Century, which acknowledges the existence of Newtypes and their rights, the world remains largely unchanged. After the destruction of the Neo Zeon remnant force known as the Sleeves, the event that has come to be known as the "Laplace Incident" seems to have drawn to a close. In the final battle, two Full Psycho Frame mobile suits displayed power beyond human imagination. The menace of the White Unicorn and the Black Lion were sealed away from public consciousness, and were consigned to be forgotten by history. But now sightings of the RX-0 Unicorn 03, long thought lost two years ago, are being reported. Its name is Phenex, an immortal golden bird."

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