In honor of the release of the RG 00 Raiser, Bandai Hobby posted a series of round table talks with the designer of the 00 and staff from Bandai Hobby.

Participants:

Kanetake Ebikawa (One of Gundam 00’s mechanical designers.)

Yuki Nishimura (Bandai Hobby)

Junichi Nishizawa (Bandai Hobby)

Bandai Staff Participated in the Mechanical Design Meetings Too

EBIKAWA: When I was brought in to work on Gundam 00, it was my first Gundam and the first show I’d been involved in where model kits would be released alongside the TV broadcast. From the very start Mr. Baba and Mr. Nishizawa from Bandai Hobby were coming to Sunrise’s studios for meetings. We developed the mechanical designs while talking things through with them.

NISHIMURA: We wanted to provide the mechanical designers with input from the production side about things like plastic colors and range of movement for the kits.

EBIKAWA: Yeah. For example if they advised that a section would be difficult to do with multiple parts in different colors, we might decide to handle delicate color differences with stickers instead. Though, they were always asking me to consider how the machines in the show would have to be realized in real life while I was working. There were plenty of misunderstandings here and there, but I wasn’t severely restricted or tied down by the requirements. First, they’d take a look at the design concept and then we’d discuss the parts that would be difficult to produce and work it out together as we worked the design into a product.

NISHIZAWA: I think the process of exchanging ideas to solve design problems or obstacles is an excellent opportunity to create an interesting product.

EBIKAWA: I think it was really fun how we kept refining our ideas as we voiced our opinions, and the design just kept getting better and better. And it wasn’t just us mechanical designers either. The series’ director, Mr. Seiji Mizushima and the series’ script-writer Mr. Yosuke Kuroda were active participants in the design meetings too and gave us all sorts of ideas.

NISHIZAWA: We had the outline from Mr. Kuroda, so we worked on the details of the robots while imagining combat situations and scenes that would appear in the show, so all that kind of stuff was incorporated into the model design as well.

EBIKAWA: Mr. Kuroda was very particular about those details. He wanted to make sure all the weapons and gimmicks we’d designed would get used in the show. In Gundam 00 the more detailed specs of the weapons were used in the series as much as possible. That was something we kept up in the Build Fighters series as well.

Continuing Tradition and New Challenges

NISHIMURA: Gundam Exia, which was designed for the first season of Gundam 00, has the cone-shaped GN-drive thrusters and all sorts of other unique lines, giving it a very different impression from [the lead suits] of other Gundam series. Was that something you were after?

EBIKAWA: I was asked that question quite a few times during the first season, but I guess I’d always intended to do a relatively traditional Gundam design. Of course, I’ve loved GunPla ever since I was little, and I’ve built plenty of kits. I think I just had this feeling that I wanted to design something the way I’d do it. But, given how many times it’s come up, I guess I wasn’t aware of just how much of a departure it was from tradition. I guess the cords on the shoulders and the design accents might be a bit novel, but I don’t think the basic shape of the shoulders is really that far removed from the historical look of the Federation suits. I actually thought people were going to tell me it was too traditional. But when the design was unveiled, it seems like people were really split over the cone thruster on the back and the lens on the chest (lol).

NISHIMURA: I think the lens in Exia’s chest is something that really characterizes the design. Even the HG model has a clear part for it.

EBIKAWA: The lens in Exia’s chest always kind of reminded me of a tokusatsu hero. I always thought the way their suits shone when they transformed was really pretty. Up until now, clear parts have been used mostly for things like beam blades, camera eyes and sensors, but not often in the actual body of the machine, so I thought it’d be cool to try it with Exia. And the lens-like GN Condenser was designed to display text. I’d actually been planning to incorporate the monitor element from the very beginning and when I was drawing the design for Exia, my first lead suit design., I remember thinking, “even if they don’t use the [monitor] element, if I’m lucky, maybe they’ll keep the lens part at least.” Since they did decide to use it, I ended up with more work: designing the monitor! (lol). During the TV broadcast of Gundam 00 the first time a shot of the prototype HG Exia appeared, the clear parts looked so beautiful, it looked even prettier than the final product even though it’s composed of the same pieces.

NISHIMURA: Were the four Celestial Being suits designed to look good together?

EBIKAWA: Takayuki Yanase was in charge of the other three, but it was something I was thinking about during the first season. Of course I took input from all the staff too. They’re kind of like an old sentai squad.There’s the leader, the cool guy, the chubby one, and the lone woman. I wanted to make sure that they were easy to identify visually when lined up on screen. And with that imagery established in the first season, we continued that idea on into the second season without any drastic changes.

The Concept for the 00 Raiser was a “Bat”

NISHIMURA: What was the process of designing 00 Gundam which appeared in the second season?

EBIKAWA: At first, I didn’t really have much in terms of concrete instruction. I was just told, “This time there will be two GN drives. It’ll be the unit that succeeds the Exia equipped with the Twin Drive system,” and I got a rough image from that. And then the series’ director, Mr. Mizushima, told me, “if Exia has the form of a massive wrestler, then I want the 00 to have more of a sleek, athletic form.” Then I started drawing with those visual cues as a base.

NISHIZAWA: You started off by figuring out where to place the two GN drives, right?

EBIKAWA: I actually came up with a lot of rough sketches with the drives attached at various points. If I stuck both of them on the back, you wouldn’t be able to tell it had two from the front. And if you couldn’t see both of those characteristic, cone-shaped drives, the viewers wouldn’t be able to tell it was a power up from the Exia. Ultimately, as I was sketching rough drafts, the versions with the drives on the shoulders seemed to make the most sense. But, as we’d learned with Gundam Virtue in the first season, putting anything too big on the shoulders can make the physical kit version of the design have droopy arms. So that’s why I decided to try attaching them from the back, instead of directly to the shoulders, to help balance things better.

NISHIMURA: That really came in handy when developing the kit.

EBIKAWA: Yeah. I was working with the thought that it would combine with the 0 Raiser to become the 00 Raiser from the start. If it had just been the GN drives, it might have been fine, but knowing that the 0 Raiser’s binders would also be involved, I thought it’d be too much of a burden on the shoulders. The idea of attaching them to the back by arms, was something that came out while we were discussing things. At first, we were worried that viewers would be uncomfortable with the idea of the suit’s power-source dangling off the shoulders, but looking at it now, I think we made the right decision with regard to the drive placement.

NISHIMURA: Was there anything else that was particularly difficult?

EBIKAWA: I had to use fewer lines than I used with the Exia, because when the 00 and the 0 Raiser combined, the number of lines nearly doubles. The combination also changes the silhouette, so that was pretty complicated. But, as the titular robot of the show, I wanted to avoid making it look pathetic as a result of the reduced line count. So while the 00 may have a relatively simple impression, when it becomes the 00 Raiser, is has about the same number of lines as the Exia did.

NISHIMURA: I do recall speaking to Mr. Mizushima a while ago and I believe he mentioned that the 00 Raiser was designed with the image of a bat in mind.

EBIKAWA: While I was working on the design, Mr. Mizushima told me, “I think it’d be good if the silhouette had a sort of strange, almost sinister look to it since it’s not a robot of supreme justice.” After that, I turned in several rough drafts of the 0 Raiser and was given the instruction to, “make the silhouette look like a bat with outstretched wings.” I wanted to bring that impression out with the way the silhouette spreads out more when the 00 has the 0 Raiser equipped. It looked much smaller at first, but after some talk it was decided to give the 0 Raiser more of the look of a stand-alone fighter plane, and that’s about when the current design solidified.





Read part 2 here.