The Mike Toole Show

Terminal Tominosis

Okay, the title should clue you right in. In the march of columns about awesome anime creators, I've talked Tezuka, Hata, Garzey's Wing, one of the worst anime ever made and arguably Tomino's biggest disaster. So without any further pomp and circumstance, let's talk Tomino.

Unlike a lot of anime directors, Yoshiyuki Tomino didn't get his start as a visual artist or manga-ka - the man can draw pretty well (he could still sketch a very decent Marine Boy.

Tomino eventually fell in with one of his old Mushi Pro colleagues, a fast-talking office manager named Office Academy, hadn't exactly acquired the rights to make a Triton cartoon honorably) was the first to really feature an emergent narrative style by the young director. Tomino readily played up the titular Triton as the show's dashing do-gooder, last of a dying race, but just as the drama hits a fever pitch, Triton discovers his ancestors weren't the heroes he'd imagined them to be. The show is ed well by fans of the medium, and soon Tomino found himself taking on more and more projects in its wake.

A lot of these shows involved the old "production advancement" or "storyboard editor" hats, but Tomino would take the director's chair again for the second half of 1975's Reideen. And so it was that Tomino, who fancied himself a writer and cinema auteur, found himself director a TV cartoon about giant robots.

But even if that's what Brave Reideen was, it stood apart from other robot cartoons. Full of gripping action and powerful melodrama, Reideen was the first robot show to feature a magical robot rather than a super-scientific one, and director Tomino would collaborate closely with an artist named Daitarn 3, which was notably lighter and funnier, including a lot of comedy that was dialogue rather than gag-driven – to this day, that's not something you see very often in anime.

Then, there was Gundam. Tomino didn't know that the 1979 series would be a career-defining moment for him, he just wanted to tell a cool story about robots becoming brutal war machines and mankind's consciousness-expanding progress into space. But while the director populated his story with interesting heroes and anti-heroes, chief sponsor Bandai kept asking for new mobile suit designs, so they could keep making toys. Watching the 43-episode series is a really interesting exercise - it's not that great overall, but it has good stuff, good characters and fights. More than that, it's possible to see a certain hilarious laziness and cynicism creep in midway, as Tomino responded to toy company demands to feature the Gundam's cool new G-Parts accessories by running the same stock sequence over and over again across several episodes, and the introduction of an array of hilariously ugly enemy mobile suits, most of which would never be seen again in the franchise. Despite butting heads with sponsors and the show's untimely cancellation, kids across Japan clamored from Bandai's Gundam model kits, and the tidal wave of cash and fan interest allowed Tomino to go back and recut the series as three movies, complete with improved animation sequences. He really made all the right moves; the films are riveting and rightfully held up as classics today, and Gundam would become a permanent fixture on the anime landscape as a result of his efforts.

The director sure kept busy, too. After Gundam was yanked, but before it was revived, he somehow squeezed in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Just like the bizarre contrast of Innocent and the barbarous Civilians with barely a word of explanation, leaving the viewers to puzzle out the strange world, huge cast of characters, and confusing jargon themselves. For me, the show wins out thanks to its excellent combat animation (the gasoline-powered mecha of Xabungle are weird as hell and fun to watch) and its protagonist. The upbeat, pugnacious Jiron Amos would provide a welcome respite from the callow heroes of Ideon and Gundam.

Tomino isn't just a director, he's also written plays and novels. His novelization of Gundam is fascinatingly bizarre, though if you ask me it doesn't add much to the story and takes the reader to places they didn't really need to go. He also wrote a series of short novels called Aura Battler Dunbine, a tale of awesome, insectoid robots!

I love reading about Tomino's seemingly decade-long clash with sponsors. Judging by what we've actually seen, insisting on the presence of cool robots has actually improved the material more often than not. But at the same time, it's tough to see a creator squirm when his story is changed by outside forces. To this day, Tomino has a chip on his shoulder about the process; he almost invariably works with Sunrise, but stodgily maintains that he's a freelancer. "Some of my work has been altered by outside producers - salarymen, essentially," he related in 2002. "I've been unable to influence these salarymen, and I regret that." While Gundam has been Tomino's bread and butter since 1979, it seems likely that he's a little more attached to Wings of Rean. He'd revisit it, down the road.

But before that, there would be other works. Tomino would team up with mecha designer Mamou Nagano to create Char's Counterattack, a big wrap-up movie for the tale of Amuro and Char. The end product is pretty good, but it's incredibly typical of Tomino's hot-and-cold approach and results - the film has some of the franchise's absolute best mecha battles, but it also has one of the most annoying anime characters ever created. If you've seen Char's Counterattack, you know who I'm talking about!

Okay, so I've written about a million words, and I've only gotten to 1990. Thankfully, Tomino would start to let up his breakneck pace. He would revisit Gundam's Universal Century a couple more times, first with the theatrical Gundam F-91; like much of his work, it's not really that good (it was originally planned as a TV series, then viciously cut short thanks to behind the scenes squabbling), but it' still a really interesting failure. He did a little better with 1991's V-Gundam, which takes a huge leap ahead in the UC timeline and introduces what might be the entire franchise's least-liked protagonist - still, the show improved through its run, and Tomino would gleefully embrace the "Kill 'em All" approach one last time at its climax. Then he took a break for a couple of years, and then there was Garzey's Wing.

Tomino's works are generally either pretty entertaining, or pretty interesting failures. Garzey's Wing is a remarkable failure, a 1996 M tried to ask questions and set up an interview about Garzey's Wing, to develop as a DVD extra. This left Tomino, who had no desire at all to discuss the show, angry and confused - kind of like the people who watched Garzey's Wing!

Tomino would start to get his mojo back with 1998's Syd Mead's distorted lens. I actually like the weird, mustachio'ed look of the title mecha, which actually only happened because Bandai asked for something more Gundam-like (the show's Sumo was originally going to be what the Turn-A looked like). In a broad sense, Turn-A might be Tomino's most consistently enjoyable Gundam project - its characters are fun and sympathetic - hero Loran Cehack is young, but not dumb - and its story is stable and coherent throughout the entire run. I'm really looking forward to seeing Bandai Entertainment's release, since I haven't seen the show since its original laserdisc/DVD issue in 1999.

2002's Overman King Gainer would continue the director's good run of form. Tomino actually had high hopes for the show, which was in production when he visited New York in 2002. He spoke about how he'd tried to keep western sensibilities in mind when developing it, and said that he hoped western fans would really enjoy it. Unfortunately, not all too many western fans got to see it - it was a relatively low-profile DVD release, and while a TV airing might've gotten it a little love, the show is honestly a hard sell. I absolutely love its weird mecha designs, cavalier disregard for physics, hilariously awkward main character, and rapid-fire, almost George Bernard Shaw-esque comic dialogue, but it's an acquired taste, and the show's climax is as muddled and weird as... well, as what we'd expect from Tomino.

But what do we expect from Yoshiyuki Tomino? Having seen the majority of his output, I expect big battles with scenes that cut away to the cockpits, so the dogfighting adversaries can argue about something completely unrelated. I expect shy, callow heroes and taciturn, intelligent villains. I expect at least one fiery, charismatic, but hilariously ineffectual bad guy. (Zeta Gundam's Jerid Messa is my favorite in that category.) I expect names that are anywhere from odd (the city of "New Yark") to absurd (Marvel Frozen! Shot Weapon! Quattro Bageena! Aesop Suzuki!) I expect to see a lovably grizzled combat veteran fighting on the wrong side. (Ranba Ral, anyone?) I expect exotic and concepts referred to in the dialogue, but left unexplained for long stretches. I expect characters who blurt out things like "I'm really shy, you know!" but then never actually act shy – in other words, expository dialogue abuse. I expect characters who you grow really fond of getting wiped out in an instant, with no time for grief left in the show's story arc. Altogether, I expect to be stimulated - and more often than not, Tomino gets the job done.

What also amuses me about Tomino is his reputation for being a troublemaker, a pot-stirrer. He's a creator that's typically been unafraid to attack anime's weird production process. He recently gave some sage advice to a young girl who asked about being an animator (he essentially told her that if she wasn't already working on her draftsmanship like crazy, she was falling behind - and he was right!), and trolled the hell out of video game fandom by remarking about his disdain for the medium. His brief misadventures in North America may or may not have torpedoed Gundam's momentum here - I've heard stories for over a decade that involve him monkeying with translations personally, backseat driving at Ocean Studio's casting call for the TV series, and offering helpful suggestions for marketing the toys, but the fact is, I can't source any of these hilarious tales. Only a handful of people over here worked directly with him, and none of them are keen on burning bridges, even years after the fact, so there's no way to confirm these legends without causing trouble. To this day, however, many people in the industry cheekily refer to Tomino as Hagemadoshi-san - "Mr. Bald-headed Wizard" - a nickname that came about because of his mischief over here. But I'm not telling who came up with that nickname, no sir!

But what of Byston's Well? Tomino would go back to the Well (HAW!) in 2005 for Wings of Rean, an adaptation of his novels that hews closer to the original text than Dunbine, even though it still has Aura Battlers in there. Rean is amazingly beautiful to look at, full of odd terminology (the main character, Aesop, was named after the acronym ASAP. Yes, really.) and an only barely coherent story about a boy sucked through a portal to confront an ambitious World War II vet, bent on using his magical powers to return to earth and restart WWII. I enjoyed watching it, but at the same time, it left me wondering why it was made. I think it might be because Tomino just loves Byston Well. People will always him for Gundam, but Rean and the Byston Well saga belong to him in a way that Gundam, a show originally mandated by Sunrise and their toy-company sponsors, does not. I expect him to take us back there sometime - and hopefully it'll be a bit more coherent than Garzey's Wing.

Tomino has spent the past few months dropping hints about a new project. Fans are excited, of course: is it a new Gundam? After all, just a few years ago he directed a trilogy of "new" Zeta Gundam films, movies that gleefully ignored series continuity and clumsily shoehorned in hot new digital animation with the original 1985 TV stuff, and while Tomino likes to grouse about a variety of Gundam subjects, the possibility of him reviving his original hit is always there. Personally, I'm hoping for something brand new - part of why I liked King Gainer so much is because it took risks in ways that Gundam probably wouldn't. Throughout his entire industry-shaping career, Yoshiyuki Tomino has been a risk-taker. And let's face it, anime needs more risk-takers!