Great Anime Directors: Yoshiyuki Tomino

By Mark McPherson
24th May 04

Tomino broke into anime industry in 1964, when he signed on for Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Production Studio to work on Astro Boy. He also helped direct Princess Knight. He later became a freelance storyboard artist and chief director on such shows as Brave Raideen, Zambot 3 and Daitarn 3 in the 70's. It was not until 1979 that Tomino became a historic anime director with the creation of the television series, Mobile Suit Gundam. Though the show got off to a rocky start and ended up with less episodes than previously planned, it did allow Tomino to get more work with the creation of Ideon in 1980.

About 2 years after Gundam was cancelled, a huge fan base had grown around it and the fans were begging for more Gundam. So Tomino decided to re-release the series in three seperate movies with new animation. They all became a hit in the theaters. Tomino didn't like dwelling on Gundam too much so he went back to making more new ground-breaking mecha shows like Xabungle, L.Gaim and Dunbine. Finally, Tomino could no longer take the crys of Gundam fans and returned to his roots.

He got the Gundam franchise back on it's feet with the creation of a sequel series, Gundam Zeta. The show became an extreme hit, so Tomino ran with the Gundam shtick for about half a decade with more new Gundam anime including Gundam ZZ, Char's Counterattack, Gundam F91 and Victory Gundam. Finally, when Tomino decided he tapped out the popularity of Gundam, he started more original projects. In 1996, he shocked anime fans by creating a fantasy role-playing anime called Garzey's Wing (a sequel to the long forgotten Dunbine).

People were beginning to become angry with Tomino for the creation of Brain Powered in 1998. Brain Powered was basically Tomino's way of saying "this is how Evangelion should have been done". To some extent, he was right, but Evangelion fans lashed out at Tomino for putting Evangelion down. Tomino realized that fans hold all the power. Realizing this, he made an entirely new Gundam series called "Turn A" Gundam. This new series took place out side the original Gundam series and featured a different kind of Gundam mecha.

However, Tomino's existance in distributing his titles to the US has been met with angry results. When Bandai asked if they could air the original Mobile Suit Gundam on Cartoon Network, he had a few demands.

1. Tomino would oversee every aspect of the translation.
2. The entire series must be digitally remastered with new colors.
3. Episode 15 must be cut from the English version.
4. The US DVDs will not contain the original Japanese track.

While these demands seemed understandable, they got worse. Tomino went to work the people at Ocean Group on dubbing it and ended up firing a lot of people. This not only made some people who loved Gundam get pissed at Tomino, but Tomino himself was furious when the last view episodes of Gundam had been cut from Cartoon Network because of it's war like nature following September 11, 2001. When Bandai asked if they could distribute the Gundam movies, Tomino's demands were pretty much opposite from the TV series.

1. Tomino will oversee every aspect.
2. The movies must be digitally remastered.
3. There will be a remixed Japanese track featuring newly recorded dialogue by the original cast.
4. There will also be a 2.0 original audio track.
5. No English track.

So, while Tomino isn't a very people-friendly person, he has created and directed some of the greatest anime films and television programs of our times and done them well. Yoshiyuki Tomino is defenitely a great anime director and will always be remembered.

-- Mark McPherson 24th May 04