One of the rarely talked about mecha shows of the 80’s is Heavy Metal L-Gaim, although it was one of my most unique experiences with anime of the past year. L-Gaim was directed by none other than Yoshiyuki Tomino, at the height of his fame in 1984, characters and mecha designed by young Mamoru Nagano and animation spearheaded by Tomonori Kogawa as an animation director alongside his young bebows. Strong names indeed, yet the final result didn’t turn out to be close to what is expected from such a project. Nonetheless the uniqueness I talked about didn’t come from the production or writing quality, but from the production itself and the participation of those three in the project, so I wanted to dedicate a post to talk about how each of those three, Tomino, Nagano and Kogawa, participated in the project and the end result. A lot of assumptions were made in this post! Right from the beginning the show makes it clear that it’s a parody. Truly unexpected if you ever watched anything Tomino touched, but now that I think about it maybe he wanted to parody the same genre and features he himself pioneered, or just blow off some steam after the major projects he just finished(Gundam and Ideon) for all I know. The show, as much as I hate this expression, really didn’t take itself seriously. This made the show that much more different and fun, the main dispute with the protagonist’s rival started over food, the protagonist visiting the repels just because he forgot to tell them thanks and so on. As far as I know this was a new take on the genre. The setting also was good. The protagonist and his friend are wanderers in a planet full of deserts and bandits, not mentioning repels. Wandering around, meeting new characters, getting in all sorts of situation, suits the main parody and unexpectedness theme pretty well. Overall the first 10-15 episodes were fun. I always feared that the show would take a more serious tone later on, which eventually happened, killing what it had going for it. It slowly transformed into a typical mecha-war anime: each episode a fight, no characters die, sluggish story developments here and there, stretched over 30+ episodes. Could be palatable with a nice story or impressive fights, but none of those were present, which leads me to my next point: Animation. Mecha and effects animation was uninspiring and boring. Some exceptions are there of course, episode 14 stood out and sure enough it had a totally different staff behind it: Anime R mecha experts Moriyasu Taniguchi(AD, also Hiroyuki Okiura’s mentor), Kase Masahiro, Yoshida Tooru and Fumiko Kishi. Although Anime R was a frequent sub-contractor in Sunrise shows, only that episode and another one were handled by them, and the difference was obvious. Aside from mecha animation, character animation was way more interesting, another reason why I hated the heavy focus on mecha fights later on. The show’s parodiness was backed by a funny and amusing character animation by Kogawa and his pupils. Kogawa was credited as “Animation Director” for the show overall, written in katakana(アニメーションディレクター) as opposed to the usual per episode kanji(作画監督) credit which was also present. Not the first time for him, as he had the same credit in Ideon, but not a usual credit for shows of that era, and I believe this to be an early form of the general animation director(総作画監督) of today’s anime. His influence over the character’s designs is unmistakable and clear. Although the characters are designed by Nagano, I’d argue that they were Kogawa’s character rather than his. An interesting mix. Kogawa’s grasp over the characters was solidified with his pupils from Beebow animating basically the whole show, Beebow, although about 5 years old at the time, was credited for in-betweens even. L-Gaim in general had a main focus of cultivating new blood and talent: Nagano(23), all the Beebow’s in their 20’s. Left: L-Gaim, Right: Cool Cool Bye Also, Kogawa is a master of colors. This shouldn’t be a surprise considering he graduated with a degree in oil painting, and Tomino trusted him with colors and colors directing in multiple occasions. What catched my eye in L-Gaim was a character named Poseydal that had a strikingly different color scheme than the rest of the cast. The intention behind this was maybe to make the “mighty ruler of the universe” stand out, which it definitely did. My guess is that Kogawa had at least a hand in this. On a side note, I was checking Kogawa’s pieces in “Folktales from Japan”, and they are pretty interesting. A lot of them are basically non-animated drawings, but meticulous and beautiful ones with a great focus on colors. I’ll list the episodes he participated in at the end of this post if anyone is interested. PoseydalKogawa’s Folktales from Japan Anyway, back to L-Gaim. Back then, Kogawa always wanted to do gags. Comical motion, sort of, playful expression of motion between two scenes, inspired by Tom and Jerry because it had the best motion of this kind(as he himself once noted). I don’t completely understand what he exactly means by that, but the character animation in L-Gaim definitely was playful and funny, a joy to watch sometimes. Unfortunately this also decreased in the later half of the show. Maybe the best episode to portray this approach would be #7, AD’ed by Hidetoshi Omori. Omori also did some key-animation in the episode, which I believe to include this scene. He inherited the limited style of animation and timing of Kogawa well. Kogawa said that he did a scene in Xabungle where a character runs 200 meters in 6 cuts, which is roughly the same principle in this scene. Jumpy but in no extreme way. As for shapes, his characters are generally curvy especially the limbs, which are also lean and stretchy, along with some slight mid-motion deformations and morphings, a general style for Beebow but particularly apparent in Omori’s episodes especially early on. I’d call it overall a Beebow style that’s not completely full-fledged yet, not as sophisticated like what Omori did in his “Deprive” Robot Carnival short or what Beebow did in their Greed or Cool Cool Bye OVAs, still interesting. The mecha design was unexpectedly bland. So unlike Nagano and Tomino, yet this also changed as the show moved on, to the point where the main simple mecha was ditched in favour of a new, colorful and transformable one. Maybe something demanded by the toy manufacturers for all I know. As for Nagano, in spite of designing both the mecha and the characters and having a say in the world setting and story(Tomino even said that this project was Nagano’s thing), he felt disappointed with the final product. In fact, one of the reasons behind the creation of Five Star Stories was his desire to better realize his ideas. He built upon L-Gaim and reused a lot of things from L-Gaim, even the name itself, Five Star Stories, pays homage for L-Gaim as in L-Gaim the story takes place in a quintuple planetary system. Kogawa as well wasn’t satisfied for some reason. When asked about L-Gaim, he simply said that he should have worked on Southern Cross instead when he had the chance. Even Tomino, the director, almost left the 2nd half of the project to begin planning for Gundam Zeta. Needless to say this had an effect on the show, namely all the inconsistency at the end. Like a character being in one episode a male yet a female in the other. It was a mess to say the least. Kogawa’s Folktales from Japan outings:#33 Part-A, #60 Part-A, #68 Part-C, #86 Part-A, #107 Part-A, #112 Part-B, #114 Part-B, #118 Part-B, #129 Part-A, #134 Part-B, #141 Part-C, #146 Part-B, #156 Part-C, #168 Part-A, #173 Part-B, #185 Part-B, #200 Part-B, #208 Part-A, #220 Part-B, #243 Part-B, #258 Part-A.
Dec 6, 2018 • Subscribe
Robot Carnival, Cool Cool Bye, Five Star Stories, Folktales from Japan, Heavy
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