From
Gundam to Rahxephon, Yutaka Izubuchi has been designing robots and
directing films. Directing was a way to stay in the business, but his
first love remains drawing. "Yes, or I wouldn't be doing this,"
Izubuchi replied when he was asked if he was fascinated by the idea of
giant robots. "It's probably because they're shaped like a human. I
personally am very interested in mecha, but in reality that is not very
useful." Like an actor who prefers to play villains, Izubuchi likes
designing the "...bad guy robots that get smashed up all the time. I
try to get them smashed up in a beautiful way, not just in a explosion
but so they can shine as a bad guy." Whether mecha are practical ideas
in today's world, Izubuchi has spent much of a career dealing with
them, starting with his work on Gundam series including Zeta. "Since I
was not the first designer, I would think about where I needed to keep
the old Gundam design, and how to update the designs and what the
audience would like to see." Izubuchi said he's recently working on a
Gundam series "that doesn't;t have any Gundams in it." It's called "MS
Igloo" and is a look at soldiers on the Zion side of the original
conflict from the Gundam 0079 series, a six-episode series that a a
three-dimensional look through the old-fashioned use of models, not
through computer graphics. "It's more interesting than Final Fantasy,"
he joked.
In
Rahxephon, "The main robot is godlike. I was told to draw wings on its
head. His enemies are golems, basically - they're made out of mud, and
while they were fighting they would sing." All of that was part of his
attempt to create new things that can capture an audience. But catching
a viewer's attention doesn't mean having an obvious exposition of the
story: in the Rahxephon movie, there are evocative silences and
conversations between characters that tell their feelings about the
story without directly telling what has happened. Rahxephon, the story
of mysterious battling robots and the lives they affect, has an unusual
title but one that has a meaning that can be decoded, Izubuchi said.
The "Ra" prefix refers to the Egyptian sun god, "x" stands for the
variable of uncertainty and "phon" represents sound - the mecha battle
by singing. "I was trying to represent that there is an uncertainly in
god through this made-up word," he explained. There's also some trivia
in the title of the Gundam animation known in English as "Char's
Counterattack;" Izubuchi said there was once a thought of borrowing the
"Return of the Jedi" title from a Star Wars episode and using something
like "Return of Char," but the "Counterattack" title was eventually
used.
From
Gundam to Rahxephon, Yutaka Izubuchi has been designing robots and
directing films. Directing was a way to stay in the business, but his
first love remains drawing. "Yes, or I wouldn't be doing this,"
Izubuchi replied when he was asked if he was fascinated by the idea of
giant robots. "It's probably because they're shaped like a human. I
personally am very interested in mecha, but in reality that is not very
useful." Like an actor who prefers to play villains, Izubuchi likes
designing the "...bad guy robots that get smashed up all the time. I
try to get them smashed up in a beautiful way, not just in a explosion
but so they can shine as a bad guy." Whether mecha are practical ideas
in today's world, Izubuchi has spent much of a career dealing with
them, starting with his work on Gundam series including Zeta. "Since I
was not the first designer, I would think about where I needed to keep
the old Gundam design, and how to update the designs and what the
audience would like to see." Izubuchi said he's recently working on a
Gundam series "that doesn't;t have any Gundams in it." It's called "MS
Igloo" and is a look at soldiers on the Zion side of the original
conflict from the Gundam 0079 series, a six-episode series that a a
three-dimensional look through the old-fashioned use of models, not
through computer graphics. "It's more interesting than Final Fantasy,"
he joked.
In
Rahxephon, "The main robot is godlike. I was told to draw wings on its
head. His enemies are golems, basically - they're made out of mud, and
while they were fighting they would sing." All of that was part of his
attempt to create new things that can capture an audience. But catching
a viewer's attention doesn't mean having an obvious exposition of the
story: in the Rahxephon movie, there are evocative silences and
conversations between characters that tell their feelings about the
story without directly telling what has happened. Rahxephon, the story
of mysterious battling robots and the lives they affect, has an unusual
title but one that has a meaning that can be decoded, Izubuchi said.
The "Ra" prefix refers to the Egyptian sun god, "x" stands for the
variable of uncertainty and "phon" represents sound - the mecha battle
by singing. "I was trying to represent that there is an uncertainly in
god through this made-up word," he explained. There's also some trivia
in the title of the Gundam animation known in English as "Char's
Counterattack;" Izubuchi said there was once a thought of borrowing the
"Return of the Jedi" title from a Star Wars episode and using something
like "Return of Char," but the "Counterattack" title was eventually
used.
