'Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX' Director Predicts Gundam Series "Might Not Survive" The Next 10 Years
Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX director Kazuya Tsurumaki, who has made a living in Japan’s mecha anime genre working on Neon Genesis Evangelion, Gurren Lagann, as well as the aforementioned GQuuuuuuX, predicted the Gundam series might not survive the next 10 years.
In an interview with Yahoo Japan and translated using DeepL, Tsurumaki shared, “When I was a child, motorcycles and cars were objects of admiration. In that vein, there was the existence of ‘pilotable robots’ as tools that surpassed adults, as if leaping directly into adulthood. But I think the current younger generation doesn't need that.”
“Even in today's manga and anime, the protagonists use magic or psychic powers to wield superpowers that surpass adults in a more intuitive way,” he explained. “In games, you can freely control characters on the screen using a controller. Maybe that's enough for them.”
“I wonder if they don't understand the meaning of riding a robot. The generation that once aspired to motorcycles and cars is still barely active, but in another 10 years, the Gundam series might not survive. While creating the Evangelion series, I once again felt the need to update the meaning of robots,” he concluded.
In the short-run it appears GQuuuuuuX has been a success. Bandai Namco FIlmworks director Naohiro Ogata told Diamond Online, “We got an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. Through working on this project with Studio Khara, we were able to reach a new audience that had never been introduced to Gundam, and we were also able to bring back our main target audience – dormant Gundam fans in their 50s and over.”
What do you make of Tsurumaki prediction? Do you think Gundam will be around in the next 10 years?
I think Gundams will last forever. Especially when we get to pilot real life Gundams in the future. Evangelion and Gurren Laggen are great animes.
a series that has dived deep into freemasonry and satanic and even communism for 40 years hidden behind robot toys was going to end up like this after the Culture shifts.
people forget that the original gundam series was pitched by the network to the writer as a gay daddy/youngster "enemies to lovers" drama for young girls (which is quite common over there as only male on female porn is illegal in japan). the writer did not want to do that so he shoved in political intrigue and robots to hide what was originally meant by the network to be literal sodomite porn as a "tense rivalry between two boys."