Forum - View topicYoshiyuki Tomino Press Conference
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rockman nes
 Posts: 271 |
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Fixed. |
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wandering-dreamer
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Well that was rather long winded. I'm afraid that I may have missed the point of many of his statements since they were rather long, but it almost felt whiny to me. It seemed like he answered half his questions by saying "we don't know, we don't know" which made it sound like he has been flying by the seat of his pants for all these years (did I read right when he said they had just recently defined some of the concepts that have been used in Gundam for all these years? Ummm, huh?).
Also curious as to his "I can't read novels" remark. George Orwell's books, as I remember, aren't particularly long so I wonder what's stopping him. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15335 |
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banana:
It's also brilliant for people in touch with their inner children.
Um, all his movies are about entertaining children. He said so himself. I'm not sure why you find Ponyo to be any different.
What cop-out ending? What exactly did you expect to happen? That Ponyo would go back to the sea or something? =p darks: Well, first off, Ponyo is only superficially a children's movie. Second, you don't appreciate it, because you're not taking into account the guy who worked on it is well into his 60s. That's not the norm, even by Japanese animation standards. Th Moomin: Um, what part of Ponyo doesn't deliver on a visual or artistic level? |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Oh god, oh god. I shouldn't laugh so hard after just getting up. I think I need to see a doctor.
Because he was being asked how to solve problems in the industry, and he honestly doesn't know. Is it Tomino's job to come up with answers for questions like that? |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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It surprises me that Tomino would be so frank about such titles' simplicity, and the alleged deceptiveness he describes. His view seems consistent with the oft-made accusation of western animators shielding their young audience. With his post-Ideon work in mind though, much about his narrative style would be explained by his initial reaction to animated works.
SDF Macross was hailed as groundbreaking in its deconstruction of the way 'villains' are involved in a story. I would say that Gundam 0079 is just as successful in developing its antagonists as the aforementioned rival title. Indeed, my understanding of Char, which to this day remains incomplete, altered heavily from one part of the story to the next.
In their defence, captainbanana seems to be merely making the point that they do not like such a film. It is indeed such a person's own fault if they expected something more 'adult' -Miyazaki having explicitly stated he makes films primarily for children in interviews- but I see their expression of opinion as acceptable as that of somebody who likes Ponyo in spite of its target audience. Some arguably harsh words were used in captainbanana's case, however. |
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Moomintroll
 Posts: 1600 Location: Nottingham (UK) |
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You misread my post - I didn't say it had any such flaws. What I said was that if a person thought it didn't deliver in those terms, it would be subjectively valid for them to criticise it accordingly whereas criticising it for fulfilling its raison d'etre is borderline retarded.
Which rather begs the question: then why did they watch it? "I don't like to watch children's films" is a perfectly reasonable statement. "I just sat through this children's film and it was rubbish because it was a children's film and I'm not a child and, hey, why doesn't the director, who's renowned for his children's films, direct some more films like the children's films that he previously made that I actually quite liked even though I don't like children's films" is a great mouldering heap of errant nonsense built haphazardly atop a subsiding foundation of inelegantly tangled logic. None of which has anything to do with bloody big robots, of course, so I'll bow out now before the mecha boys get miffed. |
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kgw
 Posts: 1075 Location: Spain, EU |
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As for why mr. Tomino did not reach the "level" of Miyazaki, I have an answer: because Hayao Miyazaki works for his own studio, and Yoshiyuki Tomino does not own Sunrise. In fact, he doesn't owns Gundam, but Bandai does.
Yoshiyuki Tomino has always looked for a way of telling his own ideas, but, unfortunatelly, those pesky sponsors, and broadcasters were on his way, either adding more toys (G-Fortress, Zakurello, G-Tank, anyone?), or cancelling his series before he can tell the story (Gundam, Ideon...). It'd be have been great if someone asked mr. Tomino about what he really want to do, not about "moar" Gundam. |
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DomFortress
 Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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I think relatively speaking, the North American cultural influence is more tolerating when it comes to artistic expression and creative freedom. Perhaps Mr Tomino can consider working with an US sponsor instead? |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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He got to finish Ideon in the movies, and it was still nonsense. |
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DomFortress
Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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captainbanana
Posts: 191 |
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Sometimes I forget that non-native English speakers often read these forums. When I said "it's brilliant if you are five" I meant that it had all the logic and story of a second tier Disney movie from my childhood. That isn't to say that it is a bad thing, just that the audience is so clearly different than most of his past movies. Artistically it's flawless, as Miyazaki films usually are, but no one should be comparing Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke to Ponyo. Miyazaki can claim that his movies are for children all he wants, but there is far more depth in something like Princess Mononoke than in Ponyo. Yes all of his movies can be enjoyed by children (on an "oooh, ahhhh, pretty animation" level) , but his movies usually aren't anywhere near as shallow as I found Ponyo to be. While I disagree with you on the notion that Miyazaki only makes childrens movies (which would be a fun panel discussion, I'm sure), I do want to mention that not all children's movies are of the same level. An adult can watch Wall-E, or something of that nature, and come out of it with a different experience (yet still enjoyable) than a child watching that same movie. I have a hard time understanding what an adult would take away from Ponyo that a child couldn't also. In other words, being for children doesn't disqualify something, unless it is only for children. Enough about that though, everyone has their favorite Miyazaki movie (mine is The Castle of Cagliostro some days, and Mononoke on others). Thank you for not bringing out the "oh, you just didn't understand it" argument used against people that didn't like any previous Miyazaki movie, or trying to tell me that I'm just too old and crotchety to enjoy Ponyo. (No thanks to those that didn't understand that I was making a joke, and turned on the flames) Someone previously mentioned it, but the thought process that went into Gundam is fascinating to me. They created an entire mythology out of the necessity to technologically explain why humanity needed gigantic mechs that could be piloted (mobile suits having been originally used to build colonies, if I'm remembering my lore correctly). Since they were heavy, they wouldn't work very well in gravity, and thus the bulk of the settings needed to be in space. Since they'd be expensive to build and maintain, they needed strong governments. I knew about the tie-in with the toys (and how it forced them to do mobile suit of the week for basically every Gundam show ever made, in order to sell new toys) but I never would have guessed that the setting of Gundam was literally out of a need for them to justify the existence of Gundams in that universe. |
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kaito2198
Posts: 20 |
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If someone will sponsor him, I believe Mr Tomino will say yes, because he always wants to find some chance to make a new work in Japan. But cause he doesn't have his own studio and his own manager, so it is always hard to achieve that. |
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Ryo Hazuki
Posts: 363 Location: Finland |
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I'm not sure would Tomino really want to make a politically incorrect comedy for an American cable channel or a primetime sitcom. Because of Standards and Practices I don't believe anything like Zambot 3, Gundam or Ideon would have been allowed uncensored for a Transformers audience. Although the "Robotech" version of Macross was relatively un-altered it didn't have civilians turned into time bombs or patricide. Hayao Miyazaki's take on creators freedom in anime: (excerpt from Starting Point 1979-1996) Second Anniversary Lecture delivered at Osaka Animepolispero. Afternoon portion, July 27, 1982. Toei Kaikan, Sonezaki-Shinchi, Osaka Those of us in the animation industry therefore find more and more aspects of our jobs nearly impossible to deal with. For example, we can't make any changes to the characters in the series Urusei Yatsura. That is especially true right now because the original manga series is at the peak of its popularity. On the other hand, for shows about robots, since the stories will never be serialized in manga magazines, we can do just about anything we want, as long as we use robot designs that the toy manufacturers can incorporate into products. It gives us the room to do a lot of improvisation in the actual production. And as long as the show helps sell lots of toys, the sponsors will be happy. And here's what Tekkonkinkreet's director Michael Arias thinks: http://www.pelleas.net/aniTOP/index.php?title=title_44&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 Do you think you could have gotten Tekkon made into a feature-length animated feature anywhere else? No. Believe me, I thought about it. Certainly from a technical standpoint, Japan is the only place to make a movie like this. But I think Japanese audiences are particularly receptive to this kind of film. People here, even "average" movie audiences, are really very sophisticated in their appreciation of animated cinema. At one point I shopped the project around Hollywood and, though everyone liked the pilot, I got some very strange suggestions: change White to a girl, make the characters older and make the story a romance, etc. |
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DomFortress
Posts: 751 Location: Richmond BC, Canada |
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However, that's not to say that I share your point of view. For the way I see it, as an animation director, Michael Arias reacted negatively towards people only making suggestions with his idea. Compared to animated TV series, a feature-length animated theatrical film is a finish production on it's own, with a different pacing when it comes to story telling. Not to mention is the fact that you had to pay for a ticket in order for you to watch a film in a theater, so in a sense there's more control with the content distribution on an individual audience base, as oppose to transmitting it via TV network. And what's not to say that Michael Arias was originally aiming at a niche audience group with his creation, like the ones you can only find in Japan. Who are so receptive to this kind of film because they would simply watch anything anime. After all, he did mentioned that "People here, even "average" movie audiences, are really very sophisticated in their appreciation of animated cinema." Therefore on a personal level, Michael Arias found criticisms from the sophisticated North American movie audiences to be negative, even when they're in the form of "suggestions". And look at just what the Japanese toy sponsors want exactly with an animated TV production: giant robots, and lots of it. In a way that's asking a lot from the Japanese animation creators that they can only tell stories with a lot of giant robots on the scene. Now can an animation director pan a romantic scene, when there has to be giant robots doing whatever giant robots do best all over the place? Not that it hasn't been done with Japanese anime, but seriously, how do you think it would work? The moment that the Japanese toy sponsors want giant robots in anime, there can only be one direction the anime production won't be going with the story due to the scene: adult-level sophistication. And about G1 Transformers, the whole reason behind the creation of the animated TV series was so that Hasbro can promote some Japanese toy lines that they just acquired the North American distribution licenses for, on the North American children TV network time slots. When I imagined about Mr. Tomino teaming up with an US sponsor, I wasn't thinking about using TV networks nor theatrical content distribution. I mean why should I when internet distribution can offer a low-tech solution to a wide range of audiences. And if the audiences like what they saw and want to see more or in better quality, then offer them direct-to-home releases. |
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kaito2198
Posts: 20 |
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Well, I read everyone's opinion, and surely it is so different between Japan and America. But still, if any American sponsor wants to sponsor Mr Tomino, I hope he will be very glad to it because what Mr Tomino faced this few years is just no sponsor to let him make any work.
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