Writer/Producer interviews, 1997
Both of these interviews were recorded during a Votoms event held at Sunrise Studio on November 14, 1997
Writer Soji Yoshikawa
It’s not Evangelion, but I think it was ahead of its time
Interviewer: Please tell us what made you decide to do Votoms.
Yoshikawa: I worked on Mr. Tomino’s Gundam and then Dougram, so I guess that’s how I was approached for Votoms. I have had a long history with Sunrise, starting with Zerotester (1973). I had a relationship with the former Sunrise president, who passed away, and we were working on a personal project, but it wasn’t successful. It’s not that I had a particularly dramatic encounter with Director Takahashi, but we’d been working together since Zerotester.
In fact, I was asked by my senior, writer Toji Gobu, to work on Zerotester. I’ve been in this world since the days of Astro Boy, so I’m not a newcomer to anime. Mr. Gobu was my mentor as a writer, and I knew that both he and Director Takahashi would be working on Votoms, so I felt completely at ease.
Since Votoms was written by three people, each of our individual colors came out quite a lot. I feel like my part had the strongest science-fiction color. Director Takahashi said, “I wonder if you can make it a little more science-fiction. Write something like that.” Mr. Gobu was in charge of the base, and Jinzo Toriumi was in charge of the action. Director Takahashi probably allocated it like that. He’s very good at making use of people.
Come to think of it, Votoms was a great opportunity for me to have a full-fledged relationship with Director Takahashi. Before that, we had worked together on Cyborg 009 (1979) and other projects, but I didn’t know him deeply because he was involved like an assistant. I had known him since my days at Mushi Pro [the famed studio of Osamu Tezuka], but since he was in the production field, I thought he was a thick-skinned guy and I didn’t like him. Like, “who is this guy?” In fact, he is a sensitive person.
Interviewer: What was the first challenge you faced on Votoms?
Yoshikawa: Director Takahashi always has a big concept in mind, but he’s always unsure what form to take. At that time, he was at a loss. I’m a good brainstormer, so I said a lot of things and watched his reactions.
I don’t think the name “Chirico” had been decided at that time. I remember Director Takahashi saying, “I’m imagining a protagonist who went crazy during the Vietnam War or something, and needs to be rehabilitated inside.”
I think the idea of getting on a robot and fighting is not an extension of one’s own strength, but rather a way of thinking about how to fight. He felt like the character was autistic and could express himself by getting into a robot and fighting. It’s not Evangelion, but I think it was ahead of its time.
Interviewer: Was it difficult to write a script for an autistic character?
Yoshikawa: No, it was the opposite. As was the case with hard-boiled American movies at one point, the main character was a so-so actor, but the script was written in a very simple way, so the people around him are thinking, “He must be like this, he must be like that.” Whether we like it or not, he emerges as a hero. For example, Clint Eastwood and Ken Takakura, who both play quiet characters, look like heroes.
In fact, it’s more difficult to play a character who speaks. A taciturn character is a blessing in disguise; if you just act that way, it makes sense. It’s more effective to just be silent. In other words, to act without acting. Chirico is one of those characters. As long as he doesn’t say anything strange, that’s all that matters.
However, he was very talkative in the narration, so that was a bit strange. (Laughs) As a side note, I was a little uncomfortable with the next-episode teasers Director Takahashi wrote, but it was a brilliant part of the series.
I was able to relax and write because the target audience was older
Interviewer: What were some of the story suggestions or difficulties you had to face?
Yoshikawa: Director Takahashi was making the story, so I don’t think I had much difficulty because the style had been decided from the beginning. Basically, we decided to set the first arc here, and the second arc there. However, I was worried about how to present the first episode. It starts with the character running away.
Interviewer: On the other hand, what did you enjoy about it?
Yoshikawa: Fyana is naked in the capsule, and Chirico sees her there, which was my idea. I felt like we should start from that. Everyone was very supportive of it.
I was also happy that Votoms was aimed at adults. Robot anime had a very young target audience, so many of the stories were about a child of about 10 years old riding on a robot and getting into trouble. It was a world where children with pets went wild. I don’t mean to be crude, but I didn’t like it because I had a guilty conscience.
This kind of violence was unacceptable in America. That’s why I’ve been doing a lot of robot things. I didn’t like the idea of a small child riding on a robot and going berserk. But with Votoms, I didn’t have to worry about that at all. I was able to relax and write because the target audience was older. I could do this boldly. I could do very Western-like things without any problems.
If the target was young, it would have been quite special, and it might have been popular in Japan, but what about overseas? Votoms became less of a parody because I wrote it with the Hollywood route in mind.
I had a double image with Votoms and Lupin
Interviewer: Other than Chirico, which character did you enjoy writing?
Yoshikawa: I don’t think I did it well, but I like Rochina. I don’t really understand Rochina myself. I wonder if everyone else understood him. I thought Votoms was a love story between Chirico and Fyana, although very restrained.
Previously, I wrote and directed the first Lupin III movie (The Mystery of Mamo, 1978), and Votoms was a step forward from that. I apologize to the Votoms fans, but I had already presented a hero who is very dangerous because he doesn’t believe in anything. Lupin is a realist who confronts the enemy, Mamo, with realism. The enemy tries to convince him of the existence of something like a god, but Lupin is a realist and doesn’t believe in anything like that. In short, he’s dangerous because he believes in nothing.
In a way, Mamo and Lupin are the same character. The only difference is that one is in power while the other is not. In that sense, Lupin and Chirico are very similar. At the time, we were in the Cold War era between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, so I made it a story about how the power of the real superpowers is much scarier. It’s sort of half-joking, but I was really excited about the fact that I could do it in a serious way.
So, I never told anyone this, but I had a double image of Votoms and Lupin. Of course, Chirico doesn’t make jokes. Chirico is rather a poor and sad character. Lupin can go with the flow, but Chirico is a sick person at the beginning. The OVA shows this.
Each TV episode is about 20 minutes long, and has to have a climax. It’s difficult to put together a long story when it’s done in a choppy way. OVAs have a longer running time in that respect, so I was able to put them together well.
I wrote Shining Heresy with no idea of what I wanted to do
Interviewer: What were the challenges of the OVA version?
Yoshikawa: Director Takahashi created the concept. He asked something like, “Can we depict this time period?” I considered a few other ideas, but I decided what he said would be the best, and the decision was made rather easily. In general, there’s no turbulence when you work with Director Takahashi.
Interviewer: What were some of the difficulties you encountered on The Shining Heresy?
Yoshikawa: I feel that we both lacked power. It wasn’t quite finished, but we were so busy with the schedule that the deadline came before we were satisfied with it. I’m not sure if it was a failure of the whole project or my failure for bringing a religious story to it, but it’s a little painful to look back on it now. I don’t know about Director Takahashi, but I wrote it with no idea of what I wanted to do. I wasn’t sure at all.
The auxiliary brain was an idea that I started. I intended to make more use of it, but in the end I felt like I was cheating in some way. I’m afraid this is kind of a downer…
Interviewer: You made Shining Heresy as a kind of prologue to a new chapter. What developments do you have in mind for the future?
Yoshikawa: I’m not thinking about the future. I remember saying something like Shining Heresy was the end of my work. It’s hard to make more from that. After that, Chirico, who has been wandering around forever, could go on a rampage somewhere. We could develop something like that, but the world is no longer the same as it was before. The generation that sees it is also changing, so maybe we don’t have to be too particular about it.
[Translator’s note: Yoshikawa went on to write the Pailsen Files series, but was not involved in either of the sequels to Shining Heresy.]
The narrative is so strong and solid that it could be replaced with a period drama
Interviewer: What do you think was the appeal of Votoms?
Yoshikawa: When I saw it when it first aired, I thought the direction was very rough and tacky. These days, they make visuals look cool with neat compositions. Votoms is rather rough in that respect. Even when it comes to the camera angles, there are a lot of things you don’t really need to do. But the direction is unpretentious, and I really like that. In other words, it has a muddy, live-action feel to it.
If I were directing, I would probably make it more sci-fi and make it look cooler, so I don’t think I would have gotten that flavor. Votoms seems like science fiction, but when you actually see it, it doesn’t look that way. It’s not very realistic SF in terms of expression. It’s not very realistic in terms of war or weaponry. I wanted to do something with a little more science-fiction in the structure of the story.
Director Takahashi was not a big fan of SF, so basically, this story is not SF. The supreme survivors that appear with a probability of 1 in 25 billion were my own ideas. I used SF as a tool, but it wasn’t essential. I think the narrative is so strong and solid that it could be replaced with a period drama.
Interviewer: Did you have any particular difficulties in this area?
Yoshikawa: I tried not to be too superficially clever or cool. I tried to make it as translation-like as possible. In that sense, the scene I’m most attached to is in The Last Red Shoulder. Ypsilon is born and Fyana is taking care of him in the forest. When I wrote that scene, I didn’t expect it to be as interesting as it is, so I like it. We didn’t show a lot of emotion in the TV series, but that story has a lot of emotion, so it left an impression on me.
Interviewer: What other difficulties did you face?
Yoshikawa: I don’t remember any difficulties in working with Director Takahashi. This is probably because he really thinks things through. If you place an order without thinking it through, there are many cases where you have to keep rewriting to get rid of a problem, but this was never the case with Votoms. After a meeting, we almost always had a nearly finished product the next time.
Interviewer: Finally, please give a message to the fans.
Yoshikawa: I’d like to see you once at a theater. I’ve met many fans in unexpected places, but some are a little different from the so-called anime fans. I’ve had some surprising experiences. For example, there was a university professor who said, “I’m a fan of Votoms.” I wonder if it means that anime has spread widely among the general public, or if people who don’t watch anime watched this one more than expected. The character of the work must be quite different.
I think this is a story that would be very cohesive if it went on for a longer time. However, I’m not looking for a job. If that was decided, I’d be in big trouble. (Laughs)
Interviewer: Thank you very much for your time today.
See a list of Soji Yoshikawa’s credits at Anime News Network here
Producer Toru Hasegawa
I thought it would be better to go that way, and I ended up with Votoms
Interviewer: The proposal for Votoms that you brought with you today is a valuable thing.
Hasegawa: Of course, it’s stored in-house, but I happen to have part of it because I made the proposal myself. So I went looking for it the other day and found it. I thought it might be useful for something, so I brought it with me.
Actually, I wrote it in a state of half-deception with the idea of turning it into a TV series. So I don’t remember how I planned to make it. For example, I wrote, “This is stress relief for those who go to cram schools in the exam wars.” But that was a big lie. Nowadays, it’s normal for people to go to cram school, so nobody worries about it. In that sense, the proposal is a lie. (Laughs)
Interviewer: First of all, how did you come up with the idea of Votoms?
Hasegawa: I’ve been a producer since the Ideon TV series. I was asked to do Dougram after that. However, I was working on the film version of Ideon at the time, so if I were to do Dougram, I’d have to work on two projects at once. I was quite brazen and said to the company, “Well, then double my fee.” They said, “Hasegawa, that’s not going to happen. You can devote yourself to the movie, and when it’s over you’ll do the show that comes after Dougram.” That’s how it came to be.
I was working on Cyborg 009 with Mr. Takahashi directing it, so the company must have thought that if Hasegawa and Takahashi were working together, they would be able to handle a series. The producer of 009 was Mr. Iwasaki, but in reality he was more of an AP (assistant producer). This was the first time I worked with Mr. Takahashi, and thanks to that, I understood the good and the bad of Ryosuke Takahashi.
Naturally, the next series after Dougram would have a toy line, so I decided to do a dual-model type work. [Translator’s note: this term refers to a product that can be assembled like a model kit with the play value of a toy.] The inspiration for Votoms came from two mockups that [Mecha Designer] Kunio Okawara brought to me.
One was in line with the original plan, but the other was unrelated. He had brought it along by chance. When we saw the mockup of the one that was not related to the project, everyone said, “This one is better.” The mockup had an open cockpit with a human sitting in it. It had an atmosphere like the mecha in Xabungle, but with exposed humans. It was like a jeep with an American military star on it. So I decided to go for it and ended up with Votoms.
Interviewer: What was the plan before Mr. Okawara’s mockup came up?
Hasegawa: I think it appeared in the Roman Album, but I don’t remember for sure. I think there might have been a hint of doing something more or less militaristic like Dougram, but I can’t remember exactly what the story world was. Takahashi-san had been working on this alongside Dougram while I was working on another project, but I was watching from the side, so I could see the military-like aspects of the story, and that it was for adults instead of children.
Interviewer: Was Votoms largely inspired by the model that Mr. Okawara brought to you?
Hasegawa: If anything, you’d expect there to be weapons for land-based combat, so it became an image of a bipedal robot, which is an extension of current weapons. That’s where everyone was inspired. In the story, a small mecha like this could integrate humans and mechas. The image of the movie Blade Runner also came into the picture. The story was brought to a head by Blade Runner and this mockup.
In essence, it was like the Willy’s Jeeps used by the American military
Interviewer: Votoms is design-oriented, but it excludes children. Did you have any conflicts with your sponsors in this regard?
Hasegawa: There was a person named Mr. Numamoto at Takara at that time. There was almost no disagreement in our discussions with him. The momentum in our thinking was that the robot would gradually become smaller and smaller, and eventually it could become closer to life-size.
Therefore, the mecha that appears in the story is not a giant robot, but rather a cockpit that becomes a robot. I think we came to the conclusion that a 4-meter robot could achieve this goal.
Interviewer: The main character mecha breaks down easily, and the mass-produced machine was also novel.
Hasegawa: Ryosuke was the one who suggested the idea of disposability. In essence, it was like the Willy’s Jeeps used by the American military. The person who rides in the vehicle is the main driver, and the mecha is the mass-produced model.
Of course, as later seen in Gundam and others, there was also talk of wanting the flow of a dedicated machine. I think Ryosuke and others suggested that we make it distinctive in the form of a Red Shoulder, rather than a single machine. It wouldn’t be the “Char Votoms,” but it would be something like that. I thought it would be possible to show the special characteristics of the unit, for example, by marking it.
Also, Scopedog is a name that I decided on. I liked the movie The Dogs of War (1980) starring Christopher Walken, so I was determined to include the word “dog” to indicate a mercenary. Votoms was not the official name either. According to Ryosuke, Votoms [Bottoms] refers to soldiers who crawl on the ground and fight [the grunts at the bottom].
Interviewer: What was the challenge for you when you were working with the sponsor?
Hasegawa: As you may know, Mr. Numamoto himself was at Mushi Pro [the famed studio founded by Osamu Tezuka] and discovered Yoshikazu Yasuhiko and others. So, even though he was working for Takara, he seemed to understand us to some extent. However, he did warn us about various aspects of the toy industry that we weren’t aware of.
The biggest problem was the lack of a face. At that time, we could not imagine having an otaku demographic as we do now. The base target audience was children, and we were told that a robot without a face wouldn’t sell. Ryosuke changed it to a turret lens, and Takara finally admitted that they could identify it as a face. In reality, I managed to get through it despite the warnings I received.
Other offers included giving it a sense of mass when it was placed on the floor, and to make it look more or less centered on the head. We didn’t want it to look under-equipped. For example, we were talking about putting a space vernier on it to give it as much weight as possible. We made the vernier X-shaped to try and give it a sense of weight.
We were also asked to prepare something like the so-called seven weapons of Benkei to give it play value. We wanted to have a dual model that could do a landing pose, open and close the cockpit, and so on. I think we were able to create a reality that allowed the children who bought it to imagine themselves riding it.
If the robot had been designed to be as large as Dougram or Gundam, this particular form might not have been allowed. And with a giant robot, the cockpit would inevitably be too small to be reproducible. In Votoms, the cockpit has been reproduced in such a way that it feels very integrated.
We proposed things naturally and considered each other’s proposals, so it was a collaborative process
Interviewer: What did you enjoy most about working on Votoms?
Hasegawa: Doing some so-called “militaristic” things that were not at the level of children. We were able to do things in the vein of Blade Runner and Apocalypse Now that were popular at the time. It was fun to be able to move forward in an interesting way on a sort of adult level.
My favorite part was the Kummen section. Uoodo is like Blade Runner in its own way, but I like the way the Kummen section is like the Vietnam War with ATs, including the helicopter units slinging ATs, the combat scenes with dropping ATs, the visual of ATs coming out from between banana leaves, and the whole squad assembling. I also loved the cool music at that time.
After that, I really like the scene in the space section where Chirico and Fyana are trapped in the spaceship and it’s just the two of them.
And my favorite line is from the conference scene in the Roots of Ambition OVA where Pailsen talks about the Red Shoulder unit: “For Melkia, Red Shoulder is one of our most important secrets. With all due respect, sir, you should only think about how to put me to work for Melkia. You don’t need to know the details.” In short, this is a powerful unit and there’s no need for you to go through the details, so I want you to leave it to me. I think this is cool. That line was conceived by Soji Yoshikawa, and I think it shows his personality. Perhaps this is how Mr. Yoshikawa himself works.
Interviewer: Did you have any suggestions for the story?
Hasegawa: I suggested the training scene of Red Shoulder in Roots of Ambition. There was a scene in Top Gun, which was popular at the time, where the instructor and trainees were chasing each other in a mock battle to see who would cross the pre-determined border line. This scene was brought directly into the AT battle.
We also referenced Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner. We had a common understanding of what was going on rather than our individual assumptions. In that sense, rather than making unilateral proposals, we proposed things naturally and considered each other’s proposals, so it was a collaborative process.
Interviewer: Which is your favorite character?
Hasegawa: Of course, the main mecha itself, the AT. I wanted to put this kind of mecha into an anime. However, the characterization I like the most is in the Kummen version. I like the interaction with Kan Yu, the captain of the mercenary army. Also, the twins, Aron and Guran, are interesting characters. When Boro is working with those two brothers, it’s exactly what I wanted it to be. I talked about this with Ryosuke and we came to the same point without any disagreement.
But the part where Chirico meets Fyana was something that I couldn’t quite come up with. So I wondered how Ryosuke could have such a romantic side. At the same time, I was worried about whether we could really carry the story from their first meeting all the way to the end.
During the original development, Ryosuke wanted to move from one section to the next. He was obsessed with it at the beginning, and I think it was a success to shift the story stage every 13 episodes so it wouldn’t get boring. If it had been done in one place, like Uoodo and only Uoodo, I don’t think it would have been possible to tell such a great story.
The main thing was that it was a good environment
Interviewer: How do you view the position of Votoms when you look back?
Hasegawa: Looking back on it now, I wonder how I was able to create a work that was so satisfying for a creator. Maybe it was the environment at Sunrise.
Tatsunoko was working on Urashiman in the background. When I asked the director about it, he said something like, “With Tatsunoko, even if you wanted to do Blade Runner, you could only do it like this.” And I said, “But Sunrise is great, we can make Blade Runner like that.”
Even at that time, I think it was well-established with the agency and the network. We couldn’t even tell what kind of power they had to make it work. It didn’t get great ratings, and it didn’t sell many toys. (Laughs) According to the records of the time, Gundam sold a lot of goods but there was nobody in second, third, or even fourth place. Votoms should have slid somewhere in there under the bar because we had the right kind of product, the dual model and things like that.
There was also a general manager at the agency, Hakuhodo, named Mr. Shirakawa, who used to work as a director for Toei Doga and other companies. I was not at all intimidated by them. Ryosuke and I share a common memory that whenever we had a problem, we could bring it to Hakuhodo and Mr. Shirakawa would help us solve it.
I didn’t know Mr. Shirakawa that well, but as a former Toei employee, he had a good understanding of anime. For example, when we got stuck in the schedule, I said, “We’re in a tough spot, so I’d like to make a re-edited episode [clip show] so that everyone can understand it.” I made this proposal twice, and he was able to get his superiors to approve it. I was allowed to do some pretty brazen things.
There was no producer on the network side, so I think a work like this was possible because we were able to work with Hakuhodo just like we worked with Sunrise. Anyway, the main thing was that it was a good environment.
Since it’s real mecha, it can be used in areas other than animation; I think a live-action Votoms would be quite interesting
Interviewer: What is the greatest satisfaction of working on Votoms?
Hasegawa: Being allowed to make OVAs. I happened to get an offer from the head office of Toshiba Corporation. Toshiba Video Soft really wanted to make a Votoms OVA. At that time, I was happy to know that there were quite a few people who were interested in it. I guess that’s when the maniac [otaku] part of me started to emerge.
Interviewer: Was there any difference in production stance between the TV version and the OVA version?
Hasegawa: Since the history of Votoms had already been established, we had to create the OVAs in such a way that the overall image would be preserved. It’s a fragment of history, or rather, something interspersed with the story. Or something that happened in other places at the same time. We had to do this within the constraints of how to relate it to the TV series.
So we decided that we had to delve deeper into Red Shoulder, which had only been depicted in fragments. The first one was The Last Red Shoulder. There were various working titles, such as Early Red Shoulder and so on. Anyway, I wanted to start with something related to Red Shoulder. What is Red Shoulder? The subtitle Red Shoulder Document was also something I insisted on. Among them, I like how they are depicted in Roots of Ambition.
Interviewer: Was it difficult to make the OVAs?
Hasegawa: The staff who happened to still be around had not yet extinguished the fire of Votoms. They all responded to the call of Votoms, so it wasn’t too difficult because everyone was comfortable with the idea.
Of course, I can’t speak about the OVAs that were made after that, because I wasn’t involved in them. But it was easy because the eyes around us, including those at the top of the company, were still focused on Votoms.
Interviewer: What kind of development do you want to do in the future?
Hasegawa: I’d like to rework the mecha scenes in the OVAs using CG processing, to show it from a new perspective. If customers would buy something with a little added value, I might be interested in making it. But if I’m told that I shouldn’t do such a thing, that would be the end of the story.
And Ryosuke also said at one point that Votoms is a pretty realistic mecha, so it can be used in areas other than animation. It was done before CG became active, but there was a discussion that if we could make a live-action movie using only the hands and feet of an AT, we could at least make a live-action movie.
Now that we live in a time when CG is so active, I believe that such a complex mecha can be rendered in CG processing, so I think a live-action Votoms would be quite interesting. If I were to make it, it would definitely involve Red Shoulder.
I know Yoshiyuki Tomino and others might get angry with me for saying this, but I think Votoms is more like Starship Troopers than the OVA for Starship Troopers. And I feel like Gundam is a little more pretentious. If you imagine a live-action Votoms coming out with elements like Starship Troopers at a time when you hadn’t heard of the Starship Troopers movie, it would hold up. I think it would be well-received by the audience.
Interviewer: Thank you very much for your time today.
[Translator’s note: the live-action Starship Troopers movie was released one week before this interview was conducted, so Hasegawa was almost certainly referring to it in his closing comment.]
See a list of Toru Hasegawa’s credits at Anime News Network here
Captivating material, thanks.