Long interview with Shishin Tsuneki, mechanical designer! (The 13th "Inside Man" of Anime and Games)

This series brings you the real voices of creators. In this 13th installment, we introduce Shigenobu Tsuneki, a mechanical designer. Mr. Tsuneki has worked on "Micro Man", "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex", "Bomberman Jetters", "Get Ride! Amdriver", "Mobile Suit Gundam UC", "Guilty Crown", "Super Speed Transformation Gyrozetter", "PSYCHO-PASS Psycho-Pass," "Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S," "Kabaneri of the Iron Castle," and "Brave Witches. In this interview, he talks about his influences, his career, his passion for his work, the current design situation, the qualities and abilities required of mechanical designers, and his future goals.

My favorite work is "VOTOMS.

Please allow me to greet you today. Before we talk about you, Mr. Tsuneki, is this the "LEGO" toy block?

Shishin Tsuneki (Tsuneki) I play with LEGO as a hobby. Since it is no use having only pictures of me, I have brought some of the things I have made.

I was amazed at the detail you have put into your creations. Thank you very much for showing us your valuable works. Now, could you start by telling us about some of your influences?

Tsuneki: Ever since I was a child, I grew up watching science fiction dramas like "Thunderbirds," "Mystery Disc UFO," and "Space 1999. On my birthday, I would ask my friends to buy me a present, saying, "You get Thunderbird No. 1, and I'll get Thunderbird No. 2. The story of "Space 1999" was goofy, but the mecha were just cool.

If you ask me what my favorite anime is, I would say "Armored Trooper Votoms" (1983-84). I like Kunio Okawara's work more than "Mobile Suit Gundam" (1979-80). It was shocking to me that there were so many of the same robots, even though they were ridden by the main character, and also that the main character rode them down.

Director Ryosuke Takahashi's mecha direction was wonderful. At the time, he was working on "Fang of the Sun Dougram" (1981-83), "Votoms" and "Aoki Ryusei SPT Reisner" (1985-86) in succession, and he changed the mecha action in all of them. Mr. Okawara's designs were simple but had a block structure that was easy for animators to draw, so the pictures were able to follow the movements. Therefore, it looked cooler in the animation than in the setting alone.

Who do you look up to?　Do you have a mentor?

Tsuneki: To be honest, I don't have a mentor as a designer. When I design, the director gives me instructions on how he wants me to do it, but basically I am on my own. The designers I know all come from different backgrounds, and I think they are designers because they have the idea that "I can draw better than that.

One person I have seen for a long time and think is great is Atsushi Takeuchi. The shape of the spaceship in "Ship of the Sun: Sol Bianca" (1999) was shocking, and "Tenchi Muyo! (1999), he drew a spaceship that I had never seen before. In the movie "GHOST IN THE SHELL" (1995), there were many cool mecha one after another, and at the time I was making movies of the cars you drew at Studio Takuranke.

Military science fiction is your specialty

What kind of designs are you good at?

Tsuneki: "Near-future military stuff. For "Guilty Crown" (2011-12), I designed the ground attack satellite Lucasite and Haruka's motorcycle.

For "Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S" (2013) and "Sword Art Online II" (2014), I thought I could draw sci-fi guns, but I was told to draw actual guns (laughs). I drew my sisters' guns and Sinon's Heckert II.

When you hear the term "mecha designer," you might think of me as a robot designer, but it is not a large amount of work. I drew drones for "PSYCHO-PASS" (2012-13, 2014), but the only robot that people ride and fight on is "Super Speed Transformer Gyrozetter" (2012-13).

I started my career as a video man for "Urusei Yatsura.

What was the first studio you joined? Which studio did you join first?

Tsuneki: It was Studio Yumetami, which used to exist. The president is Hideo Watanabe and the vice president is Hirohide Shikishima, both of whom came from Toei.

When I was a student at Yoyogi Animation Gakuin, my teacher told me, "A friend of mine is going to start a new company, and I would like to visit just for a tour. (Laughs.) One of my seniors was Ken Ueno, and my classmates included Yutaka Minowa, Hiroki Kanno, and Shigeru Fujita.

Incidentally, the first time my name appeared on the staff roll as a video man was for "Urusei Yatsura" (1981-86). Actually, I was still a student at Daiani at that time, and I drew the animation at the studio where I went for training. I did not learn such techniques as "tap splitting" (a technique to draw a good middle split by placing the tap hole of the animation paper in the middle of the trajectory created by the tap hole of the original drawing and the original picture) at school, but I learned it at the training site.

Did you always want to be an animator?

Tsuneki: I watched "Space Battleship Yamato" (1974-85) and "Gundam" in junior high school, and "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross" (1982-83), "Votoms" and "Armored Genesis: Mospeida" (1983-84) in high school, so I had a vague yearning to be in the animation industry. Later, when I failed the university entrance exam and was about to enter my second year as a ronin, I asked my parents to let me go to Daiani.

─ Did you receive guidance from Mr. Ueno at Yumetami?

Tsuneki: The president's wife taught me how to make movies. Mr. Ueno was an original picture man, so he taught me how to do original pictures. It seems that some terrible companies make you do two originals out of the blue, but Yumetami and Takuranke, the company I joined after Yumetami, taught me the basics.

When did you move to Takuranke?

Tsuneki: Two or three years after I joined Yumetami, I was approached by Yasuhiko Kondo, the president of Takuranke.

Was your life difficult at that time?

Tsuneki: I was able to get by because I lived at home, but it was really tough. At that time, it was common for videos to cost around 150 yen each, so some of us had to sleep in the studio because we could not rent a room. I think that people who came from the countryside had more guts.