Just before the release of his first book of drawings!　Animation creator Tomoken Kogawa teaches the fun of "discovery

In the early 1980s, Tomoken Kogawa continued to design sometimes glamorous, sometimes comical characters for director Yoshiyuki Tomino's hit "Mobile Suit Gundam" films such as "The Legendary God Ideon," "Battle Mecha Zabungle," and "Saint Dunbine. Tomoken Kogawa has continued to design sometimes glamorous and sometimes comical characters for director Yoshiyuki Tomino's works. Before he became known for his originality in Sunrise productions, he was an accomplished animator who, while still in his twenties, served as chief animation director for the theatrical blockbuster "Farewell Space Battleship Yamato."
This month, on June 30, 2017, "Tomoken Kogawa Sunrise Works Art Collection" (Ichijinsha), a collection of Kogawa's Sunrise works, will be released. On the occasion of the release of his first art book, we asked him to talk freely about everything from his unique composition of aori to mechanical design.

Encounter with Otomi-san (Director Yoshiyuki Tomino)

───Recent work for Mr. Kogawa includes the original drawings for "Space Battleship Yamato 2202: Warriors of Love" (2017), right?

Kogawa: I am just helping out. Just Zhoder the Great and his surroundings. The fans are happy with the work, and I will continue to work on the Emperor Zhoder in the future.

──You also worked as animation director and storyboard artist for "Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei" (2007) and "Sekai Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei" (2008). How did this come about?

Kogawa: I don't really remember. I had a relationship with Shaft for a long time, but I think they were short on staff at ....... I heard that the original manga artist (Koji Kubeta) was a fan of mine. He asked me to do the end card for the show, and I drew Zetsubou-sensei and Marvel Frozen (from "Saint Dunbine"). Then, the original picture was not returned. He said, "The original artist wanted it, so I gave it to him. I heard that he was very pleased with it, so I thought it couldn't be helped (laughs).


───Your career in the animation industry began at Tokyo Movie, didn't it?

Kogawa Yes, my first involvement was with "Star of the Giants" (1968).

───After Tokyo Movie, you went on to Tatsunoko Productions, didn't you?

Kogawa: I did not become an employee of Tatsunoko, but rather an outsourcer. My first job was "Animate Decision" (1971), and I worked on several original pictures until "Yatterman" (1977). I met Otomi-san (director Yoshiyuki Tomino) when I was working on "Shattered Fist Polymer" (1974). The episode he was directing happened to be the one I was working on. After that, he called me to ask if I would be interested in doing the animation for another film. Otomi-san would call me and ask me if I would do the animation for another film. The meeting always lasted about five minutes. After that, we spent about three hours in a coffee shop chatting about anime. We would talk about how we wanted to make a gag, or how we wanted to make a live-action film, but not an anime film. ......I enjoyed that time very much.

─ You also participated in director Tomino's "Invincible Steel Man Daiturn 3" (1978), didn't you?

Kogawa: At first, I was asked to do the character design. When I went to the studio a week later, the characters for the allies had already been created, so I was asked only to design the enemy characters. I went to the studio a week later, and they had already created the characters for the allies, so they asked me to create only the enemy characters.　So if I had designed the allied characters, the worldview of "Daiturn" would have been greatly changed to be more realistic, and the character design of "Ideon" would have been even more different because I didn't want to do the same thing.

─ ─ Because you "didn't want to do the same thing," the design of "Battle Mecha Zabungle" (1982) and "Saint Dunbine" (1983) kept changing, didn't they?

Kogawa: "Ideon" was about a war between universes. In the anime, many of the military uniforms are modeled after the German army. There is a story that during World War II, Hitler gathered the best designers from all over the country and had them design military uniforms. Therefore, I tried to make the military uniforms of the Buff Klan into kimonos and furisode (long-sleeved kimono). It's a very hard military uniform to move in (laughs). Anyway, I felt that I had to come up with something different to stimulate the people around me.


─ ─ The highlights on your eyes like the screws in "Zabungle" are one of the "unusual things" you did, weren't they?

Kogawa That highlight was an inspiration. Eye highlights can be square or triangular, right?　Every time I do an interview, I am asked, "Why the screw-like highlights? I can't explain it because it was an inspiration.