Sunrise Festival 2021] A dream plan to reconstruct the Frit and Kio Arc!　Mobile Suit Gundam AGE MEMORY OF EDEN" Director Shinya Watada Talk Show Report

A screening event of the anime "Mobile Suit Gundam AGE MEMORY OF EDEN" was held at Shinjuku Piccadilly in Tokyo on October 17, 2021, and director Shinya Watada participated in a talk show after the screening.

This event was held as part of the "Sunrise Festival 2021 REGENERATION," a screening event being held from October 1 to 31, 2021.

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE" is a TV animation series that aired from 2011 to 2012, featuring three main characters, Flit, Asem, and Kio, and an epic story that spans three generations and 100 years. Mobile Suit Gundam AGE MEMORY OF EDEN" is an OVA work that focuses on the relationship between Asem and Zehart, the second generation of "Mobile Suit Gundam AGE," and reconstructs it with new cuts added.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the broadcast of the "Mobile Suit Gundam AGE" TV anime, and when asked about his involvement in the TV anime and the OVA, Director Watada replied, "I participated in the TV series by directing each episode. It was a rotation, so I would participate once per school year. I directed one episode each for Flit, Asem, Kio, and the three generations. At the time, special editions of "Mobile Suit Gundam SEED" and "Mobile Suit Gundam 00" were often produced after the broadcast. For "AGE," I was asked if I could pick up the story of Zehart and Asem and put them together in a single work as an alternative to that. I had an idea that it would be more interesting if I did this, so I took on the project rather quickly," he recalled.

Regarding the choice of Zehart and Asem as the subject matter, he said, "It was an order to focus on the Asem section. This was not directly told to me, but I thought that they expected me to complement the last part of Zehart's story".

Before this event, questions to Director Watada were solicited on Twitter with the tag "#sunfes_age," and after this, a series of deep questions were asked in the "Questions from Fans" section.

When asked about his favorite scene in "Mobile Suit Gundam AGE MEMORY OF EDEN," Director Watada replied, "It would have to be the last scene. It is the parting scene between Zehart and Asem. When I first talked with Mr. Kimura, the scriptwriter, about how to proceed, the first thing I suggested was an idea for the last scene. I gave Mr. Kimura the preliminary version of the script and asked him to make adjustments. I started with the last scene as a starting point, and as I thought about how to get there, I realized that the flow and structure of the story needed to properly depict school life," he said, referring to the flow of the overall structure of the film. He continued, "There were various interesting and fun scenes in the first part of the school life: the MS club scene, the first scene to stop the machine that went out of control, the scene where the three of us go into space, and the scene where the pictures burn up at the graduation ceremony. We worked backwards from the last scene to create the necessary scenes.

When asked, "What do you think would have happened if Fram had enrolled with Zehart and joined the MS Club?" I was thinking about what the story would be like if the MS Club was the main character, and I was imagining what would happen if Zehart joined the MS Club and his brother Desir came there. It would be a story about a club that competes for the MS Club championship, and Asem is in a normal school but has talent, and his father, Fritz, is the coach of a strong school. Zeheart, who was the ace of that strong school, transferred to Aseem's school and ...... and so on. Fritz actually adores Zehart, but I guess he's in the manager's slot, asking why he's gone. It's the kind of setting that could be used to create a "build series" (laughs)," said one of the fantasy plans that had been brewing.

In the TV anime version, Daz Roden seemed to be a loyal professional soldier, but in "MEMORY OF EDEN," I felt that he was portrayed as an understanding adult and big brother, such as when he orders his son to avoid attacking civilians and smilingly looks at Zehart as he goes about his school life. I felt that he was portrayed as an understanding adult and a big brother." He added, "The way in which he portrays the succession of Iselkind's will is different between the TV series and "MEMORY OF EDEN. In thinking about why Zehart became the way he did, I wondered if there was a lack of paternalism. I think that is the big difference between Zehart and Asem. The people who filled the paternal aspect of his character died early on, and I thought that was the difference between the fate of Zehart and Aseem, so I placed Daz as a father figure, someone who takes care of him. I remember the artist suggested that I put an apron on Daz here, and I said, "That would be great. I was like a mother (laugh)," he said, revealing a behind-the-scenes story.

When asked, "Is there any reason why there are many mass-produced machines in "MEMORY OF EDEN" and MSV machines appear here and there? I also wanted to see what I could, since Mr. Ebikawa (Kanetake) designed so many of them and it would be a shame if they didn't appear in the anime. I wanted to see it personally, so I made what I could.

When asked, "If you were to make an OVA with Flit as the main character, what would you do? I thought about various other generations because there were parts of the story that "Memory of Eden" couldn't pick up. In "MEMORY OF EDEN," we changed the development of the TV series a little bit and switched the relationships between the characters in order to provide a different point of view. In the Frit version, I thought it would be fine to have Yurin on DIVA a little more. I wanted to deepen the relationship between Emily and Yurin a little more. I was in charge of directing the episode in which Yurin dies in episode 14, and I thought it would be interesting to build up to that point a little more. Director Watada also mentioned the "if" in the Kio Arc: "The story of how Asem became a space pirate was not picked up in 'MEMORY OF EDEN,' so if I were to reconstruct the Kio Arc, I would have put the decommissioned Romary on board the DIVA. I think the growth of Captain Aenas is a major point between the Kio Arc and the Three Generations Arc, and if Romary had been a buffer between Flit and Captain Aenas as a former military man and member of the Asuno family, the way Captain Aenas grew would have been different. Also, in the TV series, the reunion between Kio and Asem, who became a space pirate, was depicted in the form of a reunion between father and son, but if it were possible, I thought that a new drama could be depicted if the three of them could meet again.

The talk show ended with director Watada expressing his hope to see fans again on various occasions, such as the 15th and 20th anniversaries of "Gundam AGE.

(Reporting, text, and photographs by Kiri Nakazato)