撰写Special feature of 1905 film network "Mobile Suit Gundam NT" was released nationwide on July 12th, and it has been 40 years since the series was first broadcast in 1979.
Over the past 40 years, Gundam has consolidated its appeal of phenomenal animation with popular works released in different periods: Gundam for Mobile Suit in 1980s and Gundam for Z, Gundam G in 1990s, Gundam W, Gundam SEED and Gundam 00 in the new millennium & hellip; …
Up to 40th anniversary conference, official poster collection.
Behind the constant heat is the great influence of Japanese mecha culture at home and around the world.
Another landmark work of Japanese Mecha Animation, Evangelist of the New Century (EVA for short), has also gathered a huge fan base in China.
On June 8th, the first day of Shanghai International Film Festival, the old theatrical version of Gospel Warrior of the New Century won the title of "sold out as soon as possible after invoicing". On July 6th, "The New Theater Edition: The End" to be released in Japan in 2020 was exposed for 10 minutes, which caused heated discussion again.
Why is mecha culture popular in Japan?
When it comes to mecha, we must first distinguish it from robots. The biggest difference between a mecha and a robot is that it needs to be manipulated by people, and it is impossible to have independent consciousness. Japanese mecha has anthropomorphic form, which was developed as an antagonistic weapon, and its function is an extension of human power.
The birth of Mecha is closely related to the history of World War II in Japan. As the only country hit by a nuclear bomb, Japan suffered the double blow of war and abuse of science and technology.
After the war, Japan rose rapidly on the ruins, started the process of "re-modernization" and built modern scientific and technological landscapes such as large hydropower stations, high-voltage power lines, chemical plants and Shinkansen.
"Mankind enters the interior of the mecha and manipulates the mecha to defeat the giant monster" is the core plot of literary creation with the theme of the mecha. The emotions such as nuclear fear and anxiety of out-of-control technology are materialized into giant monsters that wantonly destroy urban buildings, symbolizing that the mecha, in which human beings once again control technology, has become the last line of defense.
In "EVA", the Mecha fights the "Apostle"
In the late 1950s, the original comic book Iron Man 28 began to be serialized in juvenile magazines, and was later adapted into the first giant robot animation in the history of Japanese animation.
Teenagers control the Iron Man by manipulating the remote control, and Iron Man 28 has also become the embryonic form of the early mecha.
Comic work "Iron Man 28"
In 1972, the animation "Magic God Z" created by Go Nagai premiered. In the setting, the driver needs to enter the interior of the huge robot to control, thus determining the basic paradigm of "riding".
Original painting design of "Magic God Z"
The seventies and eighties of last century were the golden period of Japanese mecha animation, with the representative works of Cosmos Battleship Yamato in 1974 and Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979. The former expands the operational background to the boundless universe, and the Yamato carries the mission of human beings to find a new place to live; The latter, Gundam, changed the mode of mecha fighting alone, creating two huge opposing organizations and a fleshy group of villains and villains.
Starting from Gundam in 1979, Mecha made a transition from a super department to a realistic department. The mecha inside is no longer omnipotent and invincible, but follows the relatively rigorous scientific and military situation design.
The huge mecha fighting in the vast space-time can be regarded as the Japanese people’s sense of crisis in the narrow land. In the 1990s, Japan suffered a series of tragedies, such as the bursting of the economic bubble, the Great Hanshin Earthquake, and the terrorist activities of Aum Shinrikyo, and this sense of crisis further developed into despair that pervaded the whole society.
In 1995, "EVA", the strongest masterpiece in Heisei era, was born. EVA, directed by Hideaki Anno, tells the story of boys and girls driving humanoid weapons and fighting the "apostles" who destroy the world.
The drama adopts the narrative mode of stream of consciousness in a subversive way, focusing on the clash of religious thoughts and the discussion of psychological philosophy and ethics, and puts forward a series of questions such as why the mecha exist, who created them and why.
The core clue of EVA is this: human beings rely too much on the power of science and technology, and eventually they are punished by God. The obscure, gloomy, pessimistic and evasive tone of animation timely aroused the resonance of the people at that time.
Judging from these phenomenal mecha cartoons, Japanese mecha culture is deeply rooted in the local historical soil. At the same time, the reflection on universal issues such as war, science and technology in animation, the blood setting of ordinary teenagers becoming "chosen people" wearing mechs, and the elements of beautiful girls, etc., allow audiences in other countries and regions to find the breakthrough point of interpretation.
Jumping out of the story, the gorgeous picture that emphasizes fighting also lowers the viewing threshold and successfully arouses the audience’s interest in watching.
Fighting scenes in Gundam
The obscure "EVA" has a great visual impact with multiple picture effects. In the performance of the battle between the mecha and the apostles, the multi-angle split mirror and quick editing make the battle scene very colorful.
Fighting scenes in EVA
Starting from animation, Japanese mecha culture has derived peripheral products such as games, music, models, novels, etc., forming a perfect industrial chain, permeating all fields and expanding its influence.
Gundam Mononoke at the 2019 China International Animation and Game Expo
Up to 40 years of change and unchanged.
Over the past 40 years, the Gundam series has continuously launched new works. The change of this series itself is the epitome of the cultural change of Japanese mecha.
Yosiyuki Tomino, the "father of Gundam", was born in the 1940s. He witnessed the Japanese post-war trauma and participated in the student movement as a student, which had a great influence on his creative thinking.
In 1974, the Space Battleship Yamato was broadcast. The Yamato was originally a warship sunk by the U.S. military, and was refitted into space battleship to carry the future of mankind. Nearly 30 years after the end of World War II, the Japanese people’s collective memory of the war was successfully awakened.
On the basis of Cosmic Battleship Yamato, Tomino tried to "describe a more comprehensive war". "Since most stories are written from a single perspective, I think it would be good to write a story from two different angles."
In Gundam, in order to defend his compatriots, the young Amro boarded the newly developed mobile suit Gundam, and his old enemy Xia Ya also had reasons to fight. After the end of a year’s war, the war left wounds in the hearts of both sides that were difficult to heal.
This idea of "different angles" gives Gundam a very large expansion space, and "One Year War" has become the creative source of the whole Gundam series.
The core setting "New Type" in Gundam has also been preserved. The original design of the new human was to integrate the elements of blood into the battle, but as Tomino continued to think about the war and the future of mankind, the design of the new human was rewritten and enriched again and again.
At first, Tomino wanted to make the new human being a "miracle" to solve disputes, and pinned his hope of eliminating war on the new human being’s sequel "Z Gundam". Tomino began to pursue reality and tried to make the new human being realize "change".
At the end of the story, the protagonist who is bent on change has a nervous breakdown and the ending is very heavy.
Camus, a new human being, gradually collapsed.
By 1993, influenced by the social environment in Japan at that time and the bottleneck of Toyo’s own creation, the newly released V Gundam was even more desperate, just like EVA, which was deified two years later. The new human beings who were supposed to have a positive impact on "ending the war" and "changing" turned to sin: tens of thousands of new human beings kept fighting.
In the 20th anniversary of the broadcast of Gundam, in the newly released Anti-A Gundam, Toyo reached a settlement and affirmed Gundam and the future of mankind with a hopeful ending.
After entering the new millennium, the "father of Gundam" gradually withdrew from the creation of Gundam. Gundam NT, which was just released in mainland China, was connected with the previous theatrical version of Gundam UC, all of which were created by Harumi Fukui.
"NT" is the abbreviation of "Narrative" and "New Type". The creative thinking of Gundam NT is also directed at new human beings. The story revolves around the new human girl who can predict in advance that the colonial satellite will fall to the earth, and her unicorn Gundam III, which carries her soul after death.
New human girl
Gundam UC and Gundam UT rely more on gorgeous battle scenes, and Yosiyuki Tomino’s philosophical thinking towards the Japanese people and even the whole mankind has been weakened.
In "Down A Gundam", Tomino has played down the label of new human beings, but returned to every ordinary individual: with good intentions, the killing machine "Down A Gundam" can also become a "clothes rack" and a "washing machine" to help others.
Harumi Fukui takes the new human as the core setting of the story again, extracts the classic organism from the original works, magnifies all kinds of empowerment measures for the new human, and constantly strengthens the ability of the new human, realizing the visual bombing.
This adaptation is to cater to the current mainstream consumer groups. When EVA was re-produced, Hideaki Anno also began to emphasize the picture and weaken the obscure sense of the story.
For Gundam, it shoulders the role of promoting model toys, and the upgrade of the mecha is also helpful to meet the requirements of product iteration. How to prevent the new works from being completely reduced to "advertising films" is a problem that needs to be considered in the next 40 years of Gundam series.