My Life In Fandom: Tomino & Kanno, Turn A Gundam, & Stories Thereof

Taken from Twitter, and reproduced below, is a thread by a user named Feez on Yoko Kanno and her relationship with Yoshiyuku Tomino--yes, "Kill 'Em All" Tomino--that you may find interesting.

A thread about Yoko Kanno's involvement in Brain Powerd & Turn A Gundam and her professional relationship with director Yoshiyuki Tomino. pic.twitter.com/bzdKY5pLf5

— Feez (@feezy_feez) May 11, 2021

I'll blockquote the rest after the cut. Minor editorial changes were made, clarifying things or fixing typos.

Brain Powerd(sic) and Turn A Gundam both have music and arrangement by Yoko Kanno, and they also feature the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra with Kanno herself on piano.

Tomino views Kanno as a ridiculously talented composer. He thinks she provides a unique perspective and perceives art in a way older men like him can't grasp. He personally learned a lot from her.

He also finds it mildly annoying that she can quickly analyze and comprehend his storyboards. In Tomino's eyes the storyboard is the be-all and end-all, so he finds her intuition to be impressive. He attributes it to similarities in parsing musical scores.

Yoko Kanno enjoys Tomino's company because he reminds her of her father (in age and temperament), only it's less awkward to talk to him about the arts. They've had many deep and intellectual conversations, and she valued the opportunity to get his insight on raising daughters.

She also likes Tomino's philosophy of using mecha anime simply as a means to tell a story and communicate a message to the audience. She relates to that mentality on a personal level w/ her music.

On the 1st, Feez had this to say about Kanno.

Tomino has an incredibly high opinion of Yoko Kanno, calling her a genius and prodigy who's easy to work with. He respects her passion for music and enjoyed the Turn A Gundam concert she conducted. He also likes how she has high standards and is difficult to impress.

Here's the reality: Turn A Gundam was not catching on with audiences and had poor TV ratings. Tomino tried his best not to listen to criticisms in magazines, online, etc., but nevertheless the show's unpopularity was making him depressed. He had hoped it would be a hit.

People were demanding more mecha screentime, more war-like scenarios—all the typical "Gundam"-like plot elements that he wanted to avoid. However, Tomino did not let the pressure influence the actual direction of the show.

Turn A was broadcast on Fuji TV and producers Kenji Shimizu and Yoshihiro Suzuki allowed it to air as-is despite its poor ratings, because they liked Tomino & Gundam. These two are the heroes behind why Turn A was free from sponsor demands and Tomino could make a quality anime.

Turn A was scheduled to air for 1 year (50 eps), but Tomino wanted it to run for 2 years. About halfway through the show, Sunrise informed him that it'd only air for 1 year as planned. While this disheartened Tomino, he did feel that maybe it was for the best (his mind & body).

To counter Turn A Gundam's unpopularity, Tomino toyed around with the idea of giving the Turn A a mid-season upgrade with a flight pack or "Mk-II" design. However, he could not bring himself to trouble Syd Mead with the task in such a hurry.

Originally "Turn A Turn" (OP1) and "AURA" (ED1) were to be the only opening and ending songs for the show, however their CDs were not selling well. This prompted Sunrise staff to approach Tomino about a new OP/ED, which saddened him. He wished he could buy 1,000,000 CDs himself.

The Turn X and Bandit were added to OP2 in an attempt to boost the show's popularity.

This filled him with a sense of pride. He figured that instead of caving in to the rabid Gundam fanbase, he'd be satisfied as long as true fans and talented people (such as Yoko Kanno) approved of the show. (Ed. Note: We'll get back to this below.)

Tomino assures the reader that he too would like to look up Kihel & Dianna's skirts.

Turn A's epilogue was a massive undertaking for the staff. They had to make sure the animation cuts matched each phrase of music, and that all the major characters were addressed. Many scenes were added, removed, or shifted around, and initially it was going to have voiced lines.

Tomino came up with the idea of using "Moon's Cocoon" in the epilogue when he first heard the track. He describes his storyboarding and the directions he gave during post-production, etc. as one of the few times he relied on "feelings" as a director.

Turn A's final episode was screened for staff & producers a day before its scheduled broadcast date, and it also doubled as an afterparty. Tomino and his wife were in attendance. He started to cry when "Moon's Cocoon" began playing in the epilogue.

The post-screening atmosphere was lively and responses to the final episode were mostly positive. Tomino recalls it as the most entertaining afterparty since Zambot 3's. He felt validated—as if what he had sought to do with Turn A Gundam was NOT a mistake.

Yoko Kanno called the final episode "interesting" rather than "good", which to Tomino was a compliment.

Tomino confirms that Loran and Dianna are in love, however he does not want the viewer to think that their feelings are overly complex. It can be a simple love based on their mutual respect for and reliance on each other.

As for Sochie... Tomino unfortunately doesn't offer much solace. Basically, she knows that Loran cares for her but she's not who he's in love with. Knowing this, she begrudgingly allows him to be with Dianna.

According to Tomino, Turn A Gundam is simply a story based on The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter / Princess Kaguya with giant robots in it. It may be the only type of story he was able to create at the time, but he does not think it was boring.

This is incredibly validating to me, as Princess Kaguya is like my favorite folklore. I've made this connection for years, and have had confirmation via other sources, drafts, and memos, but a direct quote from Tomino himself is empowering.

Tomino rewatched Turn A Gundam THREE times in one month after it finished airing. He knows it'll sound like he's boasting, but he truly believes that there's something new to discover each time he goes through it. This pleases him.

Tomino views Turn A Gundam as his "will"; he used all the techniques he had acquired in his career, but it wasn't just his work—he listened earnestly to the opinions of his staff, especially the younger folk. This created the ultimate masterpiece.

Turn A Gundam sustained Tomino in the midst of depression and was instrumental to his recovery. It retaught him the simple things—the beauty and joys life can offer. He feels humbled to have been part of this work. He is finally happy.

This concludes my coverage of "Turn A no Iyashi" on Twitter. I want to thank everyone for following along and spreading the word. I hope I was able to shed light on my favorite director. A complicated human who battled depression, raised daughters, and transformed as a person.

You can find more by going to Feez's Twitter feed to dig up ancillary anecdotes and asides on this.

As for what this says:

• The tension between those that accept what popular entertainment is about and those that do not existed in Japan then and continues now. Tomino did not when making Turn A, got the memo by the end, and came to terms with it before he returned to do Reconguista in G--the de facto interquel between Turn A Gundam and everything else Gundam. This influence spread beyond him to the rest of the franchise. Now we're getting more of the sort of thing Tomino wanted to do then with Origins, Thunderbolt, Unicorn and the upcoming Hathaway's Flash.
• Kanno's reputation is justified and has been known within the business well before Cowboy Bebop made her internationally famous. The intuition she displayed with Tomino is echoed by Shin'ichirô Watanabe's experiences with her in on Bebop, and while I've seen no comments by Shoji Kawamori I can bet that he has a similiar take since he roped her into anything he could.
• Japanese audiences even at the time of Peak Anime were insistent on being entertained first and foremost, and the sponsors were keen to leverage that to keep productions on the straight and narrow. This is not entirely without merit; it prevents converging a medium into a propaganda outlet as we currently see with Western media.
• "Interesting" is not a worthy goal. "Good" is; art is work done to a standard. "Interesting" is nothing more than being novel. Be good first and foremost, being interesting is a luxury that can be--and should be--dispensed with as soon as it gets in the way of being good. Good is the meat; Interesting is the seasoning- you don't need seasoning to cook meat properly. Tomino's struggle here is to accept this neccesity.
• The music Kanno brings can--and has--single-handedly carried a series or film from Good to Classic status and salvaged mediocre ones. This is a case of her doing both, and in so doing getting her collaborators to step up their game to match. She did the same thing with Bebop, and I speculate she has the same effect on Kawamori. She is part of a very small cohort capable of such a feat, and she can do this working in multiple genres and styles of music whereas most of her contemporaries can do this with only one or two, and she has done this multiple times. By now her skill and talent is well-respected and she's getting Art Film work when she wants it.
• Knowing how your collaborators think is required to communicate with them effectively; learning and teaching is a common by-product of achieving this state due to how most people go about learning how to communicate and collaborate with others. (This factors into other, related, things that are beyond the scope of this post.)

As with Kawamori's experience with the original Macross series, Turn A's truncation actually served to improve it overall vs. the original plan. Brain Powerd is remembered primarily due to things other than the quality of the story, and Kanno's music is part of that; the same goes with RahXephon. Adapting to salvage setbacks and turn them into assets and strengths is the habit of the successful and the talented. That means being able to adapted quickly to changing conditions in an effective manner, something that comes naturally to a musician of Kanno's caliber, and her mindset is influential on her collaborators.

I'm trying to not overstate Kanno here. It's difficult because her own collaborators consistently praise her not only as a musician but also as a fellow creative, able to give a useful and helpful perspective to aid in the success of elements of the enterprise other than the music. That's a massive value that she adds to whatever she does, which is why her name carries the weight that it does.

I should be more fair to Tomino. He is a legit genius in his own right, despite his own infamy, and his work--including his pre-Gundam work--is worthy of being regarded as Classic, so when legendary talents successfully collaborate it is no surprise that despite initial difficulties they create works that endure over time. Tomino, at the far end of his career, is finally getting the recognition he's been worthy of and seeking--whether he says so or not--since the 1980s and is shaking off the shadow that "Kill 'Em All" put over him.

If there is something you can use here, try this: Just as you should return the grocery cart to the stall, and leave places better than you found them, so should you come away from each collaboration with more on your talent stack than you came into it with. All of these are the mark of the Civilized Man.