The latest installment of the Gundam series, Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, co-produced by Sunrise and Khara, held a special stage greeting event in Tokyo on the 28th to commemorate the re-release of the theatrical prequel Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning. The event featured voice actress Tomoyo Kurosawa, who plays Amate Yuzuriha (MACHU), scriptwriter Yoji Enokido, and director Kazuya Tsurumaki.

The final episode (Episode 12) had just aired late on the 24th. One of the biggest talking points was the dramatic enlargement of the Gundam. According to the staff, it had been decided from an early stage that the white Gundam would appear as the final boss.

However, within the world of GQuuuuuuX, five years have passed since the One Year War. Enokido explained the challenge:

“Even former main Gundam units are now outdated. So the question became: how do you make an old Gundam look threatening again? How do you portray it as a powerful enemy? We had to come up with something clever. At first, we had ideas like it multiplying endlessly, but that had already been done elsewhere. Eventually, we were left with only one idea: hyper mode. I mean, it's a Tomino anime after all.”

Despite this, Director Tsurumaki was initially hesitant to go along with the idea. He ultimately agreed, admitting that no better alternative came to mind.

He recalled:

“I felt like this kind of depiction was something you just shouldn't do in Gundam. But watching real-time reactions from viewers, I kept seeing people shout, ‘Hyper mode!’
Within the context of Tomino’s robot anime legacy, I thought, okay, if you’re a Tomino fan, this kind of thing actually works.”

He added that he went out of his way to show respect to the original “hyper mode” in the details of the presentation, and confessed:

“It’s basically exactly the same as the hyper mode from Aura Battler Dunbine.”

Kurosawa smiled and said:

“I never imagined it would get so big. I was acting with the same sense of surprise as the audience.”

This series is a new Gundam installment created through a collaboration between Studio Khara—known for the Evangelion series—and Sunrise. It aired on the Nippon TV network. Tsurumaki, who directed Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time and other entries in the Rebuild of Evangelion film series, directed this work. The series composition was handled by Yoji Enokido, with mechanical design by Ikuto Yamashita, gathering a star-studded creative team.

Source : ORICON NEWS