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company itself existed only as a part of Okada Embroidering.
April came rolling around, and Okada approached me asking,  So, what re you
gonna do now? You can quit, but you ve got nothing else lined up. Why don t you
stick around and help out at the store? I was more than happy to do so. I d grown
rather fond of the business of planning and producing garage kits, and I don t think
I could have quit. It was different from doing contract work. I discovered the joy of
manufacturing your own designs, and seeing that succeed in the marketplace.
Some of the students from the sci-fi club that I d met through DAICON 3 built
garage kits for us part-time. I think for them it felt more like a continuation of
the Convention than an actual job. The ones who did the pouring for the plastic
casting99 were mainly guys from the Osaka University club. Most of them repeated
at least a year of school. On average, they graduated within five or six years, but
there were some who dropped out, never to be heard from again.
Late at night, it s easy to mistake a botched piece of resin for a rice cracker, and a
few of us got burned on that one. Plus, we were always spilling the epoxy liquids on
the floor and making sticky messes of our shoes when we walked over it. Basically,
it was a great time.
One of the Osaka University students was a guy named Gyoten100, a very unusual
name indeed. Just looking at the kanji characters, I had no idea how to pronounce
99
One of the casting materials used to create garage kits. Two different epoxy liquids are mixed and
poured into a mold, where they solidify after a few minutes, forming a model part. Epoxy resin
is a little tricky to handle because if it s poorly mixed it either forms bubbles or doesn t solidify
enough. Pieces of hardened resin have a nasty habit of looking like potato chips to exhausted
people working through the night, so handle with care!
100
Takashi Gyoten (1962-) During the early days of DAICON FILM, he was kind of like the boss
of Osaka University s Sci-Fi Club. He lived in an apartment close to the University, and it served
as our base of operations for a few months during the production of Kaettekita Ultraman. He went
on to become a high school mathematics teacher, and is now a Buddhist priest.
53
it. So I asked him. When he told me it was pronounced  Gyoten , I teased him
about it, saying it sounded like some Buddhist monk s name. But as it turned
out, he really did grow up in a Buddhist temple! After he graduated from college
he worked as a teacher for a while, and then became a professional monk himself.
That s what he s doing now. It s really weird to look back on those times and think
about what an interesting gang of characters we had working at the store.
Ideon Festival
Through an introduction from Mr. Komaki101, the editor-in-chief of Animec maga-
zine, we were commissioned to promote the theatrical version of the Densetsu Kyojin
Ideon anime. Anyway, we thought up an advertising plan at SUNRISE, and also
came up with a few promotional items for the film. Part of the plan was for Okada
and myself to appear on TV and in person as the so-called  Devil Twins , in order
to ensure the film s success.
It was then that we became acquainted with anime director Yoshiyuki Tomino102 as
well as Mamoru Nagano103, who was still a college student.
To this day, if someone mentions the Ideon Festival104, I immediately get red in the
face. I don t know if it s because we were young and stupid, or because we just got
too carried away, or what.
The Sci-Fi Convention revisited
Amidst these events and projects, a lot of different things started happening at once;
in order to talk about them all, I m going to have to jump back and forth a bit.
101
Masanobu Komaki Editor-in-chief of the cult anime magazine Animec when it first went into
print in 1979. Over the course of his editorial career he has earned a huge following for the in-depth
nature of his publications. He is also famous for naming the Gundam RX 78 from the original
Kido Senshi Gundam ( Mobile Suit Gundam ) TV series. Komaki also gave Okada and me a
regular column in Animec magazine, titled  General Products Tricks of the Trade .
102
Yoshiyuki Tomino (1941-) Famous anime director and creator of Kido Senshi Gundam ( Mobile
Suit Gundam ). Also directed the movie Char no Gyakushu ( Char s Counterattack ). GAINAX
participated in the production of this film by contributing mechanical designs.
103
Mamoru Nagano (1960-) Manga artist and illustrator. His big break came when he did the
character and mechanical designs for Juusenki L-Gaim ( Heavy Metal L-Gaim ). His serialized
manga, The Five Star Stories, has an energetic fan base and is now a well-established title. The
Mortar Headd mecha appearing in the story have become a staple among garage kit makers, and
even contributed to the development and sophistication of the model industry and its products.
104
Event which promoted the theatrical release of Densetsu Kyojin Ideon. Okada and I made an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]