The Men Who Created Gundam

A melodramatic retelling of the making of the Gundam franchise, featuring it's original creator and director, several animators, designers, business people, and die-hard fans. While this is a highly exaggerated version of the truth of events, it is still based in real history and absolutely fascinating. 

My biggest complaint is that sexual assault and harassment against women is used for comedy. I'm sure this was probably pretty normal for the late 70's and early 80's, but it wasn't funny then and it isn't funny now. 

I’d heard about the manga The Men Who Created Gundam a while ago from an article on TVTropes – and later had heard that the manga had been licensed by Denpa, though I found it was only available in a physical release, so that ended up serving as something of a hold-up on my picking up the series. However, at long last I’ve picked up up the omnibus release of the series.

As the title suggests, The Men Who Created Gundam tells the story of how the original Mobile Suit Gundam series (colloqually referred to as “First Gundam”) came to be – in a very tongue-in-cheek kind of presentation. The focus is on Yoshiyuki Tomino, who is presented as an almost Spider Jerusalem-esque figure. Not just in the sense of his bald head and ever-present sunglasses (and lanky figure), but his somewhat obnoxious and confrontational attitude, in a manipulative and obnoxious kind of way.

We have a few other supporting characters that provide point-of-view perspectives on the story, like the composite character of Momoe Kusakari, who represents much of the female production staff of the series. She also unfortunately often ends up on the receiving end of some of the regressive attitudes of the time when it comes to sexual politics, with her frequently getting groped (often by Tomino). Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (who is drawn like a rock star) also gets a fair amount of spotlight time, though never as a point of view character.

That ties into what probably is one of the biggest issues with the manga itself – Tomino’s letcherous habits and sexual harassment of women in staff is played for comedy at best or as a a charming element of his character at worst. It makes for a frustrating part of the story, where we see the build-up to the New Century declaration at the start of the launch of the Gundam Compilation movies, but we also see him harassing the staff, with that basically being treated as something of an endearing feature of him. Arguably this is a fictitious aspect of the character that’s being played up for exaggeration, but the problem is that it’s still mostly ever-present in the story.

In all, I enjoyed the manga, but I did always feel a bit of a sense of dread in the manga whenever Tomino and Kusakari were on page at the same time, for fear of what “comedy” beat would come next. I did enjoy reading the manga, and honestly it does make for a good jumping off point for later reading of what actually happened, but intentional groping, by adults, in the workplacek, played for comedy makes this a hard recommendation.