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went on to found Studio Gonzo, which has released many of its own titles since.
145
Takeshi Mori Anime writer/director. He assisted with the direction of Nadia: The Secret of Blue
Water, and later joined Murahama s startup company, Gonzo. There, he directed the TV anime
Vandread. He was also a part of many other projects, including GAINAX s Otaku no Video, which
he directed.
77
It s commonly believed that while Oritsu Uchugun was a well-made film, it was a
failure at the box office. That s completely untrue. It may not have been a huge
hit, but it certainly wasn t a flop. Not a single theater canceled its run, and at
some locations, it actually had a longer run than initially planned. I think a false
apprehension probably emerged because a few people voiced their own unfounded
assumptions - that a story as complex and subtle as this couldn t possibly draw
crowds, and from there the rumors just took on a life of their own.
Regardless, this was a big-budget production. For an animation budget in Japan
at the time, Â%1Å‚800 million was a huge chunk of change. It would have been large
even for a live-action Japanese film. The budget scale meant that reclaiming all the
production costs at the box office simply wasn t feasible.
With a successful anime production and an established relationship with Bandai
under their belts, it would ve been a real shame to just dissolve the company at that
point. Okada, Inoue, and the rest of the assembled GAINAX staff also expressed
their fervent opinions that the company should be allowed to continue on. But the
huge studio needed for the theatrical production was too expensive to maintain, so
GAINAX had to move once more - this time back to the tiny studio in Kichijoji-
Minami.
General Products moves to Tokyo
The flip side of GAINAX s new success was the ever-worsening state of affairs at
General Products. The Wonder Festival had expanded beyond belief, and slowly
but surely the garage kit industry was growing larger and more entrenched. Despite
all that, General Products items weren t doing very well in the marketplace.
We still had some hits, like our life-size Kamen Rider mask146. It was something
everyone thought of doing, but only we could actually pull it off (we made it out of
soft vinyl147, a material that was still a rarity in the garage kit world). But even
with successes like this, the future of General Products was still cloudy.
To make matters worse, as production on Orochi concluded Sawamura and I started
to disagree professionally, and he ended up leaving the company while Oritsu Uchugun
was showing in theaters.
In short, General Products was in trouble.
146
A full-size replica made of soft vinyl. The helmet can actually be worn, but does not provide
adequate protection for motorcyclists!
147
One of the materials used to manufacture garage kits. It was originally believed that vinyl was
too coarse to show much detail, and was thus deemed unsuitable for monster models. However, it
was later proven that very fine detail really could be achieved with this material. The adoption of
soft vinyl drastically lowered garage-kit prices - depending on the type of vinyl, its cost can range
from one-third to one-half that of epoxy resin.
78
I also started to believe that if I continued doing business in Osaka, I would even-
tually hit a brick wall. Working in the character business meant getting approval
from licensors. And all the licensors were in Tokyo. Plus, there was the biannual
Wonder Festival, also in Tokyo. And by now, General Products was hurting so bad
financially that even the cost of going to Tokyo three or four times a year was get-
ting to be a major drain on the company s resources. Wonder Festival was rapidly
becoming the store s primary source of investment capital, and there didn t seem to
be anything I could do about it.
I had to face facts. After much agonizing, I finally decided to move General Products
operations to Tokyo. I left the Osaka branch store in the care of Junichi Osako148,
one of the guys who d been on the Japan Sci-Fi Convention staff, and the rest of us
merged with GAINAX. Incidentally, that same Junichi Osako is now a novelist.
Some members of my staff weren t too keen on leaving Osaka, so they left the
company instead. This left us with a combined staff of about ten employees.
Shouting! Running! Laughing! Crying! Yasuhiro Takeda and the
First Big Bash of the 21st Century
In-depth coverage on Yasuhiro Takeda, Chairman of the Planning Com-
mittee for the 40th Annual Japan Sci-Fi Convention-SF2001 & Japan
Sci-Fi Fan Group Association Committee
" Date: Aug. 17 19, 2001
" Location: Nippon Convention Center (Makuhari Messe) in Mihama-ku, Chiba
148
Junichi Osako (1962-) Novelist and author of Zoa Hunter, among other titles. I met him while
he was still attending the Osaka University of Arts. At that time, he was running around from
event to event, helping out with various tasks. He later made his debut as a manga author while [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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