How much of Gundam was changed in planning?

[Zeino]

MSG had to change it's ending to wrap things up quickly before being canceled, Zeta's Kill-Em-All ending was from what I heard not originally intended, it just sort of happened. Char was suppose to be a major antagonist in ZZ but then Tomino was given a movie for that plot so Glemy took his place. Production troubles caused F91 to not be made as a full series, 0083 changing directors mid-way through leading to that stupid out of nowhere love triangle,

Bandai forced the whole Gundam Fight concept on to Yasuhiro Imagawa for G, The Episode Zero flashbacks for Wing not being animated as part of the series for some reason, X also being forced to wrap up it plot ten episodes early. MS 08th Team's plot being changed because of the death of it's first director after it's first 4 episodes. The infamous lead character switch of Seed Destiny, Gundam 00 originally supposed to have been fifty continuous episodes like every past Gundam series and not two separate seasons. The story was planned to span 4 years, with the time skip happening in episode 32. AGE supposed to be 78 episode long. Has there ever been Gundam series that has been that was 100% executed as originally envisioned by it's production staff from the beginning?

[MV6000 the Ace Zeon Pilot]

I was gonna say Gundam Unicorn but even that had it's share of changes. Originally it was gonna be six episodes but it changed for the better by making it seven episodes.

[zetatype]

0083 changing directors leading to that stupid out of nowhere love triangle,

MS 08th Team's plot being changed because of the death of it's first director.

Zeta's Kill-Em-All was from what I heard not originally intended, it just sort of happened.

I've seen these statements made a lot within the Gundam fanbase (well not so much with the zeta gundam one), but has anyone on the production staff of these series ever confirmed them? A few months ago I actually heard that neither 0083 or 08th MS Team had their stories altered and that they were actually intend that way before the original directors left or died.

[PowerdGNFlag]

The ones Zeino did not mention, namely 0080 and Turn A, I guess?

Well, he also did not mention SEED, but we know from Fukuda himself that changes were madde during production, either for convenience or whatnot (e.g. Dearka defecting because Buster model sals are low, Flay is a human bomb/Kira dies/Athrun loses an arm ending, etc.)

[AmuroNT1]

The Wing/Episode Zero thing is explained within EZ itself by head writer Sumizawa, as a combination of internal conflict and poor scheduling.

As for the original series and the legendary "Tomino Memo"...Lately, I've found myself wondering exactly how much truth there is to this. In the manga Gundam Sousei, Kunio Okawara tells production assistant Momoe (the manga's focus character) that the Memo is B.S., Tomino told exactly the story he intended to even WITH episodes being cut, and the Memo was thrown together in order to drum up interest for the movie. I know Sousei is a fictionalized, exaggerated account of the original series, but that bit actually sounds like one of those story elements that's fantastic but true (like the "Seductive Artesia" Incident, where a magazine did a nude picture of Sayla and Tomino called them up to complain...that they used the wrong color for her nips).

[Amion]

As far as I know, Victory Gundam was planned out and went full tilt into the bloodbath as Depressed Tomino wanted to go without it being altered. Maybe after seeing what he was doing to his characters, Bandai didn't want to complain too hard

And somehow I feel that a goodly deal of what happened with Zeta is that only a few of the characters were supposed to survive, like Emma. The rest such as Katz I'm almost 91% sure were supposed to get smote down. And one must ponder whether ZZ actually started altered, and then got changed back to what Tomino might have wanted. I say this because he was asking for the green light for Char's Counterattack, so a movie was preferred over the show by him. Though I suppose that still means he altered it.

[Mark064]

MS 08th Team's plot being changed because of the death of it's first director after it's first 4 episodes.

This actually didn't change. Before the first director died he wrote the story to the end so after he died they just used the original material. The only episode he didn't write was the last.

AGE supposed to be 78 episode long.

Is there a source for this?

Zeta's Kill-Em-All ending was from what I heard not originally intended, it just sort of happened.

From what I heard was that there was no role for characters like Emma and Henken in ZZ so they were killed off. But Zeta has bigger changes in July of 1984 Zeta Gundam was given a subtitle: Zeta Gundam: Char of Counterattack (Char's Counterattack but they used bad English).

Bandai forced the whole Gundam Fight concept on to Yasuhiro Imagawa for G

This is also another bigger one. From what I recall G was originally supposed to be titled Volga Gundam and take place mainly on Mars in UC. By the time Imagawa was on board this idea was already going on out and was turned into an alternate universe series about a Gundam fight, and then added the Devil Gundam plot because a series about a Gundam Fight wasn't enough (plot?).

And one must ponder whether ZZ actually started altered, and then got changed back to what Tomino might have wanted.

ZZ was already changed from it's original draft by the time it started airing and who knows how many drafts in between that. And of course was changed again when they decided that Char wouldn't be making an appearance.

Has there ever been Gundam series that has been that was 100% executed as originally envisioned by it's production staff from the beginning?

I doubt it because I doubt there are many if any works of fiction out there that are 100% the original idea. You work on something you find things don't work out and they get removed, changed, altered. That's just the creative process.

[Zeino]

Zeta's Kill-Em-All ending was from what I heard not originally intended, it just sort of happened.

From what I heard was that there was no role for characters like Emma and Henken in ZZ so they were killed off. But Zeta has bigger changes in July of 1984 Zeta Gundam was given a subtitle: Zeta Gundam: Char of Counterattack (Char's Counterattack but they used bad English).

See this link here for what I mean: http://oldtypenewtype.tumblr.com/post/4 ... e-for-your

[Arbiter GUNDAM]

Production is always an evolving process. If you could find me something that survived its original draft from pre-production all the way to post, I'd be surprised. For example, the original ending of Jurassic Park had Grant shoot one of the two remaining Velociraptors, while the final one was crushed under a falling skeleton. But during Production, Spielberg realized that ending wasn't strong enough and that the star of the movie, the T.rex, needed to come back. And that's how we ended up with the ending we got.


And where on Earth did you find that AGE was going to be 78 episodes?

[Zeino]

And where on Earth did you find that AGE was going to be 78 episodes?

http://randal.blog91.fc2.com/blog-entry-2014.html

Interview with Hino from Newtype November 2012

-Now that the show is over, tell us what you feel about it.
Hino: Well, honestly I think we could've used more episodes. For example it would've been nice if there were say another ten episodes for Asem's school part. In the project phase we were originally going to broadcast Age for a year and a half (6 cours = 78 episodes), so the whole show would've been better if we just had more time.

[HellCat]

There are actually quite a few tidbits floating around about 00, though confirming them is difficult. The big one is that 00 was originally more of an Eva-style 'Gundams vs Giant Aliens' show. This gets referenced in the official joke season 2 trailer and comes partly full circle with the movie.

Another is that the Gundams were originally chess themed, with Virtue/Nadleeh supporting massive combat computers as it directed the other three in battle. Along the same lines, supposedly the original plan was that only Setsuna would get Trans-Am and this would make him the team's new ace, as the raw power and speed would make Exia more dangerous than Dynames using Lockon's natural combat skills. Ironically that one did kind of come to pass given Trans-Am Raiser and the 'we're sorry Setsuna became broken' message from the staff after the show ended.

[Chris]

Has there ever been Gundam series that has been that was 100% executed as originally envisioned by it's production staff from the beginning?

There's no such thing. No piece of entertainment that you watch or read is exactly turns out exactly as intended when originally conceived. Entertainment is an evolving product, and everything goes through multiple drafts and has concepts added or removed.

[Amion]

I think Zeino is talking about the final draft of a story that's been decided by the author, not the original idea that popped into his or her head when they first conceived the idea. Now bear in mind I don't know when or how Bandai or other funders actually alter story points, so I am assuming the changes to 00 and such happened either during the very beginning of animation, or just before it started.

Consider X and MSG, which both were originally intended to have more episodes and plot points, only to have to cut them short, particularly the former, and rush the ending. It's true different drafts are made, but usually the writer has a more or less final version detailing the major events before animation starts.

To summarize, I have a question of my own. When a writer like say, Hino, finishes a more a less final draft he feels comfortable with, exactly when does he bring this to the board at X cooperation/studio?

[Chris]

I think Zeino is talking about the final draft of a story that's been decided by the author, not the original idea that popped into his or her head when they first conceived the idea.

It doesn't matter. Even when something has entered production and starts airing, nothing is set in stone. The staff of SDF Macross cut their story down because they were told their episode count was being cut. Then when the show became a hit, they were asked to expand the story, but it was too late because it'd already been cut down. Which is why the final episode happens before the end and we get the post-war arc that fills up the rest of the space. In SEED, Andy was dead as a doornail and was treated as such in the story until Fukuda resurrected him because he liked the voice actor and wanted to bring him back.

In live action TV, stories constantly change due to actors leaving or fear of cancellation. Babylon 5 changed multiple times due to actors leaving, and its main arc was wrapped up early in season 4 because the show wasn't going to be renewed for season 5, but then it was. The point is, TV, whether live action or anime, isn't like a novel where you have a "final draft" of the story. Things can and will change throughout the course of production, sometimes in ways that are obvious to viewers, but many times in ways that aren't.

[Amion]

I see. So the writers are forced to constantly come up with new material depending on these shifts? I wouldn't want that job, it could breed disaster or success, depending on how much time I'm given to make changes to plot. But still, I can't help but think the writers of Macross had an original plan for how they wanted the story to go, it wasn't them, after all, who made the decision to expand or shorten the story.

[AmuroNT1]

The only way a show could be exactly the same from start to finish is if it were produced in a "vacuum"; that is, every aspect of the show that exists at the very beginning (like say episode count, cast, funding, etc.) doesn't change one iota along the way. And even then, you'd be hard-pressed to find writers or producers who don't come up with a spur-of-the-moment change.

That said, I'm sure you can find plenty of examples where a work changed for the better. The classic examples (at least to me) are the famous Indiana Jones "Just Shoot Him" moment (which happened because Harrison Ford had diarrhea and was in no mood for an extended fight scene), or basically all the dialog in Iron Man (where the actors were simply given the gist of what information they needed to convey in a scene, then allowed to improvise the rest, leading to Robert Downey Jr's hilarious performance). Going back to Gundam, assuming the Gundam Wing manga ending was indeed in the original script, I'm pretty sure most people would say they prefer Heero's dramatic re-entry shot to the extremely shonen image of the six Gundams uniting their power.

[Amion]

That doesn't change what I said about the writer's having an original plan in their heads. Sure they can change the ideas later, and I never said they might not want to. I did it a lot in my writing and still do it. It's a logical flaw to say they can't have had an original script in mind because they frequently change said script from its original plotlines.

[SonicSP]

There are actually quite a few tidbits floating around about 00, though confirming them is difficult. The big one is that 00 was originally more of an Eva-style 'Gundams vs Giant Aliens' show. This gets referenced in the official joke season 2 trailer and comes partly full circle with the movie.

Another is that the Gundams were originally chess themed, with Virtue/Nadleeh supporting massive combat computers as it directed the other three in battle. Along the same lines, supposedly the original plan was that only Setsuna would get Trans-Am and this would make him the team's new ace, as the raw power and speed would make Exia more dangerous than Dynames using Lockon's natural combat skills. Ironically that one did kind of come to pass given Trans-Am Raiser and the 'we're sorry Setsuna became broken' message from the staff after the show ended.

I think the Setsuna thing sort of come to pass with the Twin Drive and all, since that made him the strongest fighter among the four. Exia aka Pawn Gundam was supposed to be weakest too at the beginning but would become the strongest. I think this sort of happened to in some of the descriptions of Exia being a plain suit compared to the other three and their specialties.

I've also heard that one of the reasons why S2 was so different was due to some negative reaction of the Japanese fans about how untraditional S1 was. Given the real life time skip, they certainly had the time to do the alterations. If this is true, it probably won't account all the differences since some stuff like the understanding theme appears to have been developed even in S1 but it does make one wonder how different it would have been. As I said, I don't know how true it is or not but if it is, I do wonder how S2 would have been (despite the fact that I enjoy S2 slightly more than S1 due to some great individual episodes, even if there general storyline is a lot worse)

[JoeD80]

Initially, the idea doesn't exist. To say there's some particular point that's crossed in an idea's conception that suddenly locks it down to "this is the story" and that changes beyond that don't count is a little silly I think. The best writers are the ones that can adapt to changing circumstances and improve their stories as they go. The ideas are still coming from the writer; why is sticking to "original" sought after when "better" can be strived for?

[Amion]

Initially, the idea doesn't exist. To say there's some particular point that's crossed in an idea's conception that suddenly locks it down to "this is the story" and that changes beyond that don't count is a little silly I think. The best writers are the ones that can adapt to changing circumstances and improve their stories as they go. The ideas are still coming from the writer; why is sticking to "original" sought after when "better" can be strived for?

The original question is whether or not a Gundam show has been allowed to complete its story without being canceled or altered fundamentally by outside sources either before running or during any stage of its production. like with 00 and X, where a specific idea was scrapped for complaints about unconventional story or...whatever it was that caused X to fall from Bandai's grace. Since we don't necessarily get to look into the minds of these authors and people we may never know, unless there is record of what took place, like with 00.