Gundam Writers

[Heaven Piercing Man]

Tomino does show up as a writer in some of the early Gundam series under the pseudonym "Minoru Onoya". At least I have heard that Onoya is him (and Tomino has had other pseudonyms like "Rin Logi"). I'm sure Mark can correct me if I'm wrong. Onoya shows up in the credits for a large number of the Zeta Gundam episodes as a co-writer (the first 16 and then about a half dozen more). I don't think he has any individual credits though. That name shows up in the credits for a few of the later episodes for Gundam ZZ as well and a couple of episodes of Victory Gundam.

The pseudonyms are Rin Iogi (for theme song lyrics) and Minoru Yokitani (for writing/storyboards). I've seen the latter also in Turn A and Dunbine, as storyboarder and writer.

Another change was

Spoiler

Hathaway accidentally killing Quess

but that doesn't really have much impact until we get to "Hathaway's Flash"

I remember reading a blog post years ago by someone who had read the novel and gave a general description of what happened in each chapter. IMO, the novel was a bit of an improvement compared to the movie, but if you hated the movie I doubt the novel will win you over.

And unfortunately I do not know of any english translations of the novel

I saved a long summary of the CCA novel from archive.org, I might repost it if you want.
Personally I don't like some things about it, like the psycoframe T being replaced by

Spoiler

Beltorchika's baby going newtype h4x in the womb, giving her a motive to go into the battle with the trashed ReGZ, then not just blocking Gyunei's shots, but also stunning him and summoning the help of all the other federal forces (as Chan's death did in the movie), then Beltorchika then just kills Gyunei (actually called guraabu -I guess Graves- in the novel but it's him). The fetal newtype h4x goes on with the baby saving Amuro by blocking Char's shots, then Belty then crashes into a Geara Doga about to shoot Amuro, and remains out cold until the moment when Axis gets pushed back by the psycoframe overload.

I think this downplays the importance of the psycoframe, which in the novel

Spoiler

came from Gyunei's MS left behind by Char on purpose during the Fifth Luna battle, so there's no letter about "the data being leaked from Zeon" along with the also absent T-frame.

Personally I'd be more stoked about seeing the first half of Hi-Streamer being translated, or hell, made into a prequel manga (because animated would be an enormous stretch )

[zetatype]

I saved a long summary of the CCA novel from archive.org, I might repost it if you want.

If you could that would be great.

Personally I'd be more stoked about seeing the first half of Hi-Streamer being translated, or hell, made into a prequel manga (because animated would be an enormous stretch )

Does the first half of Hi-Streamer explain Char's rise to power within Neo Zeon or something along those lines? Other than Hi-Streamer being the original source material that CCA and the novel were based off of, I know even less about Hi-Streamer.

[toysdream]

On Tomino's pseudonyms: Yep, he does use Minoru Yokitani (斧谷稔) as an alias for storyboarding and scriptwriting. The main examples of this in the Gundam series are...

First Gundam: No script credits (aside from episode 14, under his actual name). A bunch of credits for storyboarding (絵コンテ) and production (演出) - Tomino seems to have storyboarded more than half the episodes himself.

Zeta Gundam: Lots of co-scriptwriter credits - I count about 22 episodes worth, mostly in the first half of the series. (In fact, after the introduction of the Zeta Gundam, the only ones Tomino co-wrote are episodes 21-23, 27, and 31.) Also a handful of storyboarding credits, mostly shared with other artists.

Gundam ZZ: Lots of shared storyboarding credits, but only two credits for co-scriptwriter, covering episodes 44 and 47.

Victory Gundam: A couple of storyboarding credits, and scripting credits for episodes 17 and 45, which were basically just clip shows.

As for Hi-Streamer, this was recently discussed in this thread.

-- Mark

[doghunter1]

As far as I'm aware, Kuroda tends to single handedly do the screenplays for his series but wasn't the sole idea man. During 00, Mizushima mentioned he'd hold drinkng parties for the key staff and that most of their best ideas came when they were drunk.

(Some are now saying 'That explains alot...')

Source?

[HellCat]

To which part? The 'Mizushima held drinking parties' tidbit was revealed via the 00 weekly radio show and would require combing through the archives of Bad Haro, if said fansite even still exists (it switched to being a Star Driver fan blog when 00 ended).

[JDogindy]

To which part? The 'Mizushima held drinking parties' tidbit was revealed via the 00 weekly radio show and would require combing through the archives of Bad Haro, if said fansite even still exists (it switched to being a Star Driver fan blog when 00 ended).

I'd like to know where those archives exist anyway.

Of course my experience of Seiji's "drunken party" story came from a post-show forum where he also admitted to abandoned ideas and that his favorite character was Nena Trinity... mostly since he worked with Kugimiya on Fullmetal Alchemist.

I also want to know who worked the most on individual episodes. Granted, in America, hardcore animation fans can cite guys as obscure as John Swartzwelder, but that's an apples-to-kumquats comparison.