My Story   -Background to Meet VF-2SS Valkyrie II-

One day in my childhood, I was just sitting in front of TV without purposes. It was about 6 pm, a super robot hero I've never seen before suddenly appeared on TV screen fought against bad mechanical beasts.

I had no information beforehand, so I was subject to a strong impact and instantly drawn into the SF robot animation world. It was the very historic day when "Mazinger Z" was broadcasted first time in the world.

Accordingly, various superb robot animations were broadcasted such as "Raideen the Brave" by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, "Danguard Ace" by Leiji Matsumoto, "Demon Dragon of the Heavens Gaiking" with the dinosauric mother ship, "Blocker Army IV Machine Blaster" like a Super Sentai series, "UFO Warrior Dai Apolon" like an American football player, "Combattler V" with the reality of combine and transform sequence, and so on.

I was really lucky to directly experience a lot of exciting design works in my childhood in Japan. For these several years, I was given strong intellectual stimulation.

When I became a low teen, I had got interested in guns as a closer practical weapon. As possession of a real gun is prohibited in Japan, my interest ran to model guns.

At that time, model guns were only available as full mechanical imitation models at very expensive price. Therefore I could buy "Monthly Gun", the unique gun magazine of the time, every month, but afford to buy one model gun once for a few months. Trough magazines and model guns, I learned styling, usability, functions and ingenuity as an industrial product and a hand weapon.

A hand gun is small but very functional and full of inventiveness. Its every line and shape is designed for the clear purpose. Guns wear the functional beauty as the same as military aircrafts.

In a junior high school, I was not interested in TV animation. One day I visit a friend of mine and found one anime magazine "Monthly OUT". 

On the cover page, there was a white robot standing still armed by a gun and a shield. I had no background information, but immediately recognised its advanced concept and unique design work far ahead of the super robots in my childhood. Yes, it was the the Gundam RX-78.

Unfortunately, TV programme was not planned to broadcast in my local region. So, another friend of mine started collecting petition signatures to ask a local TV station to broadcast. I also joined to watch the impressive robot in action. As the result of that, its TV anime programme started successfully but from 06:30 a.m. in the morning. We had to enjoy a healthy life for a year.

This anime series must be the most famous in the world. So I will comment about one scene with the same impact as Mazinger Z in my childhood. That is the scene that Saku was shooting with a machine gun of dram magazine type and spent giant cartridges were falling to the ground.

Theoretically thinking, it is strange that advanced weapon in the age of space colony is still using a gun with cartridges. There must be no progress from now. However, this rendering was very effective for us to recognise the reality as "robot is a weapon".

The anime plot of Gundam is just for anime fans. The greatest value of this programme is the realistic description of robots as bloody weapons no longer super heroes.

Gundam fever had gone and I was busy to enjoy Karate, Japanese Calligraphy and 8mm movie creation during my high school life.

Through TV listing on newspaper, I just noticed a new robot anime would start. I sat in front of TV without particular motive.

A few minutes later, I was surprised that two legs had come out from a flying fighter, and successively transformed to a humanoid robot.

This was the first Valkyrie designed by Shoji Kawamori appeared on TV first time.

Kawamori further developed the weapon concept established by Gundam and realised the rational and smart transformation from the F-14ish military aircraft to a future humanoid weapon. This is his only and greatest achievement. His other works such as Macross anime plots or film directions are not worthwhile to be counted.

There were two notable points on the design of "S Gundam".

One was a face design that had big slits on both right and left sides. This was the same taste as the side slits of Ferrari Testarossa that was unveiled on October 1984. It was the strong eye catch of the styling of Testarossa (see the photo of 1/43 model).

The other is breakage of my ready-made ideas. S Gundam had two big nuclear fusion reactors on the shouldars and the upper body had heavier volume than the lower body. I felt it strange because the first Gundam had a rather stout proportion standing on the ground. However, as S Gundam was a weapon in space without gravity, theoretically any proportions could be acceptable.

I have a special fondness for Ferrari Testarossa. I saw it first time in Geneva, Switzerland when I was on business trip. It was the real Ferrari I saw since 1970s supercar boom in my childhood.　Its styling was drastically changed from Ferrari 512BB and I felt the new era of supercars was opened up. Both Testarossa and S Gundam affected my perception of designs.

A few years later, I was transferred to The Netherlands. There was no internet yet and it was more difficult to catch the latest information of Japan than now. Although I enjoyed visiting model car shops in Europe, I was not familiar to Japanese animation.

One day in Amsterdam, I found an exotic toy shop along the canal. I was interested in Star Wars figures and entered the shop. When I climbed up stairs, I saw a very cool Gundam plastic model. That was Bandai's 1/144 V2 Gundam directly imported from Japan by the shop owner.

I didn't imagine that the Gundam series were still continued. During my stay in Europe, there were 4 Gundam animation series broadcasted in Japan. I didn't know all at that time.

The box art of V2 Gundam was excellent. So I bought it immediately although it was rather expensive because of private import. Later I knew that the designer of V2 Gundam was Hajime Katoki who designed S Gundam. V2 was simpler in styling than S. It must have been designed for purely animation, not for an independent 3D model like Gundam Sentinel.

In 1998, I was back to Japan from Europe. I wanted to know the missing 4 Gundam series and bought a book "Super Robots View Broadly Ver.98". It was very nice book.

I enjoyed checking various robots. However, my eyes were glued to the page 105. There was a Valkyrie that were much beautiful than the first Valkyrie and sharper & simpler than V2 Gundam. 

"Macross II....?", "Valkyrie II....?" What is this stunningly beautiful robot? I didn't know such an excellent mecha design created in Japan during my absence!!!