>Okada: Planning was underway for IBO a few years before I came in. At that time, I was working with director Nagai on a different show, so I remember we had a little conversation about it, like “I’m going to be working on Gundam.” “Really? Cool!” He’s known for working on lots of stories about adolescence, and he’d often lamented that “I haven’t got enough ‘metal’! I want to do a mecha show!” So when he told me, I went “So you got your wish, huh? That’s great!”

>Okada: The Alaya-Vijnana System and the mafia flavour were ideas that solidified from idle chat between the two of us. So it wasn’t as if the story’s background settings or details were already set in stone when I came in. Rather, there were many bits that crystallised as we talked them through. Even with Mikazuki and Orga, whilst it had already been decided that their relationship would be the centre of this story, it was through our discussions that we fleshed out their personalities and other detailed character settings.

>Okada: Right from the start, we already had “A genius mobile suit pilot named Mikazuki and a group leader by the name of Orga.” But what their characters were like, or what their relationship was like — we didn’t really understand a lot of it until we wrote it out. Especially Mikazuki — the director and I had lots of discussions about “Just what would a bona fide genius be like?” If we turned him into someone who simply loves combat, then he’d just be one of many, so I tried to be careful about the balance there.

>Okada: He prioritises protecting his comrades, his Tekkadan family, and he really stands apart from the norm when it comes to sniffing out when he needs to do that, so his actions in that regard are pretty straightforward. But he’s rather dense in other areas. As a person, he’s missing something. In terms of working out his dialogue, I try to give him words that are rather flat, but which also give a sense of this really deep darkness… I wanted to make it very clear that there’s a hole in him somewhere, so that’s something I paid a lot of attention to.

>Okada: He really respects Mikazuki’s genius, but Mika leaves everything up to Orga’s judgment. That’s the pressure he feels. Furthermore, Mikazuki gradually gains more and more clarity in battle, so Orga feels as though he himself will be killed, devoured if he shows any weakness… He carries that tension with him all the time. A story centred around someone like Orga might actually be really rare. The commander doesn’t actually pilot a mobile suit, so ‘how can we show that he is cool’? That’s something that we also discussed. And Orga’s judgment starts to show some cracks after Biscuit’s death—he starts down a somewhat more dangerous path. But the director told me that he wanted the finale to have something of a happy note, and I was like “what’s to be done with that?”

>Okada: Take, for example, elements such as the relationships between characters like Yamagi and Shino. People tend to think that I’m the one who introduced that idea, but it actually came from the director himself. In fact, you could say that I’m responsible for adding more ‘macho elements’ (laughs). Many of the things that people associate with me are actually Director Nagai’s ideas, and vice versa. That’s something that’s been really interesting about working on this show.

>Okada: Director Nagai’s one line description of the story was, right from the beginning, that “They head to Earth from Mars, stopping by the Dort Colonies along the way.” But the details of the story changed steadily. The side plot with Ein and Lieutenant Crank, for example, was an element that was added later down the track. He also didn’t want to set up any particular actor as Tekkadan’s “clear enemy,” so I was careful to keep that in mind. Instead, they are approached and tossed around by those who want to make use of them. Through this journey, the world around them and the relationships within it change at blistering pace. But even then, Tekkadan doesn’t bend or break. That’s how it was all set up.

>Okada: I saw bits and pieces of the original Mobile Suit Gundam when it was rebroadcast on TV when I was a kid, but otherwise, I’ve only come to it as an adult. Chasing after Director Tomino (Yoshiyuki)’s Z Gundam (1985) and ZZ Gundam (1986)… Oh, G Gundam (1994) is the only one that I saw as it was airing. Just watching the opening animation gave me the feeling that “Something incredible has began”—it was a huge shock to my system (laughs).