Cover for the final draft of the Gatchaman planning notes

 


An image board illustration for the first Gatchaman episode

 


Script cover for the first episode of Gatchaman

 


Scenario for Gatchaman episode 26

 


Script for Gatchaman episode 26

 


An early Gatchaman advertising poster

 


Gatchaman staff and cast photos

 


Tatsunoko film vault

 

 


Unlike many of Tatsunoko's other early series and series pitches, Gatchaman did not have a traditional pilot or any known animation tests done. The program went directly from the planning stages into the production of the first episode. The exact reasoning for this is unclear. Perhaps there there time constraints, or maybe everyone was confident it would work right from the start. "There was no pilot film made," recalls Ippei Kuri, "We presented various drawn pictures and scenes to help introduce the characters." Clearly these were enough to sell the show to the sponsors and get it going, but this move was especially odd considering the importance that Tatsuo Yoshida placed on the project.

Sadao Miyamoto took on the task of animating the footage that would be used in the opening credits. He wanted to make certain the show started off with the correct, realistic look Tatsuo Yoshida wanted. Chief Director Hisayuki Toriumi recalls, "Miyamoto joined Tatsunoko around the time of Decision. He came over to instruct the young animators in the office. The power in the work from the crew at Tatsunoko was largely thanks to Miyamoto." Miyamoto's animation also acted as a guide to other animators on the show and the look they were to strive to duplicate.

Miyamoto gives the credit to the creator though, "Tatsuo Yoshida was responsible for all the original character designs and all the original drawings. I did my best to adapt (Yoshida's) extremely detailed very shadowy, realistic drawings. But in order to make these acceptable or easier to animate, easier to make move, I was responsible for cleaning up the images - tightening up the lines. But other than that, I tried to retain as much of the original images as possible."

An early promotional image

"What made Gatchaman a trendsetting animation compared to other shows in the 1970s, things like Devilman and so forth, was its realism." continues Miyamoto, "We worked very hard to make it a realistic show. We wanted the audience to feel as if they were taking part in what was going on in the screen. We wanted you to feel like you were right there. That's what I consider to be the most distinctive feature of the series."

The visual appearance was extremely important for Gatchaman to be successful. It was a favored production within the studio and nearly any expense that could be spared to make the show look better was allowed. This included more production time, larger budgets, a larger staff and a dramatic increase in the actual amount of animation that was done for the show.

Ippei Kuri remembers the animation cel count of the average Gatchaman episode ranged between 4,500 to 6,000. This was a substantial increase from the normal amount used to produce a half hour program (which could range into the mid to high 3,000 region). Sadao Miyamoto provides more detail, "Basically, the corporate side of Tatsunoko was responsible for assigning the budget to the production side - as in how many cels would be allowed to use per episode. The average was about 5,000 or so in Gatchaman's case. This was very much Tatsuo Yoshida's baby. He wanted it to be good so he assigned a decent budget to it and he approved things like 'Okay, you can run 7,000 cels per episode in this particular one.' We did have time constraints however and this was not always the case."

Effects were also a big part of the program. Various eye-grabbing effects from airbrushed cels, to live-action plates, to experimental lighting and photography techniques were refined in earlier Tatsunoko works, but used here to give Gatchaman its own identity. Sadao Miyamoto explains, "Ninety-five percent of the helmets, at least the visors and stuff was airbrushing. A lot of the smoke effects, the shines on the mechas and the effects on the visors were all done by airbrush. Something else was the realism of the explosions. Back in other animation productions you would see a spiky little plume coming out from the center. I wanted something that was more realistic and more involving, like a real explosion if you'd actually seen one. That was something we focused on in Gatchaman."

The production of Gatchaman was intense, rushed and seemingly never-ending. "I looked over everything," adds Hisayuki Toriumi. "Others would work on individual stories, but I always oversaw them. As many as three scripts would be going on at one time and (they) were always shown to other directors to make sure it all fit together with what was already established. At times, I'd take over and say how I wanted to see something done. To start each episode the director would work closely with me to establish what the episode would be about. Then we'd have the storyboards done." The time to produce a single episode took about three months and the production overlapped several stories and episodes at any given time, so the staff was constantly busy for the entire time Gatchaman was on the air.

Ken and Jun's typical early series appearances

Even though so much was put into the start of the series and the realism of its characters, Gatchaman's beginning had a completely different look than it did at the end. This was partially due to the natural time it took the artists to get used to drawing the characters, but also because a stable of topnotch animators like Masami Suda and Tsuneo Ninomiya were given more opportunity to show what they could do. Both had been at the studio for a long time but were each coming into their own by the time Gatchaman began production. A friendly rivalry developed between the two to see who could produce the most interesting and realistic scenes, and Gatchaman fared all the better because of it.

"It was difficult for a lot of the animators to work with the degree of realism this show required." Sadao Miyamoto recalls, "However, they were motivated and very enthusiastic about it. I had very many high-level animators on my staff and many of them have gone on to become very famous. A lot of it was due to their own motivation. They were very willing to put out what it took to get this thing put together."

By about a third of the way through the series, it had picked up its "look," which kept getting more and more detailed as the series progressed. Not only were the animators more comfortable drawing in a realistic style, the direction by Hisayuki Toriumi was becoming more confident and cinematic. "I enjoyed Japanese films more than foreign ones, but there definitely were influential elements from things like 2001 and Planet of the Apes. There were all kinds of influences from old movies. Tatsuo encouraged all of us to see a lot of movies and he went all the time to see what was new." he remembers.

Tatsuo Yoshida was swamped with work early into the Gatchaman series and he left a lot of the decisions up to Hisayuki Toriumi. As time went on, Tatsuo made fewer and fewer changes. Toriumi says, "After about episode seven or eight, he would only do it if he had time. Someone would peek into his office and ask, 'Want to see it?' Mostly he would correct facial expressions." Most of the upper staff was trusted to make the right decisions regarding the show and were left alone. Even though Gatchaman was his pride, Tatsuo ran a studio where anyone could make creative suggestions. Ippei Kuri points out, "I got to have a say in things and make characters too. Everyone was trusted and the general air was very good. It really was a first-class place." Miyamoto agrees, "Yoshida had a major hand in inspiring the staff to set up things, he was very good at getting them inspired to create this project."

When Gatchaman started, there were no plans made for its end. It was simply going to stop when the sponsors, studio and/or lack of audience decided it would. So when the end of the first year approached, Tatsunoko, Fuji, their partners and Gatchaman's fans were all looking for more. So it was decided to continue production for a time. "There was no real planning on when things were going to start or when they were going to end," recalls Miyamoto. "I started off working on Gatchaman as a freelancer. I figured as soon as it looked like the series was going to end that I was going to go off, you know, 'Goodbye! I'm going somewhere else!' and they grabbed me, like 'Come here, you're not going anywhere! We've gonna do this for two years.' So I was with it for two years. Basically, there wasn't any long-term planning as to how long these things were going to last."

Ken and Jun's typical late series appearances

By the latter half of the series, the more flat and cartoon-looking characters that had begun the run were gone, replaced by versions that had real depth and emotion to their appearances. "Tatsunoko's characters depended on the delicate nuances of their faces." Hisayuki Toriumi once said. The detail in the linework and facial expressions were amazing to watch, and something that directly led to the popularity of Gatchaman.

The writing and the characters were also given the amount of time they needed to develop and present more interesting facts and details. Early unconnected storylines yielded to more intricate and intertwined stories that spanned large amounts of time. The length of the program allowed for many different angles to be explored, left alone and brought back to explore or resolve again months later. For instance, we knew Ken's father was missing early into the run of Gatchaman. Hints and teases were revealed every once in a while, until the plotline was finally settled in episodes fifty-two and fifty-three. Joe mentioned that his parents were killed by Galactor agents in episode eighteen and this plot was dealt with again several times until its major events finally took place in episode eighty-one.

While Gatchaman tended to focus on Ken and his life for the first half of the run, Joe's backstory dominated the second half. Ippei Kuri remembers, "Ken was the one we considered to be the hero. He was probably less attractive though as he was felt as being a little too serious. But as an outlaw and a nihilist, Joe had cool charm and was favored over the hero. Even though Ken is the perpetual hero, he didn't have that certain something. The drama turned over to Joe - people connected with him very well. It might have been that Joe's personality became more appealing unconsciously. When people get older, they are filled with wonder and feel closer to characters they can better identify with. Therefore, the aim turned towards Joe."

One of the more intriguing plot elements, Berg Katse's ability to change sexes, wasn't something that was decided upon in the early planning. Ippei Kuri discusses the reasoning, "That would have been hard to plan from the very beginning! Mikio Terashima's voice acting helped to form the basic impressions of the character. Katse was something of a court noble - one with an image of power that doesn't actually do anything and who wouldn't engage in actions personally. Regarding that, we thought there should be an air of femininity. Katse sometimes appeared in women's clothes and in fan meetings back then they thought that due to our 'intricate planning,' the true form of Katse might be revealed to be a woman."

"In the art department at Tatsunoko we soon had a meeting to discuss everyone's responses, because we sometimes think we may make incorrect choices," continues Kuri, "We quickly caught the interpretations of the fans' voices and we reversed to take things in that direction. The task of establishing this new angle for Katse was put mainly to Hisayuki Toriumi. I was responsible for setting up Joe's situations and that of Katse switching sexes was his- but both became major portions of the latter half of the story."

Not only did this odd change of Katse's character register well with fans, it made him one of the most interesting and remembered villains in animation history. Tatsunoko's writers took his transformations to one more extreme - he wasn't able to fully control when he changed. This added the element of a tortured existence to the already fragile psyche with which Katse operated.

The reaction to Gatchaman at the time in Japan was completely favorable. Children loved the show in the beginning but the audience increased to pull in older viewers towards the end. The realistic style of animation and the decidedly unchildlike plots of the later stories were more than enough to capture the interest of adolescents. Being able to draw more than its intended audience was a major achievement for Tatsunoko and one that won them even more praise and a tighter bond with their broadcast partner, Fuji Television.

Gatchaman showed its last new episode on September 29, 1974 leaving the stunning number of one hundred-five original half-hour episodes. With one new episode a week, Gatchaman had been able to deliver and perform as Tatsuo had hoped. It would come to be a memorable show, a classic in Japanese animation which still routinely makes the lists of top animated programs in the country. To this day Gatchaman is a well-respected and remembered program and it continues to generate public interest and reverence for Tatsunoko Productions.

Even before it completed airing, Tatsunoko was already considering selling Gatchaman internationally. In March 1975, they attended the MIP (Marche International de Programmes) conference in Cannes, France where they presented their works to that point for sale to any interested television producers around the world. It is generally remembered that Gatchaman was available for pickup in 1975. Whether anyone from America looked at it at that point is unknown, but certainly it was never purchased. The same holds true for the 1976 and 1977 MIP conferences, where Gatchaman went unsold again.

However, Gatchaman had been seen in April 1977 by an interested American television executive. He didn't take any action at the time, but when the unforeseen and unprecedented reaction to the May theatrical release of Star Wars hit the industry, this TV executive remembered the exciting heroic Japanese show that Tatsunoko Productions had offered. If he hadn't, a generation of American youngsters may have had nothing more exciting to watch on weekday afternoons than Scooby-Doo reruns.

Next, Coming to America...

 

Special thanks to Gatchaman producer Ippei Kuri, chief director Hisayuki Toriumi, animation director Sadao Miyamoto, animator Yoshitaka Amano, past Tatsunoko President Koki Narushima and Battle of the Planets producer Sandy Frank for their invaluable information and assistance.

 

 

Unless otherwise stated, all program material, situations, descriptions and depictions are copyright © Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd.