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Horus no Daiboken ( Adventures of Horus: Prince of the Sun ), Lupan Sansei ( Lupin the Third ),
both the old TV series and the movie, Cagliostro no Shiro ( The Castle of Cagliostro ), and Mirai
Shonen Conan ( Future Boy Conan ). He has extensive knowledge of military vehicles, especially
the jeeps used by the U.S. military, and has written about this subject in great detail. GAINAX
has published a CD-ROM presenting a 50-year history of the jeep, including many illustrations
handpicked by Otsuka. He even provided the narrator for the release. Incidentally, Mr. Otsuka is
also Yoshiyuki Sadamoto s respected mentor.
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This six-volume OVA series marked Hideaki Anno s directorial debut. It contained all sorts of
elements included to boost sales, such as robots, cute girls, action and sports. The concept for the
show is apparent in the title, which comes from a combination of Top Gun and the title of another
Japanese anime called Ace o Nerae. When the show was planned, no one predicted that it would
be so well-received as a genuine sci-fi anime, and loved by so many fans for such a long time.
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Haruhiko Mikimoto (1959-) Illustrator and character designer. He went from being a more or
less unknown animator to doing character designs and art direction for Chojiku Yosai Macross.
That is one spectacular debut! He was also in charge of character designs for Gunbuster.
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The series portrayed a police squad in the near future who use robots called Labors. It was a
mixed-media project, including an OVA directed by Mamoru Oshii and a manga illustrated by
Masami Yuki. It was later expanded into TV series and movies.
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episode his own unique touch became increasingly apparent. For the last episode,
he did the unthinkable - he filmed the episode entirely in black and white on color
film. Deliberately doing so cost the studio a lot more money, and a whole lot more
effort than was necessary.
During production, the studio became increasingly cramped, and so GAINAX -
along with General Products - moved back to the Kichijoji-Higashi studio, where it
had earlier produced Wings of Honneamise. This studio was three times as large,
giving the anime production staff plenty of room to grow. General Products followed
suit and increased their own staff as well.
Third Sci-Fi Convention
The next Sci-Fi Convention was held in Kanazawa, and of course I attended. Once
there, I was approached by the staff for the following year s Sci-Fi Convention (prob-
ably because I was Chairman of the Fan Group Association at the time) and the
first words out of their mouths were, We can t do it!
You pack of spineless wimps! I felt like screaming. Now that I ve had time to calm
down and think about it, though, I wonder if skipping one convention would ve
been such a big deal. However, my initial reaction was to immediately assemble the
troops - specifically, Okada and Inoue. The three of us decided there would indeed
be a Convention, and that we would host it ourselves. In a way, our attitude toward
those quitters was one of pride, something along the lines of, If you re just going
to give up, then we ll show you losers how it s done!
The decision to sponsor the event had been made in the absence of an executive
committee, and our preparations continued without any organizational framework.
Nevertheless, there were still decisions to be made, like choosing a venue and assem-
bling our staff.
For the locale, we settled on Mizukami Hot Springs in Gunma Prefecture. We
decided to go with a so-called resort-style convention, renting out both a hotel
and the Mizukami town hall. As for the staff, we d recently moved our base of
operations to Tokyo. . . though of course, we looked forward to seeing them on the
actual day of the Convention. Fortunately, other former staff members were already
living in Tokyo, having found jobs there after graduation.
We eventually organized an executive committee, a mixed bunch composed mostly
of former DAICON staffers like myself, and a number of people from the Space Force
Club. Led by Inoue, this cub is dedicated to the works of sci-fi author Masahiro
Noda, who also happens to be GAINAX s auditor. (Incidentally, since Noda refers
to himself as the Commander-in-Chief of the Space Force, the members of his fan
club also give each other military ranks.) These two groups formed the core of our
staff, and we got the rest of the help we needed through our various connections. It
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was basically the same old routine from our DAICON days. The only real difference
was that we were no longer college students.
We decided to dub this Convention MiG-Con 159 in a playful abbreviation of the
venue s name - Mizukami, Gunma. MiG-Con differed from DAICON in that we
didn t have time to formally train the staff. Also, as far as events go, we couldn t
seem to come up with anything too terribly mind-blowing, so we decided to focus
on visual content instead. Now that we were pros, we had plenty of connections in
the industry, and we fully utilized them.
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