The Blue Destiny makes THE ROBOT SPIRITS tremble!

From "Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story: The Blue Destiny," RX-79BD-1 BLUE DESTINY UNIT 1 and MS-08TX[EXAM] EFREET CUSTOM finally join THE ROBOT SPIRITS ver. A.N.I.M.E.. We focused on the Sega Saturn game trilogy, where they were first introduced, and the setting sketches drawn by Kunio Okawara. The Blue Destiny has become popular and has appeared in many games and comic books, but we have chosen to sculpt the figure after its first depiction. Producer Hirofumi Inagaki and Director Masahiko Tokushima, who both were involved in the development of the Sega Saturn version of the game back in 1996, took a look at the Blue mobile suits, with some project details supplied by Planning Manager A.

――How do the two of you, who were involved with the Sega Saturn games in 1996, see THE ROBOT SPIRITS version of the Blue Destiny?

Tokushima:  It was based off the the key visual from "Mobile Suit Gundam Side Story II: Heir to the Blue" on the Sega Saturn.

Inagaki: It's pretty cool, isn't it?

Tokushima: The early game version, the Blue Destiny Unit 1, designed by Kunio Okawara, has a large visor area. It's quite similar to the face of the GMe. Since then, quite a few people have revised the visor to be narrower, emphasizing its role as a main character's mobile suit.

Image left: Key visual at the time / Image right: ROBOT SPIRITS

Inagaki: Hajime Katoki's "GUNDAM FIX FIGURATION" version had a narrow visor.

Tokushima: Of course, both designs have their fans, and both are cool! Whenever a new game comes out, it's always hard to decide which one to go with.

Inagaki: Right, that makes sense!

Tokushima: I'm sorry, but I'm always aiming for a nice middle ground [when a new game comes out]. If you look at it from below, it looks wide, and if you look at it from above, it looks narrow.

Inagaki: In that sense, I feel that the size of Efreet Custom's head has been properly interpreted. The shoulders are not too big, and it feels like you are very faithful to the early design.

Manager A: I was very strict about it. And also the proportions and such.

Tokushima: Its proportions are unusual. We don't often see such a form construction or such a unique bodyline from the waist to the thigh area, so it's very interesting.

Inagaki: Yeah, it's pretty cool!

Tokushima: The head is large and long. It's also good that the expression changes depending on how you look at it from the front and from the side. That's something you can only get from a 3D model.

Inagaki: Both angles make quite different impressions.

Tokushima: There's a pattern of releasing more and more items in the Efreet series and having fun with their differences, right? Anyhow, it's really surprising.

Manager A: The BLUE DESTINY UNIT 1 has a fairly wide range of motion in the waist. It's a drawer-type joint, and by raising it one step and turning it, you can produce some agile movements and poses.

Inagaki: It looks good.

Tokushima: Surprisingly, the Federation Forces's mobile suits lack bellows structures. Recreating the bellows in three dimensions ends up with them inevitably becoming flat, so prepaing the joints is difficult.

Inagaki: The "Gundam" series tends to mostly focus on the designs of core fighters. Are the bellows unique to the Blue Destiny?

Tokushima: Recently, there's also been the Atlas Gundam from "Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt." It has a jointed body that applies the technology of Zeon's amphibious mobile suits.

Inagaki: Blue is the pioneer of bellows units in the Commonwealth (laughs).

――How do you like the coloring?

Tokushima: Again, as someone who has made iterations of the Blue Destiny, I always get various opinions from individual users. As for me and my vision, I think this coloring is outstandingly.

Inagaki: I also like the matte texture.

Tokushima: Of course, there are people who prefer much deeper blue.

Inagaki: That's compliant with the first game.

Tokushima: But the variation in the blues helps to differentiate the EFREET CUSTOM.

Inagaki: Ah, differenciation. With digital technology at the time, the color can look quite similar.

Tokushima: They do, don't they? Yeah, this is perfect. In many cases, the coloring of the chest tends to lean toward black, but it looks good with this more purpleish color. The bright blue color is slightly green, so it has a synergistic effect, which I think is really good. Is that the color you had in mind when making the game? The EFREET's color is also very nice.

Inagaki: Its blue color is also very nice.

Tokushima: It feels exactly as drawn. The missile pods are also properly painted, even down to the smallest detail!

Manager A: Well, it's an important spot.

Tokushima: It's clearly a combat-type mobile suit, but one strong impression from the game is it desperately shooting missiles while running away.

Manager A: The EFREET CUSTOM you're looking at now [at the time of the interview] is in the first prototype stage of the production. The coloring is still being adjusted, but the color of the shoulders is the red from the game. In fact, with UNIT 2, which is currently under consideration to become a figure, I would like the shoulders to be the same as EFREET CUSTOM.

Inagaki: I was surprised! Like "ah, there's a beam saber here!" (laughs)

Tokushima: It's the same interpretation as ground-type Gundams.

Inagaki: The game is in cockpit view, so you can't really see it. The game doesn't know where the beam saber is stored. At that time, there were many convenient places.

Tokushima: Yeah, that's right. Weapons were not fixed so there was a lot of freedom.

Inagaki: That's why the player only has the opportunity to see their own mobile suit in event and movie scenes. Maybe that's why the Sega Saturn era had fewer polygons, so it was easier for users to imagine. Conversely, since now you can make it quite realistic, there's no room for imagination.

Tokushima: Truth be told, compared to the level we can reproduce now, [movies] were about the level of a slideshow.

Inagaki: Because the number of polygons is limited even in the scenes with little movement. I think we did the best we could to make a three-dimensional recreation based on the interpretation we had at the time.

――Please tell us your thoughts on the reproduction of the wired missiles.

Inagaki: They're amazing. They're the coolest parts.

Tokushima: They can be switched out, right?

Manager A: That's right; they've been recreated to be interchangeable. We were also particular about making sure the wire material could be adjusted at any desired angle.

Tokushima: Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you.

Inagaki: That's lovely.

Tokushima: The Blue Destiny has been modeled many times, but there has never been one in which the missiles have been reproduced.

Inagaki: It is a gimmick introduced because it's a finished product. I don't want to repeat this (laughs).

Tokushima: There's a story [behind it]. At the time, due to the nature of the game, I had a consultation during the design process, in which I said I wanted as many fixed weapons as possible. In a cockpit view game, there's a limit to how many weapons you can hold, so it was more convenient to be able to separate the shooting weapons into fixed parts on the main body. However, once that door was open, we ended up with too many machine guns and vulcans...

Inagaki: Was that when you ordered the illustartion from Mr. Okawara?

Tokushima: Yes. At first, the missile areas were gattling guns.

Inagaki: Ah, that's right.

Manager A: Really?!

Tokushima: I asked if we could add missiles somewhere since there were too many of the same weapons. He set it up as a construction that allowed weapons to be switched out as a sort of multi-launcher.

Colors were also limited in the game, so in the beginning, I asked Mr. Okawara to use the same color for the waist and thighs.

Inagaki: Normally, I don't tell the mecha designers how to color things (laughs). But I asked Mr. Okawara at that time and he willingly agreed.

Tokushima: Wasn't that around your first or second year (after joining the company)?

Inagaki: I think it was my third year.

Tokushima: I myself had just been in the industry for about two or three years, so I didn't understand anything at all. I had no idea what to do (laughs). It was a period of trial and error and struggling, with so many changes going on back then. It was also my first experience with a 3D game.

Inagaki: I asked Mr. Okawara to design a game-original mobile suit based on a ground-type Gundam.

Tokushima: There were rumors that the Gundam Ground Type design that Mr. Okawara personally wanted to do was reflected in the design of Blue Destiny Unit 3 (laughs). He finished the drafts really quickly, right?

Inagaki: I was really thinkful he completed it so quickly.

――Are there any poses you want to recreate using the missiles?

Tokushima: In the game at the time, people used to often shoot missiles to make the enemy flinch, then would jump over their head and unleash a series of attacks from behind. It's a showy technique, so to speak. That fake-out, which at first glance seems useless, seems to suit the Blue Detiny.

Inagaki: Definitely. It looks really sharp.

Tokushima: When the Blue Destiny appears in the game, the missile is often the starting point for attacks. There may not be a clear category for the Federation Forces MS during the One Year War, but it's like a so-called assault type mobile suit. In terms of Zeon [mobile suits], it's closer to mobile suits such as the Kämpfer.

Inagaki: Although it looks very heavy at first glance, it becomes extremely fast when the EXAM system is activated. It's a little strange (laughs).

Tokushima: Well, it's occult. Gundam is a sci-fi work that surprisingly includes the occult. The Unicorn Gundam's NT-D system and EXAM system have a high degree of compatibility in terms of that setting.

――How is the EXAM system reproduction in THE ROBOT SPIRITS?

Tokushima: It's amazing. I thought the visor exchange mechanism is quite novel. In the previous figures, it was a surprisingly large-scale interchangeable part, so there were times when I wanted to make the entire face interchangeable instead. I like that the parts of THE ROBOT SPIRITS items can be switched around just like changing the hair of a character figure.

Manager A: If you switch it, the eyes will be red.

Tokushima: When I make my own the Blue Destiny (Gunpla), I always end up going with red eyes.

Inagaki: I know what you mean! I use red eyes too.

Tokushima: At the time, terms like “berseker” were all the rage. That was the of the influence of a certain “New Century” character (laughs). There was also a time when everyone wanted to do a berserker or something like that.

However, if anything, since we were making a game, we were more interested in a power-up concept than following the recent trends. At first, I was imagining a controllable power-up rather than a berserker mode. Like a Gundam version of the V-MAX from "Blue Comet SPT Layzner."

Manager A: This time, we are also particular about the EXAM system of the EFREET CUSTOM, so we designed it to have the mono-eye, which is an effect of the special EXAM activation.

Tokushima: EFREET CUSTOM's EXAM activation is hard to distinguish, isn't it? With the BLUE DESTINY, you can tell at a glance that EXAM is activated, but with EFREET CUSTOM, it's hard to tell. It's just that the red of the mono-eye is a little darker.

Manager A: There might have been no plan to feature the EXAM system in the EFREET CUSTOM figure, so this was something I definitely wanted to recreate. I was very particular about it.

Tokushima: In certain situations, there are things you definitely want. Like, PREMIUM BANDAI has these logo plates recently. Don't you want an EXAM system activation one? I want to put it in front of a THE ROBOT SPIRITS figure. Like, "EXAM system standby..."

――So far, many mobile suits have joine THE ROBOT SPIRITS. Are there any that you would like to make fight with the BLUE DESTINY or EFREET CUSTOM?

Tokushima: In terms of affinity with the Blue DESTINY, the one I'm most familiar with is the mobile suits from "Mobile Suit Gundam 08M Platoon" (hereafter "08").

Inagaki: You used to watch a lot of Gundam OVAs when you were making games.

Tokushima: That's true. I also used the movements of the mobile suits in "Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory" as a reference. But in terms of world's genealogy, "08" has a stronger connection.

Inagaki: Because of the ground combat, right?

Tokushima: In terms of the genealogy of the special EXAM system, it'd be interesting to display it with the UNICORN GUNDAM.

Inagaki: Ah, that would be interesting.

Tokushima: The only difference is the overall height. The UNICORN GUNDAM would be like the big brother. For EFREET CUSTOM, GOUF CUSTOM would be the big brother. It seems like it's the "warrior" type mobile suits (laughs).

Inagaki: I think the EFREET would want Norris to pilot it too.

Tokushima: Well, it's an Ace MS. In addition to the Gouf type, it's probably surprisingly compatible with the Dom type, since it's located in the middle in terms of model number.

Inagaki: We're looking forward to future developments in the "ver. A.N.I.M.E." series.