Tomino: "Gundam world is unrealistic"

So bascially Tominos become a grumpy old man who instead of yelling "get off my lawn ya punks" yells "get off my lawn ya day dreaming hippies! Gundam is'nt real"
 
*head-desk-slam*

Google translate makes the article rather opaque and confusing. For God's sake, it falsely attributes the Gundam UC novels to Tomino. Please, please tell me that this wasn't what this guy relied on to verify what was said. He also inexplicably omits the alleged translated quote that ""the cylindrical space colonies that appeared in Gundam or could happen..." before the skepticism is expressed about humans being able to live in colonies for a very long time.

This makes all the difference in the world. The blog's version of events interpret Tomino's comments as "haw haw, forget it, we'll never go to outer space!" The full context may well illustrate the topic being taken at least somewhat seriously, albeit with skepticism on a point on which reasonable people can disagree. So yeah, I'll be interested to eventually find someone else's account of what happened.

Personally, I think that our space activities of today make it very easy to doubt Gundam's future. We haven't gotten beyond building oversized labs in space with a minimum of living space. Shoot, we haven't gotten beyond our old shuttle designs. In the course of a few centuries, though, I discount nothing. It's almost insane how drastically things can and have changed.

As for drawing Gundams and all that, I think he overestimates the extent to which people actually hope for giant robots walking among us and blowing things to kingdom come. But hey, this is Tomino. He's old and has never exactly made it a secret that he's never been completely at home with his unexpected success.
 
People feel UC is more realistic about how war is shown. Thats relative to the newer gundams because UC is also not very realistic at all itself. Whether thats true or not, who knows.

I think Tomino said it best, "its just an anime". Theres a big difference with enjoying the idea of lots of colonies in space and making that a reality.
 
SounRAB like he's getting tired of the Gundam questions. He DID create Ideon, Dunbine, and Brain Powerd also, yet 99% of the questions interviewers throw at him are Gundam-related. I guess that's understandable, though...
 
Tomino is all but confirmed as bi-polar. In one interview he'll tell us we should look to Gundam for answers, the next he'll say Gundam is useless and he hates the audience for making it into what it now is.
 
I agree with Tomino to a certain extent. Some of his comments though seemed a tad harsh. He does seem to contradict himself, as has been mentioned.

EDIT:
However, I never took the concept as seriously as some other anime fans that think the Gundam universe could be applied to real life. Especially since man has hardly been back to the moon in 40+ years.
 
UC Gundam (and Gundam in general) is decent science fiction, but Tomino is right, it's very unrealistic. It has these broad sweeping ideas about peace (almost always espoused by cute young women from wealthy families) that tend to comically simplify politics and neglect the little man. These ideas are enforced by exceptional kiRAB (almost all of them extremely hanRABome) who kill any dissenting enemies with fantastic superweapons. Any character who has a streak of gray morality in them is either killed off or forced to stand with the good guys and discard their pragmatic beliefs... for the greater good!

The one series that came closest to tapping into real world problems was the first season of Gundam 00, but even there Sunrise threw it out the window by the end for more of the same old plotlines we have seen for the past three decades.

To be fair, we do the same crap here in the West as well. Star Trek and Star Wars are far greater offenders on this point than Gundam, and yet still have countless legions of diehard fans who apologize for the numerous flaws of their franchise.
 
It can be said about Star Wars, Star Trek and all fiction, that it is not real. That is what makes it fiction. (Unless Heinlein was right about his 'world as myth' theory. But that is another matter.)

Anyway, just because it isn't real doesn't mean that people will not be inspired to create wonders based on those series.

For example, go back and look at the Sickbay on the original 1960's Star Trek series. Look at patient rooms in the U.S. hospitals today. We are already there in reality right now.

And Tomino always struct me as the "Alec Guinness" of the mecha franchises.
 
A lot of the more recent Gundam AU shows are more hard science than UC Gundam. Lagrange points, the concept of space elevators, and the development of orbital solar panels are real.
 
To be fair, science does change with history. The UC shows based themselves on theoretical space science of the time just as much as a show like 00 does now.
 
I know many of you are aware of this but I feel it is a good time to bring it up:

And Paul Cousins has already brought up Heinlein so...
 
NO NOT THAT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

If Tomino believed that Gundam was unrealistic because of the Giant War Robots, rapid human evolution, and psychic human abilities , that would be understandable.

However, the fact he believes that human living on O'Neill colonies would not be able to live 30 years in space is not possible is just silly.

And what does Tomino mean by "environment won't permit it?" Sure, today's tech, it would be hard for anyone to live in space. But give enough time and research, and we could survive (in theory at least). That's not impossible, in fact, it very probable.

BTW: Avoid the Rama sequels. In fact, avoid anything Clarke wrote after The Fountains of Paradise. It goes downhill after that.
 
Just bringing up the design of the Rama spacecraft themselves not the literary quality of Rendezvous with Rama or any of its follow-ups.
 
Oh, sorry about that My automatic defenses (ie. geek rage) activates when I see the sight of horrible sf.

On topic, good point Anyone00. If Aurthur C. Clarke uses a design, its scientifically plausible. Guy predicted the first use of communications satellites, and wrote books on space exploration. Heck, he even popularized the idea of Space Elevators in "Gardens of Paradise'.
 
I love Tomino's rants. It always gets a certain contingent all lathered up in anger, and the rest of us are sitting back and chuckling, "Oh, that TOMINO! Teehee!"
 
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