Talking with Ichiro Itano

[labsenpai]

In November, I had the chance to attend SugoiCon and meet reknowned Macross Animation Director Ichiro Itano. To date, I've travelled to see every industry guest related to Macross that has appeared at a convention close enough to drive to (from Ohio). I don't have a recording of his panel, but I'll continue with some interesting tidbits he talked about:

Itano loves the Macross mecha. He discussed how VF design elements have appeared in current prototype fighters, like the thrust vectoring "feet". He explained in detail how the "Itano Circus", his famous missile cluster scenes, were composed of rockets with different targeting/guidance mechanisms. I learned that the original concept arose from his experimentation with attaching bottle rockets to his motorcycle! Lastly, he revealed that the infamous Budweiser rocket (from DYRL) was a result of long hours and the presence of a Bud at his work desk.

Itano's favorite projects were the Macross Plus Movie and Macross Zero. The most troublesome seemed to be the first Megazone OAV. He doesn't have a problem with computer animation, but training a CG artist to be a proper animator takes two years. The CG model of the VF-0, the one that transforms completely in Ep 1, was about 800,000 polygons. In order to have multiple craft on the screen at once, the polygon count had to be reduced to 40,000. When asked about Macross7, Itano said that he was approached by Kawamori about the project, but declined after seeing the "mouths" on the mecha. I'm guessing that the mix of fighter plane and musical instrument was distasteful.

I must add that Itano's panels were poorly attended. I felt that I should've apologized on the behalf of the mature fandom community. I did my best to keep the discussion going, and I know my effort was appreciated. After the autograph session on Sunday, Itano took extra time to draw a sketch of the VF-0 for me and a friend that also participated. Truly, a blessing for this humble fanboy...

[Global]

Thanks for the report. I would have loved to have gone to the con but I didn't find out about it until a few days before and couldn't make it.

Sadly, it seems that most of todays fandom is not interested in the older shows. When I went to the Ishiguro panel at AX last summer, there couldn't have been more than 15 people in the room.

[polidread]

wow! it couldve been great to have attended and really hear from Itano-san.

no chance for him to show up here in clunky little Manila city for our anime cons tho XP