Gundam 00!

[masamuneehs]

MS Gundam 00 official press releases

From Sotsu Agency's official website, the press release for Mobile Suit Gundam 00, the 12th Gundam TV series and the first to be broadcast in Hi-Def. The premise is given as follows:

"The setting is Earth 300 years from the present day, in 2307 AD. The series depicts the protagonist, Setsuna F. Seiei, who pilots a mobile suit (Gundam Excia) for a mysterious private militia (Celestial Being), going against a whole world where conflicts never cease and the struggle to eradicate war."

[i]

Gundam 00 news
The staff:
Director - Seiji Mizushima
Series Composition - Yousuke Kuroda
Character design - Yun Kouga
Animation character design - Michinori Chiba
Mechanic design - Kunio Okawara, Kanetake Ebikawa, Takayuki Yanase
Mechanic concept design - Hitoshi Fukuchi, Kenji Teraoka
Animation mechanic design - Seiichi Nakatani

The main Gundam seems to be the Gundam Excia.

Not sure where they got the info from on the staff... will look into it

edit - well, this is all over the web as official, so I'm taking it as such. Aside from FMA, I'm not too familair with the director's work in the past, but I'm simply glad it isn't Fukuda.

The Animation mechanic designer is the guy who directed the mecha animation in the Stargazer OVA, which I thought was tolerable modern mech action (crap story and too short though).

The only thing I recognize the Series Composition guy from is Trigun, where he did the script. Apparently he's the head of some new writing studio dedicated to anime and manga writing.

Glad to see Okawara still around. That guy's been designing mecha since the first Gundam series. The two new guys were involved in mecha design for Full Metal Panic! and Zegapain, respectively. I never cared for the mechs in Zegapain, but we'll see what they come up with. From the screenshots, it doesn't look so radical of a departure from the norm.

Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is that Yun Kouga is doing Character Design. From the little, sad, emo boy, many people had speculated that she'd be involved. She's best known from her manga and subsequent anime, Loveless, which follows the homosexual relationship of an older 'guardian' and the grade-school youth that attaches to him. I can feel the yaoi fangirls amassing like the forces of Mordor... Obviously this pick signals even more rampant bishounen, a current trend in Gundam, and androgynous teenage soldiers/pilots. Personally, I'm fine with that, to an extent, but it cheapens the "a child fighting a war is a horrible thing" theme, making it the standard for such dramas, not the exception which it is.