In the opinion of Mobile Suit Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, humanity must take care to protect the planet Earth because, despite our greatest hopes, the prospect of escaping out into the frontiers of space is completely unfeasible.
The 82-year old creator offered his slightly dour take on mankind’s future while speaking with Japanese news outlet Aera Dot in reflection of the 60th anniversary of his anime industry start.
Pressed by the outlet (as machine translated by DeepL) as to what influence his seminal film Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack has had on his career, Tomino admitted, “There is one thing that became clear to me after making films for about 10 years, from Mobile Suit Gundam to Char’s Counterattack. I realized that I was simulating what would happen if humans went out into space to live. My conclusion from this is that it is absolutely impossible for humans to leave the earth and live in space. However, if I denied this, I would not be able to create ‘space battle stories,’ so I continued to create the Gundam series.”
“Because of this, some people seem to think that I have a positive view of human life in space, but it is quite the opposite,” he explained. “Humanity must continue to live on this Earth, and that is why we must take care of the Earth’s environment. There is no way out for humanity in space. I have been making a series called Gundam Reconguista in G since 2014, and in my recent works, I have brought aspects of my true feelings more to the forefront.”
Met with the subsequent observation from the news outlet that “in recent years, private space development, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, has been making progress,” Tomino affirmed in turn, “Private space development has started worldwide, and some people, like Elon Musk, are advocating space immigration. However, I am skeptical about how serious they are.”
“Perhaps they know that it is impossible, but I think they are just advocating a theme to make space development a business,” he continued. “Even if there is no space immigration, the space business will continue to move forward in areas such as launching more satellites and procuring resources from space. In the sense that space development is actually gaining momentum, one might say that humanity is obsessed with ‘capitalism of the 21st century’.”
“But again, I do not think that space is the way out for the human race,” the anime director added. “We have to think about how we can continue to live on the earth forever. And I believe that the theoretical struggle over how to confront the ‘capitalism of the 21st century,’ which is trying to find a way out of the universe, will continue for about 200 years.”
To this end, Tomino then revealed that rather than fearing the reports of that the world population will hit its peak and subsequently proceed to decline sometime in the next century, he believed such an outcome would be beneficial for humanity’s continued survival.
“The space colony that underpins the Gundam worldview was originally a concept proposed in the 1960s due to concerns about a population explosion,” said the series creator. “However, the United Nations now predicts that the world’s population will peak around the year 2100, after which it will begin to decline. This change in the times also seems to have led to the current situation where the space colony concept is fizzling out.
“I feel that the trend is good in its own rights,” he told Aera Dot. “There are some news reports that speak ill of a population decline, but I think it is a very good thing. I think it is a good thing, because we humans will have to use the earth forever. I have been saying for the past couple of decades that the world’s population must be reduced to the level of the Meiji Restoration. If the world population decreases to that level, we can become self-sufficient by adding on to our current science and technology, and we may be able to solve the food problem and so on.”
Closing out his interview with his thoughts on the current worldwide political climate, Tomino ultimately opined, “I am concerned that the current political situation in the world is infested with presumptuous politics.”
“Some people have pointed out that the political situation in the world today resembles that of the ancient Greeks, when we look at it from a bird’s eye view,” he argued. “According to the ancient Greek view of cyclical history, a ‘monarchy’ becomes corrupt and becomes an ‘aristocracy,’ which then becomes corrupt and becomes a ‘democracy’. The democratic government eventually falls into a ‘popular government,’ which then leadsd to a ‘pretender government’ in which unqualified people claimed to be leaders. This is an article written by Terumasa Nakanishi, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University, in Bungeishunju, and it was an eye-opener for me when I read it.”
“The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is a typical example,” he concluded. “Looking at politicians today, don’t you think that the current era is much worse than the Cold War era? I have only a few days left of my life, but I wish the young people living today the best of luck.”
