Mobile Suit Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino says Hayao Miyazaki has “always been my enemy,” but he won’t let anyone say he’s not an artist.
Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki has gathered a pretty broad portfolio of work under his belt over the years, easily cementing himself as something of an auteur. By contrast, Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino has mostly stuck to the mecha genre, obviously birthing one of the most important anime series around. In a recent interview with FullFrontal, though, he noted how he isn’t an auteur himself, despite creating such prolific work, saying he doesn’t “have what it takes to be an auteur.”
Tomino spoke of how the mecha genre isn’t what he “aspired to initially” but considering his own abilities “there was no other way to go. That’s why the director Hayao Miyazaki has always been my enemy: being in the same era as someone I’d never been able to surpass has become my incentive.”
