NYAF09: Yoshiyuki Tomino’s Keynote Speech

As you all might already know, Yoshiyuki Tomino was the number one guest at Tomino-con 2009, also known as New York Anime Festival. For those of you who don’t know Tomino, he is the man who invented Gundam and directed a large number of its shows. Not only is he known for being the creator of Gundam, but other great shows like Raideen, Zambot 3, Space Runaway Ideon, and King Gainer. When given the time to speak, Tomino speaks, he has a lot of things on his mind to unleash to anyone who would listen. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out, like the case with this keynote speech; which can be described in one precise phrase, “awkward silence”. The reason behind this silence is due to problems in translation, which I can freely admit, must be one hell of a hard job.

Frankly, the translator took awhile to get his ‘sea legs’ working, and by the time he got decent, everyone in the crowd wanted to drop a colony on him. Luckily, he was backed up by two other translators. Now, the rumor I heard around the con was that someone on Tomino’s staff did not want a female to translate for him, so they got a guy; but the guy wasn’t as good as the other female translators. But once again that’s just a rumor.

Part one is his entire speech, plus a few questions from fans, while the second part are the rest of the questions; including the infamous “ Gundam 00” question. Unedited for your pleasure! (and so that you can suffer through the long bouts of awkward silence like I did.)