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Sgt. Frog's Susumu Yamaguchi to Direct Gundam AGE (Updated)
posted on by Egan Loo
The anime studio Sunrise announced on Monday that Susumu Yamaguchi will direct Kidō Senshi Gundam AGE (Mobile Suit Gundam AGE), the latest Gundam anime series which will premiere on Japan's MBS and TBS stations in October. Yamaguchi directed most of the Keroro Gunsō (Sgt. Frog) films, and he also worked as a key animator on Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, Mobile Suit Gundam F91, Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, and the Mobile Suit Gundam Seed titles.
Sunrise also confirmed that Akihiro Hino, president of the game studio Level 5 (Inazuma Eleven, Danbōru Senki), is supervising the story. Michinori Chiba is adapting Takuzō Nagano's original character designs for animation. Kanetake Ebikawa, Junya Ishigaki, and Kenji Teraoka are all contributing to the mechanical designs.
Story
The story will span a century and three generations of Gundam pilots. In the year A.G. (Advanced Generation) 101 — several hundred years after humans migrated to space colonies — an Unknown Enemy (UE) suddenly attacks the space colony Angel and destroys it. The calamity and the huge loss of life became known afterward as "The Day the Angel Fell From the Skies."Seven years later, the war with the UE comes to the once peaceful colony where seven-year-old Furitto Asuno lives. When Furitto loses his mother to the war, he is entrusted with the "AGE Device," a memory unit which has been handed down from generation to generation in his family. On the device are the designs for "Gundam," an ancient mobile suit known as a savior. Furitto resolves to build the Gundam.
In the year A.G. 115, 14-year-old Furitto is at the Earth Federation base Arinsuton on the space colony Nora. For seven years, Furitto has continued developing with the base's engineers, and at last the "Gundam" is complete. The Gundam is equipped with the AGE System, which allows the unit automatically evolve. However, the UE has arrived at Nora, and Furitto must fight in the very Gundam he built himself.
Plastic Models
The Gundam AGE plastic models and figures will have an embedded IC chip so they can be scanned by arcade game machines with a system known as the Gage-ing Link.
Image © Sotsu, Sunrise, MBS
Update: More background information and images added.
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