New Post-Apocalyptic Gundam Anime Inspired by AI Fears

Artificial intelligence anxieties are at an all-time high, and the next anime in the franchise aims to address that topical issue. Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO creator and director Kenji Kamiyama stated in an interview with Variety that he based the new spin-off series on his concerns about artificial intelligence.

RG XARX-ZERO is set in a post-disaster world where humanity was sent into exile after a hostile alien artifact altered Earth’s ecosystem. The series follows war orphan Ray Azumi, played by Takeo Otsuka, who is forced to pilot an experimental Gundam. The survivors of the catastrophe attempt to use the extraterrestrials’ weapons against them through Azumi’s Mobile Suit.

“Can we truly master a technology we did not create ourselves, or will we end up being used by it? It is a metaphor for technologies that humanity is already beginning to struggle to handle in reality, such as AI.”

Kamiyama also discussed other pertinent topics for the project.

“Anti-war is a universal theme; even as the forms and meanings of war change with the times, it remains timeless. The true nature of war looks different from one era to the next. Perhaps it is the unease of the wars unfolding right now.”

Kamiyama is a veteran at reinventing beloved existing worlds. He directed The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, and the Star Wars: Visions short “The Ninth Jedi,” which was adapted into a full series with Kamiyama serving as supervising director.

He explained that approaching an existing franchise requires choosing between what to carry on and what to build anew.

“I try to prepare surprises while taking the utmost care not to stray from that consensus. When that goes well, the sense of sharing the moment with the fans becomes the motivation to keep creating — that’s what I believe.”

When tackling the world-building for RG XARX-ZERO, Kamiyama chose to set the story after a cataclysmic event rather than during it.

“I explored, at the setting stage, the idea that this world too has a time ‘before today.’ I came to feel that rather than spelling out the setting from scratch, it would enrich the story more to let viewers imagine and fill in for themselves what came before today.”

Kamiyama worked with science fiction author EnJoe to establish the world’s sci-fi logic. He described EnJoe as a master who rearranges words through mathematics.

RG XARX-ZERO lays the groundwork for the accompanying Gundam: Rogue Orbit video game, which takes place decades later in the same setting.

Over the last 47 years, Gundam has built a reputation for engaging with weighty subject matter. With Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979, series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino shifted away from fighting aliens to focus on human-versus-human brutality and the cost of war. Because RG XARX-ZERO follows a human-versus-alien conflict, Kamiyama will use this distinct setup to explore the property’s evergreen themes.

Source: Polygon