Well, they have to get through some prelude specials first.

Plus lots more about inspirations and name origins, Imagawa's favorite bits, anecdotes about the cast and creators, and lots of mushy sincerity as one would hope from a discussion of this goofy, heartwarming show.

We get some more tantalizing hints about Imagawa's original "Polcarino Gundam" plan, and learn that one of the sub-villains was named after the Bandai executive who killed that proposal and ordered Imagawa to do a nationally themed "Street Fighter" show instead.

Since this year is the 30th anniversary of "Mobile Fighter G Gundam," and a certain Gundam-themed podcast is going to be covering it fairly soon, I translated this nifty interview with chief director Yasuhiro Imagawa from a 2016 issue of "Animage" magazine... www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/produ...

I should mention that the planetarium show includes a bunch of hand-drawn 360-degree virtual panoramas. These were a real head trip to create, but should look fairly impressive on the 75-foot hemispherical screen.

Still exist, just been tied up with real-life stuff, plus a deadline crunch to finish a bunch of extra bonus artwork for the planetarium version of the Everest opera: www.cityboxoffice.com/eventperform...

Now back to work, dealing with family medical stuff, and happily losing myself in Kelly Link's new 600-page novel!

Anyway, there's lots of colorful detail about the production facilities, staff and creators, and the animation process. Plus legendary tales of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's superhuman speed and strength, Yoshiyuki Tomino being boggled by the existence of teenage viewers, alarming fan mail, etc.

These are written by Yoshie Kawahara (aka "Hiroshi Kazama"), who became one of the Sunrise animation studio's few female employees when she began working there as a high-school student in 1975. The columns are roughly in chronological order, so the first half-dozen take us into mid-'76.

This feels almost too obscure to be worth mentioning, but I'm gradually translating the "Coelacanth Kazama's True Stories" columns that have been appearing for the past decade in the quarterly robot-anime magazine "Great Mechanics"... www.ultimatemark.com/gundam/produ...