Zero Desigze!!! (Total Intelligence Report)

Zero Desigze lives!  This long-awaited project has a habit of popping up and then disappearing from the radar just as suddenly.  Anyway, it’s just gotten a pachinko game, but an anime will definitely follow later on.  The game website is [here].  I have translated practically everything that the site has right now.  Thanks to Captain Harlock for breaking the news [here].

To whet your appetite watch the promo vid below:the first 3 minutes deal with the universe of Zero Desigze, the last 2 minutes with the mechanics of the game [boring stuff to most of us].  Practically all of those first 3 minutes is footage from the promotion movie and the interview in the site.  Translations follow.

There are three main buttons on the site.  I’ll go from left to right.

A. The first button links to a movie promoting the game.

First, we hear a (male) narrator saying: “It is said that long ago mankind stepped beyond the Solar System and traveled through the Galaxy.”

Next, we see a woman in prayer [probably Itsuki Almighty, see below].  We hear her say: “Let us go together in search of a future without bounds.”

The narrator says: “[This is] a story about the historical time when technology and [biological] life came into close contact.  It is called…Zero Desigze!!”

Then all hell breaks loose.  We see a massive space fleet battle [very Yamatoesque], with lots of people yelling stuff.  I honestly can’t catch it all but here are some of the things said.  A woman yells: “This is an emergency situation!  The fleet is under attack from an unknown force!”  A man yells for the Zero Desigze Fleet to launch.  There’s an image of a robot and [I think] someone yells “Gattai!” [ohh, big robot baby~].  A villainous fellow (Wogner, see below) says “I will seize everything!”  We see combat planes and several big robots fighting.  A woman reports that enemy planetary fortress is launching missiles.  There’s talk of cannons, including a Universal Cannon.  A man (Ichiro Haya, see below) yells that he will protect humanity and then roars “I am Zero Desigze!”

Itsuki Almighty of the triple-hearted Ardis!!!

B.  The second button goes to an interview with Leiji Matsumoto on the pachinko game.

Question: Tell us about the birth of this project?

Answer: I’ve written many works over the decades, and now I wanted to express my own tastes, as much as I could fit, into this work.  This is something that I developed spontaneously, naturally.

Question: Could you give us some highlights?

Answer: You will see a lot of things popping up on the screen at the beginning: characters, robots and so on.  I want you to enjoy all of these relationships and how the game is built around them.  When X shows up then you find how it relates to Y.  The more you play the more you’ll understand.

Question: How will this project develop further?

Answer: I have a plan to air this story in animated form in the future.  I have never liked short stories that one reads and puts down when they’re done.  I like stories that go on forever, stories on a grand scale.  Therefore I’d like this animation to be long as well, something that people can remember years later and look back to as a fun experience.

C. The third button leads to a screen with information on the world of Zero Desigze.

Here’s a translation of all the text on-screen.

The main blurb:

“Master of the Anime World (master works: Galaxy Express 999, Space Battleship Yamato, etc.) LEIJI MATSUMOTO

ZERO DESIGZE: Zero Desigze is the form of a new humanity, the product of a fusion between humans and the unknown high-energy Trinity ore.  After an incident that leaves him badly wounded, Ichiro Haya is brought back from the brink of death by a mysterious scientist as Zero Desigze, who will fight for the future of mankind.  The year is Imperial Date 2222, the setting is the vastness of the universe, the curtain on the battle of chosen begins!”

Now, the character names and titles.  I’ll start with the character names in red [the good guys?]:

The battle robot: ZINBA

The man in green: Ichiro Haya, member of the Zero Institute [this is a guesstimate, kanji are so small!]

The man with the white scarf (or lobster bib): Gene Gardner, Zero Spirit Squad Squad Leader

The woman in pink: Asahina Almighty, Chief of the Medical Team

The woman in mustard yellow and gray: Itsuki Almighty, Space Battleship Himiko Captain

The old man: Doctor Zero

The little blue robot: Browser [this name is pure genius, really]

The character names in gray [the neutral guys?]:

The masked man and woman: Siegfried and Brünnhilde, Captains

The character names in green [the bad guys?]:

The man with the cape: Wogner, Earth Central Government Generalissimo [not Wagner, but close!]

The man with the necktie: Zeno Nambu, Nambu Heavy Industries President

The woman with the purple collar: Melaina, Secretary to the Generalissimo

The text at the bottom of the screen reads: A story about the still unseen future universe.

***

I’m psyched about this.  Space Battleship Himiko looks cool, and the female captain is great.  The crossover from the Nibelung manga is awesome.  The project even has its own song (you can hear on the site) and the singer is the same man, Ichiro Mizuki, who did the original Captain Harlock theme song!!  This is being billed as the “Master Leiji Matsumoto Compilation”, echoing his statement that this is going to include a bunch of stuff that he likes.  Anyway, it’s awesome!  Hopefully we’ll hear more about this at the next Leiji Summit in July.  The forum link above has links to a lot of footage from the game, more promo vids and several images.  I especially like this one:

The cinematic scenes in the game totally rock!  Leiji says in the interview that he has no plan to quit and will continue working.  He also says the traffic accident he had September last year slowed him down for a while but he’s perfectly fine now.

~ by Haloed Bane on April 15, 2012.