Gainax Pages reviews The Notenki Memoirs
by Yasuhiro Takeda

August 2005, 191 pages, ADV Manga
buy at Amazon.com

“Whaddaya say… you do here?”
-- Office Space

The Notenki Memoirs, originally published in Japan in 2002, is a memoir by Yasuhiro Takeda, a longtime producer at Gainax. After reading nearly 200 pages of what is essentially a business memoir, however, I am hard pressed to say what, if anything, Takeda ever did at the company.

He started out as a student running sci-fi conventions, developed a relationship with Hideaki Anno and the crew who created the Daicon animations, ended up working at a model kit store, General Products, and eventually joined Gainax when the store got folded into the studio. What he did at Gainax is a mystery, but he remains there to this day.

A “producer” is someone who supplies or raises money for a production and oversees the creative people who make the actual anime, but, according to his memoir, Takeda was a miserable failure in all of these capacities. Due to his complete ignorance of the rudimentary basics of accounting and tax law, Gainax was convicted of massive tax evasion in the wake of Evangelion and its company President, Sawamura, carted off to jail. Under the worthless management skills of these same men, the company that boasted the visionary talent of Hideaki Anno and created such classics as Gunbuster and Nadia could barely even remain in the black.

In sum, after reading The Notenki Memoirs, I am convinced that the problem with Gainax has always been a lack of experienced business people handling the management and day-to-day problems of running a successful business. Men like Takeda are to blame, and his memoir reinforces the recent statement by Business Week that, despite its global visibility, the production of anime remains an immature cottage industry.

So what's in this memoir? Due to the fact that Takeda never took a creative role at Gainax, there is little information that illuminates the creative process behind our favorite Gainax shows. The first half of book details the rise of amateur sci-fi fandom in Japan and the creation of the Daicon anime shorts and Daicon films. There are some interesting details about how Yamaga, Akai, and Anno created Daicon III and IV, but also a lot of inconsequential memories regarding the petty politics and minor problems of running various sci-fi conventions.

It is not well-known that Gainax created a number of live-action films, including The Return of Ultraman and Patriotic Taskforce Great Japan! The information that Notenki Memoirs contains about these films is invaluable. Before this book’s publication, English-speaking fans have had almost no reliable facts about these obscure bits of Gainax history.

The book’s second, shorter half chronicles Gainax’s move to Tokyo and the creation of its various anime, including a number of aborted projects we never knew much about. The details about each production, completed or not, are pretty thin—a grand total of two pages is devoted to Nadia. The book closes with a roundtable interview of the original three Gainax founders, Anno, Akai, and Yamaga. They are only asked about Takeda, however, so not many details about the productions or themselves are revealed here, either.

The Notenki Memoirs is not the Gainax bible some (I) had hoped for, but it is a quick, cheap, enjoyable read that fills in some gaps about Gainax history. Our entire knowledge of Gainax was based previously on a handful of translated scraps that end up on the internet or magazines, and it is valuable to have 200 pages of material straight from the horse's mouth. Also, if Notenki Memoirs sells well, it will encourage ADV and other companies to translate similar material. FLCL novels -- do I dare to dream?

Links

Gainax: Kaiketsu no Tenki - The book's title is a reference to the Daicon film Kaiketsu no Tenki, which Takeda starred in. Info on Kaiketsu no Tenki with tons of images of Takeda looking silly here.

Japanese profile of Takeda

Takeda's online photo diary - Takeda has infrequently maintained an online photo diary at the Gainax site.