Tha Shizznit

Patrick and I really did it, I think to myself, triggering the shutter for what has to be my first-ever photograph of a urinal. We've penetrated the inner sanctum. This is where the people who design Gun-Pla relieve themselves.

We're in the Shizz. That's what Patrick has unoffically dubbed the Bandai Hobby Center, the gleaming new high-tech factory in Shizuoka prefecture where each and every Gundam model kit is lovingly manufactured. Bandai set up a personal tour for the two of us after a sake-fueled evening in Asakusa a few weeks back. Patrick's book Otaku in USA made a big splash at the Bandai offices, and my company's been doing translation work for them for years. Now we're being thanked with the otaku equivalent of an audience at the Vatican.

The first (and, as far as we know, only) group of "civilians" to visit the facility earlier this year were Japanese fans selected via an online lottery. More than ten thousand applied. Five hundred were chosen. We are, we're told, the first fresh gaijin meat ever to set foot inside the place.

Actually, that's not exactly true. According to our guide, a horde of crazed French anime fans showed up out of the blue one day several months back, drumming on the windows with baguettes, begging to be let inside via a combination of hand signals and broken English. After a hurried discussion that probably involved a hasty consultation with the local Shizuoka gendarmerie, the management agreed to let them in as far as the entryway. Even that must've been pretty thrilling for a Gundam fan, it being lined with glass showcases containing professionally-assembled samples of Bandai's top kits for the last twenty five years. But they weren't allowed any futher. The Shizuoka facility isn't open to casual visitors. It's a sacred place, hallowed ground for the sort of people who care more about the "One Year War" than the Six Day War.

Photos alone don't even come close to conveying the sense of all-plastic assualt on the senses upon entering the lobby. The displays -- there's easily forty or fifty of them -- are arranged by year, filled with professionally assembled samples used at trade shows back in the day. These are the robots that hooked you as a kid and made you cry when you realized you'd never be able to build and paint them this well.

But we aren't here to see old model kits. We're here to see the heart and soul of the facility. It lies behind a sturdy, card-activated door, sealing it off from the public areas... and the reality of the outside world. Welcome to the "Area 51" of the Japanese toy industry.

Behind it lies the sprawling workroom where employees dressed in simulacra of Earth Federation Forces jackets plan, design, and troubleshoot upcoming model kits, jacked into massive 3-D rapid prototyping stations that let them churn out perfect samples from computer data. Back when Bandai's Gundam kits first strode onto toy store shelves in 1980, the prototypes were all carved by hand from wood by local craftsmen -- descendents, we're told, of the same craftsmen that built Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa's castle here in 1585. It took weeks, sometimes months, for even men as supremely talented as them to assemble a final prototype. Now it only takes a few hours.

We make our way through the Hall of Forgotten Prototypes. Slumbering in a glass case are blueprints for the very first Gundam kit and a mouth-watering selection of products that could'a been but never were. (My kingdom for that giant wooden Walker Galliar or tiny Baikanfu.)

Then we're on the factory floor, home to sixteen cutting-edge injection molding machines in concert capable of popping out some seventy thousand sprues per day. That breaks down into thousands upon thousands of kits. The toy-manufacturing facilities have all been outsourced abroad, but not the models. They're the crown jewel of Bandai's toy line, and the technology is far too important to risk falling into competitors' hands. Everywhere sit giant sacks of plastic pellets, the unrefined base material used to make street-grade Gun-Pla. Stacks of dies await their turns to be mounted on the machines. Some of them look quite old; when I ask, I'm told that they're quite possibly originals, still being used after all these years. Most toy fads peter out after a few years. Bandai's been manufacturing Gun-Pla for more than a quarter century.

In an adjacent work bay a half dozen workers polish and adjust the molds for Bandai's upcoming giant-scale $400 Space Cruiser Yamato kit on lines of greasy tables, like a prison shop class. One genial ojisan, apparently still ineligible for (or uninterested in) parole, is introduced to us as "the man who oversaw the molding of the very first Gundam kits in 1980. He mildly surprised at the crazed twinkle in Patrick's and my eyes, the "big fan of your work, sir," launched in unison in our most cracking fifteen-year-old fanboy voices. How would he have reacted if we hadn't restrained ourselves, barely, from throwing ourselves at his feet?

Amid the din of the machines suctioning plastic pellets from bags of raw material and robotic arms lifting finished sprues from the dies, a pair of beeping automated forklifts shuttles raw materials and finished product around the facility. One is finished in olive drab; the other in red. Both, naturally, feature the cyclopean faces of Zaku mobile suits. They're unmanned, operating under their own initiative as they scurry back and forth between the manufacturing floor and the warehouse.

Robots making robot toys. In a place where the employees wear Gundam unifoms and even the commodes feature the giant hero's trademark red, yellow, and white colors, why are we not surprised?

Comments

[Mr.Dandy]

Ohhh... So industrial... those steel molds are so sharp and hurty, compared to silicone molds I deal with... That's the real way to skin a robot. I love the idea that people would risk being killed horribly by a laser or a renegade forklift to make plamo.

I suspect that toilet seat was shot from the same pellet hopper as the Tekkaman Blade kit. A nice model, and just as nice toire.

[Zer0]

Hey Matt,

heard that they've closed down Bandai Museum in Matsudo, Chiba and moved it to the Shizuoka factory?

[Matt]

They did close down the museum in Matsudo, but they still haven't announced specific plans for re-opening it elsewhere yet. The Shizuoka facility is a very different sort of experience -- it's focused exclusively on the Gundam kit development and manufacturing process, and as a "live" factory isn't designed for accomodating casual public visits. At least not yet.

[Steve Harrison]

Lies! all lies!

Matt, I'm sorry, you and Patrick are part of a massive dis-information event. You were met at the door, knocked out, hypnotized, your camera loaded with false images, all very Black Ops, all very Area 51.

How can I say this? Simple logic. NO WAY a multi-BILLION Dollar international corporation is going to paint the halls as if part of a futuristic base, paint forklifts like robots, put biohazard stickers in the bathroom, have a GIANT BLASTDOOR that employees IN UNIFORMS have to pass thru...

Not to mention no pics of the various un-made Yamato kits. Which were famous for their not being made, as popular and evergreen as the line has been.

So, as you can see, logically, what you say cannot have been. right? right? You didn't walk out with those employee jackets, did you? Hmm? where's your proof? Hmm?

Seriously, I am SO JEALOUS! I await the podcast with intense yearning.

One biggie, that massive Yamato. did I utterly misunderstand what it is? Is it a pre-finished TOY?! Or was that a store demo being shipped out? I thought it was a giant model kit, but if it's a completed toy...and that freakin' COFFIN is its box, that's gonna be a bitch shipping-wise...

[Matt]

As with most of Bandai's "high target" (i.e., luxury) kit products, you don't need glue or paint to put it together, but it definitely comes unassembled. The shot is of a demonstrator they'd assembled from test shots to make sure everything worked correctly.

[Patrick Macias]

While Gundam clearly was the killer app, and Keroro Gunso seems to be what they really want to push right now, there was still just enough Yamato-Harlock-999 stuff in that place to inspire Hot Tears of Shame.

We were told very sternly by our tour guide that had the Yamato kids sold poorly in the late seventies, Bandai would today probably just be a single irate woodcutter living under some train tracks.

Still, I wish they's at least made one room full of circular Matsumoto control portals staffed by people in "here's my dick" shirts and Wildstar bell-bottoms...

[Steve Harrison]

It's the one thing Gundam fans will never accept, that Yamato showed the way, broke the barriers, blazed the trail.

Like many things, plamo were 'event of the moment' items, and like the shows themselves tended to slowly vanish as the NEXT THING bulled it way in, but Yamato proved that kits could be 'evergreen', and that even doing NEW kits for an 'old' (read: dead, gone,dust on the wind) show could be profitable.

My, I do go on, don't I? :)

It's because I cry Hot Tears of Shame for my jealous heart.

[Tim]

Robots making toy robots...awesome! I can't believe how clean the Gundam womb is.

[Tom suzuki]

Hi Matt-san.
Thank you for introducing our factory(Bandai Hobby Center) in your blog.
If you want to go there again, please let me know. I would like to invite you there.And after finish factory tour, let's go to OMAEZAKI to surf! This is one of the most popular surf point in SHIZUOKA.

[Gundam Wing]

Wow.. just wow..