A stage greeting for the advance theatrical version of the latest work of the popular anime series "Gundam", "Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuX -Beginning-" was held at TOHO Cinemas Shinjuku (Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo) on February 2nd. This was the first time that a stage greeting was held for the advance theatrical version, which began screening on January 17th, and Tsuchiya Shimba, who plays Shuuji Ito, Director Tsurumaki Kazuya, and series composition and scriptwriter Enokido Yoji appeared. The advance theatrical version was a huge hit, with over 1 million viewers in the 14 days since its release, and Director Tsurumaki said, "It's an advance screening version, and I didn't expect it to be such a hit, so I'm happy. There's a lot of fan art, and I'm looking at it, and I'm really happy about that," and called out, "There are scenes and connections that can only be seen in the movie, so I hope you'll burn it into your memory."
The early cinema version was released on January 17th with some spoilers concealed, and on the same day it was officially announced that Char Aznable and Sharia Bull would be appearing. On social media, fans have been posting their thoughts on the film while hiding spoilers. Among them, Sharia Bull, who is well known from "Mobile Suit Gundam," the first Gundam series broadcast in 1979-1980, has been gaining popularity on social media, where he has been nicknamed "the green old man."
Enomoto seemed surprised by the huge response, saying, "I heard from an acquaintance that 'Green Uncle' was popular on the Internet, but I had no idea who he was. I wondered if there was a character I didn't know about. So his name was kept secret and he was called by that nickname."
Enokido explained how Sharia Bull came to appear in the series, saying, "We had been talking about Gundam for over 20 years, back when we were making FLCL. At that time, we were talking about how it would be interesting to remake it with Sharia Bull as the main character." Director Tsurumaki commented, "Director Higuchi Shinji also seems to have talked about Sharia Bull somewhere, so perhaps there was a sense of that in that community. Sharia Bull only appears in one episode (of the TV anime series), but there may have been a desire to delve deeper into him."
"Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX" is also a hot topic as it is the first collaboration between Sunrise, which is responsible for the "Gundam" series, and Khara, known for the "Evangelion" series. The TV anime series was broadcast on the Nippon Television Network, and a pre-broadcast theatrical version, which reconstructed some episodes, began screening on January 17th ahead of the broadcast.
