Kamiyama Explains The Two-Direction Problem Behind Gundam RG XARX-ZERO
Kamiyama's account makes the shared universe the hard part of the project rather than the tie-in, since the anime and the game were written from opposite directions and had to meet in one setting.
Reporting from 1 source: Anime News Network.
Director Kenji Kamiyama says Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO is a 50th anniversary project built to launch an anime and a video game together in one shared universe, under the name RG Project. In the interview he describes the difficulty of writing anime, which starts from building a universe, and a game, which starts from gameplay, then making both sit inside the same setting.
The production is billed as an effort to present the wider world of Gundam to the Western market, which is where the cross-media structure comes from rather than from merchandising habit. Kamiyama describes the anime side as starting from the ground up: rules for the universe, why things work the way they do, then the story. Games begin at the other end, with gameplay first and everything else built around it. The setting had to be shared regardless.
He also names what any new Gundam has to keep. War is an essential theme, the message is anti-war, and the series is about humans using technology to reach space and how that helps people grow. His own addition was deciding what a new universe could carry that the existing ones could not.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.