He created Macross and designed Transformers toys: Japanese anime legend Shoji Kawamori
- Kawamori is hailed by anime geeks for his Macross/Robotech series and his mecha designs, some of which became early Transformers toys
- The 40-year industry veteran says he is worried by the change in children’s behaviour resulting from too much screen time
“It was very futuristic,” says Kawamori, through an interpreter, at Wan Chai’s Grand Hyatt, of the 180 metre (591 foot) tall steel and aluminium structure by British architect Norman Foster.
It’s not surprising the Transformers-like building caught his eye. Kawamori is a master of mecha anime, designs that involve giant armoured robots or machines, typically controlled by a person inside the robot, that have invaded popular culture from sci-fi flicks and comics to video games. In fact, it’s hard to think of a more quintessentially Japanese contribution to animation than the giant robot.
While anime geeks around the globe worship Kawamori most for creating the popular mecha anime series Macross (adapted to become Robotech in the West) in the 1980s, he really left his mark on the imagination of children worldwide as one of the original mecha designers for toys that would be included in Hasbro’s Transformers toy line.
Further global exposure came in 2001 when he made headlines for designing an updated version of Sony’s AIBO robotic dog, the ERS-220.