ShÅji Kawamori
Shōji Kawamori (河森 正治 Kawamori Shōji) is a renowned Japanese mechanical designer best known as the primary architect of the Macross mega-franchise which he continues to lead to this day. He was born on February 20, 1960, in Toyama Prefecture.
He cut his teeth as one junior designer of many in the design studio Studio Nue working for Takara on the pre-Transformer Diaclone franchise, where he is known to have contributed to the design of Diaclone flagship "Battle Convoy" (pre-Optimus Prime) and quite a few of the pre-Autobot Cars, amongst others. Diaclone is a bit of a footnote however, relative to his most famous work: creating and writing the seminal 80s mecha anime The Super Dimension Fortress Macross and nine of its ten and counting sequels, as well as his work on many smaller critically acclaimed productions such as Escaflowne and Eureka 7. Of particular pertinence to Transformers is his design work on the transforming "VF-1 Valkyrie" fighter jet/mecha of the original Macross, which was subsequently ported into The Transformers alongside his Diaclone work as Jetfire.
Kawamori briefly returned to the Transformers franchise in 2006 to oversee the design of a new Generation 1 Optimus Prime toy for Takara's Transformers Hybrid Style line as well as the immaculate jet mode of the original Starscream toy of the nascent Masterpiece toyline.
Known design work
Diaclone
- A decent chunk of the Car Robots subline
Generation 1
- Optimus Prime
- Skids[1]
- Jetfire (via Macross)
Hybrid Style
Masterpiece
- MP-3 Starscream (final version, initial design by Hironori Kobayashi)
References
- ↑ Diaclone concept art in a thread on the conceptual history of Reboost by Pre-Transformer historian Necronomitron on Twitter
External links
- Shōji Kawamori's personal website
- Shōji Kawamori on Twitter
- Shōji Kawamori at Japanese Wikipedia
- Shōji Kawamori at English Wikipedia
