Yoshiyuki Tomino

Yoshiyuki Tomino (born 1941) is the creator and original director of Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), the franchise that launched the “real robot” genre and grew into one of the most commercially significant properties in anime history. A prolific writer and director across five decades, he is one of the medium’s foundational figures.

People sense what is real

In a 2025 interview with the Japanese outlet Toyo Keizai, Tomino argued that machine-made animation will not easily surpass human work. His reasoning rested on perception rather than technology: humans, he said, instinctively sense authenticity and can tell when something is fake, and he predicted that people would eventually reevaluate AI output and return to analog line drawing.

Elsewhere he warned about over-reliance on the tools, cautioning that if you try to lean on AI for everything, “your whole world will become imaginary.” His stance is less about prohibition than a bet that human discernment is a durable check on synthetic art.

Tomino’s optimism about human perception sets him apart from peers who fear displacement outright; he places him in the anti-AI camp not through protest but through a confident dismissal of AI’s ability to lead the medium. Compare Hayao Miyazaki and Gorō Miyazaki.