[Kazuo Nakamura] Mobile Suit Gundam Ep. 31 - A Decoy in Space Bigro Production Art (1979) - [中村一夫] 機動戦士ガンダム 第31話 ザンジバル、追撃！ - ビグロプロダクション イラスト＆セル画 (70年代)

 

Items I acquired from an auction before my trip to Hyogo. I scanned these all in at 600dpi, so they are all 4k/HD.

This episode has to be my all time favorite as I'm a big fan of Tokwan (my favorite ace pilot, I hope to acquire some cels of him eventually if they ever show up). Production on this episode marked the end of Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's involvement with the original Mobile Suit Gundam as he fell ill with pleurisy and was hospitalized. To this date, what we know about this episode is that he did the original animation direction and, to some extent, some of the key animation. None of these documents exist in the immediate except for a part of his layout of Tokwan showing Char the Bigro aboard his Zanzibar, and outside of that, everything else is very much a mystery. 

Based on the end credits, one can assume that Kazuo Nakamura possibly drew these in particular, though it could be any of the animation staff. These are, however, the most consistent and as Kazuo took over a lot where Yas left off, we can p r e s u m e that these belong to his hand. Its not for certain. I do know however that he did most of the subsequent work for this episode, such as Tokwan's death and Sleggar's scenes, which are all based on both Yasuhiko's original settei and, in turn, lost layouts. 

This is the biggest grail item for me imaginable, and I have many more I got my trip proper to share when the rest actually arrive. These range from Yasuhiko's hand drawings for Combattler V, Gundam production art, and some other odds and ends from both Sunrise and Nippon Animation Studio. 

Youtube (You can actually see a video I did covering this more w/ more animators mentioned HERE! )