Development
The White Base is designed with a 3 plane view method by Kunio Okawara, however, it is not specially designed for the anime series Gundam, it was actually a salvaged design from the anime Invincible Steel Man Daitarn 3. The idea of having a space carrier from the director Yoshiyuki Tomino is partly inspired by the earlier science fiction anime Space Battleship Yamato, in which he claimed to be a fan of. It was intended to be in a more realistic black colour, but was changed to white by the order of Sunrise, similar to the colour change of the main mecha Gundam was changed from a grayish white to white, red, blue and yellow. Director Tomino showed great disgust in the colour change, also noticing the unrealistic non-aerodynamic design of it after the show was on air, said in an interview that such design would never appeared in the real world, since it would be a sitting duck from fighter aircraft. Tomino still held a grudge 10 years after the show aired and stated in an interview in Newtype 1989 April issue that the imaginary enemies of Gundam are Sunrise, sponsors and television stations.
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