Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

In his characteristic lucid style Yasuhiro Takeda wrote:Olympia - the phantom project

It was around this time that Okada suggested we pull out of anime altogether.

None of our animated titles were turning a profit - weren't even accepting any new projects. Our in-house animators were kept on, but found themselves with nothing to do.

Okada was the one who had wanted to mimic the practices of other production companies, but our attempts to treat production in that manner consistently lost money... and now he was saying that we should quit.

You've gotta be kidding me! I thought to myself. You frickin' idiot!

I decided to give Okada a good talking to. I was joined by Akai, who pointed out that GAINAX's involvement in anime was the very thing that gave it its foothold in the gaming industry. Dropping anime in favor of games was precisely the wrong way to go about things. What's more, we were determined to let Anno have another crack at making an anime.

We all headed to Matsumoto to hammer out the details of our next project. The reason we chose that locale was that our brainstorming session would double as a weekend retreat, and we always did those in Matsumoto. Once there, we all began tossing out ideas, and the first major snag we hit was Olympia.

The storyboards for the project were included in the very first collection of drawings we received from Sadamoto, which meant that the details of this thing had already been thought out to some degree. We came up with some good ideas of our own, but thinking back on it, the way that we came up with them was a little odd. We had just started to get a good grasp of the story when somebody piped up, "Okada, you're not helping. Why don't you sit this one out for a while?" Things started getting back on track, but almost immediately, it was "Anno, now you're not helping. Just hang back for a bit, ok?" Finally, it ended up being just Yamaga, Akai and myself banging out the framework for the project. It might have been wrong, but it was the most expedient way to go about things.

But then we hit a snag, and everything came to a screeching halt.

I think if the same thing happened now I'd be able to do more, but back then I felt almost helpless, as if I'd been backed into a corner. Finally, we all agreed that the project was unsalvageable, and the whole idea was scrapped. I feel like it was my fault, that I was inexperienced as a producer.

Following this incident, Okada announced that he would be leaving GAINAX.