This poster shows one of the most popular robot characters in Japan: Gundam. He first saw the light of day in 1979 in the anime series “Mobile Suit Gundam”. Since then innumerable manga and anime stories revolve around him, a Gunpla construction kit was developed based on him, and he appears as a reference in movies such as Ready Player One (2018). Several statues depict Gundam, among others one that is 11 meters high and stands since 2012 in Tokyo’s Oidaba district.

Instead of the multicolored drawings used in the anime, which sought to emphasize the three-dimensional structures, here Gundam is reduced to the grey outline on a red ground that make it seem monumental. The poster advertised the 1995 annual exhibition of the Tokyo Art Directors Club (ADC), a professional association of leading graphic designers that is organized worldwide in local groups. The designer of the poster, Takuya Onuki, uses the figure of Gundam to highlight Japan’s innovative prowess and thus to underscore the abilities of Japanese graphic designers who in the 1990s were due to internationalization increasingly feeling the brunt of world-wide competition.