like G Gundam to an audience resistant of such ambitious changes, creators must instill their own personalities to overcome hardships and make the work unique. By the end of production, Imagawa considered it meaningless to compare G Gundam to other parts of the franchise and disregarded the concept of a "conventional" Gundam series. "This is MY Gundam," he proclaimed, "And I've made a Gundam that I can be proud of." Influences As a film fanatic, Imagawa perceived that referencing world cinema would help illustrate the real world settings in G Gundam. The production staff primarily wished to utilize sightseeing guide books, but found that these books did not show the locations from the perspective of everyday people. The battlegrounds in the first several episodes were conveyed using a number of multimedia works including films by Federico Fellini, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, and Yılmaz Güney; films based on Wong Fei-hung; video clips of the band Swing Out Sister; music by the groups Genesis and Magma; and scenery from Monty Python acts. Each episode's introductory narration, provided by the character Stalker, was inspired by American television dramas such as Star Trek and The Twilight Zone. In the same manner, certain G Gundam character names and their techniques were drawn from films, most prominently the Hong Kong wuxia genre. For instance, the alternate name of antagonist Master Asia, , is named directly after the protagonist of a film of the same title. Additionally, the villain Wong Yunfat is based heavily on Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat, specifically the actor's appearance in the film God of Gamblers. Some elements in G Gundam were taken from other anime and manga. A key scene at the series midpoint involving the Shining Gundam's gold-colored "Super Mode" was inspired by Saint Seiya. Another instance towards the show's climax, where the hero's rivals join him to fight a greater opposing force, was a commonly used motif in Weekly Shōnen Jump comics, most notably Ring ni Kakero. Design Some of the settings in G Gundam were planned using location scouting, a technique Imagawa learned while working on his directorial debut, Mister Ajikko. He stated that this type of research can "upgrade" animation production quality when supplemented by indirect experience from watching films. For the prison in Neo Russia, Imagawa drew from the architecture of the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, which he coincidentally toured one year before G Gundams development. When his