Director Kenji Kamiyama, known for his work on Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, and Ultraman, is steering Mobile Suit Gundam RG XARX-ZERO—a 50th anniversary project designed as a large transmedia effort pairing anime and video game within a shared universe.

In an interview with Anime News Network, Kamiyama explained the challenge of coordinating two different media. Anime production, he said, requires building the universe's rules and logic from the ground up before the story takes shape. Games work differently: gameplay comes first, with the world constructed around it. "In a way, it's approaching things from two different directions," Kamiyama noted. "But the universe's setting had to be shared between both media."

Kamiyama acknowledged the weight of taking on Gundam, a franchise that inspired him to become an anime director. He described an initial moment of uncertainty—the pressure of deciding how to approach such an iconic series—before reframing the opportunity as a chance to "create my own Gundam from the ground up."

His strategy: break apart what makes Gundam work, analyze its essential elements, and rebuild it in his own voice. Those elements, Kamiyama identified, include war as a central theme, an anti-war message, and the idea of humans using technology in space as a catalyst for personal growth. The RG Project, he explained, aims to present the wider Gundam universe to Western audiences through this dual-media approach.