You're listening to season 11 of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of sci fi mega franchise Mobile suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
This is episode 11.9, London falling and we're your hosts. I'm Tom and I don't see why everyone is so mad about Manon helping Chapman in battle. I think it's sweet when couples do things together.
And I'm Nina, new to G Gundam and given the way age works in Gundam shows, willing to guess that Gentle Chapman is supposed to be 38 years old. As an ad free independent podcast, Mobile Suit Breakdown is made possible by our paying subscribers Subscribers. No new patrons to thank this week, but thank you to all of our longtime and returning patrons. You keep us Genki this week we
are covering G Gundam Episode 9, Kyoteki Eiyuu Chapman no Chosen or Powerful Enemy Chapman's Heroic Challenge Originally broadcast on June 17, 1994 the storyboards for this episode were done by Narito Naako, but it's the only episode of G and one of only two episodes total credited to that name, so it's a fair bet that this is a pseudonym. The rest of the production team are familiar faces. Guest star Gentle Chapman was played by Nakata Kazuhiro. He's been in a ton of stuff, but we know him best as Victory Gundam's Dooker Eek Sasaki Rune provided the voice for his partner Manon. She was prolific in the 80s with prominent roles in Crusher Joe, Blue Comet, SPT, Lazner, Galactic Drifter, Vifam, Super Dimension Sentry Orgas, and Super Dimension Fortress Macross, among others. But here at MSB Studios, we know her best as the voice of Princess L in Aura Battler Dunbine. Incidentally, her daughter was the English voice of Mewtwo in the Detective Pikachu movie and provided additional voices and in Requiem for Vengeance. Now the play by play.
Good evening Gundam fight fans throughout space and around the globe. This is GSPN and you're watching Fight Central, the source for in depth Gundam fight news and analysis. The recent draw between three time Gundam fight champion Neo England's Gentle Chapman and Neo France's George desand continues to fuel rumors and speculation. Though the John Bull Gundam had the Rose Gundam on the ropes, Chapman was unable to finish his opponent, failing to destroy the Rose Gundam's head even at near point blank range. Was it an illness injury? Is the veteran fighter losing his nerve? Anonymous sources describe Chapman taking considerable amounts of medication, but what that medication is or what it treats remains unclear. Neo England's Gundam fight team and Chapman's personal staff did not respond to requests for for comment. Chapman has been at the center of multiple suspicious circumstances and conspiracy theories. This Gundam fight. Multiple eyewitnesses have claimed they have evidence of rules violations, specifically that other mobile fighters in the vicinity may be supporting the John Bull Gundam. And what about the dense fog that has appeared out of nowhere for each of Chapman's fights? Is he a savvy competitor, taking advantage of his knowledge of the local weather?
Or.
Or is there something more sinister at work? Gundam fight officials are investigating reports of interference, and we've reached out to local weather experts about the fog. We'll have their report on the hour. In the meantime, the Gundam fight continues. Neo Japan's Domon Kashu has arrived in England for his next bout. Things seem remarkably cordial between the two competitors. They went out together for a night of gambling at a local casino, and Neo England's Gundam fight team put the Neo Japan team up in their opulent London house. In keeping with Chapman's reputation for dignity and decorum, he then invited Kashu and his team for pre bout refreshments, hosting tea at the Chapman family manor just outside the city. Still, in the end, there will be a winner and a loser, and these two will fight with everything they have. Our producers are telling me that the fight has begun. We interrupt this program to take you to our live correspondent in London. Take it away, Tim.
Thanks, Nona. In their opening clash among the ruins of old London, the John Bull Gundam and Shining Gundam appear evenly matched, testing each other's strength. Oh, and the Shining Gundam takes an uppercut to the chin from the butt of the John Bull's long beam rifle. But Kashu recovers quickly, ducking under a haymaker and landing a brutal kick to the body. The John Bull Gundam is knocked off its feet. The Shining Gundam now moves in to press the advantage. I can't believe it. The thick fog is back. Our camera crew will do their best to get a good angle on the fight while we wait for the fog to clear. Here on the ground, we can only hear the fight. Explosions, shots, the crash of mobile fighters into buildings and into each other, but have no way to tell what is happening between these two opponents. Civilians fleeing the scene are describing multiple identical mobile fighters that do not match the description of the Shining Gundam or or the John Bull Gundam. But who can be certain of what they're seeing with such poor visibility? One even claimed to have seen the Rose Gundam, though we here at GSPN and Fight Central know That George Desand is recovering from injuries sustained in his last battle. More shots now. And what looks like. Yes, muzzle flashes and there's. Oh, I don't know if you heard that folks, but there was just a huge crash. The ground shook beneath our feet. I think one of the Gundam fighters must have fallen. Things have gone strangely quiet now. And whoa. A pale green light is shining through the fog. Could this be the now famous Shining Finger Attack? There's another earth moving crash and the light has faded. We're. We're gonna try to get closer to the action. Bear with us, folks. The fog has begun to dissipate and we can. We can just make out a headless mobile suit on the ground. And it's the John Bull Gundam. Yes. Domon Kashu and Neo Japan have won this fight. Gentle Chapman has been removed from his mobile fighter and is laying on the ground held by his wife. No reports yet on his physical condition, but one thing is certain. This marks the end of Neo England's ambitions in the 13th Gundam fight. Back to you, Nona. Even an old man whose whole deal is being good at gun shooting cannot resist the masculine urge to go palm to palm, mano a mano, in a contest of grip and determination.
I have to give a shout out to listener RJ from Pittsburgh who emailed us to let us know that this is very common at the beginning of professional wrestling bouts and is referred to as a test of strength and is a way of setting expectations for the rest of the match. RJ gave the example that in the test of strength, if the babyface is stronger, then the heel will usually end up doing something underhanded or illegal later.
And indeed, that's exactly what happens in this episode. After their test of strength, they exchange blows and Domon gets the better of it. It's only when Chapman has been kicked to his knees that Manon activates the cheating system.
And on the other hand, if the heel is stronger in the test of strength, it shows that they're this like, force of nature that the babyface will have to overcome with intelligence and skill. Skill, which I believe is what happens in the first fight with Argo.
Yep.
So thank you very much, rj. I know we're gonna need to do a lot of research on professional wrestling at some point, but it's so big a topic that figuring out how to carve it up into pieces we can manage week to week is a bit tricky, but we will be talking more about that certainly as the season goes on. Oh man, this was such a good episode.
I'm glad you enjoyed it so much. What was your favorite part?
Trying to think of how to sum it up in a pithy way before we, like, get into it, you know?
Sure, take your time. I'll edit all of this out. The listeners will have no idea how long you should think how long.
I was thinking about how to say this. This feels like a very narratively significant episode within the series as a whole, because here we have this older couple who have been doing this for a long time, much longer than Domon and Rayn have been doing it, basically trying to give them some perspective and advice about this life that they have just embarked on and what both of them have to say. And both of their perspectives have a lot of relevance to these specific two young people. And I'm very curious. Curious to see how it shapes their behavior going forward. I do have some predictions, and we'll get into the specifics, but narratively, across the series as a whole, to take these two and be like, here is a possible future. I found that very enjoyable and interesting.
Wow. It took you, like, no time at all to come up with all of that. Hey, turn to camera. Wink.
How would you sum up your favorite thing about this episode? Or did you not like it?
The John Bull Gundam is really cool. See, I did that in, like, one sentence.
If your response is going to be, wow, cool robot. Yeah, that's very easy to sum up.
But, Nina, the robot is cool. Wow.
I'm not arguing that with you.
That's good, because if you said that, you'd be wrong. It has a cool gun. It has a cool, like, kind of unique mobile fighter silhouette. None of the others quite look like this.
It has a royal guard hatch. Because like I keep saying, the best way to make the designs cool is to give them all little hats.
Yep, everybody's got a funny hat. A regionally appropriate funny hat. This one is based on the bear skins currently worn by the guards at Buckingham palace, but traditionally worn by grenadiers. It almost looks like if this were a different Gundam series, the John Bull Gundam could be like an enemy mook suit. It could be like a grunt. And I always have a lot of affection for the grunt suits. So I guess it would be like the. The commander custom unit. And then the other, the dummy suits would be like the real grunts. The real gyms. I also like that it has. It feels like it has a different design philosophy than all the other mobile suits we've encountered so far. Mobile suits? Mobile fighters.
Wait, how do you mean?
Well, to me, it looks like it comes from a different generation of mobile suit development. In the same way that the mobile suits from Zeta look different from the mobile suits from first Gundam, that there is a different aesthetic, a different philosophy behind their design.
Do you think that that was done on purpose, or do you think it was just designed by a different designer?
No, I think. I'm pretty sure all of the second tier importance individual country Gundams were all designed by Okawara.
Okay.
Whether he intentionally made this one look older, I don't know. Now, before any of the lore experts start adding me about this. Yes, I know the John Bull Gundam is supposed to be new for this tournament, but Chapman did use the same Gundam for the first three tournaments he was in, and the John Bull Gundam is based on it. So I feel like I can say that this is an older model with an older design philosophy that has been in use for like three generations of Gundam fight.
Well, more even. Because if he once upon a time won three consecutive. But he didn't win the most recent one, because we know Hong Kong won
the most recent one, right? So four. At least four.
At least four. So at least 16 years and quite possibly more.
Definitely more. Actually, stick around for the research piece.
Now, there's no reason in particular to think that a country wouldn't update their Gundam Fighter over the course of that time, but by making it look old, it really ties into this whole metaphor they have going for. Is he technically England's Gundam fighter or the United Kingdom Gundam Fighter?
They say Neo England. Neo England. I have questions and thoughts about this.
Interesting. But it's basically all a metaphor for England's role on the world stage, right? That they're clinging to their past, that they used to be so dominant and used to run the world, but now they're surrounded by all their old laurels and like, kind of unwilling to let it go, but they also just don't have that kind of power in the world anymore.
The depiction of London here is consciously echoing the depiction of Rome in the first episode. This is a city of ghosts. This is a city of ruins and remembered glories.
I did really love. London has this reputation for really dense fog. But the really dense fog that London used to get was because of industrialization. It was because of burning coal both in factories and to warm people's homes. So the fact that ultimately the fog is coming from these special giant fog machines. Absolutely perfect. Chef Kiss. No notes.
The giant steampunk industrial peanuts.
And again, the. The dummies and the fog all hearken back to the Industrial Revolution again. A time of English sort of dominance economically, but at this point, an awfully
long time ago, long past. Yeah, they do say he is the Gundam fighter of Neo England. Manon mentions that the T is from Wales. Manon is also a Welsh name. Sometimes it's French, sometimes it's Welsh. They're names of different origin. Convergent evolution in language. But G Gundam was made before the big, like devolutions of the late 90s. But are the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom still under the sway of Neo England? Or is there a Neo Scotland? Is there a Neo Wales? How is the Neo Scottish Piper Gundam doing? What about the Gwydian Gundam of Neo Wales? What about.
And while we will get into the more personal implications of this later, the win at any cost attitude that Chapman seems to have adopted and that his wife seems to share with him feels like it could be a jab at England that, like, in clinging to their past glories, they have become like, cheats or bullies. I don't know if it goes that far, but.
And I think it's fair to say that every Gundam fighter is the personification of the nation they fight for.
Yeah, I mean, it feels pretty pointed. Not even pointed. It's just explicit. Right. When George Desant says Chapman used to always fight fairly, that he used to have this great dignity to him, that his fighting style and just like how he behaved in the world was an ideal that a young knight might aspire to, but that he's become bloodthirsty, that he's no longer the man he was.
And this is not limited to the Gundam fight.
Right. They cheat at cards.
Even they cheated at cards, they're impolite at tea.
Domon starts that.
Mmm. Domon is a little bit antagonistic, but Chapman is the one who pulls a gun on him and throws his teacup at him. Whatever happened to the stiff upper lip? When someone is impolite to you at tea, you make a cutting remark, you don't pull a gun on them.
I did very much enjoy the dramatic irony even earlier of Domon being like, cheating won't help you in a Gundam fight. Ma. Little does Domon know, at that point,
Domon is not even willing to believe George when George accuses Chapman of cheating. But let's not move on from the card cheating quite so quickly. If you read older English literature, for a gentleman to cheat at cards is unthinkable. For a gentleman to be accused of cheating at cards, just accused is like.
That's like A dueling. Those are dueling words.
That is a tremendous insult. And if not responded to appropriately, that would be like the death of your social life. You would never be welcomed in polite company again.
Having been caught at cheating, he would never be allowed into this casino again. Also, why is his wife a car dealer?
One gets the impression he owns this casino.
Oh, well. Hmm.
I love that. When Domon and Rain have been taken into their custody, they are placed in what I assume is Chapman's intimidation suite, the place he puts you to impress upon you how strong and good and cool he is. Because it's where they dump George also.
Yeah, well. And it has the very large, very sort of classically posed portrait of the couple on a castle, it looks like, but also photos from Chapman's younger days. Trophies, medals, awards of all kinds.
We've always devoted a little bit of time to the emblems, the blazons on the chests of each Gundam fighter. Chapman's is one of the most simple we've encountered so far. It's a heraldric shield. For all the heraldry fans out there, this is a party per bend sinister or. And vert. It doesn't appear to correspond to any, like, actual heraldry. So I don't think there's anything that fits exactly this description. It's made up the. The Chapman family, I guess.
Speaking of design in the episode, I appreciate that they get very clever with how they use their animation resources, which is to say there are a lot of scenes that are just pans over a still or other more sort of simplified scenes. And then there are moments that are gorgeous. There were moments where, if you're watching closely, you'll just go, wow, that looked incredible. That looks so good. But it's not the whole episode because they can't afford it. They don't have the time or the animators to do that.
There's a repeated motif of characters superimposed in front of gigantic images in the background. Chapman with the John Bull Gundam in the background. Or there's one that's really striking of Manon with just Chapman's face, massive, towering behind her.
What could this mean?
This small, proud woman overshadowed by the massive presence of her warrior husband?
Or not even overshadowed, more like dominated. No, it's to the extent that he has devoted his life to the Gundam fight to the John Bull Gundam. She has devoted her life to him,
as his self is small in the shadow of the John Bull Gundam. She has made herself small in the shadow of gentle Chapman.
Your choice of words really feels like it's emphasizing to me like a disempowering of her. Whereas I think her conversation with Raine and this is so good. They cut from the fight to this control room, and the sound design changes. I don't know if you noticed. It goes from all the big, loud explosions, crashing, crumbling buildings, shooting, whatever, to very quiet, but with these little, like, electronic beeps and squeaks in the background. But in effect, what Manon says to Rain is, this is who my husband is. I have accepted that he is who he is. Yes, he is selfish. Yes, he is going to fight to the death, regardless of what that does to me, his wife. But I made my decision to support him. I decided that that was what I was going to do. It really feels like she's telling Rain, Domon is not going to change. Domon is who he is. You need to decide for yourself what you want to do, what you can live with and act accordingly. But accept that this is who he is. Accept that he is not going to stop being this way, even though it hurts you, even though you hate it. I would say that she's decided her desire to be with gentle Chapman and to support him is greater than her desire to try to save him or protect him.
But how do you square that with the visual imagery we're talking about, with the small figure against the larger one?
Well, because for both Chapman and his wife, at a certain point, it no longer felt like a decision to them. At a certain point, it felt like a curse. And I think they're wrong. You can always change your mind, and it is never too late to change your life. But he talks about how, like, young people have all these options. A young person can go out and do anything. He's like me. I've been fighting my whole life. What else am I going to do? She's been with this man, her, you know, her whole adult life. What else is she going to do? They've made choices, but they also feel trapped by those choices. And they bring up a couple different reasons why Chapman feels stuck. First, Chapman mentions, by the time you realize there will always be someone stronger than you, it's too late. Which kind of sounds like he's saying, no amount of winning is ever enough. No amount of winning will ever satisfy you. There's no point at which you win completely and you're done, you know? But at the same time, his wife, in what feels like a callback to older Gundams, describes him as, like, covered in the scent of gunpowder, that, like, the scent of battle will never leave him. And he talks about it as though he would maybe like to give up this life, but can't. And that's a super old narrative that shows up in westerns, that shows up in samurai movies of the like, really great, really dominant fighter who's tired of the bloodshed and wants to give it up. But they have such a reputation. All these young guys keep coming after them to prove themselves. Like all these young guys want to be the person to take out the famous gunslinger, the famous ronin.
Throughout the early portion of the episode, really up until the conclusion, Chapman and Manon are presented as not exactly ideal, but as a very compatible partnership. They understand each other. They understand what the other one wants.
They communicate without saying a word, just look at each other and the other one knows.
And they are collaborating in this project of winning the Gundam fight. But as the episode develops, it becomes increasingly clear that they are missing something about the other one. Most obviously, Manon is wrong that Chapman doesn't know about all of her machinations. He reveals at the end that he's been aware the whole time that the fog and the dummies were her handiwork and that he was willing to accept it for the sake of the advantage it gave him in battle. And what becomes clear about Chapman is that while I think Manon believes he is addicted to the fight and addicted to winning, actually Chapman is terrified of losing. The difference is very important. Throughout the episode, Chapman dwells on this idea that where there is a winner, there must be a loser. He's always thinking about the loser when he's talking to Domon later, he dwells on the losers, the weak being left in the mud. He dwells on the humiliation. Domon picks this out a couple of times in the episode, Domon repeats, oh, I don't like to think about what might happen if I lose. That's not a consideration for me. I'm just thinking about what I need to do to win. Domon has not yet developed this terror of losing. When Chapman talks about how as a young person, all you need to do is fix your mind on what you want and then run towards it as fast as you can. He envies the fact that young people just focus on the victory and don't think about what will happen if they lose.
Young people have greater risk tolerance because they have time to recover. The older you get, the less time you have to fix things if things go wrong. And related to that terror of losing that you mentioned at the end, Chapman expresses that he feels intense pressure as a Gundam fighter that he has to maintain this image of invincibility for the public. And maybe in his case, that's true, but we've seen that that's not true in the case of, say, Chibidi, when he lost, the crowd was cheering for him to get back up and keep fighting. Yet Chapman feels like anything that tarnishes his invincible reputation means the public won't love him anymore. He doesn't. Well, but he doesn't seem to care about the public loving him so much. He almost talks about it as though, like, I'm doing the public a favor by appearing invincible and being this hero for them. I'll be letting them down if I
lose that he is an emotional support champion. Whether literally true or not, narratively, Chapman has not been defeated until this moment. And is it really as bad as he worried it would be?
He almost seems relieved.
He is relieved.
He's the one who's like, you have something to fight for too, don't you? So go on, Take me out of the competition.
Not for the first time. Defeat for a Gundam fighter is freedom,
because the fight is a cage.
Even when the defeat is not total. Like when Domonic fights to a draw with Argo, it literally results in Argo's freedom from the prison. Speaking of being liberated by defeat and the opposite, Rain gets kidnapped again. Yeah, actually, let's go through the episodes and count up the kidnappings, because kidnapping is now the perhaps the dominant theme of G Gundam thus far. Episode one, Rome, the little girl gets kidnapped.
Mm.
Episode two, New York. Bunny gets kidnapped.
Yep.
Episode three, China. Domon gets captured. Not really kidnapped. Do we count Rayn being taken hostage by the two monks? A kidnapping?
Yes.
Okay, so we're what, three episodes in? We're three for three on kidnappings. One, Rain kidnapping. Episode four, Paris, the fake kidnapping of the princess. Fake kidnapping. I think this counts. She kidnaps herself, but I think it counts. She winds up tied to a tree. She's imperiled.
And not a kidnapping. But they do lock Rain in that bathroom.
Well, I think we can agree that imprisonment doesn't automatically count as a kidnapping. And so I think episode five, Alcatraz of Russia, in which Domon is imprisoned. I don't think that counts as a kidnapping. Okay, out of five episodes, four of them have featured kidnappings. Episode six. Here we go. We might actually call this Domon being kidnapped. He gets drugged, dragged off to space.
Yeah, I would say that's a kidnapping.
Okay, Episode seven, Neo Mexico. Is there a kidnapping in this one? I don't think so. Domon Gets captured.
Yeah.
Arguable.
Arguable. He does get drugged, right?
He does get drugged repeatedly. But he's not being held to lure
someone else in or for any other
episode. 8 Canada Raine gets kidnapped.
And I suppose in this one it's arguable whether this counts as Raine being kidnapped or merely captured. Because they capture her with Domon, they're not holding her separately to like use as leverage against him.
I don't know. To me, this feels like a kidnapping.
With the two guys pulling guns on her.
No, her being. Her being like knocked out by a punch to the solar plexus and dragged to Manon's secret underground brick cave so
that she can't interfere with Manon's interference. I thought this was a bit of a change from how Rain has behaved and her characterization in previous episodes. She's still as competent and intelligent as she always was, but she's playing the goofy anime girl.
Yeah, there's a little play of that
when the guys pull the guns on her and she practically does the little fingers to head tongue sticking out like oh, silly old me tripping so that she can grab that pill and see what it is.
That one at least is a put on. That one is a charade. The first seems rather more earnest, but
could also be a charade in terms of like seeming harmless. You know, I felt like it even came across with her and Domon when they're stuck in that room and she's having the same discussion discussion that she always has with Domon, but has decided to take a somewhat different tack. Her tone is not that she's scolding him. Her tone is that she's flirting with him, not trying to completely change his behavior. She's just trying to moderate it when she's like, if you're going to wild out, you could do it just from the cockpit of your Gundam. Okay, please. Or I'll leave you again.
It's an effective technique. It gets past his guard. He's not prepared for it.
It's. It works. He responds to it in a much more positive and less defensive way.
Also, like, they had a big fight in the last episode and they made up. He made a great like, dramatic gesture to show how much he cares about her. And the. The problem, the fissure in the relationship has not actually been solved. No, but they're trying to make it work. And you know, sometimes after a fight, you are especially lovey dovey with the other person to show that despite the fight, your feelings have not changed. You try especially hard to re knit the bonds of sinew which have been damaged. I think that's exactly what she's doing.
When Manon talks to her husband about inviting Domon and Rain for tea and he's like, oh, you like him, do you? I immediately thought of Ramba Roll.
No, I'm professionally obliged to point out that this is a Ramba Ro. Hello, Ramba Roll. English version.
Manon says, he's just like you. This gets echoed at the end of the episode when holding her now dead husband, which I should have assumed he would die when he was like, when this is all over, let's move to Mars. She says to them, having recognized that Domon is very like her husband, she says to them, this could be your future, but it doesn't have to be. This is one possibility, but this could be you. Like, if Domon and Rain's relationship continues as it is now without any major changes, I think that is more or less the direction it's going of him fighting until the day he dies and Rain just supporting him while he does that.
But I think all of them fail to see something in Domon. I think they're wrong. And maybe Chapman was more like Domon when he was younger. Like, maybe Manon is right that Domon is a young Chapman on the same path. But I don't think so.
I don't feel that I can gauge without knowing more about what Domon was like before he became this fighting champion. And before his mother was killed, brother disappeared, father put in cryostasis. Because one way of looking at Domon's personality in this show is that he's like this because he's on this mission of vengeance and that when that gets resolved, his reason for fighting will go away. But at the same time, he was already a fighting champion, just not the Gundam Fight Fighter. So I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, Domon doesn't seem to have the terror of defeat, but maybe that's just youth. Maybe that's how Chapman was as a young fighter. We're told by George that Chapman used to be like the ideal Gundam fight hero. And certainly all the young fighters seem to look up to him. And I guess that's what lingers about the episode, the feeling that no, Domon wouldn't be like that, Couldn't be like that. Look how different they are. But time changes all of us. Maybe the gentle path of Chapman does lie before Domon. It's certainly not difficult to imagine Raine with all of her gadgets and cleverness and devotion to Domon. Being willing to make the kind of compromises that Manon has made, and even
if the Domon of before would never have stooped to those tricks and is not particularly bloodthirsty and wouldn't want to fight like this, who can predict how this Gundam fight will change him? I think there's an obvious comparison to be drawn between Chapman's use of stimulants and performance enhancing drugs in sports, and that an athlete who is getting older, an athlete whose championship winning years are perhaps behind them, might feel significant pressure to keep competing and to do anything they can to keep themselves competitive, even as time wears on.
Well, stay tuned for the research after this.
One of the things that strikes me about Chapman and about all of his arguments about a winner and a loser, and by the time you realize there's always someone stronger, it's too late, etc. Etc. Is that he is ignoring the possibility of teamwork. Yes, there will always be someone stronger than you, but if you band together with a bunch of other people to accomplish your goals, you can defeat even the strongest person. Or Gundam.
I don't know. That sounds like a violation of the Gundam Fight International regulations.
To quote a favorite movie of mine. And you're gonna have to bleep me the regulations.
13 is an ominous number, says Chief Director Imagawa. It presages disaster, just like Apollo 13, he adds. It was for that reason he wanted to make this the 13th Gundam fight. And for whatever reason, 60 seemed like the right number of years for the future century. So far, a nice round number, long enough that most people would have grown up knowing only the quadrennial clash of colony countries, but still recent enough for some to remember how it all began. But as every writer knows, numbers are dangerous. Eventually, you're going to mess up the math. 13 is not enough fights to fill 60 years. There would need to be some kind of a gap in the schedule. From this narrative, necessity emerged this gently chapped man, a fighter and champion so dominant that he was able to win three Gundam fights in a row. The plotline would never be fully developed in the show, but Imagawa explained in interviews that Chapman's streak winning the 9th, 10th, and 11th tournaments in succession strained the Gundam fight system to its limits. After 12 years of Neo English rule, with no prospect for change so long as the insurmountable Chapman held the field, the other colony countries began reaching for the tools of conventional war once again, the theoretical possibility of victory. The idea that any country might emerge from the Gundam crucible bearing the mantle of heaven was the sine qua non of the Gundam fight, the practical reality of constant churn as a handful of the most powerful countries passed the crown around amongst themselves, ensured a constantly changing government and probably deterred the worst abuses of power, since the ruling country could expect to be punished in just a few short years by the next administration. But once the Gundam fight was no longer a path to change the world, then the old ways would do instead. All of this saber rattling resulted in a delay of the tournament. The 12th Gundam fight scheduled for FC 52 did not take place until future century 56. Chapman himself did not participate, and Neo Hong Kong emerged as the United Colonies Federation's new Hegemon. And I should note in passing, some sources like the Gundam Wiki do claim that Chapman participated in the 12th Gundam fight, but was defeated by Master Asia. However, in a section of the Japanese version of Imagawa's G Files interview that was not included in the English release, the director says, jitsua junikai taikai no tokini badoman wa chapmon ga tosen detekuru de omote tandesyou. Or in fact, during the 12th tournament, Birdman naturally expected Chapman to show up. Shikashi Chapman wa shujite nai But Chapman did not compete. What does any of this have to do with Birdman, I hear you asking? Well, obviously it's because Birdman is the Gundam fighter of Neo Britain, a different place from Neo England, and he has a long standing love rivalry with Chapman over Manon. In fact, the two men agreed that whichever of them triumphed in the Gundam fight would get to have Manon as his wife for the next four years. Naturally, Birdman's depression after Chapman decided not to compete and he now had no way to win Manon's hand made him easy prey for the Neo Russian prison trap strategy and explains his despair about the Gundam fight in Episode five.
You're messing with me, right?
Look, you would know all of this if you had done the assigned reading in the syllabus.
You have to be messing with me.
I'm not. That's real. Wow. So Chapman is not just an old soldier too addicted to the smell of gunpowder to ever leave the field. He did leave. He achieved what should have been impossible and then walked away gracefully departing the Gundam fight at the very height of his glory. But when the next generation failed to match his achievements, the old man could not bear to stay away. This too is a familiar story. But Chapman was no longer the fighter he had been. Fully 20 years had passed since his first championship to compete with the younger generation, he was going to need help. Manon's smokescreen and drone dummies and his pills, Obviously human enhancement science and the mysterious medicines that suppress its side effects are nothing new to the Gundam series. If you accept our idea that superhuman fighting skill is G Gundam's version of new type perception, then you could fairly say Chapman is our first cyber fighter. But the way his pills are handled in this episode clearly draws from what was then a relatively new awareness of the role of performance enhancing drugs in the sports world. The death of a Danish cyclist at the 1960 Olympics, officially attributed to heatstroke, but which many at the time believed was due to an amphetamine like drug administered by his coach, had led to the introduction of drug testing at the Games. And throughout the 70s and 80s, it was an open secret that the East German government was systematically doping its athletes. But the real scandal did not hit until 1988 and the Seoul Olympics. For years, a fierce rivalry had been brewing in the men's hundred meter sprint, among the most prestigious events at the Summer Games between defending Olympic champion American runner Carl Lewis and Canadian Ben Johnson, 1987 world champion and world record holder. The two made for perfect rivals. Johnson was explosive off the blocks, while Lewis was at his best in the latter half of the race. Johnson was charming, well liked, a ladies man who came from humble origins and made a fortune in endorsements. Though he had been born in Jamaica and struggled with racism in Canada, the country eagerly embraced him once he became a star. Lewis, on the other hand, was considered brash and arrogant. Unpopular among the other athletes and sports media. He was widely suspected to be gay, a perception that probably cost him sponsorships from Nike and Coca Cola. Lewis was also considered a sore loser. The first eight times they had shared the track, Lewis had trounced Johnson. But the Canadian caught up fast, and between 85 and 87, Johnson beat his rival five times. That was when Lewis started making oblique accusations about steroid use in the sport. He wasn't naming Johnson outright, but it was fairly clear to everyone who he meant. But then Johnson started falling behind again. A series of hamstring injuries cost him months of training. When he returned to face Lewis head to head in Zurich in August, the American ran away with the win and left Johnson to finish third. A month later, they met again at the Olympics, and this time Johnson was in the best form of his life. He erupted out of the start and 48 strides later he was across the finish line. The whole thing took just 9.79 seconds demolishing his old record. In fact, it would be more than a decade before another runner, American Maurice Greene, matched it. That night, the Prime Minister of Canada called to congratulate him. But you know where the narrative arc of this story is leading. A few days later, Johnson's urine sample popped for the anabolic steroid stenozolol. He was made to hand back his gold medal and quietly sent home to Canada on the next flight. His victory had been phenomenal, a highlight that was shown over and over again on the News. In a 2018 retrospective for the CBC, sportswriter David Giddens wrote, johnson's win was the best sporting moment we could imagine. Our modest guy lined up with all the world holding its breath and watching, and he just destroyed a showboating American at his own game. It was so, so great. Johnson made something happen that I only saw once in my life. When he won, my mother leapt off her couch. She shouted and sprang up like a cricket and started doing a jig on the carpet. We hooked arms like barn dancers and did a circle while my dog barked himself into a frenzy. It's one of my favorite memories of my mother. Canadian life was beyond sweet. For 62 hours, millions of people around the world had learned Johnson's name and his story, and now he would be dragged through the mud with equal vigor. And people were shocked by this. Nowadays, the news that a high profile athlete has failed a drug test is mostly greeted with a cynical shrug. I mean, they're probably not all doping, we know, but it never surprises us to learn that this or that athlete is. But back in 88, it was a surprise decades later when the BBC collected personal narratives from people who remembered watching those Olympics. The prevailing emotions they recalled were surprise, disappointment, and for Canadians, a profound sense of shame. One said he had learned about the positive drug test when it was announced in the middle of a university lecture. Another, who had been seven at the time, said that just thinking about the race could still make her feel physically ill, even now. It's remembered as one of the most shameful moments in Olympic history and is considered to be the moment when the general public became aware of just how rampant steroid use had become in high level sport. It was hardly the first high level doping scandal. Johnson was not even the first gold medalist at the 1988 Seoul Games to be disqualified by a failed drug test. Two Bulgarian weightlifters had already popped for a diuretic commonly used to mask other drugs. But they were, you know, communists. And before Johnson, PDS and sport had been Seen, however unfairly, as mainly a communist issue. It fit perfectly into the Cold War narrative. Those dirty Reds are using evil science to create super soldiers, but we are going to beat them with wholesome grit
and determination and tender loving medication.
Also, those other athletes were weightlifters. A, let's be honest, pretty marginal sport compared to running short distances very fast. Johnson himself would never really accept that he had done something wrong. Oh, he would admit to using steroids in front of a government inquiry and his coach admitted to providing them. But everyone else was doing it, so it wasn't really cheating. Right? And besides, Johnson argued, steroids don't make you run faster. Which is an interesting argument coming from a guy who took a bunch of steroids from his running coach with the sole aim of running faster. But he was right about everyone else doing it. Of the seven men who competed against Johnson in the finals in Seoul, only two of them finished their careers without hanging an asterisk next to their name. Four, including Carl Lewis, would later fail drug tests or admit to using PEDs themselves. And a fifth caught a lifetime ban from the sport for providing drugs to his trainees after he became a coach. Johnson has always insisted that he was the victim of sabotage. His sample had been deliberately tainted or he had been drugged against his knowledge, perhaps by a sinister agent working for one of his adversaries. Lewis name is not mentioned, but it's implied. Or maybe it was that the other athletes, they were protected by powerful sponsors, but he was hung out to dry because he had switched his shoe contract from mighty Adidas to relatively small diodora. The funniest but actually most compelling defense came from his coach, who argued that Johnson could not have tested positive for stenozolol because he was taking a completely different steroid. They had tried stenozolol years ago, but Johnson didn't like how it made his body feel. Much of the discussion around steroids in the late 80s and early 90s mirrored the way George talks about Chapman's stimulants. Yeah, yeah. Doping is unfair to the other competitors and it's dishonorable for the sport, but it's also harmful for the doped athletes who trade improved performance in the short term for side effects that eventually destroy their bodies. Contemporary articles about Johnson's disqualification regularly include explainers like anabolic steroids increase strength and prevent muscle breakdown, allowing athletes to bodybuild and train more intensively. They also make the user more aggressive, a so called steroid rage, but carry the risk of liver and kidney damage, psychosis and shortened lifespan. I always find myself wondering what people do after these kinds of enormous public humiliations. Johnson was only 27 at the time, and despite the scary quotes about steroid damage I just read, he did not take the easy way out by lying down in the arms of a beautiful woman right there on the track and passing quietly away. The positive test earned him a two year competition ban, but he returned to running in 91 and qualified for the 92 Olympics, though he failed to make it to the finals. Another failed test in 93 got him a lifetime ban, but in 1999 he convinced Canada's governing body for athletics to support him in a bid to be reinstated. This failed when a drug test that he administered to himself, paid for by his agent to show how clean he was, came back positive for a banned diuretic. So, with international competition forever out of reach, Johnson did the next logical thing. He took a job training Muammar Gaddafi's son Al Saadi to be a professional soccer player.
Wow.
In this at least he succeeded. Al Saadi was indeed signed to the Italian club Perugia, where he played an all of one game before testing positive for a banned steroid, at which point he was cut from the team. Since then, Johnson has mostly lived quietly, coaching other athletes, writing an autobiography, suing his former lawyer. He even still does endorsements every once in a while, making cheeky little jokes about his own infamy, like when a sports betting company paid him to endorse their new Android phone app. It puts the roid in Android. It's fun to imagine what Chapman might have done next had he survived his defeat and the revelation of his various sports crimes. Maybe he would have retired to a Martian villa, reappearing on the public stage every now and then to cut ads for London Fog brand overcoats and Twinings tea. Stimulate your mind with our new brain boosting blend. Would he have coached the next generation of Gundam fighters who still look up at him in awe? Or would he and Neo Britain's Birdman finally get over their rivalry and agree to live together, with Mammon forming the nucleus of some kind of old man Polycule?
Next time we check in with Tom's History of Yugoslavia research. But after that we are on to MSB episode episode 11.10 the Mummy Gundam Returns we'll research and discuss g Gundam episode 10 and I met a Gundam fighter from an antique land. Aww. Domon is an Aniki now that is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange Gundams even death may die.
Ghosts that kid Definitely peed himself. Big O crossover episode. Have you no respect for the dead fire Dragon Type vs Ground Ghost? Ghost type? Snake. A snake. Ooh, it's a snake. Sandstorm by Darude and you cannot kill me in any way that matters. Ready? Go.
Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded and produced by us, Tom and Nina in scenic New York City within the ancestral and unceded land of the Lenape people and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Misha Dayoxin, the closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio and the recap music is window by 1000 hands. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the Lenape people and more in the show notes on our website gundampodcast.com youm can get in touch with us by email at hostsundompodcast. If you'd like to support the show, please tell your friends about us. Leave us a nice review. Wherever you listen to podcasts or if you'd like to support us financially, you can do so@gundampodcast.com Patreon or look for other ways to support the show@gundampodcast.com support most of all, thank you for listening. Roxanne is activated. I guess that's the name of the.
The lightboard or the Lightboard.
The sound.
The Soundboard has a name now.
Yeah.
It only took seven years. But you. We had to rate. We had to.
We didn't have. We didn't have this for all seven years.
Oh, that's true. Six years.
No, it was. It was more. I don't remember when we got this, but it was not within the first two years, I don't think. Because initially we had the. Initially we had one blue yeti between the two of us.
Yes.
And we actually recorded a fairly significant portion of season one that way. I think we got the SM58s for episode 13. I remember for whatever reason that episode 13 has a markdown improvement in audio quality.
And we got the. The red box first.
Yeah. Yeah. Because we needed. We needed that for the SM 50s.
Right. Because we were running multiple mics and then we.
And then we went to the rode mics. Rode pod mic, I think is what the Next Generation is called.
Yep.
And I think my verdict on those is that they sound different from the SM58s, but none the of necessarily better.
I mean there for all that we didn't know this at the time. There's a reason that everybody kind of loves SM58s and uses them a lot. And like, they're cheap.
They're cheap. They are, they're durable is the thing. It's not that they sound good. It's that you could, like, you could, you could club a man to death with an SM58 and then still use it to record your song about clubbing a man to death. And it would sound just as good as before.
Right? Well, and it, and it sounds, it sounds good for the price.
Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. The we here at the we here at gspn. Who did you call it? Fight central.
We don't have to get into it, but it's, it's a little like War on drugs style stuff. Like they want it to be scary, so they're not entirely honest about it because they're too busy trying to scare everybody away from it.
But also, back in the 70s and 80s when steroid regimens were much more rudimentary, the problems were worse. Yeah, like the, the, the East German women who were doped by the. Their government for various sports reported all kinds of birth defects and other health problems. Yeah. You're listening to Season. Oh, no, I don't read that. Every time you read that. And we already recorded it, Sam.