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 11.15, a history of Anti Violence and we're your hosts. I'm Tom and it's time to reveal that I am a member of the top secret 4000 year old anti Shuffle Alliance. That's right, listen to your albums and playlists in order, you animals.
He can't shuffle cards to save his life.
That's not true. I'm just morally opposed to shuffling.
And I'm Nina, new to G Gundam and ready to communicate my deepest feelings through the crude language of interpersonal violence. As an ad free independent podcast, Mobile Zoo Breakdown relies on the nigh feverish fanaticism of our paying subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest Boris. Yeah, and Chuck C. You keep us Genki.
Before we get into the Gundam of it all, a quick announcement. We'll be taking next week off to help a family member with a medical emergency and then returning to the regularly scheduled Yugoslavia interlude on the following week. Then g Gundam episode 16 in three weeks time. If you're listening to this on the public feed, that week off would be a perfect time to check out the disappearances of Lydia Fontaine. Episode 2, available June 21 on lydiadisappears.com and all good podcast apps. For now though, we're covering g Gundam Episode 15, Senshi no Shougo Saraba Shafru Dome or a Warrior's title Goodbye Shuffle Alliance. Originally broadcast on July 29, 1994, this is the only episode of G Gundam boarded by Kondo Nobuhiro quite early on in his career. He was mainly a storyboard artist through the rest of the 90s and early 2000s, including on SD Gundam Force. But in 2006 he was tapped to take over as Chief Director on the third season of Sergeant Frog before going on to helm shows like Nobunagan and more recently Yu Gi oh Sevens and Yu Gi oh Go Rush. Most interesting of all, he served as director and storyboard artist for the Fuji Q Highland park attraction Gundam the Ride Space Fortress Abawaku. From 2000 to 2007, visitors to the park could experience the Battle of Abawaku from the perspective of space bound immigrants after their converted Salamis Class cruiser Captain by Henken Beckner gets caught up in the battle. Now the play by play. Welcome back to Secrets of Martial Power with me, Wild card, the unacknowledged sixth master of the shuffle alliance. This is volume 12, how to communicate with Martial Artists if you've been following along so far, you've already learned powerful martial arts techniques like Energy Fist, Silverleg, Bullet Catch, Speaking in Unison, Shining Finger, and Lumberjack. But as hard as it may be to believe, some problems in life can't be solved with furious violence, when that day comes, you're going to need Furious Communication. Furious Communication is a new system developed by me, Master Wild Card, Undefeated of the Mid Atlantic Region, to allow a martial artist like you to clearly convey your feelings using just the fists you already have. For example, imagine that your beloved Sensei betrayed you and hypnotized all your friends, turning them evil. This is a very common scenario that affects almost 75% of martial artists at some point during their lives. But when your former master challenges you to a duel at the top of the Tokyo Tower, it can be difficult to find the words to tell him how much pain his actions have caused you, even before he demands you submit to the overwhelming power of the Devil Gundam. And most people who experience this scenario struggle to maintain healthy boundaries in the face of their former master's deadly long range attacks. After all, martial artists are tactless people who can only convey their feelings in one through Furious Communication. The important thing to remember is that a martial artist's hands aren't just used to defeat opponents. So what else are they used for? If you keep improving the power unleashed by your fist, little by little, it will become a means of expressing your soul. That's right. Just take everything you believe in and entrust it to your fists for a one on one Gundam battle with your beloved master. But don't be discouraged if it doesn't work right away. You may need to fight your master again and again before the truth of your fists can reach his heart. Open and direct communication can be dangerous. For example, you might discover that your former master has sunk to previously unthinkable depths of depravity in his pursuit of power. You should be sure to review Secrets of Martial Power Volume 6, Berserker Rage and you'd seven secret strategies for unleashing your true potential before attempting to use Furious Communication in a live combat environment. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson. Now, here's a preview of Volume 13, how to Die, now available on VHS and 8Track for the low, low price of just $49.99. As a martial artist, there are many ways to die. Some of them are easy, but some of them are very hard. In this instructional video, I'll show you a few of my favorites. But before you decide how to die, there are a few important questions you need to answer. Like when to die, where to do it, and why. Imagine that you meet your successor on the battlefield, but their body has already been consumed by DG cells. This is one of the best reasons to die. My patented step by step program makes it easy to convert your life force into purifying martial arts energy to purge the corruption within. But remember, only you can decide if that little brat deserves your sacrifice. Before we get into this episode properly, I want to clarify something we discussed a little bit last week, which was about the succession of Domon to the King of Hearts title, which it turns out is now very relevant because this episode is also about the succession to the Shuffle Alliance. We first learned about all of this back in episode six, when Domon was having his government sponsored hallucinogen induced trip to sort of remember. Imagine what might have happened if he had arrived home before his his father and brother activated the Devil Gundam and suffered the consequences. And in this, there's a. There's a little rapid fire exchange at the breakfast table when he's talking about his training and how he had attained the title of King of Hearts. Kyoji then says, ah, so my little brother is the Colony's martial arts champion. Which we assumed at the time meant that he had won some kind of tournament, he had become the champion, and
that was how he became King of Hearts.
Right? In this case, though, I think they're probably using Champion not in the sense of like winner of a tournament, but in the sense of representative.
Aha.
Domon later in this conversation says that Master Asia, like, acknowledged him as the new King of Hearts. So it seems as though Master Asia passed on the title and the crest to Domon before he disappeared. And in fact, you were right. Domon does say after conferring the title onto him, Master Asia disappeared. You know, it's not the ideal method of determining who is the greatest martial artist living. Like, typically, competition is the best way
of determining that, but, well, so I have so many questions about the Shuffle Alliance. A third of my notes are things about how the Shuffle alliance works and what it is.
And I am so prepared to speculate wildly.
Excellent.
I'm gonna make a lot of assertions based on no evidence whatsoever. To be clear to the listeners, I. I do not have any secret knowledge about the Shuffle Alliance. All I have to go on is what they show us in this episode.
The most surprising part of the Shuffle alliance to me was that it becomes really clear that they are, in fact, some sort of, like, mystical group. Like, this isn't just, oh, we're the best fighters from five different regions, or we're the top five best fighters in all humanity. Between having them all speak in unison like a Greek chorus, having them appear to Domon as psychic apparitions to encourage him to communicate with his fists, and then the. The fact that they can tell, oh, these are the fighters who are the inheritors of our titles. These are the people who have that kernel of power that we also have this inner something, a special something that I guess visits one in each generation. Clearly, there's something magical going on here.
Well, they're like the immortals. Yes, they're like the divine immortals in, what was it called Investiture of the Gods. They bring the divine gifts. They have the divine power. Their role is to, like, spur the mortal heroes into action.
Their explanation of what they are is not that they can prevent war or end war. They just keep it within certain bounds. They're almost like referees.
Yeah. Yeah. They are the referees of war.
Yeah. They describe themselves as maintaining the order of the fight witnesses who only intervene to prevent, like, humanity ending events, which they consider the devil Gundam to possibly be that.
And this is a familiar trope. We've encountered characters like this in a lot of different anime over the years, a lot of different stories. The team of the four, like the Four Heavenly Kings, the Guardians of the Four Directions, Five elements, the elite four in Pokemon, all sort of fit into this. This pattern.
Though I was thinking of groups of five that you could necessarily, theoretically compare them to.
But it is like, it is four plus one, right? It's not really five. It is a little unusual for them to be on the side of our protagonists. Usually they exist in a more antagonistic
kind of role or as sort of third parties that the protagonist would like to get involved. But it takes a lot of doing to get them to intervene, or they intervene in ways that are not 100%
helpful, or they've been corrupted by the time that the. The show starts.
And they're not secret, which is also funny for this kind of group. Usually if you have a group of arbiters like this, of superhumans, they would exist under some amount of secrecy. And that is not at all the case here.
I don't know actually, like, Domon knows about them. But of course Domon knows about them. He's a member.
But people know what King of Hearts is, and they know he is it true. And they mention that when Master Asia won the last Gundam fight, which. Did we know that before? Yes, that he was the last Gundam fight champion, but that he was representing them.
Well, that's. That's a little weird. That's a little inconsistent. Yes, because he was also representing Neo Hong Kong, which we know because Neo Hong Kong is the one running the United Colonies association bridge Club. The United Colonies hoa.
Again, it implies that people know what the Shuffle alliance is. They knew he was a member. And so him participating in the Gundam fight, which clearly not all of them do, and winning, making a very public demonstration of his power as King of Hearts. Yes, he was representing a government, but he was also representing the Shuffle Alliance.
It's a little bit like if Superman decided to compete in the Olympics simultaneously on behalf of the United States and the Justice League.
Yeah, sort of.
Though you could also imagine a scenario where like, everybody knows about Superman, but the Justice League is still secret. Yeah, I suppose everybody knows about these various martial arts masters, but they don't necessarily know that they're all colluding together.
I just think that the choice of words there of him representing them implies that people would know.
And I just think that we can't necessarily rely on the choice of words used in the translation for the wide ranging implications of that statement.
I know you wanted to do some back of the envelope math about this. We have a few different temporal points of reference. We know what year we are in the future century 60. We know how many Gundam fights there have been.
13.
The Shuffle alliance goes back at least to the time of the Romans. Unless they were adjudicating like reenactor battles in their flashback to all the wars and everything. The oldest one, they go Romans, then Warring States, then World wars one and two.
Before anyone jumps into the comments, they're Greeks.
Okay, sorry. Look, guys, I can only know so many things at a time.
I mean, I hear that one of the later images in this is like a lineup of modern looking tanks. I don't know if those are real tanks. I don't recognize them. Maybe there are some tank heads in the audience who can be like, oh, that's, that's obviously an American main battle tank.
Or there were also some missile batteries. One imagines that when they talk about saving humanity from extinction. A line which I believe overlaps with the missile battery pictures that they're talking about preventing nuclear war.
Probably. I like the implication from these visuals that like, yeah, right now the Shuffle alliance are all kick, punch, dagger and chain wielding martial artists. Because right, right now, the peak of martial valor is the Gundam fight. And so they're all amazing Gundam fighters, but that in times past, sometimes the most powerful martial artist was guy who shoots missile or driver of tank, or guy entrenched with machine gun.
At some point, one of them might have been a cavalry officer.
Exactly. The martial arts of each era.
We already talked about this, but I love the idea that they're there to preserve some abstract idea of fairness, like in the fight between Domon and Master Asia. Even though they want Master Asia killed, they are not here to intervene in this fight. If Master Asia defeated Domon, if on some chance he killed Domon, then they would go fight and kill Master Asia. But they're not going to interfere in this contest that they see as fair.
And this connects with kind of the other half of the episode. The one half that we've mostly been talking about is the Shuffle alliance meeting the new Shuffle alliance and passing on their powers through a process that we will definitely discuss a bit more later in this episode. The other half of the episode is Domon and Master Asia and Domon finding the will to fight and exploring within himself just what the martial arts are like. What is the point of them? What does it mean to be a martial artist? What is he trying to achieve and how can he save? How can he reach his master? And I think the idea here is that martial arts is an expression of the self.
We're getting deep into sort of the philosophical underpinnings of a lot of martial arts and martial arts training, which, depending on what martial arts a person practices, might be more or less present. Some of them, it's not really a thing at all. In most of the East Asian ones that I'm familiar with, it's pretty prominent. I remember talking to someone once when I was doing karate training about how people tend to start doing a sport, a martial art like karate, for fitness reasons or for self defense. But anybody who sticks with it for a certain amount of time starts to have these much more sort of philosophical and psychological reasons for continuing to participate in the art and talking about how it makes them feel, why it's important to them. And this idea of cultivating the self, that training in martial arts has an effect on you as a person in this very deep way, and that that training can help you be a force for good in the world. And then contrasts that with Kyoji and the Devil Gundam both together promising simple pursuit of strength. You're just gonna get stronger forever.
A superficial strength, as Domon puts it.
Exactly.
But Domon's desire is that he believes that if he just fights good, if he fights good, he can reach Master Asia. His true feelings cannot be expressed in words and will not be understood by his master. But if he can put those feelings into his fists and punch some sense into Master Asia, then the truth will get through to him. And implicit in that is the belief on Domon's part that his truth is correct. That he will win. And he will win not just because he is strong, but because he is righteous. It's not might makes right, or right makes might. It's like they're the same thing.
And on some level, that. That what he is trying to communicate to Master Asia isn't simply moral correctness. It's his love for his master. That is the emotion that he wants to reach Master Asia. He wants to to punch through whatever spell the DG cells and the Devil Gundam have over Master Asia. He wants to break through that with his own affection and care and friendship through his fists.
But the negative implication of that, the shadow implication, is that if he's wrong, he loses. Master Asia wins. Master Asia reaches him. And what the Shuffle alliance is saying by saying, let's have a fair fight between the two of them, let's have no one else intervene, is let's see which person's truth is more righteous. Let's see who wins. And ultimately, we believe that the correct answer will win. We'll have to accept the outcome of the fight.
Well, except I'm not certain. I mean, they would accept the outcome of that fight. But if Master Asia won, I don't think they would believe that Master Asia following the Devil Gundam is correct. I think they would still go after Master Asia.
They would think that Domon had failed, right? And then they would go after Master Asia and try to test their beliefs against Master Asia.
I actually saw it somewhat differently. They express pretty explicitly that they see this fight as a test of Domon. They are observing and weighing him. They are trying to determine if Domon has what it takes to be the King of Hearts. Hearts Emotion. A lot of what I think they are trying to convey to him, when he hesitates, when he's uncertain about fighting Master Asia, is that he cannot possibly win if he doubts himself. He needs to completely believe in himself and what he's doing. He needs to trust himself. He needs to believe that he can reach this pinnacle of martial arts. There is no room for doubt here. There is no room for him to wonder, gee, what if my old teacher is right?
He also needs to understand that in this world, it's not a Betrayal for him to fight Master Asia. Friends fight each other all the time.
Well, as they say, martial artists are crude people who can only convey their feelings with their fists.
And then they show the image of two of the Shuffle alliance, like clashing arms. They're friends, but they still fight. How else are they to make themselves understood?
The thing that finally allows Domon to tap into the feeling of righteous fury that he needs is Master Asia laughing at the sacrifice of the Shuffle Alliance. Laughing at the idea of sacrificing oneself to save someone else. Like it was harder for Domon when Master Asia was at least pretending to care about him and pretending to be offering him everything he wanted. But to hear his old master, who instructed him in these high ideals of being a martial artist, now laugh at the idea of self sacrifice and call it pointless and a waste. That makes Domon angry and that gives him the push he needs to feel like, okay, I really have to defeat Master Asia. I have to fight him for real.
But at the same time, that anger makes it impossible for him to reach Master Asia. The anger clouds out the love you were talking about.
So is the true pinnacle of martial arts being able to feel both simultaneously?
Mmm, perhaps.
Or is he going to find that the super secret third level of the Shining Gundam isn't rage, but love Possible?
Only time will tell.
The Shuffle alliance have only the slightest moment of hesitation. And really only one of them expresses it over the idea of sacrificing themselves.
The conflict here is all about selfishness versus selflessness. What Master Asia is offering to each of the Gundam fighters is personal strength, Personal aggrandizement at the cost of their dreams and their hopes, their national duty, their the things that they were going to do for other people. This is the second way in which the episode expresses the depth of Master Asia's fall from grace. The first one is that he cheats.
He cheats?
Well, yeah, kind of. That's sort of where I'm going with that. Sure. He does not believe that he can reach Domon and convince him through the strength and the truth of his fists. Even though he taught Domon all about this, he no longer believes that by punching good, he can convert Domon to his side. Instead, he proposes to capture Domon and to infect him with DG cells. He still wants Domon on his side, but he's not going to try to convince him. Not the right way.
This has all been a bit sort of deep and emotional, and I have to take things in a silly direction
again, you know, I'm Always prepared to get silly with it.
Do the various members of the Shuffle alliance have to travel the Earth sphere looking for the one human fighter who will be the inheritor of their lineage? Or like, if they die without finding that person, does that person just wake up one morning with a tattoo on their hand? Like, oh, I guess I'm Jack and Dia.
It seems like the universe provides the will of the martial artsy particles, delivers the appropriate person at the appropriate, appropriate time.
And I have another question for you. Why have Shuffle Gundams at all if the next generation is just going to use their national ones? If they're just going to disintegrate when the previous generation dies? Does everybody have to take up their own new weapon?
Like, I. I don't know who made the Shuffle Gundams? Where did they come from? Is there a Shuffle Cave somewhere where these are being mass produced?
I just really liked the idea of Gundams and a group that superseded nationalities. And now we're just back in National Gundams doing the United nations again.
And they even shout out. They're like, these young patriots will continue our legacy, right? Maybe it's something you grow out of. They all piloted National Gundams when they fought in the Gundam fight.
Presumably, the Gundam's not yours. It belongs to that government. Like, you don't get to keep it at the end of the fight. I wouldn't imagine. And if you win, you get to take a Gundam home.
This reminds me of my grandfather taking a jeep home when he left the army after World War II.
I thought that was temporary. I didn't realize he like, took it home. Home?
No, no. You're thinking of the other time he stole a jeep.
It would be very funny. I don't think this is going to happen, but it would be hilarious if at this point in the show, suddenly the Gundam fight itself became irrelevant.
That would be funny.
It's like, oh no. Now it's all about the new Shuffle alliance fighting the Devil Gundam. And the Gundam fights just kind of going on in the background.
I assume they would get a very irate call from Mr. Bandai at that point. So what. What do you think actually happened here? When the Shuffle alliance gave up their lives to purge the Devil Gundam cells from the bodies of these young men, these young patriots.
So we know, because the previous generation of the Shuffle alliance could sense it, that there is some internal power in the Inheritors as well. And so I assume that that same internal power in the previous generation of Shuffle alliance, whether it's, you know, some superhuman ability or incredible strength of will or whatever it is key that makes
them what they are, Martial arts key particles.
That they basically pushed all of that into them and drove out the evil, like just purged the DG cells from them. But obviously, if they give up all their Ki, they die. Like that's their life force. And in keeping with a lot of the themes we've been talking about in this episode, they so believe in the cause of the Shuffle Alliance. They so believe in this thing that they've devoted their whole lives to, that they are willing to sacrifice what's left of their own lives in the interest of continuing that legacy, continuing that mission. What about you? What did you think?
Well, I think it's fairly obvious, really, really incontrovertible at this point, that DG cells, right, and martial arts Ki particles have some sort of direct interaction. They're almost opposites, like matter and antimatter, martial artsy particles and anti martial artski particles, or DG cells. And so as DG cells fill the body, they expel the martial artsy particles, but vice versa, A powerful burst of martial artsy particles can expel the DG cells from the body. The two cannot coexist. This is why those who have been consumed by the DG cells lose all of their sense of martial virtue. Because the martial virtue comes from the microscopic martial artsy particles in the bloodstream. The Shuffle Alliance. Because of their long training and their incredible power, their bodies have become almost entirely saturated with martial arts key particles. And so when they use their their key, their martial arts power is to push all of those martial arts key particles into the successor in order to cleanse them of DG cells, or anti martial artsy particles as they're known in literature. There's just not enough cells left in their body to keep the body together. And this is again why the Shuffle Mobile fighters then turn gray and crumble into dust. Because the martial artsy particles infusing them have also been consumed in this process.
You know, that would explain another question that I had about the Shuffle Alliance.
I think it explains everything.
Towards the very beginning of the episode, they say we are only capable of speaking the truth. And it's intoned in a way that feels rather literal, as though they are under a spell or a gesh that prevents them from lying. But I bet it's if there is a sufficient concentration of martial artsy particles in your body, you are simply rendered incapable of falsehoods.
Yeah, your fists speak the truth of your soul, right? That's because martial artski particles are incapable of lying.
If you are sufficiently pure, you actually can't lie anymore. You just can't do it.
And Anti Martial artsy particles. Or again, DG cells are incapable of telling the truth. It's like the old parable of the two guards. Did you pay attention to the actual words of the little like chant that Domon and Master Asia do in the flashback? The like Touhou Fuhai School of the Undefeated of the east mantra.
Kind of. I didn't write it out or anything.
A lot of martial arts schools have this like list of tenets you're supposed to, you know, chant together at the beginning or end of every class. It's very cult y. Eventually you sort of stop paying attention to what the words actually mean. Most of the Toho Fuhai one is pretty anodyne. It's pretty normal. The winds of the King Completely new. Split lineage. Look. The east is burning red. Which I assume means like, look, the sun is rising. The sun of our style is rising in the world. But in the middle there they say chivalrous war to tear down the heavens. That's an interesting thing to say in a show about a conflict between the Earth and the colonies. Chivalrous war to tear down the heavens, huh? Master Asia, how long have you been committed to this Anti Colony program?
Alternatively, tear down the heavens. As in tear down the rulers. Tear down the ruling class, which in
this case is literalized in the colony
and would speak perhaps to a desire to undermine or destroy the Gundam fight.
Hmm.
As often happens in these shows, and we've noted it many times before, both here and in other Gundam series, but they kind of give the game away in the title. But truly, I was not expecting the Shuffle alliance to all die. Yeah, I thought Goodbye Shuffle alliance would mean they'd be called away on some other mission. They'd leave for some other purpose. I didn't think they would all die.
No, I mean, they get. They get Shrike teamed. In fact, they are removed at a faster pace than the Shrike Team.
I am sad about it. I like their Mobile Fighters. I liked Black Joker's design a lot.
I liked that each of them had clearly shown up with a dramatically different level of commitment to their card theme. Like Jaq and Dia is just wearing an old timey ish French frock coat
kind of outfit and smokes a pipe.
Club Ace is like just wearing his temple robes. I'm not entirely sure what Queen the Spade is going for there with his
medieval peasant outfit and fights with daggers. That I thought was fun.
That was Pretty cool.
And that feels in keeping with Spades.
Well. And I liked Jack and Dia's whole thing with the pipe. But Black Joker is clearly the only one who fully committed to dressing like a playing card.
That's why she is obviously their leader.
Obviously.
Have we seen a single other woman Gundam Fighter?
No, I mean rain that one time.
Yeah. I'm not sure that counts.
I don't think it does.
Feels like we're losing ground there.
Yeah. Though, speaking of the Shuffle alliance and their mobile fighters, I think this might be the lowest ratio of episodes to mobile suits. Four new mobile suits introduced and destroyed over the course of two episodes is remarkable. Typically, enemy mobile suits are either grunts who show up over and over and over again. Yeah. A Zaku gets destroyed, but in the next episode you're going to see another Zaku. Or the one offs the mobile armors, or the special. Like Boss. Mobile suits are either appear in multiple episodes to show what a threat they are, or they only introduce one in the episode where it gets destroyed. A factor of 0.5 might be unprecedented for Gundam.
So much design work went into prepping those mobile suits, and now they're gone. Mobile fighters? Mobile fighters.
No design work, however, put into fight suits for any of these characters. Master Asia and the Shuffle alliance just pilot in their regular clothes, so apparently
the sensors are unnecessary. So what's the latex for?
They asked Imagawa about this in one of the interviews. They're like, what about Master Asia's fightsuit? Why doesn't he wear one? And his answer was, don't worry about it.
Maybe it's a martial arts Ki particles thing again. If your body is sufficiently suffused with martial arts Ki particles, then the system can pick up your body movements without the fight suit.
Yeah. I think Imagawa also said something like, I didn't think it would look cool, so we didn't do it.
Rule of Cool. I love the new insert song.
That was really good. Yeah. And well used. I loved the sequence of Domo on, like, walking through the ranks of Death Army Death Beasts. It reminded me a bit of the scene that shows up in, like, it's in some of the Yakuza games. It's probably in Yakuza movies, but where, like, the whole massive clan lines up either side of a road or a path and they all do the Yakuza bow while one of the main characters, like, walks through them on their way to a dramatic confrontation. It's really good.
It's a bit like an honor guard. Mm.
They gave the Death Messenger The Herald. The Mouth of Asia. Kind of like a cute little voice. It reminded me of the computer voice in that one SD short, the one where they're in space and it's like a Space Patrol thing. Hang on, I'll get this. SD Command Chronicle Super G Arms versus Normgather.
Sure, I'll take your word for it. It's funny that you brought up the Yakuza games. The scene at Tokyo Tower was straight out of a video game, right? Like, here's the big boss. But oh no, they're getting away. And you have to fight the mini bosses as you work your way up the tower to fight the big boss.
It's a very cool place to have a fight, though. It's a cool environment. The way they've drawn it, it's like Tokyo Tower is a dagger pointed towards the heavens or all the support beams. It's like a mass of a tangle of red strings. Like, this is the intersection of all of these different destinies, and it gets
destroyed in the episode. I thought the animation at the very end was particularly striking, where the massive Shining Finger Energy attack has engulfed the entirety of Tokyo Tower in just sort of a sphere of light and energy. And you can't make out the tower very clearly, but there are these sort of warping, twisting outlines representing what's left of it. Very cool.
Well, did you notice at the beginning of the episode, they show us the Tokyo Metro government building again, but like, it's real mess up.
Cracks it up. Yeah.
What happened to all of those civilians who are sheltering in there?
I mean, they've shown it to us. Every episode that's taken place in Tokyo, they always go back to it. Yeah. They did promise they weren't going to damage the city anymore if Domon came to this meetup.
What is left of the city to not destroy.
Right. The other thing I noticed, and this isn't the first episode to do it, but it was particularly striking here on close ups of the faces in particular. Very expressive line work, I thought. Noticed at first when Raine is sort of begging Domon not to go, that this is obviously a trap and he shouldn't walk into it. But then again, very late, when the Shuffle alliance have realized, oh, these are the inheritors of our titles and we're gonna have to die to save them, they do a series of close ups on their faces. And again, very expressive line work. Line work that is different from the. The larger and more complex, more detailed scenes. I suppose when I say expressive what, what I'm literally talking about is much more variation of thick and thin lines. The lines aren't all the same width.
Mm, I wonder who drew these.
And something about the thicker line work, which is mostly in black, adds a bit more emotion, a bit more weight to the drawings.
Did you notice when the Master Gundam punches the arms, the forearms fly off?
Yep.
And there's a cable of darkness energy that connects the flying arm back to the the origin point so that it can retrieve the arms. And it looks like nothing so much as the Zhiang from first Gundam when it uses its all range attack.
Somehow Domon shatters the energy ribbon weapon that the Master Gundam uses. How do you shatter energy? Don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it.
Well, my last thought on this episode is that if they don't introduce another woman Gundam Fighter soon, I'm gonna riot.
Fly to Japan. Find Imagawa. Show him the truth of your father.
You'll be shocked. Shocked to learn that we've uncovered a problem with the supposed timeline of the existence of the Shuffle Alliance. As we discussed during the talkback, Black Joker's speech about the Shuffle Alliance's purpose and history happens over a montage of images from warfare throughout history, going back to Greek hoplites. But do playing carts go back that far? And if they do, did they have the modern standardized suits that are part of the Shuffle alliance titles? Playing cards are one of those objects and motifs that are so ubiquitous we don't often think about what exactly they are or how they came to exist. And it happens that their origins are a bit mysterious. Different sources give different dates or date ranges with varying levels of certainty. The big point of agreement is that playing cards originated in China, though as Britannica points out, in Chinese, the the same word is used for both playing cards and dominoes. Then again, in China at this time, both playing cards and domino cards would have been made with wood blocks and printed on paper. So this may be a distinction without a difference. Britannica points to the 10th century. Wikipedia says the 9th. Simon Wintle, writing for the website the World of Playing Cards, mentions that an 11th century Chinese historian dates the invention of playing cards even earlier, to the middle of the Tang dynasty. So between 618 and 906. Another point of agreement is that these earliest possible mentions of playing cards do not depict or describe the cards themselves, nor do they explain the rules of the games played with them. Several Chinese sources mention something called a leaf game, but it is unclear whether this was a card game or not. Some scholars posit that the leves in question were the pages of a book and were used as a game board in combination with dice. There is more concrete evidence for the existence of playing cards by the 13th century. In 1294, two gamblers were caught by the Ming department of punishments. My reading didn't say what exactly their crime was, but some of the paper cards they were playing with, as well as the wood blocks for printing cards were seized. Some of the earliest card games may have been played with paper money in different denominations, with play or pretend money introduced for convenience and to make it less risky, as in a trick taking game which dates from the ming dynasty, so 1368 to 1644. It is one of the earliest card games for which we know the rules, and in it the suits were denominations of coins, strings of coins, myriads of coins or strings, and tens of myriads, one myriad being equal to 10,000. These are believed to be the earliest ancestor of the suit system in common use today. In fact, the two latter suits had water margin characters instead of pips on them, perhaps a precursor to the face cards. We are familiar with how playing cards traveled from China to other parts of Asia and to the Middle east isn't known for certain, but is widely supposed to to be the Silk Road and its tributary trade routes. And various card games and types of cards were popular in South Asia, Persia and the Arab world. In fact, an exhibition at the British Museum in 2013 noted playing cards are known in Egypt from the 12th century AD and one source states that the oldest surviving cards in the world are four fragments dated to the 12th and 13th centuries, the late Fatimid, Ayyubid and early Mamluk periods. However, another source mentioned their significant difficulty dating cards from this era, and surviving examples are generally given broad date ranges like 200 years broad. The most lavish of these sets weren't made of paper at all, but from ivory or tortoise shell inlaid with precious stones. As the games spread to the general public, cheaper sets would be made by painting and drawing on materials like wood, palm leaf, stiffened cloth or pasteboard. Playing cards seem to have arrived in Europe, the sources disagree as to whether the cards were first introduced in Spain or in Italy, but around the 1370s, though Trevor Denning contends that the presence of the word for playing card in a Catalan Rhyme Dictionary dated 1371 suggests playing cards were already well known by that time. Regardless, they likely would have been possessions or trade goods of Mamluk merchants from Egypt and Muslim Spain. Hilariously, as in the Chinese case, much of the Most concrete evidence for the existence of playing cards in a particular place is in the form of laws that ban them. For example, a Florentine ban on card games dates from 1377. The suits in the Mamluk decks were swords, polo sticks, goblets and coins. And each suit had ranks one through 10, and it was one rather than ace, and three court cards, the lower viceroy, upper viceroy and king. Throughout the early history of playing cards, suit marks were highly region specific, not just their names, but the symbols themselves. In Spain, they used clubs instead of polo sticks, polo being an essentially unknown sport in Europe at that time. In Italy, polo sticks became batons. In German and Swiss decks, swords became acorns and coins became bells. But in Germany, clubs were leaves and cups were hearts, while in Switzerland, clubs were escutcheons and cups were roses. Moreover, each system has its own range of numerals and court cards. The numerals are not complete in all traditions. Most French games are played with 32 cards, formerly 36, but Spanish and Italian with 40, sometimes 48, rarely 52. Most Spanish and Italian games omit the tens, and Swiss cards replace the tens with banners. In Spanish and Italian games, an ace is merely a one. The Swiss equivalent, though called an ace, is actually a 2, right? In the earliest European playing card decks, the court cards were all men. German decks were the first to replace the upper viceroy with a queen as early as 1377, but they had abandoned the queen before the 1500s, and it was French decks where the queen stuck. A version of the Italian deck from the 1400s included additional courts and a fifth suit of trumps, triomphe. This was the precursor to the tarot deck, although, and this was news to me, it was used for games long before it was used for any kind of divination or fortune telling, a practice that emerged in France and not until the late 18th century.
It's funny how most like fortune telling traditions I can think of evolve from doing a weird thing with objects you already have. Even if you go back to the Haruspexes and the augurs of Greek and Roman times, like you were already slaughtering animals, right? You're already killing the animal, you've already got organs. So much of it is like spotting some birds in the air, tossing some sticks. And then there's the like.
Well, the theoretical underpinning of a lot of it was being able to see and interpret signs in the world around you.
In the natural world, there's the method where you, like, open your copy of the Aeneid to a random page and then just like pick a random word on it and that tells you something.
But oh, were they doing that with the Aeneid before? They were doing it with the Bible.
I don't know if it was before, but it was very popular to do it with the Aeneid. Virgil was considered like a wizard. Virgil was believed to be so wise that he could like, help you from the beyond. Exactly. Had predicted the future. Which may have partly inspired Ursula Le Guin's wonderful book Lavinia. Anyway, we're getting off topic. You were talking about cards.
Playing cards spread through Europe during the 1400s to become a popular pastime for the wealthy. Early European cards would have been hand painted luxury goods. But that same century, German woodblock printing technology decreased the cost of a deck of cards. And playing cards became so popular that they competed with religious devotional images as the most common use for woodcuts. And that's saying something in that era. Then French producers pioneered painting the cards with stencils, which is cheap and speedy, but also required simplified designs. This is what led to the spread of French suitmarks throughout the continent. They were invented around 1490. Pique, courotraffel, pikes, hearts, tiles and clovers. Though the names of the suitmarks in English were changed, the symbols themselves remained the same. Spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs. It is speculated that spade in this case comes from the old Spanish spado, or sword. And since club is a direct translation of old Spanish basto, Spanish suit marks may have been in use in England before the French ones were invented. Playing card manufacture was often heavily regulated. Some countries made card manufacture a state monopoly under pain of fine, imprisonment and even death to forgers. Others contented themselves with charging a tax on manufacture. The elaborate design of the ace of spades in British decks recalls the now defunct 18th century convention of applying the tax authorization stamp to this particular card as we know them now. Playing cards are made of rectangular layers of paper or thin cardstock pasted together. They are flat and semi rigid with rounded corners. Rounded corners make the cards sturdier and the cards are all uniform in size and shape as well as being identical on one side. The back. Card backs were originally plain, but since with use the back would acquire all kinds of marks, accidental or intentional, and those marks could be used to cheat. Manufacturers introduced detailed patterns on card backs. Patterns of small dots, tartans, etc. To mask any possible marks. The most successful and universally recognized deck is called the International deck and is made up of 52 uniquely identifiable cards across four suits. And 13 ranks of the suits. Two are red hearts and diamonds, and two are black clubs and spades. And before Tom asks me, yes, Some other playing card decks use different colors for each suit. The 13 ranks are made up of the numbers 1 or ACE through 10. These are also called spot cards and the court or face jack, queen and king. Aces can be high or low, depending on the game. What is now called the jack in English used to be called knave, which is derived from a German word for male child, interpreted in this context as a prince. The servant, meaning for nave came later. Standard decks now also contain two or more jokers. And although there was a fool card among the fifth suit in those old Italian decks, the Britannica page asserts that the modern joker was invented under a different name for the game of Euchre, which dates from the 19th century.
We used to play euchre in high school.
I have no idea how to play euchre. Court cards originally depicted their respective figures full length, but this allowed observant players to know their opponent was holding court cards, since they would naturally turn these right side up in their hand. This led to the invention and spread of the double headed court cards also in the 19th century. The other big design development of that era was indexing of cards, that is marking the suit and rank in the corners, so the players could identify all of their cards without having to fan them so widely, and so posing less risk of accidentally revealing your cards to your opponent. This was when in English decks knaves became jacks so as to avoid confusion over K for knave and K for king. Apparently Swedish decks still use the knave equivalent, spelled K N, A, B, e. And so in card corners use K for king and KN for knave cards. All of which is to say that unless there was some significant time and perhaps several unmentioned eras between our own timeline and the future century, the name Shuffle alliance and the titles of its members can't possibly date to the founding of that organization. Or it can't be as old as Black Joker said it was. My theory is that at some point the organization changed its name to adapt with the times. After all, they weren't always in mobile fighters. They just like to keep current. And the concept of suits predates playing cards. For example, it appears in Chinese dice and domino games from before the Song dynasty, which began in 960. In the gambling dice game Craps, there are specific names for various rolls of the dice. Not just snake eyes for a pair of ones, but also names like Hard Six, Fever, Five Easy 8yo yo and Boxcars Craps is relatively new, but it was developed from the European dice game Hazard, which may date as far back as the Crusades. Yes, yes, I know. Still too new for the timeline to work, but dice have been used since before recorded history. The Though the precise meaning of the term dice is variable in the literature, it can mean a multi sided object with different markings on each side rather than specifically the cube with pips definition used now. But even the cube with pips type is incredibly old. In 2004, archaeologists discovered a game board in the ancient city of Shar E Sukhteh in Iran. Resembling the game of Backgammon. The board was dated to around 3,000 BCE and is believed to be the oldest backgammon board ever found. It is made of ebony and features 60 markers made of turquoise and agate as well as a pair of dice. Terracotta dice excavated in the Indus Valley have been dated to 2500-1750 BC. While I couldn't find older examples of dice game suits, it seems natural enough that these ancient dice games would have names for particular dice roll results. Those names are simply lost to time, just like the origins of the Shuffle Alliance. In three weeks on MSB episode 11.16 the Invisible Fighter, we'll research and discuss g Gundam Episode 16 and that's great. It starts with an earthquake, bird, snakes, a mobile suit, and Chibidi is not afraid. What's a cute girl like you doing in a place like this? Pride and Prejudice and Robo Zombies the eternal internal question of Shinjuku Station. Which way is the exit? Devil in the Demon city Tentacles, we meet G Gundam's Shar type. Oops a daisy. Om nom nom. Delicious energy. You okay over there?
I'm good.
Nice work, idiot. And a house divided.
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 Dayaksin, 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. you can get in touch with us by email@hostsundompodcast.com 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. Shut up. Welcome to the podcast, Loud Dog. I like the implication from these visuals that, like, What are you talking about? I was there last week. Week.
Oh, well, then I don't have to worry about it. Do you?
No. I just left all the stuff in there.
I didn't look at it.
I checked the PO Box, and I was like, that's a PO Box.
Sa.