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 11.5, to Russia with Fight, and we're your hosts. I'm Thom, a longtime Gundam fan, and if I were a Gundam fighter, I would simply not be lured into the Gundam Graveyard trap in the first place. Skill issue.
And I'm Mina, new to G Gundam
and RIP to Michel Foucault. You'd have loved the conclusion of this episode. Mobile Suit Breakdown is made possible by
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Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons.
Best druggist, Steely Dan Fan, Gunny Draper
and Alec L. You keep us Genki,
what are you going to do when you run out of letters?
Go back around to the beginning. All right, there's a lot of words.
This week we're covering g Gundam Episode 5, Dai Daso Toraware no Gandham Fighter or Great A Captive Gundam Fighter. Originally broadcast on May 20, 1994. This is Take Yoshiyuki's first time as episode director for G. He came up as a production assistant on 0083 and then an assistant episode director throughout Victory. Though his list of credits is not particularly extensive, he did direct episodes for some of the most beloved shows of the 1990s and early 2000s, including Cowboy, Bebop, Escaflowne and Wolf's Reign. The storyboards are credited to Oshimi Chikara. As far as I can tell, this is the only anime credit for that name, which probably means it's a pseudonym for a freelancer who is not supposed to be taking freelance work. The animation director, Sakuma Shinichi, is also making his first contribution to G. He's from Studio Dove and has previously done key animation and animation direction for F91 and Char's counterattack. Going forward, he will be a frequent contributor to all of the 90s Gundam shows. New friend Argo Golski is played by Ugaki Hidenari, making his Gundam debut. His anime roles have mostly been minor characters in shows I've never heard of, but many in the audience will recognize him as Majima Goro from the Like a Dragon series. And now, the play by play.
It's a brutally cold day here at the Gundam Graveyard as we continue our coverage of this the 13th Gundam fight. This latest match, Neo Japan vs Neo Russia, pits two old rivals with very different strategies against each other.
That's right. Neo Japan chose a top fighter driven to win by a Very personal mission. This could fuel that win at all costs. Fighting spirit. Or it could prove a liability. His behavior has been a source of drama and diplomatic difficulty for Neo Japan in this Gundam fight. But the results speak for themselves.
On the other hand, Neo Rush's strategy is all about preparation. Capture enemy Gundam fighters and seize their mobile suits. Aiming to win by default. This strategy offers the additional advantage of insights into their opponents Gundam technology.
Insights that have made their own Bolt
Gundam a Gundam to watch.
Some do question the wisdom of using a convict, Argo Golski as a Gundam fighter, but experience has shown Golski to be a formidable and dangerous opponent. Lets take a look at the board to see how things stand.
So far, the Neo Russia strategy is paying off, with Domon captured and imprisoned. Despite his physical prowess, he has been unable to escape. And in physical altercations with Golski has sadly looked like a child taking swings at an adult.
But don't count him out yet. Neo Russia has failed to capture the shining Gundam. And if Domolon and his team can reunite him with Neo Japan's Mobile Fighter, he has a chance to win this bout.
Oh, that looks serious. The Neorusha coaches are huddled together. Something must have gone wrong.
And there it is.
Oh, how disappointing for Team Neo Russia. Argo appears to have helped Domon escape.
See, this is what I was talking about. When the only freedom your Gundam Fighter experiences is in the fight itself, how can you ask them to use a fight avoidance strategy like Neo Russia's? It plays against his strengths and may prove to be a terrible miscalculation.
Argo is coming into this fight supremely confident. The Bolt Gundam is in top form, and the Shining Gundam's punches seem to have very little effect.
Oh, that's nasty. The Bolt Gundam has torn off one of the Shining Gundam's arms and is in a strong position to do the same to the Shining Gundam's head, which would take Neo Japan out of this Gundam fight. It's hard to see how Domon can recover with Argo in such a dominant position.
Is this the end of the line for Domon Kashuk? No folks. It seems he still has a fighting chance. Ooh, that punch was a thing of beauty. With that strike, the Shining Gundam is free of the Bolt Gundam's grip and ready to execute its signature Shining Finger attack.
No team has yet to work out an effective counter to the Shining Finger. And it's what has made Neo Japan an early favorite in this year's Gundam fight. There's the wind up the pre Attack hype speech. And I don't think I've ever seen this before. It looks like Domon is too injured to continue. I think we have a draw.
An unexpected conclusion to a dramatic contest. Next week, we follow the 13th Gundam fight to Neo Japan. But for now, a word from our sponsor. Galbaldi's suspended animation Pizza. The taste you know and love. The convenience of bake at home now in your local supermarket's frozen food aisle.
Shall we open with some stats?
You have stats?
I have stats.
All right, let's open with some stats.
I guess Flanders appears.
Count two.
When does Flanders appear in this episode?
When Rain is at that Log Cabin Bar Inn or whatever asking questions of some of the locals about the prison town. There is a Flanders dog curled up
next to an old woman who is knitting in a rocking chair by the fire.
There can only be one Flanders dog, so it must be the same one from New York or Italy.
It was in Rome.
It survived the Gundam fight in Rome and escaped to Siberia.
Flanders has survived more Gundam fights than we could count.
Raine threatens to leave Domon Count too.
She's really gonna do it one of these days.
Speaking of Raine, we got to meet her dad this episode.
The scientist with the generic scientist look in the futuristic science coat. And he's about as helpful as any Gundam dad. Scientist?
Yeah. On the one hand, a scientist. On the other hand, she's asking him to intervene in some kind of government affairs. So clearly he's. He is aligned with the government.
Works with the government, something.
Rain is also a Nepo baby. The whole Neo Japan Gundam team. All the children of high ranking Neo Japanese government officials. What a great system.
Hey, they can't help it.
If Rain got to grow up around top scientists and became a top scientist, that's not their fault.
I mean, maybe the thing about the Neo colonies is that only the most important people got to go there. And so everybody from Neo Japanese Japan is connected to someone important.
Rain and her dad yet again giving me DBZ vibes.
Because isn't Bulma a scientist? And Bulma's dad is also a scientist.
Yep.
The owners of Capsule Corp.
It's very funny that I keep being reminded of dbz because I've never actually watched it.
I watched a bunch of DBZ abridged. That is my experience of Dragon Ball Z.
And yet we don't yet know much about Domon's father.
Except that he has one.
Naturally.
Don't know why I felt the need to say that. But we understand that one of the primary criteria for being a Gundam Boy is that your dad has to be a Gundam inventing scientist.
Is Rain a Gundam boy? We worked out the criteria for a Gundam boy.
They need to be sad.
They need to be space.
They need to be good. And they need to be boy. The only one Rain is missing is Boy. And we've made exceptions in the past.
I don't think Rain is that sad. Because Gundam boys have intrinsic sadness. Gundam boys are depressed.
They're not just sad about reasonable things to be sad about happening in their lives. They are deep down sad. Sad is part of their core.
Well. And I guess we also established that
Gundam boys have to be at least a bit dumb. And Raine gives every indication of being very smart indeed.
And of being generally a cheerful person. She's worried about Domon, naturally.
And frustrated by his total inability to see her as a woman and prospective romantic connection.
But I wouldn't call her sad.
Alright. Sorry, Rayn. You're gonna have to work harder if
you want to be a Gundam boy. Something that no reasonable person should ever want.
Speaking of how Gundam boys are dumb.
Yes, we've been speaking about that for seven years.
I cracked up. When Domon wonders to himself, why are they looking for Gundams?
Why is anyone.
Dude, it's not that hard to figure out. Why is Domon surprised by this?
I'm imagining the proprietor of a hobby shop when Gundam Wing first went on the air. Why is everyone looking for Gundams?
There's also Domon flinging himself at Argo
in the mess hall when they're all eating.
What purpose did that serve?
He's just mad that this guy prevented his escape.
No. He senses the fighting spirit coming from this other prisoner and he can't resist the urge for a good punch up.
Oh, I guess this is a Domon
sucker punches somebody count too.
Also, if Domon hadn't done that, Argo
would not have sensed Domon's fighting spirit
and would not have arranged this fake breakout that then turned into a real breakout.
Domon is out there playing 4D chess.
Perhaps 5D's for a guy playing 5D chess, he sure seems to get arrested a lot.
And tortured and beat up by the cops a lot. And to really find being captured and tortured an inconvenience. You're never going to be able to make Domon sound smart. I'm sorry.
I mean, no. But you gotta admit it's pretty impressive that he's a guy for whom being locked up in a Soviet prison and beaten soundly by the guards is in your own Words merely an inconvenience. When you've lived a life like Domon, when you've been arrested and beaten up
as many times as he has and
just kept coming back stronger, overcome basically every challenge you've ever faced, why wouldn't you throw yourself into the jaws of danger, confident that you're gonna emerge on the other side? What's the best way to find the Gundam Fighter of Neo Russia? I dunno. Walk around like a huge idiot with a big sign on your head that says, hello, I'm the Gundam Fighter. Please attack me.
Oh my gosh. Loads of confidence, absolute certainty that everything will work out his way in the end.
He really is a Nepo baby.
I thought you were going to say he was a Shar.
Eh, Same difference.
There's a version of Char. There's an interpretation of him where he's very Machiavellian, has everything planned out well in advance, going through the steps of his master plan. But I think Shar is much more full of confidence, barrels into situations he doesn't understand, and just figures out how to achieve his goals in the process. And I think we're seeing a lot of that from Domon.
The main difference that I see between the two, other than that they are
in completely different kinds of stories.
And this actually gets at part of the tonal difference between the two shows. Shar takes huge risks because Shar doesn't
care whether he lives or dies.
Domon takes huge risks because he doesn't think anything bad is ever going to happen to him.
Exactly.
He also has a scar on his cheek instead of his forehead, which. I mean, those are completely different parts of the face.
Yeah, they have completely different kinds of daddy issues. Does Domon have a sister?
He kind of treats Rain like a sister.
The opening narration felt uncomfortably timely in that it was talking about, effectively, the Russian government pressing prisoners into service, a thing which has been happening in the war in Ukraine.
More on that in the research piece
in a few minutes, though. This prison.
Oh, gosh.
Is not a Russian prison.
No, this is Alcatraz. For some reason.
This is very much Alcatraz. It's really explicitly Alcatraz.
I'm going to read you Imagawa's comments on this episode verbatim, since they're a bit extensive and I think very revealing about the production process going into this show. In episode five, I learned a lot about the significance of location, hunting and settings. People ask me why this prison is in Russia since it is based on Alcatraz. Fortunately, the year before making G Gundam, I went to America. So I asked if I could visit Alcatraz. In fact, I really wanted to see Alcatraz as a location reference for one of the episodes of Giant Robo. When it was time to create Argo's prison, I supposed a small one would be too boring to hold the powerful Argo. I used the idea of the jail as practice before using it in Giant Robo, so I used portions of Alcatraz whenever possible. For example, the place where Argo and Domon meet for the first time is an actual place, so I made scenes of this episode using videos and pamphlets as references. Photographs were definitely useful, but all in all, the experience of actually going out and seeing things out there was more beneficial. Perhaps because I am a man of stage direction, I constantly wondered how to convert my experiences into pictures. Another good reference was a take Home Alcatraz, a paper model of the prison that was sold in the gift shop. I presented this to modeler Makoto Kobayashi, and he was very happy. Then, after he had assembled it, I borrowed the finished product and showed the animation staff exactly which part of the jail Argo and Domon do this and that in. Also, it was quite useful for deciding the perspectives and camera angles. I asked the staff to set their perspectives on the table and told them it would feel like this to be at Alcatraz. Thus, I learned the importance of location hunting through the experience of actually seeing the prison. However, actual location hunting could not be done, so we had no choice but to do location hunting by watching films.
After all, it is certainly an iconic prison.
Yeah, I'm not sure there is any other prison with that same kind of mythic quality. Because truly, we're watching the episode, they show us a prison compound on an
island, and we both go Alcatraz.
There's nowhere else it could be.
Sure, I suppose there are other famous prisons, the Bastille, for instance. But this is something else. It's cinematic.
In the case of an actual Russian prison or gulag in Siberia, what keeps people there is largely the fact that it's Siberia.
You are in the middle of nowhere. The weather conditions are absolutely brutal. You would be unable to survive even
if you did manage to get out.
The island's kind of overkill, at least
as I perceive it. It's really important for what they're trying to say at the end of the episode.
Oh, well, yeah, as a practical matter, for a prison. No, it's not necessary.
But it absolutely harkens to the idea of Earth as a prison for the Gundam fighters. Earth as this island of habitability in
the midst of the sea of space.
At the risk of tautology, the prison is a prison, but the island which
surrounds the prison is also a prison.
And the Earth which surrounds the island is also a prison. Its prison's all the way down. For the Gundam fighters, the Gundam is a prison. The fight is a prison, the ring is a prison. At least from the perspective of Birdman,
who is yet another movie reference. Arguably the title as well. I'm not positive, but the first part of the title is Great Escape, which
is the name of a movie, a rather famous one about a prison break,
starring Steve McQueen and Birdman of Alcatraz, A highly fictionalized film about a real life Alcatraz prisoner played by Burt Lancaster, I believe. I think so. There was also an Escape from Alcatraz movie, which, again, a fictionalized account of an actual escape from the prison. And that movie came out in 79. But vis a vis Birdman, the prisoner in question, was famous as an ornithologist, did a bunch of bird research from inside prison, published a bunch of texts, made discoveries, invented bird medicines.
The subtitles at least refer to Domon's cellmate as the Birdman rather than merely Birdman, so we can assume it's a nickname and not his actual name.
He's a funny character.
Did you notice their cell has only one bed?
Only one bed and only one set of sheets. Just like in my fanfictions. I actually watched through the Birdman of Alcatraz this morning.
That's what the cell looks like that the Birdman is in when he's put in Alcatraz, right?
But he's put in solitary for sure.
No, I know. No, I'm a. I imagine Argo's handler, the woman whose name I do not remember and is not said in the course of this episode. I'm picturing her as a Fujoshi. Just like now.
Kiss.
Oh, no. We got a cell with only one bed. It's so cold tonight. Guess we'll have to share our warmth.
She reminded me of a cross between Shima and Beryl from Sailor Moon.
Mmm.
I assume she's supposed to be like, Neo kgb.
Oh, yeah. Her references to our intelligence network.
She wears a different uniform.
She clearly has authority over this prison without really being, like, part of it. She's mostly there to oversee Argo. The bit where Birdman is explaining to Domon, or at least trying to convince him that it's hopeless and he should just give up and tell them where his Gundam is, and he's like, it's all over. You're in checkmate. I assume the joke, because they show us the chessboard. The black king is not in checkmate. The black king is not even in check.
What I noticed about that sequence, because it's actually a fairly long sequence where he's explaining to Domon the trap that he's fallen into. The Russian strategy, as it were, very light on animation. Lots of pans, lots of effects that provide some visual interest without needing to animate very much.
The fight at the end of the
episode is pretty effects heavy too. Not a lot of animation.
And most of what is there is being reused.
Not that it looks bad.
No.
But some corners were cut. I'm not seeing a lot of corners,
I guess, is what I'm saying.
Corner light. But it is well constructed. I think it's a good story, well told. They do some neat things, sort of
foreshadowing when Domon breaks the prison guard's army. You know, that's the fate that he
then suffers at the end of the episode. Some good stuff, real cinema.
They also extend the torture imagery. Like there's the explicit scenes of Domon being questioned. And then when he starts the fight with Argo and takes a guard's gun, he's beaten afterwards. But the Mechagore.
Mmm, yes, the Mechagor.
All the captured and disassembled Mecha, which they can't possibly need to chain those
mobile fighters and hang them off of boards and stuff like that.
They did not need to go that hard.
That was not necessary.
But it.
I needed it.
It was necessary for me.
Nina.
But then, especially at the close of that scene, there's a shot of a Gundam head. They have drawn it so. So it's like the eye has been ripped out. There's all these cables hanging out of the eye socket.
That's so good.
This episode, more than G Gundam and G Gundam, more than most Gundam, draws a really tight line between the Mobile Fighter and the body of the Gundam Fighter.
The fact that the Mobile Fighter just echoes every movement made that there's no
control interface, that there's no joystick or pedals or buttons to press that has already linked the two very, very closely.
And that they apparently feel the pain of hits and damage that the mobile suit subsequently takes exactly this control system also renders them vulnerable.
It would be difficult to design a Gundam that was more an avatar of the person than these are. And how grotesque, how gruesome to take a person and imprison them and force them to tear apart their own body. Because that's what they're doing here. They've got all of these Gundam fighters and they're making them rip apart their own captured Gundams.
Notably, none of those other Gundam fighters are freed at the end of this episode.
I thought it was odd. You mentioned earlier you like how the story for this episode is constructed, and I mostly agree. But at one point, Birdman says of the prisoners, once they are out of here, why would they ever be let go?
Well, I think it's a hypothetical. I think that's part of the reason why they give up and accept their imprisonment, is what he's saying. He's saying if they were ever to escape, they would then be hunted as traitors. The prison is as much psychological and as much a place of refuge from the outside world as it is a pen to keep them in. You see that when Rayne is doing her reconnaissance cruise around the island and she's seeing all of these cannons hidden in windows and artillery pieces concealed under camouflage. Most prisons don't have those.
Most prisons are not built to be
fortresses to defend against attacks from outside.
Ooh. I have to backtrack to your comment about the closeness between the Gundam fighters themselves and their mobile fighter units and how it's really one body.
Oh, yeah, thank you.
Because I hadn't quite finished with that.
Because what should happen when Domon first encounters Argo, but that Argo's eyes glow exactly like a mobile fighter unit's eyes glow. Also, he is a giant.
Domon is the size of one of his legs. But returning to the design comparisons, the
bolt Gundam sort of navy blue, dark plating at the shoulders, chest and skirting looks a lot like an old Russian military coat.
Like a big overcoat that you would
wear in the winter.
And ditto the hat.
Yeah, the shape of the head is very reminiscent of the hat. And his weapon marks him as a prisoner. It's a literal ball and chain like
they used to put on prisoners.
Mm.
Though I feel like it's gotta also
be a reference back to the Gundam Hammer.
The beloved Gundam Hammer of first Gundam.
Sure, Domon does refer to it as
a hammer, but when I was doing my second watch through for notes, I was like, ball and chain. I see what they did there.
It is extremely convenient how many different
countries use the same blue, red, white
scheme for their national colors.
Makes it real easy to apply the Gundam tricolor.
You just pointed out that Argo's eyes glow like the Gundam's. But the way Domon and Argo fight at the beginning of the episode with Domon, like punching him in the chest
to no effect and then getting clobbered on his shoulders.
The almost the exact sequence repeats at the end of the episode. Then no one punches him in the face, and he does that like, tough
guy, no sell thing where he just like turns his chin into the punch, cocks his head to one side and then the other, as though he's.
He's just warming up. He's just stretching.
All right, Domon, when are you going
to hit me for real?
You would think that the roof of
the bolt Gundam's hangar would like, open or something.
You wouldn't think they'd make it.
So it has to bust out and be rebuilt every time.
No, that sequence of the mobile suit or the giant robot breaking through the
roof of the hangar, that's a classic. They did that in Zeta.
I'm sure they've done it in other shows. Like, you gotta have that sequence.
It looks too cool not to.
This is a show about cool sequences, not logical technology.
In that case, I have nothing at
all to say about Argo punching through a wall, tearing a gas pipe apart with his bare hands, and having it burst into flames without hur him or Domon or Birdman.
Argo's design also marks him as a little older. The thick, bushy sideburns, the big spiky eyebrows.
He makes some great faces in this episode.
Like his look of shock and horror when the shining finger is coming towards him.
Every frame of painting and the ending narration makes him somewhat sympathetic, right? The. The rumors that he was some sort of space pirate who traded his own life to save his crew.
Well, his Gundam survives, so we know
he's going to be a major character. So he's got to be sympathetic, right?
It's interesting comparing this to Domon's other draw, because it tells you a lot about his opponents. In the first draw, Saisaishi outwits him. In this one, it's that Domon physically cannot continue.
He's taken too much damage.
He's too hurt very from the hits he's taken to keep on fighting and to finish off his opponent unexpectedly.
Honorable behavior from the Neo Russia side though, because they do have an army here.
They have a bunch of artillery pieces.
They could have tried to destroy the shining Gundam when it was incapacitated.
Which in a way points to a somewhat uncomfy and maybe not knowingly made,
but interesting distinction between Neo Russia and Neo America.
Because Neo Russia is willing to capture
people's Gundam fighters to destroy their Gundams
to steal Their tech, all of that's fine. But once the fight has begun, they're not supposed to interfere, and they don't feel like they can violate that rule safely for some reason or other, they don't feel like they can do that.
Neo America has no such compunctions.
The reason I started watching the Birdman of Alcatraz this morning is because there's that scene of the Birdman of Neo
Alcatraz sitting on the shore throwing crumbs
of bread to the seagulls. And I thought, hey, I wonder if that's in the other movie. I don't think it is. The one thing that did stand out to me that I think might have partially influenced this episode, or at least led to the use of the Birdman reference, is there's a scene where the Birdman has all of his birds there in cages and ventilated boxes and things like that. And at one point he opens up one of these big boxes and lets like two dozen birds out to fly around his cell, and he says, I give you the illusion of freedom. Enjoy it. And that's the vibe of the end of the episode, isn't it?
They've escaped prison, but they're not free.
Domon is bound by his quest to save him, whoever him is, and also to find him, a different him, whoever that other him might be.
I would like to make a prediction about this series.
Go on.
So Domon has the dream about the Devil Gundam and that finding the Devil Gundam and that man that he keeps asking people about is the only way to save Guy in suspended animation or whatever.
I feel like there should be a musical sting every time one of us says the Devil Gundam. The Devil Gundam. Dun dun.
We should look up a sound effect.
It turns out from the next time on, at the end of the episode, the Devil Gundam is the one that I have wondered about from the intro. It's the one that appears to have another, smaller Gundam on its head. Will the nations of the world need to set aside their rivalry in order
to fight the the Devil Gundam? The greater evil?
Hmm.
Are we going to get into a
United nations type situation?
Hmm?
Hmm. That's all you're getting out of me.
I know.
I just want to make sure that my prediction has been recorded for posterity. Maybe I'm wrong.
There's a first time for everything.
Oh, you.
We know now that the Russian prison complex appearing in this episode was not based on a Russian prison at all, but on the American Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in San Francisco, California, closed in 1963 after 30 years of operation and converted to a museum, which imagawa toured in 1993 while Scouting locations for giant robots. In fact, at the time Russia had very few facilities that we would recognize as prisons of the closed fortress, like variety common in the United States and depicted in the episode. In 1991, on the eve of its dissolution, the Soviet Union maintained 2,100 labor camps but fewer than 10 and perhaps fewer than five prisons. Likewise, the decision to set the Neo Russian fighter's introduction in a prison, characterizing neo Russia primarily as a repressive penal state, probably owes more to the durable infamy of Stalin's gulag system than the actual condition of the post Soviet Russian penal system in the early mid-1990s. The characterization of Golsky as a convict conscripted to fight and kept in line by the threat of summary chest explosion, too, would have recalled the Soviet penal battalions fighting on the Eastern Front during World War II. More than any contemporary practice at the time, soldiers were much more likely to wind up in detention than prisoners on the battlefield. Ironically, this particular twist would make more sense today, considering the extensive use of prisoners as mercenary shock troops during Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. And yet the Russian penal system was in the international news in the late 80s and early 90s. In the mid-1980s, the new General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, had launched a broad platform of economic, social, and political reforms aimed at reinvigorating the faltering Soviet apparatus. Perestroika. You've probably heard the term. Gorbachev saw problems everywhere in the system, but foremost was the impossibility of collecting accurate information about the nature, causes, and extent of the Soviet Union's challenges. Decades of state control over public discourse, rosy but inaccurate reports about the system's successes, and suppression of earnest criticism left the highest echelons of government floating untethered, in a kind of information free void. And though he had risen to the highest post in the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, Gorbachev still faced resistance from the nomenclatura, the class of de facto elite functionaries who might monopolized key roles within the extensive Soviet bureaucracy. The system had been good to them. They were reluctant to see it change, and they had a million and one ways to stymie perestroika, just as their predecessors a generation prior had done to Khrushchev's thaw. Perhaps they simply did not understand how badly the country needed reform, or perhaps if it were only a question of their own self interest. Then the pressure from the people below would move them when orders from above could not. Either way, Gorbachev concluded that more open discussion of the Union's problems would shore up support for his reform program. He also wanted support, or at least cooperation from the West. Gorbachev got on well with UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan. And starting in 1988, as part of the new policy of openness glasnost, his government allowed delegations from the Western powers to visit sensitive Soviet sites like nuclear weapons facilities and prison camps, including, surprisingly, the facilities for political dissidents. The Soviet prison system at the time, which Russia inherited at 91, was organized as arrestees awaiting trial or convicts awaiting sentencing would be held in closed facilities known as investigation prisons. In at least one case, a centuries old fortress converted for the purpose. The average stay in an investigation prison was supposedly around five months, but detention for up to a year was not uncommon. The majority were held in common cells that could hold 25 people, but about 40% would be kept in smaller 15 person cells. They were segregated according to sex and severity of crime, with juveniles kept separately from adults. Cells had toilets, radios, mirrors and running water. But prisoners were only permitted to leave once per week to shower after their time in the investigation prison. Most convicted prisoners were sentenced to a labor camp. The maximum sentence was 15 years imprisonment or death. In 1990, the first year for which the Soviet Union disclosed data about capital punishment, it executed 195 people. The labor camps were divided into four regimes which determined the conditions of their ordinary, strengthened, strict and special. The principal differences between the regimes were the amount of contact permitted with the outside world and the daily caloric intake allotted to each prisoner. A more severe regime meant less food and fewer letters, packages and visits permitted per year. Dedicated penal colonies existed for women, and juveniles would be sent to educational colonies. Though not part of this system, the Soviet Union also maintained 16 prison hospitals and 1,500 other facilities for involuntarily committed psychiatric patients. Since at least as early as the 1970s, the Soviet Union was repeatedly denounced by the World Psychiatric association for the alleged routine use of involuntary commitment to imprison political dissidents and other undesirables whose behavior had not yet crossed into criminality. And later research conducted in post Soviet Russia appears to confirm those accusations. In 1988, the New York Times columnist and former executive editor a.m. rosenthal and Catherine Fitzpatrick, a human rights activist and Russian English translator, became the first Westerners to tour a Soviet strict regime. Labor Camp Perm 35 which held a large number of political prisoners. That there were political prisoners at all was something of an open secret and a minor embarrassment to Soviet authorities. For the first three years of his tenure, Gorbachev refused to acknowledge they existed at all. Then abruptly, in an address to the United nations on December 7, 1988, while Rosenthal and Fitzpatrick were in a Moscow hotel waiting to begin their visit to Perm 35, Gorbachev announced a raft of legal reforms intended to liberalize Soviet society and added that people are no longer kept in prison for their political or religious views. Indeed, just before this speech, his government had granted a wide ranging amnesty to prisoners convicted of minor nonviolent crimes and those detained for purely political crimes. Thus, by the time the Americans arrived at Perm 35, the camp was a shadow of its former self. The amnesty did not apply to those who had been convicted of crimes against the state like spying, subversion, or treason, and the latter included anyone caught trying to leave the country without permission. So 15 prisoners remained in a facility with a capacity for 400. Rosenthal's written report of the visit, published in the New York Times, naturally makes clear that the prison officials themselves were not on board with this whole glasnost thing, and they made every effort to prevent the two Americans having any interactions with the inmates. But glasnost continued, and the much publicized visit opened the doors to further inspection tours. In 89, a pair of Republican congressmen toured Perm 35 again, and the following year saw visits from National Geographic, 60 Minutes, and a delegation from the newly established and short lived Federal Prisons Journal, a professional magazine created by and for the US Bureau of Prisons. This lattermost group toured not just Perm 35, which by then had 22 prisoners and a staff of 40, but several other types of prisons and labor camps, including a women's labor camp, an educational facility for juveniles, and one of the investigation prisons. Although not located on an inescapable island in a frozen sea like the prison in the episode, Perm 35 was distinguished from the other facilities. The prison's journal delegation toured by its isolated location high in the Ural Mountains, a six hour drive on snowy roads away from the nearest city. There the prisoners assembled heavy machinery in the prison factory, working eight hours a day, six days a week, with a television and a rudimentary weight room, their only options for recreation. They lived in groups nine to a room, a small commissary stocked socks, toiletries, cigarettes, writing materials and some additional foodstuffs. Prisoners who broke the rules would be placed in a Shizo, a spartan punishment cell kept cold with wood or metal plank beds, no natural light, and only high stools to sit on during the day where they might be left. For more than a year, a handful of rooms were set up as apartments where prisoners could receive three day family visits. Though prisoners at the camp complained that requests for visits were routinely denied, the remoteness of the facility made it difficult for their families to visit, and many relatives were afraid to do so at all for fear of retaliation by the authorities. This setup a prison, factory, general living quarters, sometimes cramped, sometimes spacious family apartments, punishment cells, commissary, limited recreation facilities, and so on was repeated in the other camps toured by the American delegation. The actual conditions of life in the camps seemed to vary more according to the character and culture of the individual facilities than the severity of their regime classification. Though officials did complain that conditions had gotten worse after the general amnesty, the removal of the nonviolent offenders and subsequent concentration of violent offenders into fewer facilities had made things more dangerous, more difficult to control. While the relaxation of Soviet controls on speech and political agitation probably had a greater impact on the Soviet and Russian society in the long term, the release of the nonviolent offenders was, in raw numerical terms, a much bigger deal at the time. Though the number of prisoners in the Soviet Union had declined significantly since its height under Stalin, the imprisoned population in 1985 is reported to have been 1.6 million out of a total population of 276 million, roughly double the rate in the United States at the time, and still higher as of this recording than the current US Rate of incarceration, although not by much. Gorbachev had complained that the rate of incarceration was too high, another of his problems that needed to be solved. But the state had an interest in keeping its prisons full. Per Minister of the Interior Vadim Bakatan, the prisons had long been used to fulfill production quotas mandated by the central government. They were factories with barbed wire fences. And the social goals usually cited to justify imprisonment, those being punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence and isolation of dangerous individuals, were subservient to the nation's productive needs. By 1990, though, after the amnesty, the prison population had been reduced by around half to just 760,000 inmates in labor camps and prisons, 200,000 in investigation prisons, and a further 160,000 alcoholics involuntarily committed to treatment facilities. I didn't find any statistics to indicate whether that number of 160,000 alcoholics was high or low compared to other years, but alcoholism was high on gorbachev's list of social problems to be solved in the 80s, he had pushed a major prohibition kind of campaign, and it's tempting to assume that there was some kind of connection between that and all of the involuntary commitments a few years later. But again, I couldn't find any other statistics, so I can't say that for certain either way. The amnesty, like all of Gorbachev's reforms, soon attracted criticism. The Soviet Union experienced a remarkable surge in crime during the 90s, and some claimed that this was because the rapid amnesty process had inadvertently released dangerous criminals back into society. But if you look at the stats, the surge in criminality started years before the amnesty. And like the Soviet Union and then Russia in this period were going down the checklist of social conditions that lead to increased crime and just ticking every box. All the human development indicators were in freefall. Mortality rates surged, life expectancy plunged. Alcohol consumption increased dramatically. The collapse of state enterprises led to mass unemployment. Incomes declined as hyperinflation destroyed people's savings. Essential goods became impossible to find. The black market expanded, GDP collapsed, poverty was rampant. Organized crime exploded. Public corruption grew to unprecedented levels. Wars flared up in the provinces, Coup attempts consumed Moscow twice in three years. Paramilitaries fought official troops in the streets, and tanks shelled the parliament building. What I'm saying is it probably was not the amnesty of half a million or so shoplifters that led to all the crime doing. But because of that increase in crime, the prison population started climbing again almost immediately after the amnesty. It increased steadily from 1991 until 1996, despite an absolute decline in the population then, it remained steady through the rest of the decade. In the early 2000s, though, it began a continuous decline, at least through 2024, the last date for which I could find data. By that point, the incarceration had declined to just three prisoners for every thousand people, only the 33rd highest rate in the world, comparable to Chile, Peru, Nicaragua and Libya, but significantly more than most of its former satellites. Of the former Soviet Socialist Republics, only Belarus has more prisoners per capita, though Georgia is pretty close. Among its former Cold War rivals, the United Kingdom has around half as many prisoners per capita, France a bit more than a third, and Germany around 1/5. In the United States, however, a generation of tough on crime politics and the expansion of the private prison industry caused the incarceration rate to surge throughout the 90s and 2000s, peaking in 2008. It then declined until 2020, but has increased steadily since then, reaching 5.7 prisoners per 1,000 people in 2024. Nearly twice the rate of Russia. Which I guess means that if G Gundam were remade today, it would be Chibidi with the bomb strapped to his chest instead of Argo and his four girlfriends would have Stern Warden costumes instead of Ring girl bikinis.
Next time on episode 11.6, the devil that Fell to Earth, we research and
discuss G Gundam Episode six. And very demure, very mindful. The littlest Zam
cruel and unusual punishment. Domon was a different man before the incident.
A bad trip. Computer, activate Sinister Elevator.
It's alive.
The angriest boy in space. This isn't even its final form.
Golden from the hit film K Pop
Devil Gundam Hunters and Nina and Tom watch a dub. 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 Dayakson. 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@hostsondampodcast.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@gundumpodcast.com Patreon or look for other ways to support the show@gundumpodcast.com support most of all, thank you for listening. Are you ready to get come down to Neo New York and throw hands over your Gundam opinions? No, that's because you lack conviction. Or maybe you just haven't heard an opinion worth fighting over yet. So how about this one? Inspired by a betrayed vampire wizard, A fighting tournament is fine, but think how much better G Gundam would be if it embraced the true Winter Olympic spirit and had mobile curling matches instead.
Complete with their very own cheating scandals.
Shining Sweet Sweeper.
It would still be Shining Finger if it's the cheating scandal.
Topical reference.
Are we ready?
So ready. This is.
And I, Nina, New to og OG Gundam.
OG Gundam.
You watched that seven years ago. You don't get to call yourself new anymore. Here you ch.
Next time on episode 11.6, the Gundam
that Fell to Earth. Did I say the Gundam?
Starting over.
Sorry. Hello, Mr. Policeman. And that's it. It's over.
All right,
sa.