You're listening to season nine of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of Sci-fi mega franchise Mobile Suit Gundam, researching its influences, examining its themes, and discussing how each piece of the Gundam canon fits within the changing context in Japan and the world from 1979 to today. White.
This is episode 9.4 White Devil, amaro, Ray and Retroactive Continuity. And we are your hosts. I'm Tom Gundam Fan, sometimes called the podcasting Devil of New York.
And I'm Nina, comparatively new to Gundam, though as Tom pointed out recently, at some point in the not too distant future, I will have seen more Gundam than Tom had seen when we started this project. Totally unrelated sidebar. We are aware of the jackhammering in the background. We just have no idea when they're going to stop. So sorry, everyone. Introducing special guest roadwork jackhammer. Mobile Soup Breakdown is made possible by 723 paying subscribers. Thank you all. And a special shout out to our newest supporters pyro Bowser old type 78, joshua M. Sasha B. And Graham s you keep us genki. Mobile Soup Breakdown is independent and ad free, and your support keeps it that way. This week Slice the Light made a contribution on Kofi and Cobra panic. Bought us some tea from our wishlist. Thanks you two, for links to all of the different ways to support MSB, visit gundampodcast.com slash support. And now Tom's research on the origins of Amuro Ray's White devil nickname.
Here's a Gundam trivia question for you. Shar was the Red Comet. Rambaral was the Blue Giant. Gaia, Mash and Ortega were the black tristars. But what did Xeon soldiers call Amaro during the one year war? I expect most Gundam fans could answer that. He was called the white Devil of the Federation. Renpo noshiroi akuma. Here's a harder question where did that come from? Because no one ever calls him the White Devil in First Gundam or Zeta or Double Zeta or Shar's Counterattack. Not in War in The Pocket or Stardust Memory and certainly not in F 91 or SD Gundam. Amaros nickname is just one of those things that we know without really knowing how we know it. Like how I know that the colony dropped on Sydney was the capital of side Two, and that it was named Island Ifish. But I don't know when, where, or how those facts were first established. Ever since we covered first Gundam five years ago, I have been fascinated by the way the Gundam franchise has continually built out its continuity with later works, replacing the fluid vagaries of the original with concrete form and detail. Some of these must have been intended when the original was made. Tomino's novels, for example, were written while the show was airing. When the show is vague about the colony drop operation and makes only passing references to critical turning points like the Battle of Loom or the Antarctic Treaty, it's safe enough to fill in details extracted from the novels. So Captain Paolo says that Shah Asnubal destroyed five Federation battleships at the Battle of Loom, and the novel reader supplies the rest. Loom? That's another name for side five. A battle was fought there during the early phase of the One Year War. After Operation British Admirals Revel and Tianim commanded the Federation forces. But despite a huge numerical advantage, they were badly mauled by Xeon's mobile suits, and Revel himself was captured by the Black Tristars. Side five was completely destroyed during the battle, and more than a billion civilians lost their lives. You might very well already know that story, even if you'd never read the novels where it first appeared. You might know it because you read it on a wiki, a forum, a blog, or one of the other hundred ways that fans share background information. Or maybe you encountered a passionate Gundam fan wearing an Ask Me about Loom button and you decided to humor them. Or you could have encountered it in some unspecified future Gundam series that incorporates those background details into its main plot. Actually, I misled you a little bit a paragraph ago when I mentioned that the novel reader would know that the Battle of Loom happened after Operation British. In fact, the novels don't mention a thing about Operation British. The details of that event were established after they came out. Later works would then synthesize these two different versions, discarding the bit in the novel about Xeon dropping numerous colonies while keeping details, like the three second warning that they issued before unleashing poison gas on all of those billions of civilians. That's part of what is so fascinating about the Gundam series approach to continuity, the way ideas get proposed on the fringes. And then over time, some of them get Laundered back into the core animated works, becoming part of the canon, while other ideas fade into obscurity like a bird picking out only the best twigs to expand its nest. Captain Xeon, invented for the photobook ms. Era, gets his cameo in due course, but no one is champing at the bit to make a gosh dang. Magical ensen blaster mari show.
That's the office lady one.
No, that's office lady haman.
Okay. I thought there was another Xeon office lady. Monk.
I mean, probably, but magical Ensen Blaster Mari is about a young Xeon girl who is visited by the red comet on a white horse, who gives her the power to transform into a magical girl with a Zaku sidekick, and together they save the principality or something. It's from the late 80s. This works the other direction, too. Did you know that Flanagan Boone, obscure Xeon's submarine officer, is getting his own manga now? But no one has ever explained what Solium is, or why it was so vital to the Xeon war effort. Or for that matter, why the Gundam's computer speaks to Amuro just the once in a voice like a motherly chipmunk. There's a term for this practice as a brand strategy media mix. It describes a media property that can be experienced across multiple formats, with each component of the media mix mutually reinforcing the others. You can watch Gundam shows. You can read Gundam books. You can play Gundam games. You can build Gundam models. You can eat Gundam branded snacks and drink Gundam branded soft drinks while listening to a Gundam radio drama in the shadow of a giant Gundam statue. And if things go according to plan, each one of those will stimulate your desire for more Gundam. This isn't merchandising in the hierarchical sense, where a primary work like a movie creates demand for secondary branded products. It's more like a spider web, with each node from games to movies to gashapon capsules connected to all of the others. And at the center of it is this ephemeral thing, the Universal Century Gundam and its imaginary history. Like in Xeno's Paradox, each piece that you experience brings you closer, but the thing itself can never be captured. But all of this mixing and melding of ideas over different works, different formats, different authors, and different eras confuses any attempt to analyze a single work. How much are you supposed to know? Is it fair to assess Char's counterattack in light of double zeta? What about beltorchka's children? What about the Beltorchka's Children manga that is coming out right now? The differences and the details may wind up being kind of inconsequential. I mean, the MoS Eisley Cantina scene in Star Wars doesn't change much if you happen to know that the leader of the Bith band playing in the background has a crippling gambling addiction, or that the song they're playing is their breakout hit Mad About Me. But does it change your reading of First Gundam if, when the narrator solemnly intoes that the Principality of Xeon and the Federation forces caused the deaths of half the total population, you happen to remember that the novel instead blames Xeon specifically for slaughtering 4 billion people? And does it change your impression of Amuro Ray if you think of him as the white Devil? That's why I've gotten so interested in trying to work out how we know these things, where they come from and when. I suspect this is less of a problem in Japan, where the primary sources are easier to come by and longtime fans could actually watch the canon develop in real time. But in the US. And the English speaking fandom as a whole, everything came over late, out of order and all jumbled together. In a curious coincidence, the first episode of First Gundam aired on Cartoon Network in July of 2001, a month after the debut of Yasuhiko Yoshikazu's Manga Gundam the Origin. By the time we got widespread access to the original text, japan was already embarking on a thoroughgoing revision of the whole imaginary history. So an English speaking Gundam fan in 2001 could watch First Gundam and Stardust Memory, but not Zeta and just think how differently all that stuff at the end would hit if you didn't know what happened next. You know that scene in Shar's counterattack when Shar explains the events of Zeta and Double Zeta only for Quest to say, I already knew all of that. We chuckle at it now, but that must have been pretty useful for American audiences when the movie came over in 2002, two years before the English release of Zeta Gundam and more than a decade before Double Zeta. You can almost hear the Gundam fans sitting next to Quest saying, oh, so the Titans turned out to be bad guys. I see, I see. And what about this organization called the Haman? I want to learn more about that. By the time first Gundam reached America, Amuro had already become the white devil of the Federation, but only just barely. And here's how it happened. In 1998, Bondi's Video Game Division released KIRO Senchi gondamu Giren No Yabo better known by the alliterative English name Girin's Greed. It's a simulation strategy game that puts the player in command of one of the factions in the one year war, allowing them to control everything from unit production to battlefield strategy. Starting from the promise of letting the player fight the war again but do it their way. The game draws a great deal of inspiration from the Kaku Senki genre, which I talked about a couple of weeks ago and later entries in the series would go even further in allowing the player to change the history of the universal century. A hallmark of the series is that by fulfilling certain conditions, a player might save Garma, empower Ramba Rawl to defeat the white base, or put Temre in charge of his own army by incorporating characters and machines from across the sprawling Gundam franchise. Girin's Greed has that kind of toy chest quality of letting you play with all your favorites, just like that time you had Optimus Prime officiate the wedding of Darth Vader and the Shredder. Giren's Greed gave you the opportunity to give Shar his own custom Gundam, or answer the question that Gundam fans had been asking since 1991 what would have happened if Amaro Ray had met Anna Volgato during the Battle of Solomon? If those two ace pilots do meet on the battlefield, there's a little dialogue scene that plays between them. Amuro senses a powerful presence coming from the enemy, and at first he thinks it must be Shar, but then he realizes it's someone else. Sugoi Pressata shaka Dagatsio Gato recognizes his enemy immediately the white devil of the Federation. For the sake of Xeon's dead warriors, for the countless hundreds who fell before you, I will have you atone with your death. That interaction must have struck a chord because they kept reusing the dialogue, including in the 2011 release of New Girin's Greed, the most recent entry in the franchise.
Shaka Shika Daga siyui Mkuna.
By then, though, the nickname had spread well beyond its origins. It worked its way into the Super Robot Wars video game series, which had at first tried to call Amaro the Federation's white shooting star. But that nickname didn't really take off. In 2010, the White devil nickname was adopted, or maybe I should say acknowledged by a mainline anime release, thus establishing it permanently and retroactively in the continuity as Amaro's nom de Gere. The phrase white devil has a strong resonance in English. It's commonly used to describe villains, real and fictional, who wield the power of their whiteness as a weapon against non white peoples. Historically, it might conjure up the Boxer Rebellion in China, an uprising to expel the foreign devils who are dominating the Qing Dynasty. It might remind one of Muhammad Ali's famous 1974 TV interview in which he said that the white man of America was a blue eyed blondeheaded devil. And no doubt you can think of plenty of other examples applied to the Gundam context. It may start to look like calling Amaro the White devil of the Federation is intentional commentary about his participation in the Federation war machine and, by extension, his culpability for the Federation's crimes. I leave it to you whether you think that's true today, but I don't believe that was intended when it started. First of all, I've never found any evidence that there are similar associations in Japanese between the phrase Shiroi Akuma and racial oppression, or oppression of any kind for that matter. Shiroi Akuma is used casually as a nickname for trains, race horses, the Pokemon togakist the wolf goddess Amaterasu in the game Okami, the drug cocaine, and so on. And what's more, I think it was originally intended to be a cheeky reference to some fairly obscure Gundam side material, because Amuro was not the first Gundam character to be called Shiroi Akuma. For the sake of completeness, the earliest use of the term in the Gundam franchise, as far as I can tell, is on a 1988 trading card featuring an SD version of Haman's White cubile with the text Shiroi Akumaga aruareta. A white devil appears. But the first time Shiroi Akuma was said diegetically within the universal century, it was actually by a Federation officer talking about Gato and the white machine that earned him that nickname wasn't a Gundam at all. It wasn't even a Federation machine. It was the machine that Gato called the Spirit of Xeon itself the Noya zeal green in the anime but described as white in the 1992 novelization. When Gato first sorties in the Noyazeel and descends like a thunderbolt upon the Federation pursuit fleet, some poor, doomed soldier sees the mobile armor approaching and calls it Shiroi Kyodaina Nanika, something huge and white. Akuma Noyona Monoga, something like a demon. It is Federation Admiral Hepburn who first puts it together as Shiroi Akuma. Later, Admiral Delaz intercepts these transmissions and he adds shiroi akumaka renpono suigeki kantaiwa gato also yonde orio ano mobiruamani naniyori fusawashi namai dato omoanka the White Devil bull. That's what the Federation pursuit fleet is calling Gato. Can you think of a more fitting name for that mobile armor? There may be some wordplay in this. Gato is already an Akumu, a nightmare, and now he becomes an Akuma plus, while Akuma means devil or demon, akumade written with different characters is an adverb that means to do something stubbornly persistently, even unto the bitter death. Which sounds a lot like Gato. And with his white hair, he's already shiroi. All of this gives the confrontation between Amuro and Gato in Girin's Greed an anachronistic ironic little thrill. If you recognize the reference, it's Gato, the original White Devil, sdqla trading cards notwithstanding, versus the Federation White Devil. It's a knockdown drag out grudge match, and the winner gets to keep the nickname. So I guess Amuro must have won.
I cannot believe that nickname is never spoken in First Gundam. Where the heck did I hear it?
I don't know. This is a good question. You have not seen the things that it's actually in. You haven't played those games?
Nope.
It's just floating around in the ether like contagion.
It would never have occurred to me that that nickname wasn't in this show. I'm so familiar with it at this point that it's like, oh, yeah, Amuro the White Devil. Obviously, that must have been in something I watched.
I was really expecting it. That whole time we were watching First Gundam, I was like, all right, when's it going to come up? When's it going to come up? And then it didn't.
Are you absolutely sure it didn't? Did you rewatch all of First Gundam to make sure?
I mean, I remember looking for it and not seeing it, and I am assured by several Japanese fan blogs that those people also confirmed that it was not in.
That okay.
They do call him Renpono Shiroi Yatsu. Oh, that guy.
Next time on episode 9.5, the hour of the Hippo alternative Timekeeping Schemes I take a brief visual gag from an SD Gundam short as an excuse to talk about Japanese timekeeping before 1873. Until then, stay genki, folks.
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 Dioxin. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio. 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 and on our website, gundampodcast.com. You can get in touch with us on Twitter or Instagram at Gundam podcast or by email to hosts@gundampodcast.com. And thank you for listening. Is that a jackhammer?
Oh, yes, it is. I was like, yeah, why should we try to do it anyway? Be like, we are aware of the jackhammer but we don't know when they'll stop.
Yeah, I think we ought to just do it.
I think we ought to roll with it. And it can be funny.
Yeah. Wouldn't be the first time we've had a Jackhammer as a guest on the podcast.
The most unwelcome podcast guest I can think of.
Other guests.
It's true, actually. A huge number of other guests would be less welcome than a jackhammer.
I'm going to need to rerecord the outro, I think, probably this season or next. Take out the reference to getting in touch with us on Twitter. I keep thinking about the line in Miyazaki's, the wind also Rises, the quote that they keep coming back to. The wind is rising and we must try to live. The wind is rising and we must try to post. Shiroyakumaka rentono suigeki kantaiwa gato also yonde orio ano mobiru amani nani ori fusawashi namai datato omoanka Renpo no shiro Yatsu that like that guy figuring out how to do headphones and reading and whether that means wearing my glasses or not wearing my glasses. These are some big adjustments to make at my time of life.
It was very funny to me when you were like, Glasses aren't comfy when I get a new pair. Sometimes they're uncomfortable for a little while, but I've been wearing them, in effect, for my entire life. The idea of glasses as uncomfortable or a nuisance or anything like that is basically nil. Except sometimes when I'm doing more active sports, because then they kind of want to fly off your face.
Well, in the words of the Bard, that's your misfortune.
I would argue it's yours, having to make these adjustments.
I wouldn't have to make adjustments if only my stupid body would stop decaying. All right, that's it. We're out. Goodbye, Jackhammer. Jack has a nickname for Jonathan, right? Or James. James could be either, I think, anyway.
Usually James.
Goodbye, Mr James Hammer Sam.