You're listening to season ten of mobile suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of Sci-Fi mega franchise mobile suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
Well, well, well. If its not another MSB Q and a episode, how predictable. Yep, were back. We got so many questions for victory that we decided to split the Q and a episode into two parts. And this is the second one. Hopefully well get through all of the questions that are remaining, and we dont have to stretch this for another week. Were not going to do that, I promise. We're done with Q and A for now. But appropriately. Let's start with this question from Kirby, who asks, I've been wondering how many hours you put into each episode? Like when I try to recommend the podcast to people, I can always use more ammo and my. No, no, no. This one is actually super good. Here's why. Also, I'm just curious. So the short answer, of course, is too much, too many hours. Gosh. Let's see. So just doing the talk back, I probably spend about 3 hours taking notes and prepping longer. If I feel like I have to do any pre recording research, then the actual recording usually takes us about 2 hours. After that, we have some freelance editing help this season from Wheels, who we met because she's one of the editors on the disappearances of Lydia Fontaine audio drama. So Wheels handles the first pass edit on the talkback for us, which saves probably three, four, maybe 5 hours worth of work just right there. And then when we get it back, there's probably another 2 hours worth of editing to get it into final shape. So that's just the talkback, and that's just from my end. Nina, about how much time do you think you spend on the talkback?
Two to 3 hours of prep. And the 2 hours of recording sounds about right. It does depend on whether I'm writing the recap that week or not. It takes me much longer to take notes when I'm trying to track the whole narrative in my notes, rather than just particular things that stand out to me as interesting. So closer to 3 hours when I need to write the recap that week, more like two. On my off weeks, I edit, I would say about 50% slower I than Tom. So when I do a second pass of the talkback, it takes me more like three or 4 hours to his two. And that's true of almost any editing. The talkback's the hardest thing to edit because it's not scripted. It's the longest chunk and is the piece of the episode where it's most possible to just pick up a section and move it to a totally different place. And deciding when and how to do that can be quite tricky.
But the real time sync, I think, for both of us, is definitely the research which has increased in scope, rigor, ambition, basically everything since we started doing these. The research pieces we do now, I think, are much better. And certainly our standards for them are much higher than when we got started. They can take 2030, 40 hours in a week. The research, the writing, the recording, the editing, all of that.
I would say that generally, research pieces take us two to three days, but the length of that day can vary a lot, depending on how ambitious we've been with what we're trying to do and how stubborn we're being about being as thorough as we would like to be, or finding better sources or whatever it might be. And that can change on the weeks when maybe after having devoted a day to research, we realize, oh, this is not going to work, either because it's going to be too long and it can't be finished in time for that week's episode, or because there's simply not enough there to fill out an entire research piece and that time's just gone. So I would say that the research and writing portion probably averages ten to 15 hours, if it's not like an extra long or two parter. But then there is, of course, the recording and the editing of that section.
Yeah, and we're frequently finishing those research pieces, like, right up to the wire. We are frequently writing and recording on Friday afternoon for a theoretical Friday night, Saturday morning release time.
How long does it take you to put the music over the recap and work out the timing on that?
And at this point, not very long at all. Actually, I spend much more time balancing the levels of audio in all the different sections that have been recorded at different times throughout the course of the week, getting it all to sound at least reasonably cohesive. And there are tools that will do that for you. But in my experience, they're a little too. A little too rough, a little too flattening. We lose the low bits and we lose the high bits, and ultimately, I get better results doing it the laborious way.
Manually.
Yeah. Tweaking the knobs and sliders, so to speak. We've talked occasionally about the need to potentially change up our format at some point in the future. Maybe switching to not doing research pieces every episode, or episodes that are just research pieces and episodes that are just discussion, possibly switching to a once every two weeks release schedule. I know nobody wants to see us moving more slowly through Gundam, but the amount of work that goes into each episode is definitely. It's more than a full time job for both of us, and it can be pretty brutal.
I'm sure some of you are totting up the hours and going, wait, that's not full time to bundle it all in together. Pure episode work probably accounts for a good 20 to 30 hours from each of us on an average week. There are weeks when it's going to be more and weeks when it's going to be less, and then the rest of the time goes to things like social media and the finances and designing merch and merch fulfillment for patrons.
I spend a fair amount of time planning ahead, staying up on news in the Gundam fandom and on the industry. You know, stuff that doesn't directly relate to a particular episode, but is still necessary for us to be able to talk intelligently about Gundam and anime in general.
I often tell people we could not make the podcast as we make it if it weren't our full time jobs.
Yeah.
And then of course we both also have side gigs, but the podcast easily fills out like 35 hours from each of us on the average week. And some weeks it's a lot more.
Yeah, I mean, none of this is set in stone at this point. It's just sort of ideas were kicking around as we try to figure out how to make this more sustainable for ourselves.
Kirby also asks an easier to answer question. What's for lunch? Leftover mexican food. We had some tacos and other delights delivered last night. Leftovers are one of my favorite things.
Rounding back to Gundam and to victory, Dustin L asks, if you could replace one character with anyone from the original Gundam series, who would it be and why?
I'll be honest, I really don't feel like I have a good answer for this. There are so many redundancies built into the cast of Victory Gundam. It's hard to pick one character from first Gundam and be like, this person would be really impactful. Would they? In this massive cast? I don't know.
I'm just gonna go for a fun answer and say that I would love to see Sleger law getting shot down by all of the shrikes. So lets have Sligo replace Oliver.
Actually, you know what? Pick one random highland solar battery child and replace them with another Haro. Lets have two harrows.
Two haros in one series. Nina, youre getting greedy.
And the why is because Haro is great. Who wouldnt want there to be two haros?
You were just complaining about redundancies. And now you want more haros.
Well, but first, Gundam Harrow and victory Gundam Harrow have very different personalities. These are harrows with very different vibes. Hit the targets. Asked, knowing that Gundam wouldn't have a female protagonist until Suletta Mercury, how does victory Gundam shape your view on how the franchise could have been changed for better or worse 30 years ago? And I assume because they bring up Suletta, they mean with regards to, like, gender stuff, this is a surprisingly big question, and I'm going to kind of sidestep it and be meta about it. We could brainstorm pages and pages of things that they could have changed, but ultimately, whether those changes make the show better or worse depends more on execution than on the change itself. Suletta Mercury as the first girl protagonist of a gundam show could have been awful. They could have done a terrible job with that. They didn't have, at least from what I saw. I haven't finished. Still haven't finished.
Which for Mercury, we're five episodes in.
But it all depends on the team behind it and the execution. And those are things that are really hard to kind of predict how they'll go or, you know, we can easily imagine an ideal series, but whether or not Tomino and the writing team that he had and sort of the whole creative team at this point point could have done justice to a girl protagonist under these circumstances, I don't really know.
I'm gonna kind of steal from you. Cause this is something you mentioned in a conversation we had not on the podcast because we do actually talk to each other when the microphones are not recording. A while back, you mentioned how Sailor Moon managed to be a huge hit that was very much about girls and like four young girls, but that was also very popular with boysenhe. And Sailor Moon is hitting right when victory is coming out. Sailor Moon is basically proof of concept for the idea that you can make a show about girls, but you can make it in a way that is still very appealing to young boys.
My saying that it was appealing to male audience as well was from a talk I went to over at anime NYC, and they were talking about the us market. I don't know how popular it was with boys in Japan.
We know now that there is a whole huge category of anime that is about young girls but is targeted at middle school and older aged boys. You know, boys who have discovered that girls are interesting. And to sort of attack the question instead of answering it, you could argue that quest was the protagonist of Char's counterattack, and at least in CCA, in Formula 91, and now in victory. Tomino seems really interested in the young women in quest, in Cecily, in Katagina. And so there is a timeline where they have Tomino keep making Gundam shows, and he makes them with girl protagonists. I don't know if those are good shows. I don't know if that counts as good representation, but that is a completely different trajectory that the series could have taken after this.
So do you think Tomino had boy protagonists just because that was expected of him or that it was demanded by the studio? Do you think he would have made. Because I see what you're saying about quest, but no, I strongly disagree. Or did he just lack the imagination to think that he could sell a show with a girl protagonist or what?
Yeah, I think if he wanted to do that, he would have really needed to advocate for it. He would have needed to want to do it, be really convinced and really confident that it could be done well and push super, super hard for it. Swimming upstream, jumping the corporate salmon ladder to convince all of the bigwigs to do this when it flies against all the conventional wisdom of the time. And I just don't think he had either that will or that confidence in himself.
To me, Tomino's way of writing women into his stories feels very much like the perspective of a grown man trying to understand young women. Not about, here's a story about a relatable young woman character and what she's going through in her life. More like, gosh, what is up with girls? Does anyone understand them? Hmm.
Relatable? No. If Tomino had made victory with Katajina as the protagonist instead of Uso, would that have been good? I don't think so, but he would have made it possible for successive Gundam shows to do more in that vein.
Or it would have failed so badly that everyone would have said, see, this is what happens when you have a girl protag. We're never doing that again.
Fair possibility, but it still took them, like, 30 years to do it. So do you think it would have taken more than 30 years?
I don't know. That's one of the things we honestly can't know. We can't know if having a girl protag earlier would have been good or bad, if Tomino would have done a great job with it or totally botched it, if they would have brought in some new writers, some more women, would it have been a setback? Would it have been a big step forward? Like, there's no telling. There's so many factors that we cannot even imagine how they would all interplay and how it would turn out.
It would have been bad in the short term, but good in the long term. I know I can say it.
I'm confident, just like a mandehead. Maybe that's gonna get cut. I don't know. But I do think it's very, like a man of your background and identity to be like, I'm supremely confident I.
Did that because I thought it was on theme. For the question Cobra asks, what are your thoughts on the first prevalent animal sidekick in Gundam Flanders? What kind of animal sidekicks would you want to see in future series?
Flanders feels so silly, but I also love him. And the more that I think about Flanders and thought about this question, the more I realized how sad it is that the necessities of, you know, trying to keep on a budget animation wise and to limit the complexity of various scenes being animated have removed the possibility of including more animals in the show. Humans love pets, y'all? Like, and probably, yeah, very early on in any sort of space colonization scheme, the only animals there would be the animals involved in, like, medical experiments about living in space. But I really don't think it would take long for people to decide, like, oh, yeah, these conditions are stable enough that we want our animal companions. I don't know that we would pick the same animals that we have on earth, but likely as not, pets would be almost as common in space as they are on earth, unless they were banned or something.
And people's relationships with different kinds of animals can be great shortcuts for showing off their personalities. Think about how much it says about char that he just rides around on a horse at several different times during the course of the series.
And there is something about Flanders that maintains that connection between Shakti and earth, because it's clear Flanders is sort of a working and guard dog. Flanders is not a pampered Lapp pet. Flanders is quite self sufficient and hardscrabble and helpful.
Flanders is also an emotional bond that connects shakti and Uso. Flanders is part of a family, along with Shakti and Uso and Haro. It's an unconventional family, but a beautiful one.
As for what kind of animal sidekicks we might like to see in future series, I feel like pet mice or rats could be quite charming and might do pretty decently in this kind of environment. They do well in most environments. Part of me longs to see someone with a pet snake, although I don't know how snakes would react to the different gravity or lack of gravity. Poor snake just, like, writhing around in the air. But, I mean, how well do people do? Everybody in the colonies uses adaptive devices to move around in those circumstances, so you would just need to keep the snake bundled up with you or make little fins for it so it could swim through the air. I don't know.
Terrifying. The flying snakes are coming. Nina.
I'm thinking of, like, a little pet snake.
Yeah, that's how it starts.
Oh, no. The snakes are sharing their movement technology with each other. Are you tired of these mother bleeping snakes on this mother bleeping colony?
The snakes on a plane sequel. We needed snakes in space. Speaking of animals, DeWitt says we've seen bugs as mobile suits. What other animalia phylum do you think they should theme future designs around? Okay, bear with me on this. Jellyfish.
Oh, that doesn't need much explaining for me. It's not dissimilar, stylistically, to say octopuses or.
Actually, that's not what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about those silhouettes, the big, billowy jellies.
Something very organic and soft.
Yeah. Big shoulders or capes. Manteaus. Flowing tendrils of energy around a sort of lean, central, human like body.
Yeah. So you're still picturing very humanoid, but with this added thing, I'm imagining something much less humanoid.
Yeah. I'm picturing Nagano momoru style mecha. So they're all super slender, really exaggerated fashion models. Long, thin legs, high heels, and then these big, flowing, rounded, organic shoulder designs, bodies, accessories.
It's astonishing how many phyla are just for different types of worms.
Would you still love mobile suits if they were worms?
Oh, I'm on the wrong level. Think specifically phyla within animalia, although I wouldn't mind some plant inspired mobile suits that could get very interesting. I mean, there's already been a bit of that, but I would very much enjoy to see them lean harder into the less human designs. Lean harder into designs that do not maintain the head, legs, arms, torso shape. Also the idea of more, like, biomechanical organisms, things that somehow combine the mechanical technology with more fleshy and alive bits that can start to verge into horror a little bit. But I often enjoy those kinds of depictions of ships or technology. Byx asks, how are you feeling about the show's depiction of nature and ecology? Any favorite environments from the show so far? I already mentioned how I think the show demonstrates tominos sort of evolving emphasis on the environment. In terms of favorites, the two that come to mind most immediately are that massive, massive area full of lilac trees, which was quite beautiful and then quite sad as it got destroyed and also marked a very important moment for shakti and how she relates to everything that's happening. And the other one that I liked very much was the section of the highland solar battery devoted to growing plants for oxygen, which is not shown in very much detail, but again, is used very evocatively to sort of emphasize the difference between earth noids and space noids and how differently they think about these things, and is a very sort of clean, mawed, bright space and then punctuated by all these little plants growing on the walls. It's nice.
You would like that. My favorite is probably the artificial reef that Mister Robb built outside of Barcelona, the seaside, all the sea creatures, but also the the wreck of all of this human debris repurposed to become a part of the natural environment. The next question from Panettiere is which of Victory's themes or story threads is resonating the most strongly, which are coming across weekly? Where do you think it should focus its remaining episodes to tell its best stories? And I would say the environmentalism aspect, at least in the first half, has been one of the strongest and one of my favorite parts of the story so far. I'm not sold on victory's messaging about gender, though. It's really only in the early phases of that, and it does seem to be building up steam for some kind of major confrontation in the back half. So I'm holding out hope that that will turn out well, or at least interesting.
Is that an area where you think they should focus more particularly?
Well? It's dangerous. They might end up devoting a bunch of resources and energy to it and then not doing a very good job with it. And that would be bad. But also, if they dropped the ball right now, it would just kind of be bad. I think if they didn't do anything more with it, it would end in a bad place. Yeah. So they should definitely keep digging and see if you manage to hit paydirt.
I always love the moments when victory grapples with how hard it is for people to know themselves and the ways in which people lie to themselves, about themselves, and about the choices they make and why they make them. Victory has also done a good job with the sort of found family and found community aspects, how you can build relationships to people who aren't your parents, siblings, cousins, how you can have these kind, supportive, caring relationships with people outside of your immediate family circle, and even get mentorship from people and help others and have the kinds of ties, the kinds of sense of mutual obligation that we associate with family outside of the biological family setting, and that that is a positive, that that is a good thing.
Hang on. This is making me think of something going back to an earlier question, the one about replacing a character with somebody from first Gundam, and you're talking about the found family, is making me think about how, as a consequence of lowering Uso's age, and therefore the sort of average age of the kids side of the equation, the space between them and the adults gets much bigger than it was in first Gundam. Like the space between Amuro and bright is only a couple of years, but the space between Uso and Marbet is a world of difference.
If you could argue that because of changes to the way that we think of children in childhood and changes to circumstance, that beyond the actual number of years difference, there is a vast maturity and experiential difference. We're comparing young people during wartime who were expected to step up into adulthood, responsibilities from a much younger age, 1415 maybe, to children of the nineties who were not expected to do that until college or after college.
Definitely. I'm sure that it reflects changing expectations in society, but it creates a very different vibe. Bright was of the crew. Marbet is not really part of Uso's little orphan band. They're not even really all orphans, right, because the Highland kids still have their parents. But I would really love to see what first Gundam Bright would make of the kids in victory and like, specifically bright. Towards the beginning of the series, before the whole white base crew has come together and professionalized and turned into adults in small bodies? Basically, like, how would first Gundam Bright have reacted if instead of Amuro and Kai and Hayato and Sela and Frabo, his initial crew had been Uso and Shakti, Odello, Warren, Susie, et cetera. I think that'd be a fun dynamic to play with.
Returning to Panettiere's question, I agree with you that what, if anything, the show is trying to say about women is a bit convoluted at this point, and I'll be curious to see if they straighten it out. It's a bit hard to say at the moment when I'm feeling more charitably toward the show. I think theyre doing a decent job of conveying how complex this kind of conflict can be. That there are so many different factions involved and not all for the same reasons, which I think is a very compelling kind of story to tell, is a perspective we dont often get on conflict. Its so much easier to be like, here is one big bad alliance or one big bad entity, and here is the alliance opposing them, as opposed to here's half a dozen different groups who are all into this for their own reasons. I hope they devote enough time to that in the second half of the show because it kind of blips in and out so far. And while I don't think they've done a bad job with it, a lot of the proof will be in the pudding, as they say. The proof of whether they do a good job or not will depend on that second half of the show. Scott W. Asks, dear Doctor's Gundam podcast, has Nina noticed the thing about the eye catch yet?
Well, have you?
Apparently not.
Have you noticed that every eye catch is different?
No. I had noticed that the beginning of commercial break eye catch and the end of commercial break eye catch were different from each other, but I had not noticed that they were different across episodes.
Every eye catch is one frame in a short animation of Harrow and Flanders together.
Oh, that's cute.
And at the end of the series, you can put them all together and watch a little. Like, I think it's only like two minutes or something. Maybe even shorter than that. Neat, but it's cute. Pegaace asks, any theories on this version of Haro who built him? Did the toy line just become so advanced he can do all that as a base model? How does it tie into previous Gundam protagonists having to give up their harrows while USo gets to have his stick with him even in combat? Haro in victory is really interesting because Dukerique responds to the little robot as though he's never seen one before, and as though its capabilities are remarkable, suggesting that whatever technology went into Harrow has maybe been lost or is at least not very common. Certainly there's no indication that the Haro toy is like a well known thing. It's possible that this is a very old Haro that has been, you know, steadily upgraded over the years. It's possible that this is something USO has personally modified that would be in keeping for a Gundam protagonist. Or maybe a sufficiently old Haro just develops sentience on its own. Sentience and a desire to kill.
While I was also surprised that Haro type robots seem quite rare in this world, perhaps they've been replaced by other types of robotoys. My assumption from the beginning was that USo or his father had found the parts somewhere and had both salvaged and modified it. That Harrow did not come to them fully working or with all its current capabilities, but had been gradually tinkered with and adjusted over time. That seems very in keeping with USo's education and the way he spent his time. I can imagine him pouring over that library looking for information about electronics and programming and harrows, and we have already.
Seen them do hardware modifications to upgrade Haros capabilities in space. Seems like the kind of thing they might have been doing for a long time.
And to my mind, it's still too early in the show and USO is still too young for us to talk about. Oh, he gets to keep the harrow well, he's considerably younger than our previous protagonists, and although there have been many moments that draw attention to his sort of being on the cusp of adulthood, being in this transitional age between childhood and adulthood, I would not say that he is decisively an adult per the show yet. And so the moment at which he would need to give up Haro has not yet come to pass.
Uso has also, repeatedly throughout the show, leveraged his perceived status as a child in order to get special treatment in order to avoid being arrested to escape captivity. When he pulls tricks like, oh, I was on your ship because I was looking for my lost parents and now I really need to use the toilet. He gets away with that to the degree that he does get away with it, because he's a little kidde and it's, I think, the same when Haro, like, bites down on the controls when he's getting electrocuted, in many cases, his childhood is saving him. Childhood can make a person more vulnerable, but USo has found a way to weaponize it, or at least to turn it into a shield, to use it creatively like any of the other resources at his disposal. Him shooting the legs off of his gundam in order to destroy or distract an enemy mobile suit is kind of the same thing as him putting on the clothing of childhood for a little while. And I think his relationship to the harrow is similar to his relationship to his contested status as a child. And we'll see going forward whether or not he's able to retain that. Speaking of shooting the legs, Joe R. Asks, what is both the dumbest and coolest part of victory Gundam, and why is it USo launching his legs at things?
I love that he keeps doing that. I love the oddly independent operability of the various parts of the Victory Gundam. It's one thing they did that was truly new or that felt truly new and fresh about this mobile suit design and this series, and I love it. I think they have done really fun things with it to the extent that it's goofy. It's mostly when it's animated in kind of a silly way. Nothing. The fact of launching the boots themselves, just when the animation looks a bit janky. I'm trying to think if anything else stands out as both really dumb and really cool. I mean, the motorcycles, right? Duke e canon's battle cycles.
I'm gonna bring it all together because it's not shooting the legs off that's the coolest and dumbest part of this for me. It's that one scene where he's got the torso, he's got the chest and the head of the victory. No arms, but he does have the legs. And he's just standing there with a gun clamped onto the calf of one leg, shooting at the motorcycles as they're like driving all around him and doing jumps and tricks and stuff. That's the dumbest scene and the best one in the show.
Lupe. Constantly ejecting, just in time. Unkillable Lupe.
We got a bunch of questions that were about the universal century and our relationship with it, our feelings about it, its relationship to victory Gundam as sort of the end of the universal century as we know it, the end of this steady progress through the imagined history. So Im going to read all of the questions and then were just going to talk about them, because I think our answers will basically cover all of them at once. Kirby wanted to know if we were looking forward to leaving the UC behind. Snowwhistle asked, while Victory Gundam has ostensibly taken place in the universal century, like Formula 91 before it, it made a solid break from that history in an effort to appeal to new fans, there's very little in the way of direct references to the characters or even larger historical events of the prior series. So do you think the show is fine as it is in this mid state where it's technically part of the universal century, but doesnt reference its history very heavily? Or do you think that the series should have leaned into that history more, or perhaps made a complete break from the universal century and become a full alternate universe series? Whereas Flyawaynow says, does this really feel like a Gundam that is at the end of history, both in a meta sense and within universe that is, is the idea that this is just a Gundam story and not really a universal century story a valid idea for experiencing it? Was the universal century resolved back in Char's counterattack, and everything after that is just sort of an appendix? And Mark S asks at this point, is there anything left that you would want to see addressed or explored about the world of the universal century, like, I don't know, an.org chart for the federation government, which I'm not going to say no. I would personally be very interested in that, but I dont at this point feel like it would improve the series very much. But Nina, to the more general question, here we are at the end of the universal century. Is victory really part of it, or is it some new and different thing wearing the clothing and maybe the ill fitting skin suit of the universal century?
This is another series of questions that present some difficulties. I am looking forward to being done with the universal century, quote unquote, for now. But that's predicated on them doing something very different in the next series, something that makes a clean break from that. And if it's just some different version of the world we live in now, but imagined so that it's in space, that's not going to be different and refreshing and compelling in the way that I would hope that breaking from the universal century would be. So, you know, there's some trepidation there. What I'm looking forward to is something new and interesting, and simply leaving the universal century won't necessarily give me that. As far as its connections to previous events of the universal century, how explicit or not they are about that, I haven't really had any problem with how this show fits in. It feels to me very much like part of the arc of history in the universal century, even though it's not made explicit, in the same way that, you know, a conflict might have its roots in conflicts 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And thats not, strictly speaking, talked about at the time that its happening. Its not necessarily made explicit, like, ah, this is because of that treaty from 70 years ago or whatever, but from our more removed perspective, we can look at all of this and say, ah, yes, I can picture how all of this came to be from the aftermath of events that weve already witnessed. And I don't think the show needs to make explicit those connections. It probably helps them that they don't, because in one way, that adds a layer of interest for people who have seen everything else, but means that those who haven't aren't missing out on big, important story elements. As for what I'd like to see covered, I love world building. I, as I was just saying, love moments that show us how the sort of culture and norms of living in space differ from those living on earth. I imagine they differ between kids, like the kids from the Highland solar battery, who live with their parents on working facilities versus people who live in colonies. I imagine it's different between a prosperous colony and a poor one, and it does not take very long for people to develop cultural and linguistic differences when they're in isolated populations. Think about fandoms, even think about how quickly an online community can develop its own linguistic shorthand, its own social rules. That is the kind of thing I would like to see a lot more of. I am probably never going to get that, so that's more of a drama series thing than an action adventure series thing. But that would be my number one wish.
And I can see the argument for saying that the story of the universal century ends with Shar's counterattack, but personally, I disagree. Certainly the story of Omaro and Shar's rivalry ends with Shar's counterattack, and maybe that's the ending of the Zeon story. But as far as the universal century goes, victory already feels like a final capstone on the universal century in a way that shars counterattack or Formula 91 were not. Of course, its always possible that something will change later to alter this analysis. But if you think of the universal century as having a narrative of itself, like any dating system adopted by humans, its telling a story about time and history. And what matters, like our use of the christian Anno Domini calendar tells the story about how the world was changed irrevocably at the moment of Christ's birth. All of time can now be divided into the befores and the afters. It is the year of the Lord, and we are just living in it. So the universal century is the story of humanity in space, and it's the story of the earth Federation, the only organization dominant enough to redefine time on its own terms. So from first Gundam until now, the meta story, behind and above the struggles of the individual characters and their factions, is about the decline and fragmentation of the earth Federation. It is about the end of the universal century as an era of humanity living essentially under one government. Since we met it, the Earth Federation has been in the process of collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, and it's kind of a testament to its strengthen that it has managed to survive, even in this moribund form, for as long as it has. And as each entry in the series has introduced a new threat to the federation, and as time has marched forward, the scale of those threats has been getting smaller and smaller. But the federation's ability to survive its victories over those threats are becoming more and more tenuous in victory like, look at the scale of the Zanskar rebellion it's a couple of colonies. It's a couple of fleets. Like, everybody acknowledges that if the federation would just do something, then they could roll over Zanskar with no trouble. But the federation doesn't have the political will to get involved. It doesn't have the juice anymore. Not really. And if it does use it here, it will not be able to use it somewhere else. When they invoke the beginning of a warring states period, they are telling us that this is the end. This is the death spiral of the federation. You don't go into a warring states period and then come back out of it with a strong central government unless there have been decades or centuries of constant warfare in order to forge a new coalition. A new central government.
Right. You don't get the old government back again after something like that.
Yeah. Zanskar is like, Zanskar is a brush fire. But how many more brush fires are out there smoldering, waiting to burst into flames? I think if I had my druthers, if I could have anything included in this show, I'd like to see more of the other warring states. Like, why are they calling it a warring states period? If it were just Zanskar, they wouldn't call it that. So, what else is happening out there? How many other league's military or equivalents are there? How many other zanskars are there? Is every side fighting wars like this?
What's going on? Way in deep space? What's going on out by Jupiter? The various conflicts of these universal century series so far are a prelude to that. It's like a slow simmer that has finally come to a boil. They have constantly had these conflicts and fracturing on some similar lines. Right? Because the Federation cannot maintain control over this vast spread of humanity. Not the kind of tight control that would prevent this from happening. And the kinds of problems inherent to this sort of system keep coming up again and again. People either can tell they're not being closely monitored, and so say, ah, what can I get away with now? Or say this government does not adequately represent us. Why are we kicking in this tax money? Why are we giving up these privileges or these freedoms in order for x, y, and z from this government that we don't really feel like we're getting or that we don't particularly value?
And if the federation wanted to put Zanskar down, if they were to give a fleet to an admiral and send him off to destroy the Zanskar empire, if there were someone with the connections and the charisma and the ability to put together an armed force capable of stomping on Zanskar. What's to stop that person, who, let's say, hypothetically, is named Jin Jahannam, from turning around and building their own little empire in the wreckage? All the tokens of federation authority are still going to get passed around. There will still be a federation senate and prime chancellor or whatever they have. Maybe there will be competing successor states, each claiming to be the true continuation of the federation. There will be a moon federation and a side. One federation and an earth federation, but nothing. Not the same earth federation, obviously, but like as a government, as an empire, as a. As a unifying force for all of humanity. Ooh, they are cooked. We have one last question from Nick about Chronicle, asking if we had more background information about Chronicle via supplementary material, would that change our assessment at all? Or do you judge characters based on their present canon behavior? And don't believe that a sad backstory barely acknowledged by the anime justifies or even explains being evil. It seems as though Tomino had one set of ideas for Chronicle that gets expressed in the novels, and the anime writers had their own conflicting ideas, which may explain some changes in his personality after episode 19 or so. And then there's the way he gets presented by Sunrise Bandai in publications and later game appearances, tending to be much more sympathetic. I love this question because it really goes to the heart of a lot of what we're doing on MSB in terms of watching Gundam. The way we watch it, talking about it, the way we talk about it. We are focused on what is happening in the anime, what are we seeing on screen in the primary source materials. But then there is this vast cloud, this web of interconnected external materials that all offer more insight into these characters. And sometimes it feels as though, oh, we're seeing a different window onto the same person, and sometimes it does seem as though we are seeing a different person wearing the name and face and a few tokens of the person who appears in the anime. I don't know much about chronicles appearances in games or in the novels, except for a few little details about his backstory, but that's kind of how it is with people. You only ever see a tiny slice of a person. You only ever see what they're doing overtly out in the world, and the more remote they are from you, the less and less you can actually see of them and the more you see of how they are perceived by others. I think if Chronicle had a very tragic backstory, that would be really interesting, but it wouldn't change what he's doing, would it? He has become who he is because of what happened to him, but he's still who he is.
Did the novels come out after the show? Cause the show is not an adaptation of the novels.
The novels are contemporaneous with the show.
Interesting. Okay.
Which is pretty standard for these Gundam novels. They tend to come out at the same time as the show or shortly after, and frequently deviate in some pretty big ways.
Sure, this is relevant to me because generally speaking, I judge a character and a character's actions in a show or a film based on what the show or the film tells us about that person, not depictions in other extraneous media. Except, I will admit, if I am watching a show or a film that is an adaptation of a book or a comic, and I have read that book or comic first, then often I'm judging it based on how I feel they've adapted the character rather than purely on its own merits. Since that was not the case for my experience of victory, I'm really just gauging chronicle by what the show has told us about Chronicle. A sad backstory or more information about a backstory can certainly give us additional sort of understanding of a character, of why they are the way they are. But just as with people, you can understand someone's actions and still say, okay, I can see why you're like this, but also, you're an adult, and you have the power to make your own decisions, and you need to be responsible for the things you do. It is rather immature of a person after a certain point to blame their behavior on past circumstances. Like after a certain point, a person has to take responsibility for themselves. And I would argue that chronicles definitely passed that point.
More information about a character's backstory is really good for understanding how their motivations translate into their actions, because those experiences create a filter. They create expectations for how the world works. For somebody like Shar, who suffered all of these family tragedies at a young age, the loss of his father, the conflict within Ziyan that saw him and his sister having to fool, then being separated, like all of that convinced shar that the world is a very harsh and violent place. And it convinced him that the only way to get justice for his family against these very powerful Zabis was to work in the shadows, to work in secret and just kill them to get revenge, bloody revenge, by any means necessary. Another person with a different background might have reacted to the events of first Gundam very differently. So with Chronicle, I think we can see what he's doing, and with more information about his backstory about how he and Maria grew up and how they ended up in the positions they're in now, it would help to understand why he's doing what he's doing, but we still are lacking that essential kernel of what are his motivations? What does he want out of the world? What is he trying to do? And I hope they will share that with us. I hope the show will reveal that.
It is shockingly opaque. He sort of hints at it at various points, but it's unclear how much of that is a mask portrayed to others. And it's also clear he does not have full information about what's been going on in Zanskar. So maybe some of his motivations will change.
And with that, we are done. Those are all the questions we got and are prepared to answer at this time. So thank you all for your patience. I hope you enjoyed the Q and A. And next week we'll be back with a real episode 10.27 covering Victory Gundam episode 27 please listen to it. 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 Mischa Dioxin. The closing music is long way home by spinning ratio. The recap music is slow by Lloyd Rogers. 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. if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email hostessundompodcast.com or look for links to our social media accounts on our website. And if you would like to support the show, please share us with your friends. Leave a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts or support us financially@gundampodcast.com. patreon. You can find links and more ways to help out@gundampodcast.com. support thank you for listening. And next week we'll be back with a real episode, victory Gundam, episode 26 or 27. Just gotta check that real quick. Oh, darling Kitten. And if you sat two different people down with the same outline that had the same instructions about who chronicle is and how he behaves and why he does what he does, and each had them write the same story, they would probably write very different chronicles. I forgot you named the mannequin.
I think the name I picked was Harold. I feel like it changes every time I address the mannequin, but I see.