You're listening to season 10 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 10.31, Shakti's Big Adventure, and we're your hosts. I'm Tom, and at my age I'm just looking for the right teenager or teenagers to inherit all my podcasting equipment and continue my mission in the wake of my inevitable heroic sacrifice.
And I'm Nina, new to Victory Gundam.
And maybe Kill em All. Tomino is just gradually inuring me to.
The deaths of major characters. Mobile Suit Breakdown is made possible by our clever and astute paying subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons. Come on listeners.
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Y'all don't understand what a personal sacrifice it is for me to sing on mic for you. Putting myself out there being bad at stuff.
I think this represents important growth. You should sing every week.
This week we're covering Victory Episode 31.
Motorado Hashin or launch the motor ad. The episode was written by Oka Akira and storyboarded by Nishimori Akira. The animation director was Maeda Meiju, making his final contribution to Victory, and the episode was directed by Fujimoto Yoshitaka, making his first and only credited contribution to the Gundam franchise. Fujimoto has had a pretty prolific career since doing this one episode for Victory, including as chief director on a bevy of cute girl focused projects like Cyberteam in Akihabara, All Purpose, Cultural Cat Girl, Nukunuku Girls, High Tactical roar, and Khoikoi 7, as well as a bunch of pornographic OVAs from the early 2000s like LA Blue Girl. Now the recap the League prepares for their return to the battlefield. Odello and Tomasz, training to become mobile suit pilots under Oliver's watchful eye, use their gun blasters to carry crates of supplies from the League's secret lunar base back to the Lean Horse Junior, where it lies in hiding. Shakti finds herself at loose ends with nothing she can do to help out. Or at least nothing that she wants to do. To Susie's surprise, tasks like laundry and shopping for food, the fundamental necessities of life no longer seem worthwhile to the young princess. So when a message arrives that the infamous Motorad fleet under the command of Chronicle Ashur himself, is about to leave for Earth, Shakti races off to Confront her uncle. Perhaps she can use her position as Princess of Zanskar to beg for mercy for the Earth. Word of the motorrad launch soon reaches the supply team out by the White Ark. Oliver immediately orders the full League force to make ready for battle. They'll use everything they have to intercept the Zanskar fleet before it can reach the Earth. But the League's best pilot is otherwise occupied. USO and his mother have finally arrived at the League base, only to discover Shakti missing and no one entirely sure where she's gone. It doesn't take Uso long to guess. He knows Shakti too well. Without hesitating, he grabs a car and goes after her. But he is already too late. Shakti's fumbling attempts to infiltrate the Zanskar compound bring her to the attention of of the same squad of secret police goons who nearly apprehended Mira Miguel before USO and company rescued her. Despite Haro and Flanders efforts to protect her, she is swiftly dragged into a waiting buggy and away. The goons intend to deliver her to Uncle Chronicle before his ship departs. USO, having traded his car for a V2 core fighter, races after them, with Mira crammed into the passenger seat behind him. Half a dozen Gwigsis in Bespa colors try to intercept, but the petite mobile suits are no obstacle for uso. He breaks through into a hidden motorad hangar, but Shakti's captors did not stop here, so he pursues them out onto the open moonscape. They're spotted, and Chronicle orders mobile suits, including Katagina and Lupe's units, to scramble and intercept. But they are engaged en route by Oliver's victory squadron. As the battle rages, Mira drops from the core fighter onto the roof of the buggy, and with nothing but her courage, her quick wits and a flare gun, manages to get Shakti out just moments before the buggy and its remaining occupants are crushed beneath the relentless tire of Katagina's Ayn Raad. As she rolls on by the two tiny human figures, Katagina snatches at them with her mobile suit's massive hand. As the metal fingers close around them, Mira manages to throw Shakti clear, but is taken herself. USO retrieves his friend, but there is nothing he can do to rescue his mother now. The battle against Chronicle's Adrastea class motorad battleship is a disaster. None of the League's weapons can penetrate its defenses even at close range, and the battleship's firepower dwarfs that of the lean horse. Oliver jettisons the hangar and boots from his V2 for USO to use. But even the boy genius cannot stop the motorrad. So Oliver, with just his core fighter, makes a fateful decision. Chronicle must be stopped, and the explosion from a mobile suit reactor may be the only weapon in their arsenal powerful.
Enough to do it.
Deftly avoiding blasts from the battleship's defense turrets, Oliver gives his last order, entrusting to Marbet the care of their child, and then crashes his fighter into the motorrad's leading wheel. Marbet freezes mid battle, sensing somehow that something terrible has happened. Only the arrival of Oliver's young pilot trainees, Odello and Hamash, saves her from the merciless beams of Lupe Chenault. Oliver's sacrifice is enough to damage the flagship, but nothing will delay the inexorable motorads, Chronicles, Adrastea, even Rams one of its own escorts in its haste to depart, leaving nothing behind but horror, sorrow, wreckage, ruin and rage.
You finally got me. All of these deaths in victory, and this is the one I finally cared about. Damn you, Tomino. And I don't even like Oliver that much. But I'll tell you what did it was. Seeing how sad Marbett was at the end.
I was about to ask you why you felt that this death affected you.
So much more than the others.
You think it was Marbett's reaction?
Well, no, tell a lie. I mean, Marbett's reaction is definitely potent.
There at the end, and it's a.
Big part of it, but I started to feel it even before he had actually died, even before his determination to.
Kill himself in order to stop this.
Battleship was really, like, obvious, or at least before it was certain. And it's the moment when he, like he's flying towards the battleship in this little core fighter, this little barely armed nothing, and you see the look of resolve settle in on his face. And it was right then when it got me, because I knew what he was going to do. And something about it, something about seeing that act of self sacrifice, that willingness to lay down his life to protect all of these kids and countless unknown peoples on Earth, and the willingness to entrust the future to others, to give them his best and do what he can to set them up, and then say, you know, Marbet, Odello, Tomasz, uso. I'm counting on you.
A big part of it is simply that we've known Oliver for longer. We have a greater sense of him and of his importance to these people, that he matters to them.
And part of it is certainly that.
The episode signals from fairly early that he is going to die, and that we experience this long period of anticipation ahead of that happening. For me, it. I almost hate to say this, but I felt much more moved by Marbit's grief than by Oliver's death.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Well, it feels a little bit like, meh. Oliver. Whatever. Poor Marbet. Poor Marbet.
But they're of a peace. They're of a kind. I mean, you don't know Oliver. Neither do I. None of us know him. He's fundamentally unknowable. He's like ink on celluloid. He's a voice actor recording in a booth. No one has really died. Right. But Marbet is sad. And I know Marbat is as unreal as Oliver is, and yet her emotions touch us that much more. No, I get it. It's all part of the way you tell this story in fiction, because Marbet's grief tells us that Oliver's death was sad.
Why we should care. Basically, all of these characters, sadness, not even just Marbet. Connie and Yuka and poor Odello and Tomasz and uso. One aspect of Oliver's character that stood out to me from almost the moment he's introduced, and that always registered extremely favorably with me, is that he doesn't seem to have any ego about the fact that he's a pilot. Also, his job is to support and enable other people. He has never hesitated to give USO more firepower when he has it, and USO doesn't because he knows USO is a better pilot than him, and that's fine.
I think that's why it doesn't sting when he tells Odello early in the episode, like, you may not be as good as uso, but you're learning quickly to another person or from another person. That could be an insult. That could really, like, get under somebody's skin. But from Oliver to Odello, it's just like one B grade pilot to another. Like, yeah, neither one of us is the protagonist, and that's okay. We can still do something. We can still pilot the mobile suit. We can still fight.
And then there were two things about the moment of death itself. The crash one, as you talked about self sacrifice, he is a tiny person in a relatively tiny core fighter throwing itself at a giant tire. But that imagery calls to mind the metaphor of people throwing themselves into the gears of a machine to stop it.
Mm. Or very real experiences in history of people, like, standing in the way of tanks.
That phrasing, though, about people throwing themselves into the gears. That's from an author or famous saying or something.
I can look it up. It doesn't ring any bells for me.
Oh, okay. Just assume you know everything.
I mean, that's fair. I appreciate it. All right, so after some brief research, Nina is right. It is a famous saying from a famous speech. It's from the activist Mario Savio during his student occupation of a university building in Berkeley in the 1960s as part of a student movement for free speech on campus related to the civil rights and Vietnam War protests that were going on at the time. During the occupation, Mario gave a speech in which he said, there is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon. Upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.
So that was my first thought. And my second thought is, isn't it reminiscent of Camille when he slams into Sirocco with the Corps fighter?
And before him, Ryu Jose? Yeah, it is the last resort in times of absolute desperation.
The Kamikaze crash.
If the episode has one serious flaw, I think it is that they do not adequately convey to us why the Motorrad fleet is such a huge threat that it has to be stopped here at any cost.
Yeah, I found it a bit clumsy that they mention the infamous Motorrad fleet. How can it be infamous? It's barely existed for weeks.
Right. And, like, we still don't know what Zanskar is doing down on Earth. Like, what is the point of their occupation? So we have no idea what the consequences of the Motorrad fleet getting to Earth will be. Except that everyone in the League Militaire.
Keeps saying it'll be catastrophic.
That they absolutely have to stop them here, no matter what. If you don't accept that premise, then the ending of the episode, Oliver's death is going to feel pretty pointless.
I mean, we know that they had planned on shooting a giant, horrible laser cannon at the Earth previously.
So potentially everyone just assumes it's going.
To be more mass destruction, that that.
Is the purpose of the fleet.
But it's not made all that clear. And the opportunities in which they could have made it clearer, they don't chronicle talking to these, like, spies in the city of St. Joseph. Never mentions that he has to leave in a hurry for XYZ operation. Later on his own bridge when he's, I guess, angry because Shakti hasn't arrived yet and he was told that she'd been captured and he's what? Did we not actually capture her? Was that a lie? His orders seem to indicate that they're not going to wait, that whatever has happened, he can't wait for them to bring Shakti to him. He needs to leave now. That would have been a great opportunity to explain why the urgency.
Instead, they do this little dance about like, oh, most of the pilots are on this ship. Does that mean they haven't left yet? No, actually, some of them have left. I don't know. Those lines could have been better spent, I think.
They don't really serve to give us any additional clarity about what's happening. And it is perhaps some of the other things that are made very clear about Bespa and Zanskar in this episode that are meant to show us that regardless of their specific plan, it cannot be good.
Because they're just a bunch of mean, low down, nasty varmints.
I mean, someone who would hit a Haro and a dog, right, just randomly.
Pulls out a gun in the middle of this bar and then brutalizes both Haro and Flanders. Then in two separate occasions, they just drive over one of their own vehicles.
Yeah, they just destroy their own units. Katagina acts angry at the guys in question that, well, clearly they shouldn't have been driving there and it's their own fault. I just killed them.
See, Katagina, like everyone in Zanskar, believes in bigger tire supremacy. Whoever has the biggest tire has the right of way.
And then later, Connie and Yuka are horrified to see the largest of the ships that are part of the fleet. The flagship, I assume, just ram straight through a much smaller ship of their own.
Yeah, just crashes right into one of their escorts.
And the callousness of it that they seem to have not just no regard for the life of any of their enemies or the neutral parties, but that they don't seem to have any regardless for their own soldiers or citizens either.
Well, first of all, why does the flagship, the largest of all ships, not simply eat the others? Second, Katagina gets at this in her line to USO when she's like, you gorillas, addicted to your individuality, addicted to your egos, are no longer strong enough.
To hold us back.
Trapped in individualism, right?
I think the word she's using also translates as egoism. And that's egoism is like a thing Tomino likes to harp on, so I assume that's kind of what she's going at here.
It's funny how the people with these rants, though, never want to subject themselves to anyone else's group oriented thinking. It's always about making other people adopt their version of group oriented thinking.
Yeah. And when you are thinking in terms of the group, especially when you get all ideological with it, when you think about the grandeur of the Zanskar empire or the holy pure light of Mariaism, when you start thinking in those terms, it gets really easy to just crush a bunch of your own mans. Like who their lives are immaterial compared to the scale of the important thing that I'm fighting for.
If the end justifies the means, then imagining a big enough, important enough end justifies basically anything.
If your ideology is a machine, and if that machine drives a wheel, the bigger the wheel, the more momentum it has, the more important it is that the wheel must grind.
Yeah. If they literally believe that Mariaism will solve every ill of humanity, which is a preposterous thing to suggest, but then nothing is out of bounds. No single act would be villainous or vile or cruel enough to not do it. When you believe the end outcome is the end of all cruelty or viciousness or evil in the world.
I swear, just one more. One more violence, just one more crime, and then all violence and crimes will be over. This is a like, darker, more villainous version of Zanskar. More like that they appeared at the very beginning of the show. Some of the nuance of the intervening episodes has sloughed away. And I love how they symbolize Chronicle's descent into this state. Because this Chronicle only barely resembles the far more conflicted, idealistic. Conflicted. Exactly. Prince of the early episodes.
Well, they promoted him.
They did.
They figured out the ideal solution to this situation is just give somebody more power in the machine.
And you notice when he appears in this episode, he's drinking wine in the middle of his meeting, just like Farah Griffin always did, probably out of the same identical wine glasses. That's how they signaled that she was aloof and callous about the devastation caused by her orders. I assume that Zanskar issues the bottles of wine and wine glasses to officers of a certain rank, and they're, like, required to drink a certain amount during the day. Gotta keep up appearances.
I hadn't entirely registered that change in Chronicle, but it forms quite the contrast to some weird changes in Shakti as well.
Mm.
She expresses to Suzy that she feels bored that they finally reached this place that they've been trying to get to for a long time that's really important. The Ligue militaire manufacturing facility, and that there's nothing for her to do. Which is odd, because Shakti previously, not even that long ago, what, like two or three episodes ago, was expressing horror that the other young people were participating in the fighting at all, including Suzy.
And the episode is not insensible to this. When Shakti expresses this feeling of boredom, Suzy is like, shakti, you're the one who taught me how important it is to do all of this, like, basic housekeeping stuff, care, labor.
Although it's a very nice little speech from Suzy about how all of that stuff isn't quote, unquote, just women's work, that it's important and that people need it to live. Mm.
It sure is. All of that is true, but feels.
As though the show is merely paying lip service to this idea because they continue to have just girl children do it. Mm.
Yeah. Funny how that happens. It's super duper important. But we are going to delegate it to the women exclusively.
It just feels like a very abrupt change for Shakti to go from, I don't want to be involved in the war at all. I'm just barely coming to terms with the fact that my various friends are involved. I will help out with all these other important things to being like, I'm bored by all the caretaking duties that I have now. I want to do something quote, unquote important. I want to have an important task in. What's happening?
Look, Shakti found out she's rich, and now she thinks she's the protagonist of reality.
The deep, deep naivete of her. Thinking that she can just ask Chronicle not to attack Earth and that he will listen to her.
Mm.
Is mind boggling. Because when at any point has anyone from Zanskar demonstrated that they give a about what she wants? I know you're gonna have to bleep me.
Oh, yeah, it's fine. This is like, in the lead up to World War I, the Kaiser and the Russians are sending letters back and forth, being, like, my cousin, we're such good friends, please, let's not go to war. Meanwhile, their respective governments are barreling towards war with each other.
I think about this every time I read about, like, the intermarriage of various royal houses of Europe and Queen Victoria's children spread across the continent. And all of this intermarriage was supposed to prevent war. Like, it was supposed to make Diplomacy easier and prevent conflict. And I'm sure that's why Europe never has any wars ever, because they're all related to each other and they never fought again.
I did a whole bit about that last episode, you might remember. It wasn't that long ago.
That's right.
I stole your bit.
Ugh, my bit. I do think there is something to this idea that Shakti found out she's a princess and now wants to do all this, like, running around adventuring, taking care of things by herself stuff. She's certainly misjudged how the Zanskar Empire actually works.
It's also very possible that she has made a misjudgment about being a princess, which probably most people who are not actively princesses make, which is thinking that that means she has power and influence.
She may also have misjudged Chronicle. She might have gotten kind of a good vibe off of this uncle of hers and not realized how rancid it's turned recently.
Finally, I can absolutely understand a character, you know, participating in certain kinds of tasks, feeling a certain way, and then over time, wishing that they could do something more important. Like if you were in a story, if you were a character in a story and you're adjacent to the protagonist and you see the protagonist do all of this, like, universe shaking stuff, things that affect all of humanity, maybe you might think, I want to do something like that. I don't want to go do laundry. Or even from a place of altruism of a kind. She might worry about how many of these really important tasks fall on uso. She might be trying not just to save Earth or her friends, but specifically trying to save uso, trying to protect him from having to risk his life again, kill more people to try to protect Earth. But they have this happen so abruptly and with so little explanation that it feels strongly out of character for her.
This is another one that could probably have benefited from more setup on the motorrads. Like, if this was not the League military's first attempt to destroy the motorads, if we had already seen how powerful they are, how difficult they are to fight face to face, if we knew the stakes, the consequences of failure, then instead of this being Shakti being like, I'm bored, I think I'm going to go stop the war, it would become, this is a desperate situation. Guns haven't worked, so maybe as the princess, I can use my influence and plead with them.
If she did it after Oliver had died, for instance, and this strange impulsiveness from her makes USO's ability to guess where she's gone. That much more remarkable. USO is his normal amount of impulsiveness in that he doesn't even pause to explain to his mother what he thinks has happened. He dashes off to chase after Shakti.
And credit where it's due. She just follows his lead. USO's mom, also very impulsive, probably where he got it from when she just like jumps onto the roof of this buggy in order to try to rescue Shakti.
See, I don't think she's impulsive. I think this comes back to that as an adult, you more often know what to do in a given situation. There are a lot of examples of parenthood in this episode and a lot of comments about kids and about raising kids and parenting, both explicit and more subtle. Mira is one of the more subtle ones in that we never get any kind of a discussion or any dialogue about, I'm not going to criticize or try to control my son. I'm just going to support him in his goals. But that is what she does. She's along for the ride. Initially, when he's trying to puzzle out and says out loud like, oh, how am I going to get at them? How am I going to get Shakti out of there? She doesn't say anything at first. She's just thinking about it. She doesn't distract him while he's flying. And then she demonstrates that she's willing to risk her life to help save USO's friend. Oh, sidebar apparently she did not know about Shakti's birth family. Or if she did know they had different names. Or at the very least, she doesn't realize that those people are the same people who are in charge of Zanskar. I thought she might have known, but apparently not. But yeah, for her to jump from a moving core fighter onto a moving buggy, infiltrate it by herself when she knows she's outnumbered, and then leap from the back of the buggy with Shakti and then throw Shakti clear when Katagina grabs for them. Just like an incredibly brave woman.
Clearly not her first rodeo. This is at least her third rodeo.
That's the other part of it that felt thought out to me. Even though things happen quickly, it didn't feel impulsive because she's so calm about it. She's very, like, matter of fact and business like about all this, but I.
Don'T think that's planning. I think that's the. Like, she's got the skills. She's got the skills to improvise on the fly. Well, she didn't know any of this was going to be happening.
There's a difference between acting quickly and acting impulsively. I don't think you have to have spent weeks planning something to make it not impulsive.
At this point, I think we're just quibbling over the definitions.
Quite possibly.
I just keep going back to the scene really early on when USO remembers getting hurt playing outside or working on something outside, and his mother telling him he needs to, like, think of it more before he does things so that this doesn't happen anyway. Also with some extremely impressive tunnel flying.
Oh, yeah. Whenever you're watching anime from like the 80s or 90s, especially the late 80s, early 90s, and you see that really simple, easy to draw, repeating texture for a wall, like they do with the tunnel, where it's just like generic concrete slabs, so it's just a grid. Or they do it again later when they're flying through the canyon. And it's very simplified rock formations. You know, you're about to get the good animation because they have drawn that very simply so that they can animate something moving through it really fast. And that definitely plays out in this episode. There's some great Core Fighter flying, some great moments of really kinetic animation in the fights I also liked. I think this is a new innovation for the V2 core fighter. Instead of just shooting the head Vulcans straight forward, the head actually pops up out of the back and can rotate like a turret. It's a little bit goofy, but imagine the terror of being a gwigsy pilot. Imagine the joys of being a Gwigsy pilot first. But imagine the terror of being a gwigsy pilot. And this little kid in a Core Fighter flies past you. And as he does, the head of the Gundam. The Gundam pops up out of the back of the fighter, turns to face you, and then blasts you with its cannons.
It's like in a horror movie when a head turns 180 degrees.
Exactly.
Returning to the idea of parenting and parenthood. One of the more explicit mentions of this, of course, being Tomasz's dad, who comments to Marbet and to Oliver. He says he wants to be a pilot, so all I can do is help him do it. That there comes a point when you can't really control your kids, and if you want a relationship with them, you kind of just have to support them in the pursuit of their own goals. Oliver comments to himself. Kids who grow up in tough times really are different.
That felt like Tomino turning to the audience a little Perhaps a small sliver of hope to be extracted from the economic crisis. Like, you know, maybe the kids who grew up in the boom times of the 70s and 80s, maybe they turned out terrible, but what about this new generation? Will the children of the 90s save the world?
Maybe it's encouragement for those kids. Hey, you're hearing a bunch of horrible news all the time, but sometimes growing up in difficult times means you'll be stronger. I mean, it's not correct, but yeah.
Now there's this line in the Aeneid to badly paraphrase, like my favorite line in the whole poem. Someday in the future, perhaps we will look back fondly, even on this, these difficult times.
But before Oliver crashes the core fighter into the wheel of this flagship, he says to himself, because there's no way for Marbit to really hear him. It's like a prayer. It's like ascending Marbit, take care of our child. And I wondered at the time if he was being literal. Is she pregnant already? Which would be fast but not impossible. Or does he mean it in a wishful sense that he hopes she's already pregnant, even though they don't know? Or is it metaphorical? Whether she's pregnant or not is neither here nor there. They'll tell us eventually, as the show continues, I'm sure, but by the end of the episode, it becomes very clear it is metaphorical. The work of his life, which is.
Unfinished because the war is not finished.
Falls to Marbet to pick up and to Muso and to the other pilots. Yuka tells Marbet that when she's done grieving, she needs to take charge of the Shrikes, that she's the person who ought to do it as this legacy from Oliver. USO thinks to himself that the parts of the V2 are like keepsakes from Oliver.
Now, does that mean USO is no longer going to shoot his boots at people?
Maybe.
Does that mean USO is going to treat these particular boots and this particular hanger as special and something to be protected? That would be a huge change for him. I kind of don't think the show is going to commit that far, but I'd love it if they did. When Marbette pulls Odello and Tomasz to her chest and she says, he left you to me.
I love that scene so much, because up until that moment, Marbet has been trying to stay angry because it holds the grief at bay. The grief is paralyzing. The grief is what almost got her killed on the battlefield. She didn't know where it was coming From. But Marbet never freezes up. Marbet is never so scared. She can't move. That just does not happen to her. We have never seen that. And in the moment of Oliver's death, there it is. And then later, we have Susie expressing surprise that Marbet's not crying, that she seems angry.
And Shakti mentions.
I don't remember exactly what Shakti says, but, you know, essentially that sometimes it's easier to be angry than to be sad. And when Odello and Tomas first come up to Marbet apologetically, she thinks that they're grieving, Oliver, and is sort of trying to be gruff and serious. And people die in battle all the time, and this is war, and you can't let yourself think about it now. But they're not really grieving, Oliver. They're grieving for her. They're grieving for her loss, for the fact that they couldn't protect her from losing this man she loved. And that's what gets her, that all of these people around her aren't just grieving, Oliver. They're grieving for her, too. And that's when she finally cries.
I'm breaking the sequence a little for this, but after Victory wrapped, there was a, you know, a crew get together to say goodbye to the show that they'd all worked on. And I think there was a general agreement that they'd kind of muffed it, that the show had not been what they intended it to be. And during this get together, some people from the photography department. I might have told this story before, but some of the people from the photography department, the people who actually, like, shoot the cels onto film, they came up to Tomino and they apologized for mistakes they had made in some particular episode or something like that. And Tomino says it was like this was what broke him. It was these younger junior people coming up to him and apologizing for something that, from his perspective, was his fault. He should have been paying more attention. He should have supervised them better. He should have caught those mistakes and had them redo it. But he was distracted and depressed and didn't have time or whatever it was, and he wasn't doing his job to the level that he thought he ought to be. And as a result, these other people's mistakes were slipping through, and they ended up blaming themselves for a failure that he felt like belonged to him. That would be a really good place to end it.
Yeah, it would.
But I don't want to end on such a dreary note. And I do have one kind of funny Thing to point out, there are brief mentions a couple of times of a place called Neo Cartagena on the moon. Maybe this is just going to wind up in the outtakes.
I love that you say that the Spanish way. By the way, Cartagena.
I'm married to you, babe. The name is very funny because does.
Cartagena already mean new place?
Cartagena comes from the Latin Carthago noa ha, which means New Carthage. Carthage comes from the Phoenician Kart Hadasht, I think is how it's. At least is how it's written. Don't quote me on Phoenician pronunciation, but it also means new city.
The new New New New city. Exactly.
I feel like Tomino led projects need a character like Katagina who can just say weird stuff. Just putting the themes right out there in the open. Not necessarily the themes that were obvious to anybody else. That's why they need to have a character saying the thing. So the character can be like, hey, did you notice these themes? Maybe check them out sometime. Consider how they might relate to other things going on in this episode. For example, how Oliver's self sacrifice refutes Katagina's accusations about individualism.
So obviously Lupe, Katagina, both horrible, terrible, hate them.
Yeah, but what if they kissed?
To paraphrase from Jane Austen, hopefully they can be each other's mutual punishment.
They seem to be well on their way.
Yeah, love to see Katagina get smacked down by Lupe, even though Lupe is also terrible.
Let them fight. Let them kiss.
And now Nina's research. A goodbye to Oliver.
The flagship of the new Motorrad fleet is like so many other Zanskar ship classes, named for a figure from Greek mythology, Adrastea. She had various incarnations, including a Phrygian mountain goddess associated with Kubelet and a Cretan nymph. But the best known are these two. First, that she was a nymph charged by Rhea with the care of the infant Zeus, who was being hidden from his father Cronus. Amalthea is another such. Remember Amalthea? Sometimes they are sisters, sometimes they are the same, being their names interchangeable. And second, Adrastea is identified with Nemesis, goddess of divine retribution and the inescapability of punishment and justice. In the Orphic tradition, she is called Ananke and is the personification of inevitability, compulsion and necessity. The most powerful dictator of fate and circumstance. What does it mean then for Oliver to die, dashing himself against Adrasteia? There is a Greek tragedy called Prometheus Boundaries. Completed sometime in the 400s B.C. it has long been considered the work of the famed and influential Aeschylus, though more recently there has been considerable scholarly debate about the play's authorship. The events of the play take place shortly after the Titanomachy, or the war between the Titans, the older generation of gods and the younger Olympians for control of the universe. Though notably the Titans. Prometheus and his mother Timis take the side of the Olympians after the Olympians have triumphed. Prometheus defies the will of Jove and gives fire to humankind with fire representing all technology, the basis of all knowledge and learning, the core of civilization itself.
And now the Ephemerals possess the red eyed fire by which they shall be learned in many arts.
Prometheus, bound, begins with personifications of strength and force, accompanied by the God Vulcan, enacting the punishment ordained by Jove, chaining Prometheus to a tempest riven precipice. Throughout the play, Prometheus speaks with his friends, the chorus of nymphs and the Titan Oceanus, to IO, who is also suffering divine punishment and seeks his counsel. And to Hermes, a messenger sent to demand Prometheus divulge a prophecy that foretells Jove's fall from power. There are numerous translations of the play, many of them old enough to be in the public domain. I read the translation by 19th century English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and it's this version that we will be quoting from here. As I read, there were many moments when I thought of Oliver. He struggles against a crowd cruel tyrannical power.
I know that Jove is cruel, that he hath for his sole justice, his own will. Everything is full of sorrow save to rule the gods. For none is free save Jove.
He sees a wrong, a danger, and takes action to right it.
What time he sate upon his father's throne first unto various deities, he gave gifts various and arranged his government.
But recked he nothing of unhappy man.
Eager to raise his universal kind and generate another which desire none dared resist, save I. But I with daring interposition rescued mortal man from sinking into hell. Exterminate.
He knows the risk he takes, the punishment to come.
But all these things I knew by mine own will. By mine own will I sinned and will confess. And aiding mortals met with woe myself.
And yet he acts anyway, impelled by.
Necessity and submitting himself to fate.
Alas, alas, my tears alike, for present and for future flow. Where lies the boundary of my mighty woe? What do I say? All things all future things I view unclouded. Nor can sorrow come strange to my soul. It doth behoove to bear calmly what fate ordaineth, knowing that necessity hath force impugnable.
In this metaphor, women and children are the humans of the story, left to death, destruction and deprivation by men and governments, the gods of our world. And mobile suits are fire, the technology that allows mere humans to preserve themselves in the face of the gods overwhelming power. Prometheus had also recently married and like Oliver, did not grant these boons to benefit himself.
Tell me how thy well loved mortals can deliver thee from all these woes.
He knows he goes to his death and accepts a soldier's fate, believing his life a price worth paying. One man alone, he strikes a blow against an immense powerful enemy, and so his last gift is his legacy.
Blind hopes I sent among them mighty help.
Thereby thou didst afford to mention Next time on episode 10.32 the Snake and.
The Rat, we research and discuss Victory.
Gundam episode 32 and Guardian Angel Avenging angel that's rad.
One of them sneakity dragons. I can't quite explain it, but Pippiniden.
Is a garma Katagina's flat tire.
Tragic. The worst guy you know has the coolest mobile suit Pondering my orbs.
Please evacuate the area in a calm and orderly manner. The belly of the beast.
And we.
Are all made of star stuff.
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 Misha Dioxin. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio. The recap music is Slow by Lloyd Rogers.
The songs used in the memorial are the initial spark and Nostalgia is like grammar. You find the present tense and the past perfect, both composed by Alejandro Arvizu and performed by John Calancini.
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 hostsundompodcast.com or look for links to our social media accounts on our website.
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Thank you for listening. Come on down to Uncle Bandai's Big Tire Emporium, where we know what kids love. It's wheels. Kids love wheels. We got wheels on bikes, wheels on battleships, wheels on mobile suits, wheels of empire.
What's a vicious cycle but a wheel of violence?
You got it? We'll put one or more wheels on it. In it or around it. This week's Wrong Gundam opinion was submitted.
By Great Ace, Very two. Thanks.
Great Ace Very two.
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Genki.
Hi. Hello. If I pull you up here, will you sit still while I record? Because I can. I can, like, sit her here. I love when they make the mobile suits clumsy for humorous effect. I'm a fan. Something about a robot expressing human clumsiness is pretty great. Also. Oh, my heart. Warren, trying to be brave. Trying to put on such a brave face and act stoic, but his body betrays him. He is, in fact, so anxious. Not only does he get a fever immediately, but he is also staggered.
He's just. He just doesn't have it in him to fire the missiles the way Odello would.
Well, Odello gets excited about the missiles.
Warren is made for gentler things, milder pursuits.
Like machine guns.
We'll use one of those endings. Got so many endings.
That's weirder for me to say that. I guess it sounds weird for anybody to say that. My orbs.