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.
Welcome to season nine. As always, we're your hosts. I'm Tom, a longtime Gundam fan, and I'm Nina.
Really excited to be doing these research only episodes while we work on the SD Gundam festival translation. Some of these are topics I was legitimately disappointed we didn't get to. Mobile Soup Breakdown is made possible by 728 paying subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest supporters. It's pronounced USo Ebbing Quin G, Robert H. And Horace Lupercal. You keep us a Genki as an independent and ad free podcast. MSB is entirely listener supported. If you enjoy this podcast, support us today by recommending us to your friends, becoming a subscriber, making a one time payment, buying us research materials and office supplies from our wishlist, or reviewing us wherever you listen to podcasts. Links to all of the different ways to support us are on our website, gundampodcast.com. Support.
Of Gundam that we are planning to cover this season corresponds to the 1993 movie SD Gundam Matsuri, or festival. But since we need to translate that one ourselves, and since we expect that to take a while, we have decided to spend some time catching up on our backlog of research pieces and discussion topics from the shows, movies, and shorts that we've covered so far. Think of it like a festival of research, and like SD Gundam itself, this season is going to be a crossover of everything that we've covered over the previous eight seasons. These will be shorter episodes, but we have some really interesting topics lined up already, and I think you're going to enjoy them. This week is episode 9.1, playing with guns, Nina's research, inspired by the airsoft guns that appear in war in the pocket.
Way back in season five, when we were covering war in the pocket, I started to get curious about airsoft guns. Japan has, at this point, famously low levels of gun ownership and gun violence. To the extent that there is such a thing as gun culture, Japan seems like an unlikely place for it. And yet airsoft is very popular in war in the pocket. Al and his friends take airsoft guns with them when they go out to play. An airsoft gun specialty shop and its owner feature prominently in the Persona five video game. I'm sure there are other pop culture examples of airsoft guns, so I suppose my question is why, and also how. Not to mention what, since I don't know the specifics of what an airsoft gun is, that seems the best place to start. Airsoft guns often have a realistic appearance, and in many jurisdictions they are classified as imitation firearms. Some models even have mounts compatible with real firearms accessories. Most airsoft gun designs are based on real guns, to the point where some airsoft manufacturers have exclusive licenses with arms manufacturers, and some airsoft models cannot be sold in particular markets because they violate a gun maker's trademark. For example, the company Tokyo Marui makes at least one Colt gun. They are not supposed to do that.
I am reminded by the way that the rifle that is used by Federation forces in both 80 and in 83 was given the fake manufacturer name cult ha.
There are a huge variety of makes, models and types of airsoft gun handguns, shotguns, rifles, machine guns, even grenade launchers. They are usually made of plastic and aluminum alloys, making them much lighter weight than their real counterparts, and they fire lightweight plastic bb's that measure six to 8 mm in diameter. Some airsoft fields require biodegradable bb's, the size of the magazine. The part which stores the BBS for firing and determines how many shots you can fire before you need to reload varies dramatically depending on the model of airsoft gun and on the use of aftermarket parts and modifications. Tech, another term for modding, is a big part of the airsoft hobby community and ranges from cosmetic changes to adding accessories to altering the actual mechanical functioning of the gun itself. In the simplest terms, airsoft guns use compressed air to fire a projectile, but with less force, that is to say, more softly than an air gun. Airsoft guns can be mechanical or pneumatic. Mechanical versions use a coil spring loaded piston air pump to create the compressed air and are either manually cocked, meaning the shooter has to use some manual process or force. The best example of something similar that I could think of was an old super soaker water gun that I had as a kid, which had a pump action air compressor or mechanical air guns might have a battery powered electric motor gearbox. Pneumatic airsoft guns use prefilled canisters of compressed gases like carbon dioxide, one one two tetrafluoroethane or green gas, which is a propane and silicone oil mixture, which apparently has none of the propane smell. The term airsoft can refer to war and combat games played with the guns, as well as to the guns themselves. The game plays like paintball or laser tag. Individual players or teams in a specially designed environment, trying to shoot each other and not get shot themselves. Although since airsoft doesn't have paint splatter or laser sensors, hits are largely on the honor system. Most fields test any airsoft gun brought in to make sure that the muzzle velocity, the speed at which the bb leaves the gun, meets their safety standards. Airsoft guns are also popular for simulations, live action roleplaying games, historical reenactments, and are even used by some organizations for gun safety and weapons training, one example being the US Coast Guard, which has used airsoft guns for some training exercises since 2018. In these circumstances, some players will use smoke caps or noise amplifiers to increase the realism of the game or scenario. What I hadn't realized is that there's a good reason for the term airsoft to be distinct from air gun. Air guns are, at least according to one of my sources, the oldest example of pneumatic technology in the world, with one specimen dating from around 1580. These were not for play or for training. They were used in warfare and for hunting large game. From the 17th century through the 19th century, air guns had a number of advantages visavi other gun technology. Unlike flintlock and matchlock guns, they could fire in wet weather. They were much faster to fire than muzzle loaders. They were relatively quiet and produced no smoke or muzzle flash.
Air guns appear several times in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries as weapons of assassination. One appears in the adventure of the abandoned house is what I think it's called from the return of Sherlock Holmes, and it involves a big game hunter and professional assassin, Colonel Moran, who tries to use an air gun to shoot Holmes. And there's actually a description in it of how one of them functions at the time. In his hand, he carried what appeared to be a stick, but as he laid it down upon the floor, it gave a metallic clang. Then, from the pocket of his overcoat, he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which ended with a loud, sharp click, as if a spring or bolt had fallen into its place. Still kneeling upon the floor, he bent forward and threw all his weight and strength upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I saw that what he held in his hands was a sort of gun with a curiously misshapen butt. He opened it at the breach, put something in, and snapped the breech lock. Then, crouching down, he rested the end of the barrel upon the ledge of the open window, and I saw his long mustache droop over the stock, and his eye gleam as it peered along the sights. For an instant he was rigid and motionless. Then his finger tightened on the trigger. There was a strange loud whiz and a long, silvery tinkle of broken glass.
In Japan in the late Edo period, the famous inventor and gunsmith Kunitomo Ikansai created an air gun as well around 1820. The other point of confusion for me was around the difference between an airsoft gun and a BB gun. BB guns are a type of air gun first produced in 1886 by Markham Air Rifle Company for use in youth firearms training. They fire metal projectiles, which are smaller and more dense than the plastic bbs used in airsoft guns and are prone to ricochet. They are more dangerous than airsoft guns, though a lot of that comes down to the regulations around airsoft games rather than the guns themselves. While rarer, airsoft projectiles can also cause injuries like broken skin or busted teeth. But now let's step back and consider if air guns were such an old and widespread technology, and the idea of creating a low powered air gun for toys and training already existed, why did airsoft come out of Japan? Why did it develop at the time that it did? Matchlock firearms were introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the mid 15 hundreds. At the time, they seemed too weak and unreliable to be of any use in battle, but there was enough interest in the technology to spur domestic research, production, and innovation. Modifications that allowed matchlocks to fire in the rain improved the trigger and increased the caliber were all developed, as was large scale domestic production. 17 years after the introduction of matchlock guns to Japan, a japanese made matchlock killed a general in full armor. 30 years after the introduction of matchlock guns, Japan had more guns than, quote, any other nation on the planet. According to one source, several japanese feudal lords had more guns than the whole british army. Some Japanese made matchlocks from the 16 hundreds were converted to bolt action in the early 19 hundreds for use in the russo japanese war and were considered to have performed admirably well. Guns in Japan were a victim of their own success. Having seen his predecessor, Nobunaga take over Japan with an army composed largely of peasants armed with guns, Hideyoshi set out to drastically curtail the availability of firearms, hoping to prevent a popular uprising. In the late 15 hundreds, laws were passed to severely restrict who was allowed to own both guns and swords, and the population was encouraged to surrender their weapons or have them seized. Hideoshi tried to make this all sound very pious, claiming that the weapons would be melted down to make nails and metal fittings for a new buddhist temple. But actually he had the metal used to make a statue of himself. Access to guns and swords only became more restricted over time. In the early 16 hundreds, gun and gunpowder makers were restricted to Nagahama, and both the businesses themselves and all of their production required permits and licenses from the government. The amount of production and sales that the government allowed was not enough to keep gunsmiths in business. So in an effort to keep the now impoverished gunsmiths from running away or manufacturing and selling illegally, the government started paying them a pension, irrespective of production. So even if they didn't make a single gun, the government was going to pay them a pension. Then the government started paying higher and higher amounts for fewer and fewer guns. Over time, this decreased the number of gunsmiths, drove up the price of firearms, and created a government monopoly. These rules were relaxed slightly in the late Meiji period, and remained that way through the Taisho period and into early Shoa. But there wasn't much increase in civilian gun ownership or civilian gun violence. There was plenty of gun violence between disputing military factions, though, including assassinations. Remember Tom's research piece on the young officer's revolt? Whether the low rates of civilian gun ownership were because of the long history of restrictions or for other cultural reasons is hard to say. In 1958, the swords and firearms possession control law went into force and is still in force today, having been updated many times since then. Currently, shotguns are the only type of firearm a civilian can own. They require a license and are subject to extremely strict controls. I'm talking annual inspection of how you store it, annual tests, annual relicensing that is only ever offered on a weekday. So you have to take time off of work to do it, and takes an entire day. And letters from your doctor, and background checks, not just of you, but also of your entire family. But this wasn't always the case. Rifles weren't banned until 1971, at which point they allowed license holders to keep their rifles, but stopped issuing new licenses and held a license holder's heirs responsible for turning the rifle over to police when the license Holder died. It was this change that seems to have prompted the creation of the airsoft gun in the 1970s. Several sources attribute the idea to a photographer and shooting enthusiast, Nagata Ichiro, who wanted to create a model gun that could still be used for target shooting, but that wouldn't be dangerous. I tried to find more information on this guy and came up totally empty. Was he into target shooting? Olympic shooting? Hunting? Had he served in the military? Or lived abroad in a place where shooting was more accessible. Was he a military otaku? Sadly, I couldn't find answers to those questions. What I can say is that the most famous japanese airsoft company, Tokyo Marui, started as more of a general toy manufacturer in the early 1960s. Their earliest hit toys were gliders, including one that looked like Japan's zero fighter and one that was Astroboy themed. In partnership with Mushipro, they also made plastic model kits and plastic character figures. Then, in 1979, they sold their first model gun. Now, there are many companies that make airsoft guns, but Tokyo Marui was one of the first and is credited with many innovations, including the very first electric motor gearbox driven spring piston assembly in 1992. A few final fun and not so fun facts about airsoft guns there was a gunpla model kit series SD Gundam BB Sensei that featured little air guns that could shoot BB's, though this feature was discontinued for liability and safety reasons, in many jurisdictions in the United States, replica or imitation guns are required to have parts or markings that distinguish them from real guns, usually a bright orange piece on the muzzle. Even with this requirement, people have been shot and killed by police and by other civilians while carrying replica weapons that were thought to be real. When I looked for academic sources about airsoft, much of what I found had to do with arms trafficking. Apparently, gun parts will sometimes be purposely mislabeled as parts for airsoft guns in an effort to get them past customs and other inspections. Several olympic shooting events use not airsoft guns, but air guns. This is another bit where I would have liked to find out if that was always the case, and if not, then when and why it changed, but was not able to find out. So I guess what I'm saying is, this is me manifesting into the universe that I would really like to read a historical and sociological study of airsoft and airsoft culture. Tell me about the otaku. Why are they into it? What do they like about it? Just who was this Nagata Ichiro guy who gets credited with the idea? Now that the universe knows what I want, I will just sit back and wait, and maybe you'll all get an airsoft research part two in a few years.
So airsoft guns seem to have been invented sometime in the 70s. Yamaga Hiroyuki, who wrote war in the pocket, was born in 62. He's probably a little bit too old to have played with airsoft guns when he was Al's age, but he might have seen kids a bit younger than him getting into it. And in postwar Japan, where there were so many debates about what should the role of Japan be vis a vis international violence, what role should Japan have in other people's wars? Should Japan have its own army? In the middle of that whole big cultural debate about violence, it's so interesting to see little kids playing not just with toy guns, not with bright super soakers that shoot water or nerf guns or whatever, but with actual, really realistic depictions of real guns firing real projectiles at each other for fun.
None of my sources brought this up in any way. This is pure speculation on my part. But it's worth remembering that there was a long history, especially during Taisho and early Shoa, during the war periods, the period of imperial expansion, of encouraging young boys to play at soldiers, of encouraging them to emulate the japanese military's soldiers, and of trying to make soldiering in service of the empire something admirable, something young men wanted to do and not just were conscripted into, and of culturally getting everybody else on board with that, of families thinking of it as, of course, you don't want your son, your brother, to have to go fight, but it's for the glory of the empire, and it's such a good thing they're doing. And that doesn't all just go away when you lose a war. Many people were extremely disillusioned, of course, but there had been generations of propaganda around this.
And the airsoft gun is so interesting because looking at the history of Japan and really the history of the world, the history of states, powerful governments, especially those that take power after a period of weak government, like Hideyoshi and Tokugawa, after the Sengoku era, powerful governments tend to restrict weapon ownership. Yet in the modern era, in the era of the mass army and total war, you need a population of civilians who are accustomed to violence, trained in the use of these weapons, and who have a martial spirit. So airsoft guns allow you to develop that spirit in young kids, but pose no threat to the state.
Freakier tidbit that I left out of the original version of this research.
Ooh. I've managed to draw out the good stuff or the bad stuff.
I don't remember if it was airsoft guns or some other type of low powered air gun, like a bb gun, but they were used in U. S. Army training before Vietnam to help soldiers get over their very natural human internal resistance, to trying to kill other people, to acclimatize soldiers, to taking kill shots. Another wrinkle in all of this, and obviously extremely complicated and too big a subject really to totally delve into it here. But the US presence in Japan from the occupation onwards, the presence of us soldiers in major japanese cities, of exposure to soldiers and jeeps and weaponry, could well have been exciting for young kids. Young children often did not have the same reaction as their parents. That feeling of shame at the loss of the war soldiers would have been oddities and curiosities. And soldiers frequently gave kids candy like they did things to kind of try to ingratiate themselves locally sometimes, and especially with kids, probably would have let kids look at their gun, look at their jeep.
There's an anecdote in Matt Alt's book Pure Imagination, where he talks about the early days of the japanese toy industry and its revival after the war, because like every industry in Japan, it suffered horribly in the know. The molds for the toys were taken and melted down to make into cannons. But the most popular, like the first huge hit toy, were model jeeps. And they sold well in America and they sold well in Japan because kids loved those jeeps.
This is more strongly associated with kind of middle school and older aged people, but that more childlike interest can turn into this otaku obsession of knowing all the models and all their characteristics and how to tell them apart and all their specs. And if you already have that kind of an interest in war or in types of war machinery, guns are another very interesting target for that kind of brain, that kind of interest.
Going back to the Gundam context, it feels like seeing Al and his friends playing with guns isn't just meant to indicate to us that they don't really take this seriously, that all of this is just like fun and games for them, but also that they are training to be the next generation of soldiers. This is the propagation of the cycle of violence as intertwined with consumerism and the sort of expectations of their whole society that young boys are going to grow up to be soldiers.
And throughout a lot of human history, playing at war by both young children and by adults when there are not actual wars to fight in, has largely been treated as a good thing, not even just neutral, but good.
We do, after all, call training exercises for the military war games.
And the main distinction I would make between airsoft and things like paintball or laser tag is really just that airsoft guns look hyper realistic.
Thinking about the history that you've just laid out for us and how the airsoft gun evolved as a lower powered version of the air gun. Airsoft guns don't just look just like real guns. They are real guns.
I'm not sure if you could hear it in my voice. Early on when I compared them to their real counterparts, I'm sort of putting quotes around that they're all guns, and part of the reason that airsoft competition fields check the muzzle velocity of guns that people bring is because they can easily be modified to fire at an unsafe velocity, at a velocity that really could hurt another person. And several of the sources mentioned, both for BB guns and for airsoft guns, any muzzle velocity, any amount of force that can break bone is potentially deadly. And so as soon as you make one of them powerful enough to break bone, you could conceivably kill someone with it.
The only light in the room came from the lamp upon the table at which I had been reading. Holmes edged his way round the wall and fleeing the shutters together, he bolted them securely. You're afraid of something? I asked. Well, I am. Of what? Of air guns.
Next time on episode 9.2 War Fantasy 83 Stardust memory and the Kaku Senki genre. It will be Tom's turn to dig into his list of research ideas we never got around to. And in the meantime, stay Genki, everyone.
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 gundampodcast or by email to hosts@gundampodcast.com. And thank you for listening. No wrong Gundam Opinions this season, only rigorously researched Gundam facts. I can't believe you're literally nauseated by my jokes. I know they're bad. You don't have to take it that far.
Is it Tom's jokes or the heat? Only time will tell.
I am little. Hmm.
Luckily, you don't have to talk very.
Much, but that just means my every word has to be perfect. Do would you like me to read it? I have it up here if I can jump in. I don't want to step on your toes, but I think it's cool.
What year in the Tokyo Marui one was in 79, according to their website. But I'm not 100% positive that that model gun was an airsoft gun, and everybody just kind of says, like the 70s, there's not great data.
Yeah, totally.
The Wikipedia pages. Even the japanese Wikipedia page. Not great. Even pages for various groups and associations that organize competitive target shooting with airsoft guns. Not a lot of good historical information about the hobby. This is why I want someone to study it.
Only rigorously researched Gundam facts. Facts is a hard word to say.