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 10.51, Victory, and we're your hosts. I'm Tom, longtime Gundam fan and hoping that our coverage of Victory this past year has breathed fresh life into this older and often overlooked entry.
And I'm Nina, standing proudly victorious over yet another Gundam series I've helped analyze to death. Mobile Suit Breakdown is made possible by our lets call them optimally opinionated paying subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest digital obesity Emily and Laser Lancelot. You keep us Genki Some Updates now that we have finished Victory, we decided not to have a research piece this week and to not release an episode next week so that we'll have plenty of time to compose our thoughts on the series as a whole and to review and answer all of the questions listeners submitted. Longtime listeners know that we typically take a couple of months off between seasons, first to have a bit of a vacation and then to do preliminary research and preparation for the coming season, which this time around will be 1994's G Gundam. However, this time there is an added wrinkle. We each have a list of research topics we really wanted to cover this season but did not manage to get to or in the case of Tom's Yugoslavia, research finished. So our plan is to release these research pieces as standalone bonus episodes during the hiatus.
There is no set schedule for these. They'll come out periodically as we finish them to give you, let's say, a little drip feed of MSB episodes while we're hard at work behind the scenes getting ready for next season.
Season 11 can you believe it?
But this week we're talking about Victory Gundam Episode 51, the Ascension of Angels aka Tenshitachi no Shoten. This final episode, which aired on March 25, 1994, was written by head writer Sonoda Hideki. As of this writing, this is his last contribution to the Gundam franchise. In 1997, he was hired to write scripts for the original Pokemon TV series and soon started writing screenplays for the Pokemon movies, ultimately penning 20 between 1998 and 2015. Most recently, he wrote the stage play for the 2023 live musical adaptation of 1960s sci fi novel the Girl who Leapt through time. Episode 51 was storyboarded and directed by Nishimori Akira, while animation direction was shared between SEO Yasuhiro and Murase Shouko. All three will return for G Gundam. Now the recap Angel Halo is coming apart, and psychikers are spilling from the scars carved by errant blasts from the battle that still rages between the two dwindling fleets. Shaak Ti remains in the key room, doing her best to guide the collective will of those who remain within the massive psychomy. But even she cannot control it. Kakati realizes that something has changed within the Halo and leaves Admiral Sugin's squid class command ship to investigate. This proves to be a serendipitous choice, for as he leaves, the bridge crew spot a new threat. The blasted wreck of the Jeanne d' Arc is still flying, and it's headed right for them. Is the ghost ship guided by the spirit of Admiral Mubarak? Did Hungar Guan stay behind after all? Does it matter? The two flagships meet, and for a brief moment, they seem to embrace as long lost friends might. The moment passes. Their hulls scream, metal against metal, twisting, tearing. Then the Jeanne d' Arc's damaged engine blossoms, a kiss of flame and mutual annihilation. Katagina watches with delight as Chronicle and Uso fight their final battle. Are they fighting for possession of her heart? For pride? To satisfy their own petty rivalry? Or just to survive? The Psychikers are doing something. The murderous wind that surrounds Angel Halo is powerful enough to send mobile suits to tumbling like so many autumn leaves. Odello and Tomash find Uso on the increasingly chaotic battlefield. Leave the fighting to us. Ooso. You need to go do something about Shaak Ti. It's a touching moment on a solid plan. Odello even manages to get the better of Katajina. But they're caught in a wave of the Halo's peace particles, and he cannot bring himself to strike the killing blow. Katajina has no such compunctions. So much concentrated peace. Peace energy makes her wretch. But once she's recovered, the would be Princess sends Odello to join his parents in the afterlife. Uso, Alicia, Shaak Ti each feels the echo of his passing. But Uso has no opportunity to grieve. Chronicle is upon him once more. I know everything now. Uso, Iwin, you and Shaak Ti are going to use the Angel Halo to wipe us all out. It's the last mistake Chronicle will ever make. Uso makes quick work of him and jets away, leaving the Rig Kantio a headless, limbless wreck, pinwheeling helplessly thrown free of his cockpit. Chronicle calls out to his sister's spirit for help one last time. But there is little she or anyone else can do for him now. With a Sickening thud. His head strikes one of the ring segments and the prince is seen no more. Aboard the command ship at the center of the halo, Cagaty confronts Queen Maria's empty throne. He believes all this chaos is her doing, an act of ultimate ingratitude from a woman who was and might have remained a penniless fortune teller had he not raised her to the throne. When her silent spirit appears before him, the old politician fires half a dozen rounds right through her spectral face. Does he imagine that this will accomplish something? Has it broken him to see all his grand plans come to ruin? Or is it merely an act of defiance? Does it matter? The ring segments are moving under their own power now, not dispersing but recombining in novel geometries. One crashes into the command ship, throwing Cagaty across the room like a rag doll. All over the battlefield, ring segments and their new configurations begin to rise, snatching up the remaining combatants, Federation and Empire alike, carrying them who knows where. USO finds himself trapped. Levitu's feet are caught in a gap between two segments. He's helpless when Katagina arrives. But for once, she's not here to kill. She has come to disappoint. She had promised to be his forever if he beat Chronicle, but now that it's come to pass, oh, she cannot bear it. Speaking face to face, cockpits open, she says she truly loved the prince and there is nothing for her in a world without him. USO should just hurry up and kill her. But he won't. Or he can't. All he wants is to save her from herself. She embraces him, murmurs, what a naive little boy you are, and plunges a knife into his side. It's not a serious wound, though, and her follow up shots are even less effective. Uso is still looking for Shaak Ti, but before he can free her from the Key Chamber, he is stopped by the ghosts of his old friends Odello, Oliver, Junko, and all the rest of the Shrikes. He must face Katajina one last time and lay their feud to rest before any of them can move on. And she is waiting for him. Cannon at the ready, at the end of a long access shaft running through one of the ring segments. It's an ambush. But he makes no move to attack her. Don't mock me. She snarls. No more tricks. And she fires. Her eyes go blank. Are they scorched by the light from her cannon? Too much power in too small a space. Is it psychosomatic? Did all that roiling hate and trauma finally break something crucial inside her mind. Is it the final revenge of the ghosts of all those she's killed? Does it matter? She does not see the miracles that follow, how the V2, shrouded in invulnerable wings of light, disperses her shot. How the energy spills out in every direction, tearing the command ship apart. And how Shakti remains alone, untouched, floating like a dream above the peaceful earth, the life giving earth, the First Mother and the last. Months pass. Peace reigns in Cossarellia. They buried Odello on the ridge among friends, alongside other fallen soldiers. Some may have been foes once, some he may have killed himself. Shaak Ti takes Carlman and Flanders down to the stream to do the washing. Just as USO enthralled the angel halo once dreamed, a blind girl on a Wapa stops to ask the way to uig. It seems her auto compass has broken. Don't worry, shaak Ti tells her, quieting a wary Flanders with a word. You can have our spare. The traveler tries to refuse the offer. She has no money to pay for such kindnesses, but Shakti insists USO and the others pass the young woman on the path, and one of the girls wonders who she was. Oh, just a lost traveler, shaak Ti answers. Snow falls. Seasons change. The war of angels is over. Life goes on. Tomino Yoshiyuki is a notoriously harsh critic of his own work, especially right after it's been published and 10 years after it's been published, although usually by the 20 or 30 year anniversary he has started to come around on it a bit. So I'm going to start our discussion by reading you his own evaluation of this final episode from the Cure of Ternay Terne no Iashi, which is a book he wrote and published in 2000. It was about his experiences working on Gundam in general and specifically on Tournay. But he does talk about Victory a little bit. And in that in a segment that was excerpted and translated by Mark Simmons, he said first and foremost, the concept of the final episode of Victory had been filled with my real life resentments and it hadn't come to a proper conclusion as a creative work. Regardless of which staffer's hands it passes through, film always exposes the mental state of the person who presented the basic concept. You could say it even captures their spirit. So he was not particularly happy with how this show ended. My own impression, watching the episode was much more positive. I had a good time. I thought it was a good, emotionally satisfying conclusion to the series. But the more times I watched it and the More closely I looked at individual elements of it, the less satisfied I was, and ultimately my position on it right now is that I think it works overall, but does not stand up to close scrutiny. The more you look at any individual element, the less sense it makes and the less satisfying it is.
It's funny because this is one of those episodes where I have a lot of little nitpicks about the story, about things that seem to not make sense, things that are contradictory or seem to come out of nowhere, like they were really trying to cover a lot of thematic content, thematic elements right here at the end. So certain things don't get the setup that maybe they deserved. Some things aren't explained, and yet I found it a very satisfying conclusion. Ultimately to this story. I was happy with it as an ending.
That's where I started too. And I guess a good place to start on that would be Odello.
Odello's plot beats in this episode. Odello's role in this episode is a great example of what I meant when I said certain things weren't fleshed out as much as they deserved to be. Certain things feel a bit like they came out of nowhere. In particular, because before he dies, this episode is an example of Odello having achieved a certain amount of, like, character growth and growth as a person. This is. Odello officially becomes USO's senpai. When he started, USO was the one who had more experience. He was a better pilot, he was a better fighter. All Odello had was bloodlust and bravery.
When they were in the mobile suits. Yes, but in those early episodes, riding around with the cameo on Team getting in brawls at the hangar, there was a brotherly dynamic.
But getting into brawls with your little brother is very much the behavior of an older brother, but is not particularly responsible behavior. Whereas here it's a lot of covering USO helping USO when he's in a pinch, facilitating the mission. Right? It's not about his vendettas, even down to when he's fighting Katagina and they get caught in the Kirakira, the peaceful sparkle of the Angel Halo, and the contrast between him and Katajina, where despite all of his anger and resentment, despite the fact that he got into this because he wanted to hurt the people who'd hurt him and his friends and his family, he can't bring himself to kill her. When he's feeling the full force of that desire for peace, he says to himself, this would be the moment to kill her, and he can't do it.
He cannot overcome the peace waves and it gets him killed. It gives Katajina the opportunity to rally and cut him down.
But I do think that moment, that moment where he doesn't kill her is meant to show us how far he's come from the beginning of the series.
This is Obi Wan deactivating his lightsaber right before Darth Vader cuts him down. This is the, if you strike me down, I'll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Finding and accepting that peace even in the middle of battle. And then he. He gets a vision of his departed parents who comfort him as he is about to die. Which seems to be the only specifically depicted example of what Shakti was trying to do in the prior episode with her prayer, like, bring the spirits of people's loved ones back to them to comfort them in the middle of this battle.
His death and the implied comments from his parents also very much a part of Victory's whole deal about parents and children and Gundam's whole deal about how people struggle to communicate. You know that children need to know you're proud of them. They need to know that they're loved. Parents struggle to convey these things to their children. Odello has thought for most of his life, apparently, that his father hated him. And to learn that he was wrong, to learn that that was not the case is a huge relief and comfort to him.
And it feels like that is meant to be a mirror to USO and his relationship with his father. Uso's own strained relationship with Hangerg. USO might well believe that his father hates him.
Alright. This was one of the things that bugged me. What actually happened or didn't happen with Hangerg. Because in the penultimate episode, it is strongly implied by Hanger disappearing and not telling anybody where he's going, that he is attempting to escape and not go down with the Jeanne d' Arc. He does not intend to go down with the ship. And yet everything that happens in this episode seems to indicate, oh no, he did, he's dead. So what on earth was the plan here? Or wasn't there one? Or a miscommunication perhaps, between writing teams or animation? I don't know.
Good question.
It was badly handled.
I would like to believe there had been a miscommunication among the writers. That was my original theory. And that led me to go looking for interviews with the writers, interviews with Tomino, where they could like, talk about the writing process for Victory. And it turns out that's probably not what happened because at least according to Tomino he personally rewrote all the episodes and all the dialogue. So much that the writers would watch the final episode and not even recognize a hint of their own contributions in the resulting final product. So there is, by his own admission, a single writer claiming responsibility for all of this. So if Hangeurg has been forgotten, we cannot blame it on the transition between two different writers in these two different episodes.
We can just blame it on Tomino.
It is possible that, you know, something was forgotten. I imagine at the end of a long running series, probably everyone involved is under an enormous amount of pressure and completely exhausted. And it's easy to imagine how something could slip through the cracks. Maybe we were supposed to see Hangurk die in the prior episode and it had to be cut for some reason. I'm not sure. The implication does seem to be that he's dead. We get his ghostly spectral image over the Jeanne d' Arc as it makes its one last weird like ghost ship ramming attack. And Shakti in her litany of people who have died that she knows does say Ojiisan like uncle. But she usually uses that for Hangerg. And I believe that's before Chronicle dies, so she can't be talking about him.
I'm the one who pointed that out to you.
You did. And now I'm going to get credit for.
Wasn't even just that Hanger disappeared. Mumarek hangs a lampshade on it and says, ah, well, he's always been clever. Like I'm sure he's got something up his sleeve. Is the something up his sleeve just to be a secondary backup ghost on the Jeanne d' Arc?
One can easily imagine a Hangaerg story where he is in the process of evacuating to he has a change of heart. He realizes that actually he does need to do something for the sake of these kids. And then after Mubarak is killed and the bridge is taken out, he goes and takes over the the secondary bridge, the combat bridge, and uses it to crash the ship into that last remaining squid. But also that doesn't happen. So who knows, Maybe he escaped. I was really curious so I went to look and see if Japanese fans talking about Hanger's fate had any more insight. His fate is different in other adaptations of this story, in the manga and in the novels, I think. And a lot of people suggested that maybe the idea was that Hanger was going to escape and then return for a follow up show where the new threat is like the Jupiter Republic. That has been referenced a couple of times. But Obviously, that show didn't happen, so the fate of Hangerg is just one of life's little mysteries. But to go back to Odello, because everything you said about him is stuff I really like about his depiction in this episode.
Me too.
He does show great character growth and we've actually seen enough of him over the course of this series that that character growth feels earned.
It does feel like a bit of a leap to me that the transition from how we've seen him most recently to this version of him feels a little stuttery. It's not like a smooth line arcing upwards, but it doesn't completely come out of nowhere.
We saw the trend line, we saw the direction he was heading, and now he's just skipped a few stages on it.
And even the final moments with his parents. The poignancy of that kind of gets hinted at in the first half of the series when talking about Susie, but undoubtedly thinking about himself. And Warren as well, scolds USO for talking about looking for his parents when they don't have parents to look for.
Yeah.
Though, you know, 51 weekly episodes to go. Half the series without ever referencing that or that feeling. And then be like, hey, guys, remember from almost a year ago is maybe asking a lot of your audience.
Sure. But Odello, unlike uso, has not accumulated for himself an army of surrogate parents. So it makes sense that he would still be yearning for the comfort of his biological parents. And seeing the reactions of his friends to his sacrifice, to his death is really touching. Seeing the way it strikes Alicia, the way she falls out of her seat, the way she cherishes the pendant he made for her.
His is the death that makes Shakti realize a lot of people she knows have died.
Mm. But it makes USO look like a real USO, feels the death happen and has basically no reaction whatsoever to the death of his beloved older brother, who he has just been bonding with in this episode. And not four minutes later, when he gets Katajina alone, he doesn't seem to have any emotional hang up. Like, she just killed your best friend, dude, and you feel nothing about it. You're completely stoic.
I didn't have that reaction at all.
Not the first time I watched it. But like I said, when I drilled down and really focused on this. And it reveals a problem that I've had with USO all along. For all that, there are those brief scenes of USO really reacting to the tragedies. There's the bit of uso, like in his cockpit crying until he can't cry anymore. USO is so stoic. Imagine how an Amuro or a Camille or a Judo would have responded to this.
I agree that they made USO too stoic, that he feels a bit flat, but I think that's the special child problem. He's not a person, he's an angel. And all he and Shakti want is for everyone to stop killing each other, and that includes not wanting to kill their enemies. Odello's already dead. Killing Katagina won't bring him back. Rage won't bring him back. Tears won't bring him back. This did not at all feel out of character for USO to me. He has not been the most compelling protagonist. And ultimately, especially here at the end of the show, this feels much more like a show about Katajina than about uso.
That's another thing. Katajina has killed a lot of people. This is the first person she's killed that she, like, knew. I know she wasn't with them very long, but she knew Odello and I would have expected more of a response from her.
Perhaps the show doesn't quite earn it, but for both her and uso, the implication might be that they're just too far gone. USO has killed so many people at this point, and so many people he loves and cares about have died that he's just numb. Like, what is. What's he supposed to do? Like, he didn't fall down dead of grief the first dozen times. Why is this time different? He lost his mom, he lost his dad. He lost most of his surrogate parents. He even points out to Shakti when he first takes her back to Angel Halo for her to try to calm the psychickers and change what they're doing, that he's compartmentalizing. He's heavy compartmentalizing ever since this battle started. And Katagina is lying to USO when she goes to him in her normal suit and then winds up stabbing him. But she's not totally lying to him. She doesn't feel as if she could ever go back to uso, go back to the League Militaire after having loved Chronicle and after everything she's done. She knows that USO may think, oh, if you just lay down your weapons, we can go back or we can build something new. And she's like, oh, no, dude, not after what I've done. That's not going to happen.
And I really like that element of it. I like the fate of Katagina, the lingering effect of all of this on her. And I struggle with Ooso because uso, as you say, has become so hardened by all of this, has killed so many people, has done so much, has lost so much. And yet, at the end of the day, he just goes back to living in Casarelia with no indication of any kind of lingering consequences.
Another take on uso. Over the course of this battle, like a dozen different dead people appear to him. You know, how much are you gonna grieve when the dead just come back for a little chat every time you need them?
He does get remarkably specific help from those ghosts. Odella being like, don't shoot here, you dummy. You'll kill Shakti.
Junko being like, go that way.
Though I did think that was funny that like, they don't say go that way because that's how you'll find Shaak Ti. It's like, go that way. Because all of us vengeful ghosts still have a bone to pick with Katajina. We need you to finish this, but not Mira. Yes, the complete absence of Mira's ghost was noted. It's on my list of hmm, I'm not sure this holds together when you really think about it elements.
But does it need to come on Tom Vibes? We're talking about space psychics transcending their bodies and ascending to space. Question mark, Heaven, double question mark. Like, how much sense do you want it to be?
I'm just saying, when the best Gundam protagonist of all time, Camille Bidan, reminds, reached the point of feeling nothing when he killed people, the show made it very clear that that was a bad thing, that that had broken him psychologically and doomed him. And then in the final episode, he suffered a catastrophic breakdown. I'm not saying that USO should be exactly like Chamile in every way. I'm just saying he should be more like Chamile in most ways. For me, as a treat, I have.
Just two other quick notes about USO before we talk about other characters. But when he says to chronicle your weakness led Katajino astray. On the one hand, it's completely bonkers to me that USO would even now be trying to find ways to absolve Katagina of her own behavior and choices.
Uh huh. I wrote like a five paragraph essay about that line.
You're already saying a lot more about each of these individual characters than I anticipated. This is going to be a really.
Long talk, and I'm sorry for that.
But on the other hand, frankly, if Cartagena had been helped by a handsome young League militaire officer or Federation General or something, maybe she would have fought for their side. Maybe she would have aligned herself with whoever her lover was aligned with.
So we are telling me that all of this is the fault of Striker and Khufu for not like, making a move on her when they had their chance.
They were not important enough.
They were not dashing enough.
I don't even think it's just looks. I think Katajina doesn't want babies. She wants power.
So I think the reason USO has to say this. In part, yes, he is still trying to absolve Katachina. But also it's the thesis of the show. Like, it's a bad thesis. I don't like it, but it is. I think they're saying if Chronicle had been a strong man, he would not have relied on Katagina in the way that he did. She would not have gotten into the robot. She would not have started killing. She would not have gone down the dark path.
The other thing that seems worth mentioning is that when USO kills Chronicle, he does it with two beam sabers held over his groin. Not unlike a penis. Double beam penis death.
His is bigger than Chronicles and so he is able to destroy Chronicle.
Because Tomino is weird about everything. Psychosexual. Is this the show's way of saying that ultimately USO is more adult than Chronicle is?
USO is more of a man.
USO is more of a grown up.
Mm. Well, and Chronicle, in this back and forth, Chronicles, like, you have no idea how hard my life has been as the Queen's brother.
I yelled. Tom will tell you I yelled in the middle of the episode. Neither do we. Yep.
Mostly we've just seen him being resentful that all of his colleagues think he's a nepotism hire who keeps being promoted despite, as far as I can remember, never once succeeding at any of his assignments.
Yeah, just failure after failure after failure.
His one accomplishment, and this is to his credit, he does manage to capture Count Oinyeung. And he finds the secret League underground headquarters. That's true fair play to Chronicle for that.
He has one success in the first fifth of the series and never succeeds again.
And then when he gets defeated by uso's blazing penis sword as he's tumbling out of his cockpit once again, he begs his dead sister to help him save me. Sister.
So I have an interesting note about that. I have a note under USO's comment to chronicle about it was your weakness, but that both Chronicle and Katagina have like, poor little rich boy, poor little rich girl vibes. They're made for Each other.
Oh, yeah. They truly are perfect for each other. They would have been such a toxic couple.
And I know there's a whole bunch of backstory and some novels or whatever that maybe would actually make me sympathetic to Chronicle in some way, would maybe cultivate feelings of compassion in me, but I ain't gonna read all that, and Chronicle of the show does not deserve my tears.
It's like the different Djinn's Jahannam. You got a Jin Jahannam of the Lean Horse. You got a Jin Jahannam of the Jeanne d' Arcan. You got a Chronicle of the Show. You got a Chronicle of the Movies. Movies. Gosh, imagine if they made victory movies.
Anyway, no, thank you.
You got a Chronicle of the Show. You got a Chronicle of the Book. There's probably a Chronicle of the Manga. Whose hair is the fluffiest of all? I don't know. I haven't read the manga. I also loved Chronicles bit where he's like, I've been struggling against Kagati. Citation required, my friend. When have you struggled? How have you struggled against Cagate? But the first time you mention his plan to turn Zanskar into a matriarchy, you seem pretty down with it. The only time you actually, like, have an opportunity to do something to hamper Cagaty's plans, that is not hand Shaak Ti over. You do the opposite. You hand Shaak Ti over. You've got the perfect opportunity to ice him like Kaecilia iced Giran. And you don't take it because you haven't got a ruthless bone in your body. You're full of Ruth.
I mean, it is entirely possible that he doesn't actually mean struggle against Kagati, as in, like, I disagree with what Kagati is doing and I want something different. He might just mean, ugh, this old guy is in charge and won't give me any responsibility and won't let me do anything. And I hate him and I want him to go away.
You're not even my real dad.
But you mention him calling out to Maria, sister, save me. And I wanted to point out something this episode does with all the various ghosts and spirits, right? Because Chronicle invokes Maria, USO invokes his father. He says, what should I do? What should I do? Kagate invokes Maria. He wonders if Maria summoned the Jeanne d' Arc, if it's like a curse from her ghost. He says, maria, save me. He says, maria, tell me the truth. Were we always doomed?
Him shooting Maria's ghost is so funny.
Well, okay, too many things to say. Let me finish one point before you bring up another.
Never.
My point being the ghosts never respond to direct petitions. The ghosts are only helpful when they feel like it and to whom they feel like it. And I remembered Maria's comment to Tassilo that the living should leave the dead alone, that the living should not be invoking the dead in that way. It was also deeply ironic for Kagati to be like Maria. Was this Operation Doom from the start, and then you were a mere fortune teller when I found you. It's like, well, now you want her to do more fortune telling. His invoking of her and his shooting that sort of ghostly apparition of her was confirmation, if you needed any more, that he was a true believer. After a fashion. I got almost like a tech bro vibe from him when he was talking about the Angel Halo. And it was, has the machine turned against us? Is the Angel Halo itself sentient and turned against our will? He does, however, have a really cool space car, high altitude flying car.
It's very cool, like a little luxury space shuttle car thing. It felt very Akira Toriyama to me.
Totally out of place in this show, but cool all the same. Speaking of the ghosts and the psychikers, what exactly is happening to them? Because initially, if you had asked me last episode, I'd have said that Shakti's efforts would mean most of those people would live. I did assume that having been hooked up to the Angel Halo, all of their brains powering this, like, subsequent huge prayer auras or whatever would make them a little weird. I sort of assumed there would be like a psychic or commune somewhere where they all live together, because other people find them a little spooky and they find other people weird in different ways. However, again with the gore. We see so many capsules tumbling out of the ends of pieces of the Angel Halo. Broken capsules, the horrible moaning, the bodies limp and just drifting there. I mean, the. The episode title is the Ascension of Angels. So are their spirits still in the Angel Halo? But they've ascended their bodies. I mean, I transcended their bodies.
I think what's going on is they've created a collective consciousness of all these 20,000 psychikers, and Shakti is at the center of it. Shakti has the most control over it, but does not actually control it. As she says close to the beginning of the episode, even I don't know what's going to happen. I don't actually control this anymore. And the idea of a collective will, like that the show presents it as terrifying, and I think it is because.
Remember, the prayer here is for peace. The prayer here is for living in peace with your loved ones. And these are people for whom that peace means leaving Earth behind actually means this ascension, whatever that ascension means. Exactly.
So they sort of go through distinct phases. Initially, there's the, like, powering up the Angel Halo collectively. Even as it disperses its pieces, is still doing something. Then there's the big storm, and it seems pretty evident that the Psychikers, the Angel Halo, is creating this huge storm. Then the storm ends and they start recombining, forming these new, smaller structures and leaving. And as they leave, they're taking with them the soldiers, not just Zanskar, but just like whoever is still fighting.
They're just scooping them up and dragging them off to question mark.
It reminded me of. Nope.
Oh, gosh.
Right. So I guess there is then no indication of what happens to them after they leave Earth's atmosphere.
Nope. Yeah, I have in my notes. Why do the new rings drag ships, Mississippi Crews back out to space? And will they stop there? I imagine them almost like when NASA sends a probe out into space and it's just going to keep going.
Yeah.
Forever.
Yeah.
Until it breaks.
I was wondering about that. I mean, it does feel like they're just sort of scooping up all of these soldiers and taking them away so that there won't be any more fighting. But I do note that the first time this happens, it's right after one of the Zaanskar ships is like, we need to retreat and go back to the homeland. Oh, I don't know if this ship will be able to make it. And then they just get scooped up and carried off. And so maybe that's the idea. Like they're just going home.
Or it might just be the same principle behind separating any two kids wrestling on the floor or dogs biting at each other. You separate them and they stop fighting.
Except that they're taking the Federation ships and mobile suits too. Not in, like, separate groups to go back to their respective places. Just like all of them together. Like, grab all these spacenoids and take them somewhere else.
Maybe all humans look the same to the psychickers now.
And it may simply be that they're taking the spacenoids back to space and leaving the Earthnoids on Earth. Could be.
So in the midst of this, there's Shakti's horrible scream and she strikes a pose which at this point is very familiar to me. Those of you who remember my research about Kubalea may recall, there was an image used, I want to say, for Haman, for Double Zeta on her flags that was like a woman with upraised arms.
I think it was in sort of.
A crescent moon shape.
In some depictions of her throne room, it, like, appears on the back wall.
There are a number of times when Shakti recreates that pose, pose inside the key room of the angel Halo. And then surrounded by or bisected by the rings, that same imagery comes up.
And her hair going loose and splayed out all around her as though she were in water. That feels reminiscent of Japanese ghost stories.
Well, it's a sign of intense emotion because, remember, this happened with Kataja's hair also. It was in its tidy little braided crown or whatever, and then, boom, no more braids, hair loose. Sex demon. But my question the first time I watched was, who saved Shakti? Did she save herself or did the psychic ers save her? Because ultimately, what's implied is that they're all one. Like you said, there's one consciousness shared. And while she has touched on that and interacted with it, she's still separate, and she doesn't really want to be part of it. That's not her goal.
I don't know if there are any other examples of this in the world, but there's like, a mother figure, a daughter figure, and then a kind of like, sacred spirit, interconnected but separate.
Here's the thing, though. I am fairly positive that what saves Shakti is Carlman.
Carlman standing and saying, shakti, come home.
Right? Either Carlman's own new type abilities or that his new type abilities allow him to be heard by the Angel Halo. And so the Angel Halo psychic or say, oh, they. You're wanted somewhere, right? Like, here you go, little man.
Shakti is the only one in the Angel Halo that we know of who can complete the original mission of return people's loved ones to them by returning to Earth. And that would fulfill your prediction of Carlman being instrumental in the resolution of this show.
Although not really in the way that I thought.
Take the win.
Nina and I'd like to talk about Shakti in the very end of the episode in those last couple of scenes. But we should probably talk about Katagina first.
But before we do that, you didn't really address the, like, what causes Shaak Ti's scream or what caused the huge, like, psychic storm that envelops everyone?
I don't know.
Well, it follows immediately after that one Zahnskar ship accidentally blasts one of the Rings and and kills a bunch of psychikers. And as you've said up to that point through the episode, we have seen lots of psychikers being killed, lots of pods being jettisoned.
Oh God, the blood splatter on the glass of that one bridge.
Grotesque. So I think what is happening is that the collective will of the psychikers. I still hate that word. Anyway, their collective will, yes, they pray for peace, they want peace, but unlike uso, they're still capable of feeling emotions when bad things happen. And so they're hurt and they're lashing out. Collectively, they're being hurt even if they.
Aren'T lashing out per se, even if they're not trying to cause pain. Shakti is so connected to them while she's inside the key room that she feels that pain regardless.
And then the emotional turmoil in the psychic urs caused by that pain to is what creates this giant whirlwind, perhaps focused through Shakti, who as an individual person is not equipped to absorb that much pain.
Shakti's intense empathy forming a contrast to Katagina's. Ew. What are these loving feelings? I'm gonna throw up.
I love that they just committed to her being an absolute hater to the end.
One thing that this show has done that I've been really impressed with and love in the story is, especially in these last few episodes, Victory makes the case that at this point, Shakti and USO are more adult, more mature than Kataji Nahen's chronicle. And in this episode in particular, whenever they clash with uso, whenever they clash with this force, Katajina and Chronicle, they always insist on bringing up how dare you kids get in my way, you children. As though they are trying to differentiate themselves, as if they are trying to say, no, we're the adults and you're supposed to respect us and do what we want or stay out of our way. We're the grown ups. You're the children. How dare you. But there's much about Katajina's portrayal, especially in these last few episodes, that makes her out to be immature, young, girlish for all that she's a girl with weapons she doesn't understand and doesn't really want to. And this gets tied up with the whole blindness thing. The joke of it being she's been blind all along, right?
Oh ho ho ho.
But she and Chronicle both say to USO in this episode at different points, like I see you or I see what you're doing. Mieru is the Japanese verb that they use repeatedly. And they're both wrong. They're both like, you're not getting away with anything. I know exactly what's happening. No, you don't. None of us do. And the way her eyes look in those last scenes in Casarelia, there is a close up on her eyes before she, quote, unquote, dies before we think she dies. And her eyes look the same. If that's meant to indicate to us that she's blind. It happens actually right before it happens after the ghosts hit her. Not from an attack.
You can actually watch it happen. You can see the moment when it does. And it's when she. It's the moment she fires her big gun at uso.
And Haro's language is misleading. Haro says that the enemy Kieta has been erased, which does get used in other scenes and in other episodes to mean dead. And apparently Shakti has learned a lesson, which is that she does not tell uso, even though she absolutely, ultimately recognized Katajina. And I think Shakti's tears. There are regret that she couldn't save.
Katajina and everyone else that Katajina represents.
Yeah, she would have wanted to save everybody, and she couldn't do it. And she knows better than to tell USO Katanjina is still alive. She's learned one lesson, though.
I don't. I don't know that USO would, like, feel much about it at this point.
It's too parallel to the note Katagina left, though, that Shakti first wasn't going to give and then does give. It's too parallel to when they're in that underwater city and Shakti is like, oh, I saw some people with Katajina. And USO goes chasing off after her.
Do you think Katagina remembers them?
Yes, because I think when she hears the name Karuman, she knows exactly who she's around.
I don't think she knows exactly who she's around. I think there's something, like, tugging at her that she doesn't quite understand. A memory that has been, like, covered over by trauma.
Nah, I think she remembers. I think she and Shakti both know who they're talking to and have both decided not to say anything about it.
Mm.
Perhaps because it would be too painful.
And why do you think she cries when it starts snowing?
Because she's never gonna see snow again.
Hmm.
This is probably her first winter since she went blind. And she can feel it. She knows it's there.
I thought of a couple of other possibilities. One is that during the course of this, like, roving battle that takes place in this episode. At one point, they are fighting in the snow. It's one of the last places that she, like, saw Chronicle. It could also be that the snow descending on her reminds her of those, like, motes of golden energy falling across the battlefield that at the time, so disgusted her. But in retrospect, she may recognize that as like, her last missed opportunity to just walk away. I do want to point out being blind is not a punishment.
It's a bit tricky because they are absolutely invoking not uncommon injuries of soldiers and of civilians who get caught in combat situations. People do get blinded, people lose limbs, people, you know, take all kinds of permanent injuries to their bodies and their psyches. But to have the only person who has that be a villain in the show feels like they're saying, ah, the gods have punished you for your wickedness.
And there's a long tradition of people being struck blind by the gods as punishment. Oedipus, for instance, is the one that comes immediately to mind. No, I think in the language of the show, this is a punishment. This is Katagina's punishment for her wicked ways. But, like, ew. Ew.
I would take less issue with it if any of our other protagonists had some kind of permanent injury. It's a little weird that none of them do.
Yes, like, I have so many issues with this wonderful, beautiful denouement sequence. One of the principal ones is, I think USO should have some kind of permanent injury from that time he got stabbed. I think that would make the ending a lot better and it would make Katagina's disability seem less like a punishment from the gods for her wickedness.
To give it some credit, we have said all along that so much of the difference between these two sides is that the characters who we've been following just want to go home and for home to be safe. That's it. That is all they have ever wanted and that's why they are doing this. And so to have the denouement be they go home and it's safe is like, okay, yes. That is in fact what they were saying this whole time. That is what they wanted. Good for them, and that's what they're doing. I find it somewhat unrealistic that both Clansky's sisters and everybody else who was on Highland decides to stay. I would have assumed some of them would, but not everybody. It is a very different kind of life. You're telling me. None of them went back to space. And it's all very personal. It's all very small. It's all very daily life, which is very tomino. But that other stuff matters. What government does Zanskar have? Now this is weirdly allegorical that all the good guys are either dead or seemingly exactly how they were before this all started. When in fact and I would have thought the complex feelings the Gundam team have displayed about war would have brought this out. But like nobody gets through war unscathed. Not even the winners.
Not to get to monomyth. Joseph Campbell the Hero's Journey about this but the last stage of the hero's journey to involves the hero returning to the place they started in, but with new knowledge, with their essential nature having been transformed by the journey.
It's bittersweet because they can't go home again. They are not the same person.
And the only difference for USO appears to be that now he has a kid and he rides a different Wapa.
Now he's got a kid and a wife and a pregnant neighbor. I don't think that USO and Shakti need to solve all of humanity's problems. I think it's okay for the show to let them go home, but it is a gap. You do wonder what next? And if it really is about creating a world where Marbet's child won't be in a position of having to go to war. We have to care about the big picture stuff. We can't just go back to our own insular lives.
In a different show this would be less of an issue. But in this specific show they have made so much of the idea of a space warring states period that Zanskar is not a unique one off threat. Zanskar wasn't even an entire side. Zanskar was like a couple of colony cylinders. There are thousands of other potential Zanskars out there. This is like getting to the end of the Onin War and being like, wow, I sure am glad that's over. It's a good thing that this erosion of central authority won't lead to a nearly century long war of all against all. As the regional powers struggle to decide which one will establish hegemony over the crumbling empire, ultimately culminating in the inauguration of a stable but rigidly oppressive dictatorship. Phew.
Well Tom, they have to set it up for a sequel.
The Jupiter Republic is still out there. There are other threats. We don't even know if Cagaty is dead. His death is ambiguous. He gets knocked from one end of the room to another. I know he's an old man, but he is like he could have survived that he might be up there gathering his forces again. And you know what doesn't still exist at this point? The Ligue Militaire. Everyone who gave a care is dead or in retirement. So the next Zanskar empire is not going to have the same problems that this one did. I'm sorry, I'm just really into the idea of a space warring States period. And I feel like the creators of this show have not acknowledged the implications of this idea that they introduced into my feverish brain. What do you think the deal is with the last shot before the denouement when we see all of those what appear to be Mesoamerican step pyramids?
I assumed this was meant to be Chichen Itza because that's the most famous example of that kind of Mayan structure. Well, I thought somebody on the design staff is obsessed with Mexico.
Yeah, they do. They do keep going back there.
Somebody must have visited.
Well, and we saw similar step pyramids back in moonmoon. So like maybe an obsession of Tomino's in particular.
It is a kind of virtual visual shorthand to say life goes on. The Maya don't exist anymore, but we live among their ruins. Someday we will not exist and someone will live among our ruins and our wrecked mobile suits abandoned to the woods.
What a good image. What a good final image for a show.
It's a weirdly nihilistic tone to set because on the scale of human civilizations, you know, what does it matter? What does this one war mean really, when we're talking about thousands of years? But I do think that might be the point.
There's also perhaps a message of continuity because there's that statue which is foregrounded in that final image of what appears to be a human shaped warrior with wings, an angel with wings, with feathered wings. And I think you're right in identifying this as Mayan art. There's like a particular way faces are carved in Mayan sculpture that I think resembles this particular face. There's a Mayan temple called Ekbelem, which is near Chichen Itza and which has inside of it a couple of statues of what appear to be winged warriors. And this may be a reference to those, although the sculpture itself looks very different.
They might even have invented the sculpture from bits and pieces of other art they saw when they were there.
So yeah, we have this winged warrior then and now, and maybe in the future there will be another like it. Just an endless cycle that eventually brings us back to this point.
Next time on episode 10.52 Casarelia we wrap up our coverage of Victory Gundam, answer listener questions and discuss our thoughts on the series as a whole. Please listen to it.
Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded and produced by us, Tom and Nina in Scene 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. 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 hostsundampodcast.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@gundumpodcast.com Patreon you can find links and more ways to help out@gundumpodcast.com support thank you for listening. There are a lot of wrong Gundam opinions out there, like this one from Bix the Red Panda who says that after a year of standing up to the victory, we can all sit down again. That might sound sensible until you realize that Bix is in the pocket of Big Chair. What else could explain such a flagrant anti science standing agenda? Stay vigilant listeners and stay on your toes.
I didn't quite want to talk about the ending just yet.
Well then let's not.
That's a crunching bones sound, but we'll talk about that.
I wish I had it on a Saturday soundboard so I could play it periodically. Sorry Nina, I've become like Busso. I feel nothing about these deaths.
Kubelia. I don't remember how I I think it was Kubelea. The yin.
The Yin for now, until the cycle comes around again and brings us back to this point.
It took me. Sorry. Oh, that's okay.
I was leaning back and almost fell over.
You forgot that's not a tilty one, Sam.