You're listening to season ten of mobile suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of Sci-Fi mega franchise mobile suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
This is episode 10.20, victory is coming, and we are your hosts. I'm Tom, feeling a bit like I've been blasted with a long range microwave attack this week.
And I'm Nina, new to Victory Gundam and equal parts annoyed and bemused this week as not one but two pins that I mailed over a year ago turned up at our PO box this week. Ah, the vagaries of international posts. Mobile suit breakdown is made possible by our paying subscribers on Patreon. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons, Pike Killira and Petey Yuki Bemsp Genki. And special thanks to Grant M. And slice the lite for supporting us on Ko Fi. A quick update about our other podcast project, the audio drama the disappearances of Lydia Fontaine. As of this past Monday, June 10, the Kickstarter for season one is more than 50% funded. For those of you who havent checked out the pilot, heres the hook. Lydia Ryan never knew her mothers family, but when she returns to find her childhood home ransacked, her parents gone, and a book that shouldnt exist waiting for her, the teenagers insatiable curiosity leads her into a world of mystery, paranoia, and danger. Set in a deceptively familiar world of big data, perpetual surveillance, and machine mediated communication, the disappearances of Lydia Fontaine weaves bitter family feuds and high stakes intrigue together with light science fiction, fantasy, and cyberpunk elements to create a magical surrealist audio drama about old wounds, dangerous secrets, and complicated legacies. You can listen to the pilot on most podcatchers and@lydiadisappears.com that's l dashadisappears.com, where you will also find a link to the Kickstarter. As with MSB, disappearances does not have advertisers or paid sponsors. The season will be entirely funded by people who enjoyed the pilot and want to support the creation of more episodes, and we're pretty confident that will include some of you. The Kickstarter ends Wednesday, July 3, at 09:00 a.m. new York time. So don't wait.
This week on MSB Victory, episode 20, Kesen Zenya or eve of the decisive battle. The episode was written by Okea Akira, storyboarded and directed by Sato Ikuro, with Taniguchi Moriasa as animation director. The Kailas Gili's dreaded big cannon is nearly complete. Only the league military squadron staging at the Highland solar satellite stands between Captain Tasila Wago and the defenseless Earth. The Kailas Gili fleet has already repelled every force the league could throw against it. But perhaps this time, perhaps if they had some kind of secret weapon. Jin Jahanam wants to use the Highland solar battery's microwave transmissions as a long range energy cannon, but Captain Gomez is skeptical. It's a fine idea, but it's still just an idea. They're nowhere near ready to attempt it. USo interjects with his own idea. They've got two ships, right? What if they used one of them as a shield to cover the other as it attacked? Jahannam rejects the notion out of hand, but Gomez and Romero think it has some merit. They dont have the strength to take on the whole fleet, but a trick like this just might buy them enough time to knock the Kailas Gili out of commission. Romero adds his own twist. If they were to modulate the highlands microwave emissions, they could turn it into a non lethal weapon, one that induces headaches and nausea throughout the enemy fleet. Ousso leaves the adults to prepare for the operation. The Guan land will need to be evacuated if it is to serve as a shield for the lean horse. The kids from the Highlander must return to their temporary home to make the necessary adjustments to the emitters, and the pilots must prepare themselves for the difficult battle to come. These preparations are interrupted by Bespa raiders, and UsO and the shrikes scramble to drive them off. The boy is still struggling to adapt to space, but fortunately he has junko to watch his back. Your senses need to be sharper in space, she chides him. Don't get distracted. Don't give away our position by firing recklessly. Junko is a force of nature out there, dancing between the beams and sowing death from both hands. Aboard the Bespa flagship Katagina, Luz happens to run into Suzy, Shakti and the other guests from earth. It is a strange and strained reunion under the circumstances, and when Katagina hears that Shakti has received all kinds of special treatment, she seems alarmed. With the Bespa forces driven off, the league's pilots are able to rest before the big operation. In the break room, Uso overhears a private conversation between Marbet and Oliver. It seems that Oliver is concerned about Junko. The shrike's leader fights with reckless abandon, like someone racing towards death. He is afraid that putting marbet and Junko together in the same unit would mean losing both of them. Uso is disturbed by what hes heard. He lies awake in his bunk talking to Haro and reminiscing. After so many tragedies, after losing so many of the shrikes already he is desperate to prevent this one. He slips out of his bunk and sneaks into the barracks where the shrikes are sleeping. He wakes Junko gently. Please dont die Miss Junko, he whispers to her. Thats all. Just please dont let yourself get killed. Everything is ready for the attack. The microwave dishes are focused on the fleet and the broadcast begins. The effect is felt almost immediately. Just as predicted, the Bespa soldiers are wracked by headaches and stomach cramps. There is no mercy for the innocent. Karlman, Susie and the rest of them suffer just as badly as Tassilo or chronicle. The Bespa mobile suits are slow to launch, their pilots and crews incapacitated. The line for the toilet is apocalyptic. As they close into combat range, the league pilots are forced to enter the microwave zone themselves, but they need only endure for a few seconds, time enough to launch their preemptive strike. Missiles by their hundreds, streak across the void and land in shattering explosions on the unready Zanskar ships, patrol ships become fireballs, and cruisers snap amidships like so many twigs. Both sides are fully committed now, and the battle rages on. Hello gentle listeners. I did not get to sleep very much last night, so this is going to be an interesting recording session. But out of my sleep deprived fog, the main thing I remember about this episode is how much of a focus there was on Junko and how she remarkably didn't die. Despite all that attention, Junko turns out to be the only shrike with enough plot armor to survive this level of characterization. Although the episode ends on such a cliffhanger that I guess she could die next week.
Marbet's reaction to, and more significantly, her characterization of Oliver and Junko's relationship really stands out here. It seems to hinge on the fact that she feels Oliver does not treat Junko the way a commander should treat a pilot. He lets her have this attitude about the other pilots. He lets her behave this way, that way.
If he were here to defend himself, Oliver might say that his role as commander is really about empowering the pilots of the Shrike team to be there most authentic selves, that that is the best way to manage them. He has that line about like, if I don't let her act like this, then Junko wouldn't be junko. Yet it's also clear that he is worried about her.
Marbet seems to feel that Oliver gives Junko a special treatment, and that this makes her envious. She even attempts to take a couple digs at him, which he doesn't seem to react to at all. But she implies that he's bad at his job, basically, that he is not being a good commander for the shrikes.
And at least on the battlefield, he isn't much of a commander. He allows Junko to take the lead when it comes to fighting. He's one of her wingmen. He flies in the number four position in her squadron or something.
I think he said three, but, yeah.
The point is that while he is the nominal commander, it doesn't seem like he actually does much commanding. You know, he's maybe more like a quartermaster or secretary for the unit.
Marbet makes the rather unkind observation that if Junko has such a death wish, maybe Oliver should just let her get on with it. What she fails to recognize is that part of Oliver's concern is he's aware Marbet feels some competitiveness with Junko. And the junko's recklessness and Marbet's competitiveness could feed off of each other in a way that would also put Marbet in a lot of danger. He's worried about Marbit also.
And there is perhaps some implication that Junko's recklessness also comes from a place of competitiveness with Marbat, or at least of a desire. Well, at least of a desire to show off for and impress Oliver. Like, Uso has that moment during the battle when he asks her, Junko, do you like Mister Oliver? And I guess this is the first time that there's really been any suggestion that, yeah, maybe Junko is into Oliver, because she doesn't say no. She doesn't outright slap down the question. She just says, hey, that's none of your business, kid. That's for adults. And she says it in, like, kind of a sad way. I think the suggestion there is that, yeah, junko kind of does want Oliver senpai to notice her.
Marbit's jealousy almost feels like sibling rivalry to me. A little bit, like, in the way that if you've got two kids and one of those kids just, like, needs more from their parents, the kid who doesn't need as much help might still feel envious of all of that time and attention. Oh, Junko gets all this extra attention from Oliver because she has a death wish or whatever. Ugh. Like, what about me?
Oliver feels like he has to constantly be at Junko's elbow to, like, pull her out of any kind of scrape that she gets into.
Right. Keep an eye on her constantly.
Oh, Marbet's fine. She can handle herself. She doesn't need to be watched over in the same way.
Mhm.
But it's the similarity between the two of them, and I think each of them recognizes that in the other one.
I don't know, I think that glosses over a lot of what happened in the earlier episodes to contrast the two of them and the way the shrikes were so catty to Marbit, that they're such girly girls, fully made up all the time. And Marbit is such a tomboy.
In this episode, Junko obsesses over the difference between her and her shrikes and the regular pilots. Those newbies, those amateurs, they have no business on the battlefield with us. They have no business pretending to be regular soldiers, etcetera, etcetera. And that was one of the ways that she distinguished herself from Marbet. In those early episodes, Marbet was less experienced. The shrikes were veteran soldiers, and Marbet was a test pilot. At this point, Marbet is up there with all of them. Marbet is at least on the same scale of skill, even if she's not as good as Junko. So the differentiation between them, the. The gap has shrunk. And I think that troubles Junko. I think maybe that's part of what drives her to excel in the way that she does, or at least to try to excel to perform for everyone.
She hasn't made it explicit. She never says anything about it. But Uso's flashbacks to the deaths of other shrikes and the way in which those deaths often feel connected to one another suggests that another thing driving Junko is her grief. The deaths of these fellow pilots, who she was very close to, and our Uso being held to a bosom count is up to three. This episode felt like an episode about Uso in flux. Uso at this very transitional point of his life that's come up over and over again previously. But it feels like such a little kid thing to do, to go to mom in the middle of the night, not with a nightmare, but, like, I am desperately afraid you're going to die. Don't die, okay? Like waking her up the night before a battle. Don't die. All right?
And then she didn't. Uso should have started this earlier. Why does he give his protection only to Junko? There are other shrikes.
They were in the aura of it. They also woke up, and they saw it, and they were like, aw, that's cute. Uso also falls into the pattern of wanting to talk about romance when fighting.
Is imminent, the imminence of the battle makes you feel more alive. All of your feelings are heightened, including the romantic ones.
For all of her disdain of less experienced pilots, Junko and the other shrikes, but mostly junko are really trying to help USo adapt as quickly as possible to space combat. And a lot of how she describes how he ought to behave sounds like she's describing new typism, or at least ways in which we have heard new typism described before.
The expanding of the consciousness in space so that you can watch all angles at the same time, so that you can feel through the mobile suit this.
Incredible sharpness of senses, and a sense that you can expand your awareness outside of your body, outside of your mobile suit, out into the universe, that your senses can reach farther than you realize. Because obviously it sounds either like an exaggeration or very woo woo to be like, feel through your machine's armor, sense what is outside. But previous portrayals of new types make clear that that is really what a lot of new types can do. And then to so soon after that, have Uso's main camera get hit and have him literally fighting blind, right? This comparison between not having a new type ability and fighting in space is akin to fighting without a sense of sight.
It's one of the great paradoxes of Gundam, isn't it? That going all the way back to Omaro in first Gundam, the senses or the extrasensory perception is developed through combat, through the intensity of the battle, through that full commitment to perceiving everything at once. Because the alternative is that you or somebody you care about is going to die. Yet we are supposed to believe, at least according to the ideology of zeonism, Daikunism, new typism, that it is from that enhanced perception that humanity can ascend into the next stage of our existence. A stage in which we can move beyond conflict through perfect understanding of one another. But the metatext of the series says again and again that the only way to reach that stage is through conflict, through brutal, constant battle, and that the people who come out the other end of it are so broken by the experience of getting there that actually understanding each other becomes impossible. Or even if you can understand each other, so much damage has been done that even perfect understanding cannot actually lead to peace. It just leads to hating the other person more accurately and completely.
Yeah, I've always thought that. I think it was double zeta was the biggest refutation of that idea, that if we perfectly understood each other, we wouldn't have conflict because there are new type moments between Haman and judo. They understand each other very well, but understanding doesn't negate core conflicts in values or goals. Those conflicts still exist even if you understand each other and understand where someone else's goals or opinions come from. I loved the scene where Suzy is wondering, oh, do you think USo is coming? And Shakti expresses a great deal of certainty about this. Katagina immediately comes up with a logical explanation, like, oh, because of course he would be taking part in the combat, right? And is like, no, I can see the Gundam, but not Uso.
I have that line written in my notes and, like, circled three times with, this is important written on the side pointing towards it.
Oh, I'm certain it's important. I just have two theories for what it could mean, and I'm not sure which is correct. The first is that Uso is effectively one with the Gundam in this moment. And so she has previously talked about the Gundam as though it's a spirit that could possess Uso, and if it possesses him when he's fighting, then maybe she can't sense him as himself anymore.
Mm hmm. Strong contender.
The other thought is that connected to that idea that he maybe needs to become a new type but isn't yet. Because he cannot project his self outward in that way. Because he cannot expand his consciousness and self beyond the Gundam. She can't sense him.
Hmm, I see, I see. Have you considered a third possibility, which is that the victory contains a biosensor, or perhaps a biocomputer, which makes it psychically resonant in a way that normal machines are not. And so the power of its psycho waves overwhelms Uso's relatively weak newtype abilities. And so that's the only thing that Shakti can sense. Like, if you threw a pebble and a boulder into a pond at the same time, you probably wouldn't notice the ripples from the pebble.
Is this some sort of supplementary knowledge from somewhere? You know I hate that.
No, I'm just calling back to the biosensor from Zeta, the incredibly important technology built into the Zeta Gundam that is never actually mentioned in the series.
Speaking of the Victory Gundam, can we address the irony of Chronicle being like, they're not gundams? Don't call them gundams because he thinks it's bad for morale. But then he's like, they're victory types.
Yeah, that's pretty good. The league military's naming department was on point for this one. Also, it's funny that the number of gundams on the field keeps getting magnified. Like, there's five victories, there's ten victory types coming at us.
One last thought about USO before we move on. He's at a point where he knows how much he doesn't know. He recognizes that he has a lot of growing to do. In a previous episode, we saw him really struggle with the catapult leaving the ship. In the Victory Gundam in this episode, he does a bit better, but it's not easy. It's still a bit tricky for him. He's still getting used to it. It's this sense of gradual improvement.
This is a recurring motif Tomino loves when people struggle with the catapult. It's just a great shorthand for this person is still getting used to operating.
From a ship the moment early in the fight. Maybe it's in the first of the two fights, I don't remember exactly, but where he sees an enemy pilot ejected from the wreckage of a mobile suit that he has just destroyed, and he kind of narrates as though he's talking to the pilot, but he's really just talking to himself. What that guy did wrong in the fight.
Uso's after action report.
Well, on some level, I think he's trying to comfort his own conflicted feelings about fighting and killing other people. But I think this is also an effort on his part to learn as much as he can from every fight he's in. That. Okay, what did that guy do wrong here? I'm gonna say it out loud to myself, so I know I have internalized, like, this is what went wrong for that pilot in this fight, not only for his own survival, but also to live up to what Junko expects from him, to live up to the commitments he's made to himself vis a vis protecting other people, rescuing Shakti.
Well, he's a very smart kid, and he approaches the battle from an almost intellectual angle. It's very different from a Camille or a judo, who were extremely, you know, emotional in their fighting. Judo in a similar situation would be screaming something like, come on, man, why are you making me kill you? Just go home. We don't have to do this. Whereas with USO, it's like your beam emissions were 27% too weak to stand up against my firepower.
But not quite that dead inside.
Not yet.
Maybe it really is the humility of it, the recognition that, oh, I have a lot I need to learn if I want to be able to accomplish my goals, if I want to be the kind of person I want to be that sells me on the story being at least partially about him transitioning to adulthood. It's very easy to be cocky when you're young, for you to feel super confident. Not that adults don't feel that, too. Uso is, in many ways, much more mature than a significant number of adults. But the coexistence of his more childish moments with his desire to learn and grow and fulfill all of these commitments.
Well, the episode is bookended by two different groups of people talking about what USo isn't. You already mentioned the scene towards the end when Shakti, Suzy, and Katsujina are talking about the incoming attack and Uso being part of it and Shakti not being able to sense him. At the beginning of the episode, there is a scene where Odello and Alicia are talking about USO, and it's a weird scene. I'll come back to this. It's like the writing feels very awkward here.
I also thought they looked kind of off model and strange, both of them.
There's maybe a lot wrong with this scene. Actually, a couple of the scenes at the beginning feel very off, but that's besides the point for now. There'll be plenty of time to kick these scenes around later. But Odello says, you know, I think it has something to do with microwaves. Do you know what's up with that? Alicia says, no, I have no idea. Odello says, I think Uso knows in a weird tone. Alicia says, well, how would I know? I'm a civilian. And Odello says, well, Uso's not a soldier. But he doesn't say what Uso is. He just says, uso's not a soldier. He's some secret third thing.
Right? He's not a child, but not an adult, not a soldier, but not a civilian.
He is a gundam. Let's actually dig into that scene. Now. The beginning of this episode has USO joining a kind of ersatz strategy meeting on the bridge of the lean horse with Jin Jahannam and Gomez and a couple of representatives from the old man polycule. And they're all just sort of, like, discussing their different plans. It's very informal. It's very flat. There is the fiction that Jin Jahannam still has to make the final call on all of it, but, like, it's pretty clear that he's not actually making the decisions. And Uso suggests that they should use one of the two ships as a shield. And then there's this discussion of using the microwave to induce stomach and headaches.
I definitely spent long moments thinking that was a joke. We're gonna give them stomach upsets and headaches with our microwaves.
Look, this is one of Tomino's obsessions. One might even call it the singular preoccupation of his creative life. What if you were in space and you had to poop real bad? It keeps coming up. I'm not kidding. It is a recurring theme for him. And, like, I have some theories for why he's so into this. Like, the man is very much about continually reminding us that we have bodies. Even in the midst of the most exciting, epic Sci-Fi adventures, we still, like, have human bodies that have various biological needs, and they need to be met whether we're on earth or in space.
Well, yeah, no matter how exciting the setting, we still need to eat, we still need to sleep.
And I don't think he's particularly interested in what you might call big picture logistics, like, where does the food come from? How does the government work? Who votes on what? What committees do this or that or.
The other thing, really, the most essential aspects of being a living human.
Right. He loves that, that small scale infrastructure. How do you go to the bathroom if you're piloting a mobile suit?
I suspect diapers are involved.
Well, Chronicle has that line. He's like, bring some extra toilet packs, whatever that means. I'm gonna guess space diapers.
But how would you.
Future diapers.
But how would you change them while you're piloting? What would be the good of bringing extras?
Maybe there's, like, a suction system. Hey, I don't know, but maybe we'll. Maybe we'll get to see it at some point. That seems like a Tomino thing to do. After this scene, Usho gets dragged out into the hall by Odello and Warren, who have witnessed the whole thing and are like, why did you say all that stuff, man? And USO tells them it was because if everybody is distracted by this attack, then they will have the opportunity to slip out again and continue their search for Shakti, a plot thread that is dropped immediately after this scene and never picked up again.
And how exactly are Odello and Warren going to look for Shakti and Susie in the middle of all of this?
Right? Then they go to this other scene, where Uso and Odello and Warren go and talk to the other kids. Tomash is summoned to the bridge to discuss the microwave plan. Now suddenly, Odello doesn't know about the microwaves. This is the first he's hearing about it. He has this weird interaction with Alicia. It feels like these two scenes were both written into the script, but with like a use one or the other, not both note on the side. And that got covered up, maybe by a coffee stain. And so they just ended up making both of them, even though they're kind of in conflict with each other. The interaction with Odello and Alicia is weird because he like, it kind of seems like he's negging her. Like asking her if she knows about the microwaves. And then when she says no, he's like, well, Uso does. You dumb girl. It's okay, though. You're pretty. Lol.
I didn't get that at all. I got more of a maybe she's a little irritated. She's like, how would I know? Why are you asking me about this? I don't know any more about it than you do. And then it occurs to him, I bet Uso knows USo involves himself in all this decision making. USO gets taken into the confidence of the adults more than any of the rest of us do. Extremely silly, but felt true to character when Odello is like Alicia, join the league militaire and stay with me. Interesting that Elisha is going back to their home colony, but Martina is not. Martina is going to stick around and fight with the league militaire.
Well, she's a feisty lady. Warren looks so satisfied when he says that it's nice that he appreciates a.
Feisty lady and made very clear that the sisters are both aware of their admirers and pretty chagrined by the whole situation. They're not enjoying this attention.
I mean, the boys are not exactly the smoothest operators. If the writing was a little off in this episode, the visuals were for the most part on point, and in fact, they have been for a couple of episodes. Now it feels like they have stepped up a little bit. For one thing, the shadows are everywhere now. We started this series with shadows only being applied to certain special scenes if they were deemed especially important. But I think that rule has fallen by the wayside or whoever is in charge of directing these last couple of episodes has just decided to flout it. There are some really good bits of animation. There are some really striking visuals. Obviously still some corners are being cut. They're still doing that, like cut to a reused explosion trick.
Other than the scene with Odello and Alicia talking that I thought felt a little odd and off model. He's in profile for a lot of it, but like complete perfect profile, which is an odd look but easy to draw. But other than that, it was a really great looking episode. What was that harpoon looking weapon that they used at one point. That was cool.
That was cool. That was fired by one of the javelins. So I'm gonna assume it's some form of javelin.
The scene of the pilot sort of like in a tuck position floating away after USO has destroyed the mobile suit. The other pilot with the cracked helmet sort of bumping up against USO's mobile suit towards the end. That really felt evocative of a boat moving through water that has corpses in it. And the corpse is bumping up against the hull of the boat.
Uh huh. Yeah, they do a lot with the bestial look of the Zoloat's head, those glowing red cat like eyes, and the.
Zoloah's net, or whatever it's called, that, like, electric wire weapon. It's just neat visually. I did wonder if that was what Marbit was getting at. When she tells USO she thinks the Zolo odd is useful under the circumstances because anti ship combat can be a bit of a free for all. She doesn't explain exactly what she means by that, but perhaps the net is what she means. Being able to buy yourself some space or to catch multiple enemies in a way that the victory can't.
Yeah, I think that's likely. Something about the Zoloat maybe just that it catches the enemy off guard. It's one more thing they're not expecting. And it frequently does devolve into a chaotic free for all. But Oliver and the other shrikes understand something that USO still needs to learn, and maybe Marbet and Junko too, which is that it is not a first person shooter. It is not a deathmatch. There is, in fact, basically no advantage to being the one who gets the kill shot. Fighting in space is a team game. And you see this with UsO really like beating himself up for not being the one to get the kill. He's like, ah, Junko got that one. And then next scene, they cut over to Oliver and Peggy collaborating and just being like, yeah, high five. We killed that guy together.
Great shot. Good job. I couldn't have done it if you hadn't set it up for me.
Yeah, that's the volleyball attitude. That's team play. And the Zoluat, because of those wires, is really well suited to team combat. If Marbet could learn the lesson that she needs to work together with the shrikes, work together with Oliver and Uso, and stop trying to prove herself to them, she could be really useful. I love to see a battle with some structure. So often in these shows, we just have two ships that randomly encounter each other in space, and then they scramble mobile suits and pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Some people explode. Emotions happen here. There's a plan. There's an overall structure to what's going on. There are stages to it. Feels good. Feels good to know what the stakes are, to know what the goals are, to actually have, like, an objective that the heroes are trying to achieve.
Yeah. From the beginning, the general agreement seems to be that they can't win this fight, but what they can do is prevent Bespa from being able to use the Kailas Gilly as a mega weapon against the earth, and that if they can do that, then it's worth even the loss of a ship, which is a pretty big deal since they only.
Have two of them.
They are pretty under resourced. So choosing to sacrifice a ship in this way is a big deal. The whole discussion of the plan and development of it made me realize part of what makes Jinjanahan feel kind of contemptible is how ego driven he is on some level. This sense that he doesn't like any plan he didn't come up with or that he can't take credit for, but also that he's very easily distractible. He has no focus, really. It's very easy to pull his attention from one thing to another thing if the new thing sort of, like, gratifies his sense of importance. When USO makes the what if we sacrifice one of the ships and use it as a shield suggestion, and then Romero comes in with, like, let's throw around some other ideas. Jinjian Han was like, yeah, we need some other ideas, because he doesn't want to use the kid's idea, but they wind up using it, right. Romero suggests, oh, we could recalibrate the microwaves, and then it wouldn't be a physical weapon, but it would make the enemy super uncomfortable, and this would interfere with their combat effectiveness. They still end up doing the thing Jinjanaham objected to, but because it's rolled into this other plan, that didn't come from a kid.
Well, it's the same leading from the bottom kind of organizational strategy you talked about all the way back in. First condom. The plan has coalesced, and the guy at the top just goes along with it, which is kind of what you want from a figurehead type of leader. He's easily led.
But other times that this happened, it felt as though the leader was still contributing something to the plan or its execution had thoughtful and well considered modifications or questions about the proposed plan.
Gosh, I wonder if Tomino's increasing frustration with the leadership at sunrise and the various sponsoring companies and tv networks might have affected his view of leaders in general.
The visual metaphor of the cable bonking into Jin Janaham, who is sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge thank you so much.
I love a big chunky cable. If your Sci-Fi setting does not have big chunky cables, I do not want to hear about it.
But if that doesnt say the person sitting in this chair is entirely unimportant, I dont know what does.
I assume Otis did that on purpose. I assume he was getting a little satisfaction off of bonking the boss on the head.
The haplessness of him. How extraneous, and frankly, in the way he is so much of the time.
Ive seen in the japanese fandom hes described as being like a wooden tanuki, just a figurehead for luck that doesn't do anything, put it out front of your restaurant or whatever.
It also becomes very clear that Katagina had no idea Shakti, Suzie, Carmen, and Flanders were aboard. So some spy no, she doesn't want.
To do that anymore. Now that the league military has become an army, she's not interested in helping them.
And I said it on the next time ons last week. But seriously, Shakti is in a new outfit now. Why do all of the baddies ships seem to have a store of like fancy girls clothes?
Only Shakti is in a new outfit, not Susie and not Katagina. Why do the bad guy ships carry clothing specifically for like 13 year old girls?
1213 year old girls, especially if theyre a princess. Or you want to make them look like a princess.
Especially when the guy in charge of the fleet is also buying Shah Rasnobal's old armchair. Come on, man. Tasila Wago, what is your deal?
He's obsessed with Shar, the girl's close thing, though. I don't know. And now toms research into the name of the Bespa battleship Amalthea.
When Tasilo wago ordered chronicle to probe the gathering league military squadron around Highland, he sent an Amaru tea, or amalthea class capital ship, accompanied by two Sinope patrol ships. I think I might have called it a space cruiser before, but in fact it is classified as a battleship, and at 462 meters it is one of the largest and most advanced ships in the Zanskar arsenal. Like the Sinope, its symmetrical on both the horizontal and vertical axes, with cannons, catapults, and command posts duplicated for every orientation in an elegant reflection of the notion that there is no down in space. The name Amalthea comes from greek and roman myth, and like the Sinope, it is also the name of one of Jupiters moons. We begin, perhaps to observe a pattern. As of this writing, Jupiter has 95 confirmed moons, but the vast majority of those were discovered after the introduction of new digital imaging techniques in the year 2000. At the time victory was made, we only knew about 16 of the jovian moons. Four, IO, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, were discovered by Galileo in 1610. Amalthea was the next to be discovered nearly 300 years later by Ee Barnard in 1892. More famous, perhaps for Barnard's star, nine moons, including Sinope, were discovered between 1904 and 1975 by various astronomers, and the remaining three, Metis, Adristea and Thebe, were discovered with the aid of the Voyager probes in 1979. The names for these satellites are official in the sense that they have been recognized by the working group for planetary system nomenclature within the International Astronomical Union. But until the 1970s, it was standard practice to refer to the jovian moons simply by a number, Jupiter one, Jupiter two, and so on. The names of the four earliest satellites, IO, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, were proposed shortly after their discovery, although not by Galileo himself. Galileo named them after his patron, Cosimo Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Grand Duke's three brothers. The names we use now were instead proposed by the german astronomer Simon Marius, based on a theme suggested by Johannes Kepler. The 20th century moons, including Sinope, were named en masse in 1975. There were other names in use, for some of them popular but unofficial. But these were dismissed, and a unified naming scheme based on Kepler's theme was adopted. All of Jupiter's moons would be named after the numerous mythological companions, lovers, conquests, and victims of the God Jupiter. With the profusion of new moons discovered in the past three decades, the committee was obliged to modify the rule somewhat. Newly discovered satellites would also be named after Jupiter's descendants. They also did a cool little thing where, depending on whether the name of the moon ends with an e or an a, tells you which direction its orbit goes. But that's not relevant here. As Nina noted in her research on the name Sinope, the mythological Sinope has several different origin stories, but the one that sees her entangled with Jupiter goes a little like this. Sinipe was a naiad, a water nymph and daughter of a river God. Her beauty was such that she caught the attention of three gods, Jupiter, Apollo, and the more obscure river God Halys. Consumed by his passion for the girl, Jupiter snatched her from her fathers home and brought her to the site of the future city that would eventually bear her name. When Sinope rejected his advances, the king of the gods promised to give her anything, whatever she most desired. Okay, said Sinope. Great. Fantastic. So what do you want? Anything. Anything at all. Name it and it's yours. Cool. Then I want you to leave me alone. And listeners, it worked. In fact, it worked so well that she repeated the trick twice more to get rid of Apollo and Halys. According to Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica, Sinope kept herself celibate from men and gods for the rest of her life. Although on the other hand, as Nina reported, there are other versions of the myth that assign her divine lovers and famous children. Perhaps considering what weve only just learned about the famously unmarried Queen Maria and her secret daughter, the choice of the name Sinope was made with more intent than simply throwing darts at a cork board with the names of the jovian moons written on it. Amalthea is part of another key element of the jovian mythos. But like Sinope, and unlike most of the other moons namesakes, she was not Jupiter's lover. She was his wetnurse. You probably know the story of Jupiter's birth, how his father, the titan Saturn Kronos in the Greek, had been warned that one of his children would overthrow him. And so he tried to forestall the prophecy by devouring each of his offspring immediately after their birth. Jupiter was the youngest after Pluto, Neptune, Juno, Ceres and Vesta. After losing five of her children in this barbarous fashion, Saturn's consort, his sister Opus, resolved to save little Jupiter by giving Saturn a swaddled rock in place of the newborn God. She entrusted the child's security to the curates spirits of the wild mountains in Crete. There, frenzied war dances, the clashing of sturdy spears on bronze bucklers would drown out the baby's cries for his more tender needs. She appointed Amalthea to be the baby's nurse. Amalthea's exact nature is disputed. In some versions of the myth, she is a nymph who fed the divine infant on the milk of a nanny goat mixed with honey, because the curates, besides being wild warrior spirits, were also the inventors of beekeeping. In other versions of the story, though, amalthea is the nanny goat and is usually accompanied by other nymphs, like adristia or adamantia. As the story goes, at one point the goat, whatever her name might have been, broke off one of her horns while running through the cretan wilderness. Or it was broken by a young Jupiter while he played with his nursemaid because he didn't know his own strength. Either way, in either event, the severed horn was retrieved and it was filled with herbs and fruits and other fresh delights. Jupiter then endowed it with great magic such that it would always provide in abundance whatever its owner desired. And thus it became what we know today as the cornucopia, a symbol of plenty. When the goat died, Jupiter took her hide and transformed it into the aegis, his nigh unvulnerable shroud or shield, which ended up being one of the principal icons of his daughter Minerva. To honor his nanny, Jupiter placed her in the sky in the form of the goat shaped constellation Capra. And now this mythic icon of nurturing and abundance gets to be a battleship. How nice for her. I think there may be something to the idea that Amalthea is a surrogate mother to Jupiter, just as Maria Armonia is a kind of surrogate mother to the Zanskar empire. But goats dont produce milk unless theyve had kids. So amalthea, like Maria, must also have been the regular kind of mother. Its just that her real children have been left in obscurity in favor of her more famous fosterling, you know metaphor.
Next time on episode 10.21 a warm light in a cold place we research and discuss episode 21 of Victory Gundam and cruel to be kind. His life, his love and his lady is the league militaire new gimmicks this is our load bearing child soldier. What makes this beam different from all the other beams? Dark Souls voice, new types mentioned tuning fork of death. I thought the mask was for earths dusty air.
You know ive been meaning to bring that up for weeks now.
The bittersweet lemonade of victory and what is the sound of one life ending? 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. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the lenape people, and more in the show notes on our website gundampodcast.com. if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email hostessundompodcast.com or look for links to our social media accounts on our website. And if you would like to support the show, please share us with your friends. Leave a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts or support us financially@gundampodcast.com. patreon. You can find links and more ways to help out@gundampodcast.com. support thank you for listening. Did you serve in the Bespa military forces? Have you experienced any of the following headaches, nausea, stomach pains, vomiting, changes in bowel habit? If so, you may be suffering from what many Zanskar physicians are calling Highland syndrome and could be entitled to compensation. To speak to a lawyer and find out if you qualify, contact us at Bloom, czimatter and Computesworth plc. Don't wait. Get what you deserve today. This message brought to you by future space lawyer and MSP listener, Fancy Wookiee. Thanks, fancy Wookie. Hello. Hello, you kitten.
Come here. She meowed for my attention, but now she's just exploring around, sniffing my feet. Your whiskers tickle.
All right, I think that's good enough.
Okay, there's somewhere in there we can end.
It's a trivia ending somewhat to find a good endpoint, but I think we got it.
All right.
It'll just cliffhang, just like the episode did.
Does they do call it the eve of the decisive battle? I did wonder if this was the first time we've seen the bed seatbelts.
Those were cool.
Which, if you don't have simulated gravity on a ship, then you would just float around. If you want to see stay in a particular spot to sleep, you would need to be strapped in in some way. Both USo seems to have his own bedroom, and there he is, held slightly over a bed by a seatbelt kind of thing. And all the shrikes are in what look like chairs, reclining almost flat and also held in place by seatbelts.