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 10.22, the Tiger and the turtle and were your hosts? Im Tom. Neither tiger nor turtle, but a secret third thing.
And Im Nina, new to victory Gundam. And if Godwalt is the tiger and Uso is the turtle, who is the dragon?
Who is the bird?
Toms nodding, he knows what Im talking about. Mobile suit breakdown is made possible by our paying subscribers on Patreon. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons, atomasphere and Sam, you keep MSB. Genki for those of you who missed the update, we posted Tigris. The 18 year old cat we are fostering was very sick last week and we weren't able to finish the episode. She's doing a lot better now, but has advanced kidney disease, not a curable condition in cats, so the goal is to keep her as healthy and comfortable as possible as she approaches the end of her life. Thank you so much to everyone who sent kind, encouraging messages. It was a real comfort during a very sad and stressful time. In happier news, the kickstarter for our new audio drama, the disappearances of Lydia Fontaine not only funded, but reached its second stretch goal. That means the full season will be ten episodes long, the pilot, plus nine new episodes that will be written, recorded and produced over the coming year. We probably won't talk about it much on MSB, so if you would like to be kept apprised, you can sign up for the mailing list and find links to the social media pages on the show's website, www.lydiadisappears.com. that's l y dash.com.
This week, Victory Episode 22 Uchu no Tora or the Tiger of Space the episode was written by Sonoda Hideki, storyboarded by Kase Mitsuko, and directed by Egami Kiyoshi, with Shinbo Takuro as animation director. Now the recap.
After the battle, Uso, Marbetz, Oliver and Junko scour the wreckage, but Uso is distracted, preoccupied with wondering where Shakti is and how he will get to her. When shots from a wreck give away the position of a Zanskar survivor, a gaping tear in the hull reveals the human behind the attack, and Uso cannot bring himself to fire.
When one of the others shoots, Uso.
Cries out at the pointlessness of such a death. Why didnt the soldier just surrender? In a particularly dense area of debris, a flash of green draws Uso's eye, it's Haro. Having left his mobile suit to retrieve the little robot, Uso spots something else, a seemingly undamaged mobile suit, an abigor that looks just like the mobile suit of the Zanskar pilot he helped when he first came to space. It is that self same pilot, Lieutenant Godwald, and Uso's attempts to hide are too late. Godwald snags him with a magnetic wire, reels him in, and holds him at gunpoint. Upon realizing that his enemy is the boy who gave him oxygen when he was stranded, he allows Uso to return to the victory gundam before attacking. To Godwald, Uso's past kindness remains a weakness. They dart through the debris field, in and out of COVID Junko arrives, pursued by two more Zanskar mobile suits, before Oliver joins them and evens the odds. When Uso is caught in a beam wire trap, Junko stabs the mobile suit holding it, rendering that suit inoperable. Godwald rescues his stranded wingman, and with the other Zolua providing cover fire, they retreat. The league militaire pilots do not pursue. Instead, they rendezvous with their comrades at the La Vien rose four. Warren and Odello break into happy tears when Haro shows them the video he got of Shaakhti, Karlman, and Flanders, and the good news keeps on coming. The Aeneas, the ship carrying most of the staff and families from the highland solar battery, escaped safely and is on its way to one of the non Zanskar side two colonies. While Junko and Marbet argue about their respective treatment of Uso, the youngsters come up with a plan to reunite Tomasz, Karl, and Martina with their families and to continue on to the Zanskar homeland in search of Shakti and Suzy. Having anticipated this, Marbet is waiting in the cockpit of the victory when USO opens it. Juncko floats up behind him and both demand to know what exactly he intends to do. At first he claims its a reconnaissance mission, but confronted with how dangerous and foolhardy it would be for him to attempt that alone, Ouzo finally admits that as long as Shakti is out there, he has to look for her. The two older pilots ultimately let him go. It doesnt take long for Uso and his friends in the fishbone to spot a friendly signal in the distance. Linnaeus but a jolt of awareness stops Uso short, and a streak of beam rifle fire passes right in front of them. Godwald and his wingmen have returned, unable to let Uso go after their previous confrontation. The fishbone hides, finding himself caught once more in a wire snare. This time without any backup, Uso disconnects the victorys. Boots part to free himself. Now in fighter form, Uso flies through the husk of an abandoned colony, dodging the ruins of old buildings and evading Godwalt's attacks. One of Godwald's wingmen tries to block Uso's path, only for Uso to dodge to one side, leaving the wingman in the path of Godwald's next attack. UsO instructs the victory to recombine. The boots hit Godwald Zabagor as they.
Fly in and dock, distracting him for.
Long enough for Uso to take the advantage. Still, Uso hesitates to shoot at Godwald. Infuriated by Uso's hesitancy, Godwald presses the attack once more. Uso's friends jettisoned a gas canister for him, and finally he shoots it. The ensuing explosion destroys the Abigor. Even though Godwald's escape pod ejects in time, he promptly leaves it, coming after Uso with only his sidearm. The wire Uso uses to fend off his attacker knocks the man back into the ongoing explosion, and Uso is left to wonder at the futility of all this death, even as his friends thank him for reuniting them with their families.
They say that when you're tired of watching a stoic 35 year old Mandev teach a teen boy what it means to possess the soul of a warrior, youre tired of Gundam.
This episode is actually chock a block full of people trying to teach UsO what it means to be a person, an adult, a soldier, a pilot.
But thats been the case throughout victory, probably more so than any other Gundam show I can think of. And part of what makes this one feel so unimpressive, so intangible, is that Godwald is just one more in a long line of very similar BEsPa officers who have confronted USO, exchanged a couple of words with him, and then, you know, died stoically, shuffling off the mortal coil and off the stage to make room for the next one.
Godwalds greatest value in this episode? Well, I suppose there's two things. One, the ways in which he is similar to USo already, or similar to people in Uso's orbit. We go straight from USO lamenting that that one survivor didn't have to die, he could have surrendered, and that if he had surrendered, even Junko wouldn't have killed him. Even bloodthirsty Junko straight to Godwald lamenting, that guy didn't need to die. If he had just hung tight for a little longer, we could have rescued him.
They're even on what seems to be the same mission. I'm not sure if the league militaire group is out there sweeping for enemy survivors or looking for their own, but I think both teams are out there, you know, searching the wreckage for any survivors.
Although Godwald ultimately does not want to let USo go, he does retreat when things look bad for him and his men. He doesn't hold out against impossible odds for no purpose. And the final bit that felt important to me, and we'll see where the story goes with it, because I actually don't think the story has taken a side on this particular question just yet. But shortly before Godwal dies, he says to Uso, if you choose this path, you accept this fate. Or something along those lines.
Cue memories of Ramba ral saying, I'll show you how a soldier dies, and jumping out of the window.
But also in direct contradiction to Uso's comment. At the very beginning, when Codwald captures him and Uso says, stuff just happened to me, some stuff happened, and now here I am, and people keep trying to kill me, so I try to kill them back, like, as if he's being carried along on the current of events with no volition of his own, with no ability to make his own decisions. Something which I felt like Godwald's comment refutes. Basically, this is no. You're not just being carried along by events. You are making choices. And the choice you made to be in this cockpit means that it is kill or be killed means that your life is in danger, and that often you are going to have to kill other people in order to save yourself.
This follows USo himself struggling with the choice that is before him. He's in this little formation doing their sweep, but he's sitting in the cockpit. He's distracted. He's thinking about the shakti problem. He's like, man, why do I have to be here?
Why do I have to do this?
He is resisting the implications, the necessary duties that follow, on accepting his role as a soldier. When he then leaves in company with the highland kids and Odello and Warren to go meet up with the Aeneas, and presumably then to infiltrate side two and try to get Shakti, Susie, Flanders, and Karlman back, he is making that choice. He is choosing to abandon his duties as a soldier in order to be one of the kids, to be their friend, to be their. Their ally, to operate independently of the league. Militaire notwithstanding that he still has the Gundam. But I thought Godwald's whole ideology is too strong a word. His whole personal philosophy felt kind of incoherent. The strongest thing he says to Uso, he says, I'm gonna tell you, and I'm gonna teach you the ironclad rule of being a soldier in space. Cause that's what we are, you and me. We're soldiers in space. And you gotta learn this sooner or later, kid. The ironclad rule never, ever miss an opportunity to survive.
But then he goes after Uso a second time.
He doesn't run when he could have run. Uso doesn't want to fight him. But also, we previously met Godwalt. He's an established character, thinly established. He was in two episodes, and one of them was a brief cameo when he shows up on the bridge of the squid and Tusculo tells him not to do anything. But when we met him previously, he very much refused the oxygen tanks Uso was offering him. He saw an opportunity to survive, and because of his pride, he told it to heck off.
I am starting to wonder if his ironclad rule wasn't, in fact, just like a ruse. Because he does immediately go after Uso. He lets Uso get back to his mobile suit and then immediately takes off after him in the Abigor. Like, haha, should have killed me when you had the chance, kid.
But he passes up the opportunity to shoot Uso with that handgun at close range. Like, if he just wanted to kill Uso, he could have done it right then, right?
But I don't think he wants to kill Uso. I think he wants to teach Uso that Uso needs to be more cutthroat, that Uso needs to stop hesitating to kill the enemy.
But why?
I don't know.
Maybe if he had been given more time, if he had survived this episode and we had gotten to see him develop a little bit more into a more fully fleshed out character. Ironic to say, fully fleshed out character, because he is. He is a thick, beefy dude, and they give us a little bit of beefcake of him taking his shirt off at one point. But if he had been allowed to stick around and develop some more, then maybe we would have been able to resolve the contradictions, or at least understand them a little better, understand them as the kinds of contradictions that people have all the time.
Illustrated pretty clearly by Uso, who ends the episode thinking to himself, it doesn't need to be this way. We don't have to just be killing each other all the time. And that's what I meant when I said I'm not sure the episode has taken a stand on this. I'm not sure the episode is willing or wants yet to say whether Junko and Godwald are right or Uso is right. And we have Uso yelling at Godwald. I'll show you I can do it. I'll show you I can kill an enemy who I know and destroying the Abigor. But then he is relieved when he sees the escape pod. And while he is certainly going to fend off Godwald and Godwald's handgun. And why the heck can Godwald open the cockpit from outside? Why is that a thing?
I can imagine a bunch of reasons why you would want it to be possible to open the cockpit of a mobile suit from the outside, even if there's a person in it.
But I would also assume that there would be like an engineer key or a key code or some kind of lock or passcode or something so that you don't have enemies just hopping into your mobile suits.
I mean, for all that, it happens pretty frequently in gundam. I think the situations in which an enemy might actually be able to get that close to the cockpit of a mobile suit. At that point, there have been so many operational failures, or it's just so unlikely that I can understand why they wouldn't put the lock in there. Because if you think about it, if for some reason you need to get into the mobile suit, well, yeah.
Anything that makes it more secure makes it harder to access. On the scales of being able to access the cockpit quickly versus making the cockpit more secure, the decision may have been made of, we want to be able to get to an injured pilot as quickly as possible. Heck, the risk of boarding action and.
If you know you're scrambling mobile suits to defend the ship, you don't want to be in a situation where you can't launch the victory because Harrow ate the key.
Sneaky, sneaky, Mister Haro.
But see, that is another example of a time when Godwald had an opportunity to survive. Uso was not going to shoot down his pod. He could have left again.
This just goes to show that his real mission is like destroying Uso's innocence. Why that matters so much to him, I'm not clear.
But not the man eating tiger, but the innocence eating tiger.
But this is a mission to get USO to stop hesitating, to get USO to be able to kill. Even knowing it's a person, even knowing it's a person. He's methadone even knowing it's a person who he has exchanged pleasantries with.
This is a guy who meets a 13 year old boy and immediately thinks, I am gonna ruin this kid's whole life. I'm gonna mess him up forever, even if it kills me. Or maybe he's just super genre savvy. Maybe he knows that he's a 35 year old man in a mecha series. I don't actually know his official age, but he gives 35 year old vibes.
Which means he's probably, you know, 24. It definitely hinges on Godwalds personal conception of what it means to be a soldier, what it means to be a pilot. When USO hesitates, he says, you have no right to be a soldier. He's, like, disgusted by the idea that someone this hesitant would call themselves a soldier.
USO, of course, did not call himself a soldier very much. Said he was not a soldier, just a regular kid.
Act as a soldier then. But here's the other thing. USO fends off Godwald. Was he just gonna let Godwald drift in space and let the chips fall where they may? Cause that's, you know, in some ways, a much crueler way to die than being blown up. Was he gonna try to take him prisoner?
Well, he didn't have a chance, right?
No.
Based on prior experience, Uso's the kind of guy who, when somebody is stranded in space, will do what is necessary to help them out a little bit, as Godwalt knows.
But here's the other thing, right? This same message that Godwald is trying to get across to Uso, Junko is kind of also trying to get him to absorb that message.
But that makes sense. Cause she's on his side.
I grant you. While they don't pull it off as well, in a way, this hearkens back to some other characters we've seen who almost care more about their warrior code than about the specifics of who they're fighting and what side they're on. There is a sense of camaraderie, even with your enemy, as long as they are an enemy you respect, who behaves in a way that is a credit to all warriors, all pilots, regardless of their specific affiliations.
Yeah, we got that vibe from Watari Gila from Dukkur.
Eek you earlier. It's a type. It's a type that certainly comes up in Gundam. Often, it seems in older gentlemen, men.
Who have lived long lives 35 years and are ready to die to make room for the next generation. In a way, this reminds me a lot of some of like Zetas worst tendencies. A new Titans enemy would show up. Theyd get one or two episodes and then be dispatched so that the next one can show up. Ben wooder Buran blutark kakricon Kakuler Lila mirarara. You know, I remember these names, but you would be forgiven for not having any clue who im talking about because they make such a faint impression. And unfortunately, I think Godwald Hein is doomed to suffer the same fate. I'm struck again by that conversation at the beginning when he sees Uso and he's like, oh, are you a student soldier?
I wondered if that bore any relationship to the very early research we did about the very young, like middle school aged boys who were conscripted into military service in Japan during World War two.
It's a different term.
Okay.
The one he uses, though, does have its historical antecedent, which is that it's the term that was used specifically for the college aged students, 19 and older who were drafted by the empire as the war started to turn against them and they needed more manpower. So initially, as in most countries, there was an exemption from the draft if you were currently in higher education. But increasingly, as the war wore on and they were running out of soldiers, those exemptions started getting restricted more and more.
That's just classic. I'm an adult. You are a child of some age. How old are you? 1015. I can't tell the difference. I already brought up how a lot of Godwald's points echo Junkos points to USO. I was struck by how much of it boils down to being about keeping calm and keeping your head under fire. Some of it is knowledge, some of it is things you have to know, either because you've been taught them or you've learned by experience. But a lot of it is about keeping a cool head in tense, frightening situations. But the parental dynamic that was most interesting to me this episode, you'd think it would be Godwald. He's definitely the important guy. But was Junko and Marbet? Because now that Junko and Marbet are friends or friendly, I think there are the parental stand ins for USo. Junko is the stern, strict, physical father figure. She headbutts USO twice, once when they're in their mobile suits, once when they're in their normal suits. She shakes him when he talks about going to do reconnaissance by himself in Zanskar. And then Marbet, the tomboyish one, as the caring, encouraging, comforting mother figure.
Hmm, counterpoint. Junko can't be the father figure. Because she's present in his life, Oliver remains the father figure. He's just off at the office all day.
Maybe only a woman can be a present father.
I think Junko is more like an older sister.
An older sister would have hugged him back. When he's hugging her. Tick up. The USO held to a bosom counter.
Hang on. We need to talk about this seriously for a second because it's happened a lot.
Oh, yeah.
And here Uso gets really embarrassed when he's being held to Junko's breast. He's blushing. Right?
But not in a way that I think indicates discomfort, necessarily just an awareness.
But what it is, is the woman's bosom signifies both maternal comfort for children, but then an object of desire for adult men or anyone who is into women. But in Uso's case, boys versus men have two radically different relationships to breasts. Uso is stuck in that liminal position between the two. So Marbet and Junko are treating him like a child to be comforted, nurtured, hugged, clasped to the bosom. Yet Uso is beginning to think of himself, beginning to experience life as a man and beginning to think of them as women.
Counterpoint again, we're just gonna keep doing this. We have a book about japanese popular music, and in particular, ballads. And one thing that came up is that because through much of japanese history, children would have been breastfed to an older age than we generally associate breastfeeding with now. People would have memories of having breastfed.
Rather than like most of us, if.
We were, we don't remember it. And so adult men actually have both associations for breasts. There's the association of something comforting and motherly, and also the association of something attractive and sexual. Adult men mediate that in some way, and USo hasn't quite figured out how to yet. It's also possible that we're in the nineties now, right? And times change, culture changes, behavior changes. Those twin associations may be much less prevalent by the time we get to the early nineties than they were earlier. But when I watched that scene, it looked less as though Junko clutched him to her and. And more like she shook him, like, what do you think you're gonna do out there all by yourself? What are you thinking? And then he feels bad. He feels sorry. He's feeling a lot of very intense feelings. He hugs her.
I think initially he grabs her because she is, like, shaking him back and forth, and he's, like, trying to steady himself. But the two actions, when combined, have the effect of a very aggressive motorboating.
It kind of looks like that from how it's shot, but I don't think it's quite that. Speaking of shots, there's that very aggressive low angle shot of marbed and Jungkook across from each other in the doorway with Uso between them. Tell me that's not mom and dad. Or the whole argument between Marbet and Junko where it's like, you dote too much on him. You're clinging to the boy.
Oh, so you hate him then, right?
Like, no, of course. Oh, you also dote on him too much. Like, no, I don't.
Sure. Uso's two moms. That scene you mentioned where USo, it's like a worm's eye perspective. USo, sort of between Marbet and Junko. It doesn't look great. I think there have been some mistakes in the perspective. USo looks way too small relative to them. It reminds me of this one scene from Zeta again, where Quattro and blecs and Henken, Beckner are all smushed into a tiny little elevator together. And they're all big dudes. And the camera is, like, low and pointed up at them, and they just. They become these, like, massive parodies of themselves squished into this tiny little space.
I assumed that that distortion was on purpose because, again, it's USO, the child caught up in this adult world.
I. I don't think so. I mean, I think there was supposed to be that effect, but I think the animator messed up. I'm glad you brought that up, though, because this episode, while I found the writing not particularly inspired or inspiring, I thought the visual storytelling was really good. Interesting angles, interesting depictions. Stuff like Godwald going for the gun and USo grabbing his, like, grappling hook and using it to propel godwald away and then just sort of gently letting it go. A lot of moments like that when USO and Marbet and Junko and Oliver all return to the hangar at the La Vie en Rose, there's a shot from below of, like, three of them all leaving their mobile suits and drifting towards each other. That was beautiful to see. It's what you would expect, I think, from an episode that was storyboarded and directed by some really skilled, really experienced people. And then the animation director is a little raw, like, not a complete newbie, but relatively new to that position, which is exactly what it was. I had to look this up afterwards because I was thinking about the visuals so much. The storyboards were by Kasemitsuko, who is always fantastic. The directing was Egami Kiyoshi, who's a veteran and has been around Gundam for a long time. And then the animation director was the relatively untested Shinbo.
A couple last points about Junko and Marbet. Though Junko calls Marbet out of the room and says, it's none of our business. My initial reaction to that being, what isn't? What is she talking about? She's letting the children scheme. She's saying they're gonna make a plan. They're gonna decide what they want to do. It's not our job to be in the middle of it. And they argue back and forth, and the kids think, ah, they're distracted, never realizing that the adults are distracted arguing about them. However, there Marbet is waiting in the cockpit, and there Junko is. They flanked him. So despite Junko's feeling that they maybe shouldn't interfere too much in what this group of kids decide to do, she and Marbet do intercede here, but it's not to stop him. Not necessarily.
They give him a hard time, but what they really want from him is just to be honest.
That's it. See, his first reasons, his explanation, his reconnaissance about Sanskar. He's telling them what he thinks adults would consider good reasons. He's telling them reasons he thinks they'll buy or thinks they'll let him do what he wants. If he says that.
Oh, the boy named Uso is lying. Hmm. How curious.
Because he's still that same kid from the beginning of the show who hid a lot of his feelings and was not terribly open about what he was thinking or feeling with other people. And then when he finally admits, as long as I know my friends are out there, I have to go to them, Marbeth says, finally, the turtle comes out of his shell, and Uso is still struggling to internalize that he can and, in fact, needs to rely on other people. He'd have been in real trouble in the first fight of the episode if Marbit and Oliver hadn't shown up. One of Juco's main arguments against his supposed reason for leaving is, you're gonna do that by yourself. What? And then at the end, when he manages to blow up the abigor, it is because his friends have sent over a fuel tank for him to use. He has not absorbed in the way that Warren and Odello have absorbed that when you're fighting alongside other people, their happiness is your happiness, their sadness is your sadness, and vice versa, that they all help each other to get through this and to get along and to help and protect and be with the people they care about. He's very willing to help others and so reluctant to ask for any help himself. And I don't think he would be so quick to depend on Warren and Odello if he didn't see them as having their own motivations for getting involved. If he didn't think, oh well, of course they want to get to Susie, so we want the same thing and we can all go do this. If it were just Shakti and Carlman and Flanders, im not sure he would ask Warren and Odello for help. I think he probably wouldnt hed pull.
A seabook or a judo and just try to sneak into the enemy base all on his own.
I found both Warren and Odello getting to see the video of Susie and the highland kids knowing that the Aeneas got away safely. So moving and so sweet.
It's really heartwarming, both of them.
And Odello has also learned and grown because there was a time when he would have been upset at people being happy about being reunited with their families in this extravagant way. In Warren's presence, in his own presence.
He would have done that thing where you go ch and then you wipe your thumb across your nose.
But he understands now they're not doing it to be cruel. They're just so relieved and happy. And it's no different than his own relief and happiness at knowing Suzy's okay.
He at least has a little bit of an ulterior motive because Alicia is also on the Aeneas, sure.
But it's also what Warren tries to convey to Martina, and she misunderstands, but that he can understand that she's fretting about being reunited with her family, that if I he had a family to be reunited with, he would feel the same.
I hope we see the Abigor again. I kind of doubt we will. It feels like a one off.
I love it. I love its pointy head. I love its third eye. I love its double scythe. I love how big it is compared to the other mobile suits.
Right when Godwald is fleeing with his wingmen in the first battle.
It's like a mama duck and her.
Baby ducks, exactly one under each arm, flying away in the grand sweep of Gundam mobile suits. It's not really that big. It's comparable in size to some of the transforming mobile suits from the masala, the Kaplant, the ashimar. But now that the regular mobile suits have gotten so small, it does become this, like, massive presence on the battlefield.
Was also very sad to learn that there is no recent gumpla of the Abagor, only some very old kits, single tier. Not that I need any more kids.
Where is our kapoor? Where is our abigor? I remain fascinated by the differences between the two different versions of the english subtitles that we have. Loyal listeners may remember that we have two versions of this show. We have the Nozomi produced american Blu rays and then we also have the Bandai produced japanese UC libraries version. The subtitles in these two versions are nearly but not entirely identical. I'd say 99% of the time. Probably more than that. Probably like 99.5% of the time. Every line is exactly identical, right down to the typos. And there are a lot of typos. This series has probably been the worst out of all the Gundam that we've covered for. Just missing words, misspelled words, not proofed.
In the way that you might expect a professional product to be.
Yeah, but then every once in a while you get a line that is actually different, but it's not necessarily different in what I would call a meaningful way. And so I'm utterly fascinated by why they made these very small number of seemingly not very important changes. Like in this episode. The one I caught was when the kids are talking about the Highland solar battery and why they remained there even though they're from a colony inside two that hasn't been taken over by Zanskar yet. In the Nozomi american release, I think Martina is the one who says they put pressure on my dad's company. In the UC libraries version, she says they put pressure on my dad's public corporation. With public and corporation both capitalized similar to, but apparently different from the PCST public corporation of space transport. So, like, why was this difference so important that they made that change? Which version is the original and which version is the amended one? I don't know. It's not like one of them is noticeably fixed because, as I said, the typos, the missing words of which there is at least one in this episode, are still there. In both versions. I'm just flummoxed.
I was trying to remember the original La Vienne Rose. Was it independent or was it a federation facility?
It's an Anaheim electronics facility.
Okay, is it still. Is the fourth iteration an Anaheim electronics facility?
Good question.
Okay. USo gets a classic little lightning bolt jolt type newtype flash in this episode. However, the sound effect is so silly and we had an entire argument about this. Tom thinks it's the same sound effect they've always used. And I'm like, no, it isn't. This is a much sillier, worse one. This is not the laser sound kind of one that they used to use. This one is, like a sproingy, funny one, which didn't fit at all in this sad, serious fight that is happening.
All right. I think they have used different ones before. Like, I don't think they've used one consistently. I'm positive I've heard this before.
Okay, maybe they've used this one before, but it's not the one I associate with the new type lightning bolt. I associate more of a laser y pew kind of sound. This one was definitely sproingy.
Its sproinginess simply represents how ganky Uso is.
It's bad. It's a bad choice of sound effects. Here's a question for you. Godwald keeps throwing his double scythe, but it's not a boomerang. It doesn't return to him. Does he just have a bunch of extra, like, half scythes that he can stick together?
Don't ask too many questions. It's just cool and fun, even though it's a terrible weapon that should not exist.
Rule of cool, my friend.
In what way is this thing better than a gun?
It's cooler. Like I just said, extremely uncool. Lean horse junior, right? No kid any of those kids ages wants to be a junior anything. I associate the junior tag on any sort of brand name, and in a way, the name of a ship feels like a brand name with, like, ah, this is the version for babies.
Mm hmm. Leanhorse Junior. Sounds like a joke they would make in an SD special.
Given how terrible it is, it's almost certain it really was Jin Janaham who.
Came up with it, and they just let him have it. Cause, like, you gotta let the boss have his way. Sometimes there is a certain type of person who is involved in some sort of group project, like fighting a war and makes.
Worst group project ever.
But as USO is steadily learning, it is definitely a group project anyway. They make, like, one contribution, generally one highly visible contribution, like, coming up with the name or making the PowerPoint, and then do nothing else but continuously remind everybody that they came up with the name. I'm saying I have met this person. I have worked with this person before.
Having named their ship also gives him a way, almost, to take credit for their formation as a group and then for anything good they do, which I identified last episode that one of Jin Jahanam's strengths, maybe taking credit for stuff that might be what he is especially good at. And it wouldn't surprise me if he starts taking credit for all of the good that these young, lean horse junior soldiers crew manage to achieve. Yes, I have to bring up when I'm right.
I have to.
I have to take credit.
You don't see me over here crowing about how I predicted that Uso was gonna have to kill Godwald. Although let's be real, that was a pretty low effort prediction.
Also, you have seen this show before.
I didn't remember that.
Here's a question for you, smarty pants. When USo is retrieving Haro and Haro goes itai, which means ouch, basically. Is that just a thing Haro is programmed to do whenever anything bumps into it? Or does Haro feel pain?
I think they made haro feel pain.
That is messed up.
Well, it's Gundam. The music really stood out to me in this episode.
The extremely melancholy strings sort of orchestral music that plays during the final confrontation between USO and Godwald was great.
It's not just that the strings are melancholy, which they absolutely are, but they play over a much more harmonious, soft, soothing background music that feels like this is space. Calm, peaceful, harmonious. But then interrupted by this sad string music, which feels like here's the battle here and there within the vast sea of space where people meet and tragedy occurs.
The setting for most of this final confrontation is also the ruins of a colony. How much time in this show have people spent fighting in the ruins of past wars? Because most of these are not cities that were destroyed in the current conflict. They were destroyed a generation or more ago, or abandoned or what have you. But it's such a melancholy setting. It feels like a graveyard, even though there are no bodies. All these empty buildings, all this broken glass that used to protect the people inside it. And Uso shouting at the cycle of war in human history, saying, it doesn't need to be this way in space.
As it was on earth. I think that's a big part of.
What victory is trying to say.
All the ruins on earth, all the ruins in space. This is just what people do.
We cant outrun ourselves.
We bring ourselves wherever we go.
And now, Toms research on Captain Tasilos name.
I have made a lot of jokes out of Captain Tasilo's name before, so it seems only fair that I now give it some more serious assessment. Tasilo is a real name, and an ancient one of germanic and particularly bavarian origin. It's still in use today, but is not very common. According to one data aggregator. As of 2014, there were about 1200 Tasilos in the world. More than 1000 of them lived in Germany, with the majority of the rest in Austria, Brazil, and the United States. But at first I was not entirely convinced that Tasilo was the intended latinization of this Bespa officer's name. See when the name of the east german figure skating phenom and Stasi informer Tasilo tirbach gets written in Japanese, it's written with a long e sound.
Written.
With the short e sound tashiro. As is the case for our squid commanding Griffin killing friend, its a fairly common japanese place and family name. The japanese self defense forces have a minesweeper named Toshiro a general. Toshiro was commander in chief of the japanese forces involved in the Marco Polo bridge incident near the start of the second sino japanese war in the 1980s and nineties. There was a singer comedian all around talent type called the Emperor of Puns, whose real name was Toshiro Masashi. And there are other characters in victory with names that were consciously derived from japanese originals. Junko Jenko, Oliver, Inoue. In 1994, Tomino explained that this was because victory depicted a world in which the ethnic distinctions of our own time have broken down completely. Oliver and Junkos japanese heritage survives only in their names. If there are already two characters with those kinds of names, why not another? But in the end I came back to favoring the bavarian tassilo over Toshiro. Look at the company he keeps. References tend to appear in groups. If you meet a prospero, you should probably be on the lookout for an ariel or a caliban. Dantes rarely appear without virgils. If every white base pilots name is suspiciously close to the name of a world War two airplane, what do you think the odds are that that just happened accidentally? So here we are looking at a guy with a plausibly german name hanging around folks called Godwald, Hein and Arbeo Pippiniden. That latter name is particularly important for this analysis. You may remember that Pippinidan was the first character to mention Tasilo's name all the way back in the Kamyon Kasraelia uwig phase of the story, long before the man himself appeared on screen. You may also remember from a prior research piece that Pippinidan is the german name for the Pippinids, the descendants of the 7th and 8th century nobleman Pepin of Landon. Initially, the Pippinids were senior nobles serving the frankish kings of the merovingian dynasty. One chronicle records that the founder of the line, Merovec, was the son of a frankish princess and a quinotar, a mythic beast with the head and upper body of a bull, albeit one with five horns instead of the standard two, and the lower body of a fish or sea serpenthe I promise this is all going to connect back to Tesilo eventually. Now, Merovec, son of the quinitar, may never have actually existed, but he was claimed as an ancestor by the very real Clovis I, whose conquests transformed the fragmentary patchwork of tiny kingdoms in post roman Gaul into a single frankish kingdom. But Clovis and his descendants, the merovingian kings, practiced a form of partition inheritance, wherein a deceased sovereigns territory would be divided more or less equally amongst all of his heirs. Like clockwork, they would then turn on each other in fratricidal wars until somebody managed to weld the kingdoms back together again, just in time to die and start the cycle anew. The state of nigh perpetual warfare between the various frankish kingdoms gradually weakened the power of the kings relative to their vassals. Each merovingian king was accustomed to designating a senior noble to act as mayor of the palace, manager of the royal household, basically. But as royal authority collapsed, the mayors of the palace began exercising greater political power in their own right. Pepin of Landon was one such mayor of the palace under Dagobert, king of Nuestria and Austrasia. Upon his death, Dagoberts two kingdoms passed to his eleven year old Sigebert in Austrasia and five year old Clovis in Nuestria. As you can imagine, real power lay elsewhere than in the hands of these two child kings. In Austrasia, Pepin of Landon emerged as the most powerful of the nobles and secured the position of mayor of the palace, which would remain in his family after his death. His descendants, especially those from his daughter Saint Bega, gradually expanded their power. His great grandson, Charles Martel, was king of Austrasia and Neustria in all but name, and Charles son Pepin III dispensed with the whole merovingian fiction altogether and just had himself crowned king of the Franks. Pepin's son, Charles Martel's grandson, and thus the original Pepin's great great great grandson, was the Charlemagne, who would be called emperor. The Carolingians. Charles Martel and his descendants devoted much of their efforts to centralizing and pacifying their sprawling kingdoms. The weakness of the merovingian central authority had made their rise to power possible, but they were not about to let anyone else repeat the trick. Besides subjugating the core frankish kingdoms of Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy, they also reduced the independence of the peripheral duchies on the fringes of Francia, Aquitaine, Frisia, Saxony, Alemannia, Provence, the kingdom of Lombardy and the Duchy of Bavaria. Charlemagne in particular spent much of the early part of his reign subjugating first the Saxons, then the Lombards, then the Saxons again, then the Bavarians, then once more the Saxons. Then he took a break to fight the Avars before returning to war with the Saxons, but were here for Bavaria. Bavaria was ruled by a duke, occasionally styled as a king, and was theoretically subordinated to the frankish monarchs. Starting around the 6th century, perhaps earlier, the dukes were of frankish origin themselves, and, through the maternal line, also descended from the kings of Lombardy. As was the case throughout Francia, waning power of the Merovingians allowed the dukes to become more or less independent of their nominal overlords. And then the Carolingians tried to walk that back. Charles Martel in particular had waged two campaigns in Bavaria, and it seems that he made some kind of political settlement with the duke there because he married a princess of their house and allowed them to remain in control of Bavaria. In 748, the same year that Charlemagne was born, Duke Odillo of Bavaria died, survived by his wife, chiltred, and his son Tasilo. See, I told you we'd come back to Tasilo. Tasilo, the third of that name to reign as duke of Bavaria, was through his mother, a grandson of Charles Martel and thus Epiphanidae, and a first cousin of Charlemagne. He was also the last duke of Bavaria. How this came to pass is somewhat uncertain. The chronicles recording these events show distinct signs of having been revised after the fact to retroactively justify Charlemagne's actions. Inciting incidents are recounted in significantly more detail than is typical for the chronicles in which they appear, or they're in a different style when compared to the passages around them. Supposedly contemporary accounts include phrases like but he did not long remain in the faithfulness that he had pledged, which suggests the benefit of hindsight when they were being written. We can say reliably that when Tassilo's father died in 748, he was only seven years old. That same year, his uncle Grifo, a younger son of Charles Martel by his bavarian second wife, seized control of the duchy. Grifo's brother, Pepin invaded Bavaria in response, driving Grifo out and installing old Odillo's young son as Tasilo. III, Duke of Bavaria.
I cannot, with these guys names.
Grifo, Grifo.
I'm sitting here like chewing the inside of my mouth, trying not to laugh at every additional weird name you mention. Pepin, Grifo, Odillo, which sounds an awful lot like Odello.
It is not lost on me that those names sound an awful lot like each other.
Supposedly, when this happened, Tasilo swore all kinds of oaths of loyalty and fealty to Pepin and his heirs. Under the circumstances, he's a little kid who was just put back on his throne. It does seem likely that he probably swore some oaths, but the passage in the annals that records the event is pretty dubious. And the supposed repudiation of those oaths is going to form the foundation of Charlemagne's later anti tcillo propaganda. In 763, Pepin called his vassals for a campaign into Aquitaine. Here we are told that Tassila was supposed to participate in the campaign, but that he ignored his oaths, made some kind of an excuse and slunk back to Bavaria, forgetting all that he owed to his uncle and like a coward, refusing to fight. If this did happen, it doesnt seem to have bothered Pepin or his heirs much at the time. Theres no indication of conflict between the Franks and the Bavarians until some 20 years later, long after Pepins death, the customary period of civil war, and Charlemagne's subsequent rise to power. In 787, an incident may have occurred in Rome, where Charlemagne was celebrating Easter with Pope Hadrian I. The king and the pope together were receiving envoys from Ticilo. There had been some kind of dispute, never identified in the chronicles, between the king and the duke, and Tassilo wanted the pope to act as peacemaker. It's written that Charlemagne and Hadrian were eager to make peace, but that the envoys demurred. They explained that they did not have the authority to negotiate such an agreement in their own persons, which is probably true. It would have been very unusual for messengers under these circumstances to be empowered to make a deal like that. However, when he heard this, the pope, a firm ally of Charlemagne, flew into a rage. He accused the envoys, both of them very senior churchmen, of deceit and treachery. He called to mind Tasilo's oaths to Pepin 30 years prior and threatened to declare the duke and his allies anathema if he did not immediately submit himself to the king. That pronouncement would have given Charlemagne religious sanction for any campaign against the Bavarians, no matter how brutal. Charlemagne returned to his court and issued a summons to Tasilo. Come and surrender yourself to me. When Tasilo refused, the king began gathering his forces. He planned to invade Bavaria from north, south and west. But ultimately, Ticilo blinked. He surrendered himself, confessed his wrongdoings, and reaffirmed his oaths. Charlemagne pardoned him, but the following year, 788, saw Tasilo hauled before the king once again to face new charges. Now he was accused of deceit, treasonous statements, and conspiracy with foreign enemies. We are told that the duke did not attempt to deny the accusations, although that might have had something to do with the fact that Charlemagne had sent soldiers to arrest Tasilo's entire family and confiscate all of his property before putting him on trial. Tasilo was sentenced to death for these crimes, but from his position of total victory, Charlemagne found that he could afford to extend what passes for mercy in the airy realms of royalty. He imprisoned the former duke and his sons in various monasteries, extinguishing the ducal line and abolishing the duchy. Bavaria was then divided amongst the various counts who had once answered to Ticilo III. There are other prominent tcilos, of course. There were the two prior bavarian dukes by that name. There's that east german figure skater and police informer I mentioned before. I can think of at least two living princes named Tasilo, although both were born well after victory was made. But Tasilo III of Bavaria is probably the most historically significant Tasilo, and considering the connection between him and the Pippinids on the one hand, and Captain Tassilo and Arbeo Pippinidan on the other, I think this is the most likely inspiration point. Theres another link there, too. Arbeo is also a historical bavarian name, and the best known historical Arbeo was Arbeo, bishop of Freising, a contemporary and subject of Tasilo III. As for whether Duke Tasilo inspired anything else about the captain besides his name, well, just have to watch and find out. If so, will he be the tusilo of the chronicles, an unreliable coward and oathbreaker who abandons his duty on the thinnest pretext, who conspires to rebel against his nation in order to avoid punishment for his crimes? Or will he be a sacrifice to the ambitions of more powerful men, a scapegoat sentenced to death on trumped up charges? Hey, it could be both. It's a long show. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm really jonesing to play some crusader kings for some reason.
Next time in two weeks on episode 10.23 under the sign of the z, we research and discuss episode 23 of Victory Gundam and meteor Shish Kabob Zanskar's most wanted. Every border implies the violence of the guillotine, a scree screen make a hole.
Their security is just atrocious.
Seriously, it's real bad.
Enter Sandhog. He took the back. He's got both hooks in. Yeah, that other guy is toast.
Colony of the free.
The director's thinly disguised fetish and anytime Odello has a.
Problem, he shoots a missile at it and boom. He has a different problem. 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.
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Support thank you for listening. There are a lot of wrong Gundam opinions out there corrupting the fandom, like.
This one from Vix the red Panda, who says that whether you like a mecha design or not is simply a skill issue. If you stare long enough into the mecha abyss, you'll come to appreciate any design as just a funky metal friend.
The pace of little treats is accelerating exponentially and unsustainably.
I'm pretty sure I remember the title, but is it tiger then turtle or turtle then tiger? I think it's the tiger and the turtle that flows better.
Correct.
All right, this is Epice episode Epsihoud.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
I think I know what you're talking about. It's the four directions, right? The four, like heavenly beasts, guard the four directions, correct.
It's comparable.
Hi, kitten.
Hello, kitten.
Finish your thought. I will give her attention. Hi, kitten. What? What is it? What is it now? I don't understand. I felt that Carl was channeling Marshmachello briefly in this episode when he is floating through the cockpit, cross legged, arms crossed. Love that pose. This is what research does to us. It just chases us from craving to craving. I think we're done.
I think we're done.
Tigress says we're done.