You're listening to season 11 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 11.16, the Invisible Fighter, and we're your hosts. I'm Tom, and once again I am using this opening segment to remind you to listen to the Disappearances of Lydia Fontaine audio drama, the first four episodes of which are now available@lydiadisappears.com and you know it's good because I am overcoming my pathological aversion to self promotion in order to tell you about it.
And I'm Nina, new to G Gundam and I do love the introduction of a mysterious masked stranger. As an ad free independent podcast, Mobile Suit Breakdown relies on the effervescent enthusiasm of our paying subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons, Pelcosaur and Cole W you keep us, Genki.
This week we're covering g Gundam Episode 16, Saikyo Sai Aku Debitu Gandamu Arawaru or Ultimate Power and Rise of the Devil. Gundam Originally broadcast on August 5, 1994. No new names in the top level credits for this episode, but we do have a new voice actor to introduce. Although his voice is muffled by his mask, Neo German fighter Schwarz Brude was played by Horii Hideyuki Horii is a prolific voice actor, lending his talents to anime, film tokusatsu, video games, audio dramas, comm pachinko machines, and so on. He was the Japanese voice of Paul Atreides in the David Lynch Dune and Tom Cruise's character in Rain Man. He was Ryu Hayabusa in the Ninja Gaiden series and Ginyu in Dragon Ball Z. Relevant to Nina's interests, he played the main character in the short film Stink Bomb.
It's so good.
He'll also be back in a few years for another Gundam role. Now the play by play. It lurks below. Behold, in Shinjuku station an army gathers, an army of the dead performing their dark rituals to revive the evil God that gave them life anew. Feel the rumble beneath your feet. The ground splits and all tumbles into darkness. Our heroes are entombed neath a concrete sky in stagnant air, their tempers sprayed and on their heels the hungry hunting risen dead they flee but cannot escape. Now down, down where all paths meet down in the womb of the earth a demonic light that devil called Gundam waits and feasts and grows more twisted Its children in their serried rows A willing banquet perched in silence on its shoulders the saturnine architect of these great horrors. Kyoji. An enormous hand reaches out, yearning, clutching for rain. But she is not alone. The empty air takes shape. It is a man, a fighter. And together they escape. But the threat remains. The earth yawns wide and births the chrysalis of evil. Now watch as Master and apprentice clash. See the new Shuffle alliance scattered like autumn leaves. Behold the rage that sleeps uneasy within the King of Hearts. Bask in the heat of his anger and see him flinch. The Devil drinks deep of Domon's hate. The egg shatters, and the Machine God Doom of all mankind is born. How many more climaxes to the Shinjuku arc do you think they can possibly cram into this show? This might really be the last one, since Stalker introduced it as such. But every episode for a while now has felt like, oh, this is the climax of this arc.
Surely this is the last Shinjuku episode.
Surely the tragic sacrifices of the Shuffle alliance will be the big climactic moment on which to end this little arc. No, no. Indeed, we need another big confrontation. More horror, more destruction. Once again, Domon must clash with Master Asia. Once again, he must be saved by the introduction of a new and heretofore unknown character. Goodbye, Shuffle Alliance. Hello, Schwarz Buddha.
Points in favor of this being the last one. This is the episode where, at least to our characters, it becomes they think clear why the Devil Gundam has parked itself in Shinjuku all this time. That it needed to rest and to feed in this like pupil state as it began to evolve into its next form. However, points not in favor of this being the last part of the Shinjuku arc. Rein makes explicit in this episode something that has been hinted at for a long time here. Domon kind of needs to step up and be the leader. He does not want to step up and be the leader. He resists every moment, every effort on anyone else's part of making him do that or of encouraging him to do that.
Maybe Domon just believes in non hierarchical decision making. Maybe Domon doesn't want to be the leader because there shouldn't be any leaders in this confederation of equals.
I would give that theory more credence if I hadn't heard him say, and this is a ludicrous thing for him to say under the circumstances, but that he sees what he's doing, the pursuit of the Devil Gundam and of Kyoji, as purely personal and so not anyone else's business and not something anyone else needs to get involved in. Even though he has acknowledged, and everyone else has acknowledged that The Devil Gundam is a threat to all of humanity. But he's like, no, I'm a lone wolf. I don't want to work with other people.
If humanity wants to solve this problem, they can get in line. It was Domon's first. He called dibs. Do you not respect the sanctity of dibs?
Somewhat heartbreaking. He is struggling to believe that his old master could have chosen to follow the Devil Gundam of his own volition. He hasn't been infected with DG cells. He's not being mind controlled. He chose this.
Many mind controlled people believe that they have chosen it.
Okay, we could get into the philosophy of what does it mean to have free will and free choice? But we don't have time for that right now.
I'm just saying. Master Asia, saying that does not mean it's true.
Okay. More heartbreaking and less easy for you to refute.
Try me. I can refute anything.
Despite everything that's happened, my impression is that Domon did not entirely believe that Kyoji had done everything everybody said Kyoji had done. He couldn't really believe that Kyoji had killed their mother. That Kyoji had taken the Devil Gundam to Earth was on this path of destruction until Kyoji shoots at him. He hadn't truly believed that he had lost his brother until that moment. Because you can hear the total poleaxed surprise in his voice when he says he was trying to kill me or he shot at me. I don't remember the exact line. But after the shot, he is disbelieving. He hadn't truly absorbed that information in the same way that he hadn't truly believed that his master had gone to the dark side until ample proofs had been provided several times over.
Well, I'm gonna refute that.
I wanted to give you the opportunity.
It's true that Domon is surprised Kyoji would take the killing blow or attempt it at least. But I don't think that means he doesn't believe that Kyoji did all the things he's been accused of doing. It's just that the death of their mother and the imprisonment of their father. These were indirect results of whatever Kyoji was doing. Their mother gets shot accidentally by military police while she's throwing herself in front of Kyoji. This is only Kyoji's fault in a very indirect sense. In that Kyoji built the Devil Gundam and that brought the military police there and he didn't willingly surrender himself when they first showed up. Etc. Etc. Ditto their father being like, tried and imprisoned in carbonite. That happened because they built the Devil Gundam together. It's not like Kyoji threw his dad into cryostasis himself. So the idea that Kyoji would be willing to kill his own brother, this is new for Domon. Kyoji is so far gone. They're not fighting the way brothers fight. They're fighting the way enemies fight. And that's what really hits him at the last moment, when Domon has the opportunity to deliver the killing blow. Even suffused with rage as he is even in his super mode, even going berserk, he still cannot bring himself to land the killing blow. He has to give Kyoji the chance to. To come back to the light. To abandon the path of evil. The path of the devil. Now, I notice you carefully did not respond to my challenge about whether or not you acknowledge the primacy of dibs.
Oh, I see, I see.
Is it not the case that within the like the mythopoetic tradition of G Gundam, the special heroic world of G Gundam as the wronged party, does Domon not have the first right to revenge himself on Kyoji, the Devil Gundam, and Master Asia? Yes, it threatens the whole world. But this is personal for him. He cannot achieve the culmination of his heroic journey unless he is the one to strike them down.
Two points. First, I agree. In the kinds of stories to which G Gundam belongs, Domon has the first right of revenge, Right of first refusal, Right of first revenge on his brother and on Master Asia Kataki. And it's worth pointing out that in this kind of story, Kyouji's willingness to enact horrible destruction and violence on strangers is less horrifying than his willingness to kill his brother. Which, like being willing to kill thousands of strangers is one thing, but killing your brother, whether or not we agree with that, that is the kind of story we're in. However, vis a vis that right of first revenge question, as has been established by the previous generation of the Shuffle alliance, they are also perfectly within their rights to follow him around and be there to take up the cause if and when he fails. And I suspect that the direction this show is going, the arc of the show, is going to be about Domon realizing that he needs teamwork, he needs allies. That the great things they can achieve together are more important than him being a lone wolf. That the reason evil will fail, that the reason good will defeat Evil, and is because good is an alliance, good is a group. And in this kind of story, Evil is Not evil is singular, though evil
has the capacity to recruit. Evil is not singular so long as evil can mind control and raise the dead and reproduce.
All the more reason Domon needs allies.
It's not as if the new Shuffle alliance is all united in calling for Domon to take up the mantle of their leader. There are a lot of big egos in this group. There's a lot of male energy. I don't see any of these fighters who are natural rivals, both by personality and by the circumstances of the Gundam fight. It's going to be a challenge getting all of them on side.
And yet. Sidebar for a moment. The national composition of the new Shuffle alliance paints a really interesting picture of what a group of Japanese writers in the early 90s thought that the sort of post Cold War international order was going to be composed. The United States, Japan, China, Russia and France.
And as I pointed out when they were first introduced, this is almost identical to the composition of the original Shuffle Alliance. Well, the original Shuffle alliance was created 4,000 years ago, so who knows what countries were involved in that. Was Assyria, one of the leaders of
the Shuffle alliance, the Ottoman Empire, at some point.
Did you say Ottomans?
I said Ottomans at some point.
Oh, for sure, for sure. Yeah. Now, where was I? Oh, right. So the previous Shuffle alliance, almost identical composition except Master Asia being from Neo Hong Kong versus Domon being from Japan. The other four are all identical, as we had posited when the when the show first started. Maybe these are just like the countries with fandoms, the countries with a cool look that you could expect Japanese middle schoolers to be like, oh, I love France. I'll buy the Rose Gundam Gunpla.
Fair enough. Although that was really a digression from my main point, which is that despite the big egos, despite the competing personalities, we've already seen a lot of cooperation between these people. Sai Saichi, very willing to treat Domon as a sort of mentor, elder brother type. Domon has worked with each of these fighters in different contexts. And then here. I loved the scene where Ghibli and George act as though they are going to fight each other, and Rin is like, oh gosh no. Too much testosterone, y'. All. We have more important things to do. But it was a ruse.
I'm not sure it was entirely a ruse. I think they were on the verge of fighting with each other and then noticed other threats.
Point is, they. They understand when to set it aside.
I think the contemporary Japanese term for these guys would have been feminists, not feminist. As we understand it in English as like a proponent of women's rights, but like the term in Japanese at the time would have meant more like womanizer, flirt boy.
Bleep.
Jupiter Headbandio from Zeta Gundam is one of the classic feminist characters for exactly this reason. And Chibidi and George both bring their very different energies to the pursuit of women and hence the rivalry.
I wonder about George. George is so focused on the sort of chivalrous attitude towards like all women that I wonder if George has ever had a girlfriend ever.
Both of them are surrounded by adoring women. Yes, Chibidi because he desires them and George because he disdains them.
Well, but doesn't disdain. It's just very, well, chivalric.
How many George Chibidi fanfics doujins are there? How many Fujoshis watching this show paired these two up?
We might need to look into that. That is a fascinating question. My point is they can work together and frequently do, despite the competing egos, interests and personalities.
Well, each of them has a good relationship with Domon at this point, but but not so much with each other. Forging these fractious fighters into a united team will be a challenge. Presumably one that takes several episodes.
I did enjoy the narrative construction of using the earthquake to split the party.
Mhm though then only one of the different groups actually encounters anything interesting. Like you get the big group of all the support staff and Argo are just kind of stuck there until they get rescued by the civil defense gyms. Basically Domo and Saisaishi just wander around until they wander into someone else's adventure. It's only Raine with George and Chibidi who actually encounter interesting things. First all the Robo skeletons and then Raine stumbling upon the birthing chamber, the unbirthing chamber, the Devil Gundam's retreat.
I have been calling the Robo skeletons zombies. I quite like the design. I don't think we addressed it much previously.
I want to call them like Mecha Skeletons or mecheletons, but it really only works written.
I'm probably going to stick with Zombie, but it's a neat design. It's unlike anything I've seen before. The introduction of the DG cells means that it's skeletal but not exactly skeletal and the suits turn them into these necklace hulks.
The way the DG cells interact with the skeletons reminds me of like fossils where the actual material is not bone, but it takes the form, the shape of bone because the material has replaced the bone and then all of the soft bits have decayed. Away. The old timey spacesuits are pretty cool. A nice complement to the the skeletons. I mean, it's very sci fi horror. It's like if you cracked open a derelict starship, this is what you would find inside.
Did not particularly like the new Devil Gundam design. This sort of squat, spiky robo dinosaur with tentacle fingers.
Do you still deny that it looks like a tardigrade? Or has it finally, in its evolution, come to resemble one? Even in your eyes, I still don't
think it looks like a tardigrade.
It looks like a tardigrade.
I can't remember if we've brought this up before, but worth pointing out that the Akira Manga ended in 1990.
Yeah, I can see how there's some similarities, certainly conceptually. Interestingly, the final form of the evolved Devil Gundam here was so complex that they couldn't animate it like conventionally, so they handed it over to the background team to just paint it.
Is this the final form or is it going to evolve more? I think we're too early for final form.
The final form in this episode.
Okay.
After it goes from the like weird crusty orb chrysalis kind of deal, mostly a weird crusty orb, as you said, and then coming out of it, most of the top of a head, but the crown has been split open and out of that comes like a snaky spine thing. And then the huge old pair of linebacker shoulders and then another head.
It's sort of like a Naga version of a Gundam coming out of the head of another Gundam.
Definitely some Naga going on. Reminded me a lot in its proportions of the cool Dragon mobile armor from Victory that we liked a lot. It also is kind of like one of those deep sea fish that have the little light coming off of their forehead as a lure. Or when snapping turtles use their tongue and make it look like a worm. The head coming out of the head, the smaller head, the smallest head, feels like it's mostly just a diversion, a lure. But the orb, the chrysalis, to me, it looked like a tumor. It almost has like throbbing veins on the side.
Again, very Akira. One funny thing I noticed in this episode, most of the characters from unnamed soldier types to our main characters is very stretched this episode. Everyone is extremely tall and skinny, more so than usual.
I'm remembering one of the interviews with Imagawa or someone else on staff at this point. They basically had like five teams working in rotation. Mm.
Okay, so this is the stretch. The stretch team. The music. As Domon is gearing up to attack the Devil Gundam before it transitions to his, like, transformation. Shining Finger Attack music is very stirring, very cinematic. We also get a lot of funny chibidi.
English yeah, if you're listening in the dub, you are missing out on some really good chibidisms. Ouchie, ouchie.
Shut up. And now I think we gotta talk about the German Gundam fighter who wears a mask and is definitely our char.
Hold up. I hear that. We will talk about that. But before we move on from the Devil Gundam, I love the way it slurps his beam saber. The way the beam saber, it's not even a saber anymore. It becomes like. It's like wavering back and forth. It's like a hose. It's like a hose of energy that the Devil Gundam is just absorbing. Because he couldn't strike the head, he had to strike the body.
Well, I'm not even sure if that's the case, because this is a trope that I've definitely seen in other sci fi people have transitioned to energy weapons. But then you encounter an enemy who's able to absorb that energy rather than taking damage from it, and it's like, oh no. All our normal weapons are useless.
Well, in seminal sci fi animated classic Titan Ae, you can't fight the dredge because they're pure energy. Indeed, everyone knows this. However, that very energy could be used perhaps in the climax of the movie in some way.
Just so.
But no, narratively, Domon chooses not to strike the head.
Yeah, I'm not disputing that.
But you think even if he had struck the head, the Devil Gundam would still have been able to schlorp that saber energy right up.
Yes, because we're only on episode 16. And this means that now there has to be an entire arc of, oh well, if a beam saber can't kill it, what sort of weapon can? What kind of attack is going to succeed? And we've already seen the Shining Finger attack, like, evolve, step up from an original form. And so maybe it's going to go through additional changes and evolutions, or maybe there will be some entirely new weapon or some like, group attack. You know, it gives us additional scope for little, like, arcs within the remainder of the show.
But you can still have that same arc if the focus is not, how do we build a weapon that can destroy the Devil Gundam? It can instead be, how do we build a fighter who can kill the Devil Gundam? Because Domon, we thought he had it. We thought, with all of that rage he feels when he sees Kyoji, that he could be the one to deliver the killing blow. But it turns out he's not. He's weak. He still has his human feelings, his affection for his brother. Perhaps the arc needs to be how do we make Domon into a killer?
That sounds like an arc for a previous Gundam show. That doesn't, to me sound like an arc for G Gundam. Because we've established with G Gundam, attacking with everything you have is not necessarily about killing. It is about communicating a depth and sincerity of feeling and intent.
But I think that's what Domon tried to do. That's what he was. He was trying to convey all of his intent, all of his love, all of his hate, all of his feelings to Kyoji with the perfect, honest communication of violence. But it failed.
He's not there yet. He's not there yet. He still isn't sure what exactly it is he should do about Kyoji. I know he's been on this revenge kick for a while, but he either needs to feel that he can destroy the Devil Gundam to stop save Kyoji, or that he in effect needs to save Kyoji from himself by killing him. That's where he needs to be emotionally. And he's not there yet.
That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm glad we agree.
I don't think we agree at all, but I suppose the listeners will let us know.
I'm saying he's not there yet. He doesn't yet have the. The will to kill.
But you're making it sound like, like the transition between. In an old Gundam series, one of these young guys who's like hesitant to kill other people versus the transition they make, where eventually they're killing like dozens of guys in one fight in a sort of flow state and they're not feeling it the same way anymore. That doesn't feel like G Gundam to me. That doesn't?
No, no. But it's sequential. And it's a similar sequence. The ultimate apotheosis. The final revelation will be something beyond that. Just as for other Gundam boys in the past, they have to get to the state where they do not care. And then they have to get beyond the state to caring again.
But don't you think this is part and parcel to his unwillingness to take charge? His unwillingness to work in a team? He does not want to make the kind of decision himself that would allow him to have that sensation, sincerity of intent that the Shuffle alliance were talking to him about. His unwillingness to take charge is like symptomatic of or part of the same issue of, like, his sincerity of intent is not there. He is uncertain. He wants someone else to be certain for him and tell him what to do. And until he stops doing that, until he stops wanting to shunt that responsibility, he cannot defeat the Devil Gundam.
I think that's very cogent. I think that's very insightful. I disagree with it. Domon is under orders to kill Kyoji, and at this point, those orders have to extend to killing Master Asia as well, since he's in the way. They're clearly, as you said, threats to the whole world, right? But they are also the two people in the world that Domwon loves the most. So even though he knows, he. He has been told and agrees and acknowledges. Logically, he knows they must be stopped. But still, all along, he has cherished within himself the hope that somehow he alone, through his power, can save them. That he can get out of this without having to kill the people he loves most. And he doesn't trust the other members of the Shuffle alliance to get that. He doesn't trust them to help him do the the thing he's not supposed to do to break his orders.
Which is funny, because each of them, in their own way, kind of acts on their personal mission rather than on their government's interest. Including Domon. Right? He only accepted the government mission because it dovetailed with his personal desire for revenge. I don't think he actually cares about the Gundam fight on its own. And the same is true of most of these fighters. They have their own desires. We've talked about this extensively. The Gundam fight is kind of tangential to their personal missions. And we've talked extensively about how Tomon still doesn't entirely seem to trust Rain, and how hurtful that is for her.
She is an agent of the government. She's his friend, she's his partner, but she's like. She's an agent of the neo Japanese government. She's there for the mission, not for his secret.
But has he asked her that? And has she said that?
How painful would it be if she said no? Well, he's scared. He can't bring himself to ask her. Just like he can't bring himself to rely on the other members of the Shuffle Alliance. He knows he shouldn't be doing this.
And that's the other thing, right? In the fights with Master Asia, in the fights with Kyoji. What Domon is really hoping here is that he can remind these people he loves that they love him, and that their love for him will turn them from this path. And they are repeatedly demonstrating that that
is not the case, that Master Asia has not been corrupted. He's chosen this of his own free will.
Oh, now you. Now you say that.
No, I'm saying. I'm saying. Listen, I take no position on that one way or the other. But that is what Master Asia is saying to Domon. And that is what is so painful about it. That Kyoji is willing to try to kill him.
And he as yet cannot accept that the people he loves so much that he is willing to risk his own life and frankly, to risk all of humanity for these people do not love him the same.
I'm reminded here, thinking again about Domon's reluctance to take up the leadership role in the Shuffle Alliance. I'm reminded of the Temeraire books, which, if you're not a patron, we've been doing a special bonus episode series called Nina's Revenge in which Nina makes me read this long running series of fantasy adventure novels that she really loves. The Temeraire books by Naomi Novik. And not to give away too many spoilers, but at a certain point the question comes up of giving the dragons ranks commissions in the army because before
this they're treated like aircraft. They're treated like big horses that you can put a bunch of people on.
Now imagine if you gave your B2 bomber a commission as a Colonel of the Air Force.
But also imagine that your B2 bomber is fascinated by philosophy and mathematics and can talk to you.
Yeah, I've read sci fi. I know all about this. I think often about starships with personalities and intent and sentience. Anyway, when you accept the commission, the obligation to follow orders without debating them, without trying to do an end run around them, not only to follow them, but then to pass them on to your subordinates and enforce them even if you don't agree with them because you accepted that commission. I think that's happening to Domon here as well. As long as he is merely a lone operator, an individual Gundam fighter, he can subvert his orders a little bit. But if he becomes the leader of the Shuffle alliance, responsible for protecting the whole world from the dangers of too much violence, I mean, then he probably has to abandon this personal quest.
Yes, he would need to. I thought you were going to say it puts him in conflict with his government orders.
Oh, I don't think he gives one solitary.
No, I don't think. I don't think anybody does. And it's been made very clear that the government's ability to enforce those orders on Gundam fighters on Earth is pretty limited, so you know, what can you get away with? But it's true. Taking up the mantle of leadership for the Gundam alliance would mean having to put its priorities ahead of his personal ones. And would mean accepting that he may not be able to get through to Master Asia or to Kyoji. His love of them might not be enough.
I'm just imagining that one meme. I think it was originally a Steven Universe one.
Oh, I think we're gonna have to kill this guy. Yeah, yeah.
It could be any of the Shuffle Alliance. Could even be Rain behind him being like Domon. I think we're gonna have to kill this guy.
Can we talk about the Char now, Schwarzbude?
Sure. Let's talk about Neo Germany's Gundam Fighter, the Invisible Man. Gosh, he really looks like he belongs in a Tokusatsu series, doesn't he?
Well, one of the silhouettes of him when he is helping Raine escape the weird Devil Gundam chamber, he looks almost like a detective. The coat gives him a sort of trench coat silhouette.
I'm sure it is a trench coat. It's a little short, but it's in that, like, dark gray of the German army. He kind of looks like a. Like a Stasi agent.
For obvious reasons, the German militarism they invoke in the design is much more World War I than World War II. The helmet on the Gundam.
Oh, that's true. On the Spiegel. Yeah, yeah, true, true. I was thinking of his design. He's basically wearing a stocking cap, balaclava with a pom pom in German flag colors. Like the contrast between the goofy elements of the outfit and the serious elements of the outfit. He's wearing shiny black hessian boots. He's wearing a military trench coat. From about the neck down, he looks like a soldier. And then above it, some sort of jester, perhaps. He's got a V fin on his
forehead, which is an attack boomerang.
It's a boomerang. This looks like a slugger from Ultraman. This is a classic tokusatsu weapon for him to be wielding. He can turn invisible. And then his Gundam's special power involves
Shadow Clones and some kind of active camouflage. I learned that term because that's the research this week. But when it stands up out of the rubble, we see that there is some kind of like, projection or hologram or something over the surface of it that makes it look like the rubble that made it look like the terrain.
We've been watching Imagawa's Giant Robo Ova parallel with this. And he really looks like he could be one of the experts of justice. Yeah. And the.
The energy, the tone, the line delivery, and the lines themselves feels like I am your new powerful, mysterious mentor. Come out of the shadows to teach you my secrets that you need in order to complete your mission.
For me as a child, the original Power Rangers series was a. Was a pretty big landmark. Set a lot of my. My expectations for media introduced me to a lot of tropes. And this is like the arrival of the Green or later, the White Ranger.
The Sailor Venus, if you will.
Yeah, well, he's a little Sailor Venus, but he's also a little Tuxedo Mask. You have your band of five, and then here's the sixth one who's even more powerful. Already established. Kind of throws off the whole balance. Challenges the role of the leader, but doesn't actually want to be the leader. It's a classic type. I'm sure there is a TV tropes term for this character.
I do love the elbow knives on the Spiegel.
Spiegel, which means mirror.
Ho ho.
They're basically tonfa, but bladed. Pretty cool. Pretty cool.
When we were preparing to talk about this episode, Tom said to me that it's an episode where not a lot happens.
And I stand by that.
Oh, it absolutely is.
This is actually true of G in general. There's not. Like, very few of these episodes are
narratively complex where there's a lot to talk about. It's because of the like, complicated emotional subtext of what's happening or about the design of the show.
Or somebody uses a really cool attack.
Right?
Like Master Asia's storm of smaller Master Gundams that look very much like the Mi Ferrario from Dunbine. Like, how did he do that? Is that literal? What's going on there? Don't worry about it.
The point is where we find a lot to talk about. It tends not to be like because of narrative complexity. It's about other things. Will the next episode take place in Shinjuku?
Is there any Shinjuku left to take place in? They finally destroyed the government building, right? Didn't it get, like, split?
There's a visual metaphor for you. The two towers that are part of a single building finally ruptured asunder. Like the relationship of the brothers.
And then the big blast when the Devil Gundam fires off its beam. Not unlike a nuclear explosion going off. On a lighter note, it's becoming increasingly clear that only Bunny's voice actor is, like, on staff. Only Bunny regularly gets Spoken lines. The other members of Chibidi's harem are just, like, chilling.
They introduced a lot of sidekicks and at some point may have been like, all right. We can only have so many of these people voice acting.
The necessity to, like, keep all the sidekicks busy. You can see it wearing on the team making these shows like, oh, I guess we'll have an earthquake happen and collapse and trap all of the sidekicks together so that they can be off screen for the whole episode and no one will wonder what they're doing. They're even getting a little bit of that with the main characters because here they're just like, oh, we don't know what to do with Argo. Put him with the sidekicks.
Something about the way he stands next to his handler makes it feel like he's wearing a leash and a collar, even though he's not.
I've seen that fan art.
I don't know if you caught this. In the scene where the other Shuffle alliance members are all standing in a row waiting to attack the Devil Gundam, the Rose Gundam is in a pose that's almost like balletic. Or I suppose it's meant to evoke fencing, but one leg is sort of crossed in front of the other. The feet are in a single row pointed forward. Rather than the sort of more typical broad fighting stances of the other Mobile Fighters.
I'm sure it is one of the, like, historical fencing positions. I think it's in that same sequence is one of my favorite bits of this episode, which is when the other members of the Shuffle alliance see Kyoji and one of them is like, hey, it's that guy from the photograph Domon kept making us look at.
I have a note about this because up until now, none of them knew that the creator pilot controller of the Devil Gundam is Domon's brother or related to Domon in some way. This is that lightbulb moment for all of them.
Have you seen this man? Now you have. And I bet you'll see him again.
This week's episode introduces a new Gundam fighter, Neo Germany, complete with his own set of abilities and quirks. Most prominent of these is invisibility, both of the human person and of the Gundam. But it becomes clear in the last fight of the episode, this isn't true invisibility. Neither the human nor the mobile fighter have become transparent or magically vanished. Which means it's time to talk about the science fact and science fiction of active camouflage. Also called adaptive camouflage or chameleonizing. Active camouflage is camouflage that can change and adapt, often very quickly to the surrounding environment. Think of an octopus, cuttlefish or chameleon changing the color pattern and even texture of their skin. Although active camouflage on human clothes or vehicles feels like something out of science fiction, a simple form of active camouflage has existed since World War I. This subtype, called counterillumination, is seen in some deep sea creatures, for example the firefly squid. Depending on depth, many sea creatures appear as a dark silhouette when viewed from below. To counteract this effect, they bioluminesce or produce light on the downward facing surface of their body to match the brightness of the water behind them, reducing contrast and making their silhouette less distinct. Many fish, such as sharks, have a passive camouflage version of this, with lighter coloration on their bellies than on the rest of their body. Counterillumination was the focus of early military research in active camouflage and was trialed on aircraft as early as 1916 by American artist and aviator Mary Taylor Brush. Brush filed a patent in 1917 for a camouflage system that involved putting lights all over an aircraft. Combined with passive painted camouflage, the plane became very difficult to view against the sky. She went on to use her artistic training to design passive camouflage for planes and was a pioneer of aircraft camouflage beyond the counter illumination system she developed and patented. She's not really relevant to this research piece, so I didn't dig much, but the little bit I did learn about her is fascinating. Having trained as a pilot before World War I, she also designed and patented planes and was a friend and neighbor of Amelia Earhart. I will have to learn more about her on my own time. The next major research in counter illumination for camouflage was kicked off by a Canadian professor, Edmund Godfrey Burr, who in 1940 was tasked with studying night observation instruments for the war effort. At the time, he noticed just how visible aircraft were against the night sky. And then one night in December 1940, Burr saw a plane coming into land over snow suddenly vanish. Light reflected from the snow had illuminated the underside of the plane just enough to cancel out the difference in brightness, camouflaging the plane perfectly. By 1941, he was testing counter illumination for use in camouflaging ships, and the UK's Royal Navy began parallel trials that same year, with the US Navy beginning its own research not long after. In these counter illumination camouflage systems, light was projected onto the body of a ship to match the brightness of the horizon or the night sky. They went through multiple proof of concept and test iterations, including structural improvements adding color filters to compensate for the warmth of the light from the projectors and adding sensors so that the system could automatically adjust to ambient lighting conditions. Different sources give different percentages and may well be referring to different tests or different versions of the same system. But even at the low end, this system reduced a ship's visibility by 25% using binoculars or 33% using the naked eye. And in optimal conditions could reduce a ship's visibility by as much as 75%. These prototypes only briefly saw service when they were trialed on actual convoy ships in 1943. Although they were as effective at reducing visibility as they had been in tests at sea, the electrical equipment proved too delicate and frequently malfunctioned. Worse, the system was slow to respond to changes in background lighting. The thing to remember is that at the beginning of World War II, centimeter radar did not exist, and submarines, with their low to the water profile, had a big advantage against planes and ships. But by the end of 1943, enemy subs were using underwater microphones and radio direction finding. Visual range was a lot less relevant. And as one source put it, with long range aircraft, radar code decryption and better escort tactics, the need to camouflage ships from submarines greatly decreased and diffused lighting research became a low priority. The US had actually halted its diffused lighting research in 1942. However, it was picked up again in 1943, this time to be trialed on aircraft like the B24 Liberator and TBM Avenger. This was called the Yehudi Lights Project, and the goal was for aircraft to reach a submarine and drop a depth charge before the submarine could spot them and dive out of range. In effect, this meant being spotted when the plane was no more than 30 seconds away from the target. The theory was sound enough and had already been tested decades previously. Lights on the aircraft itself, adjusted to the brightness of the sky, would make the craft's silhouette less distinct, making it harder to spot from the get go. There were two big issues. Firstly, that aircraft at the time did not have enough electrical power to illuminate their entire surface or even their entire underside, especially in daylight. Secondly, that mounting lights all over the exterior of the plane would really interfere with the aerodynamics in the plane. Where Brush trialed this system, the lights were actually inside the frame and then holes punched in the cloth exterior to let the light shine out. So they didn't really interfere with the aerodynamics in the same way they would if you affixed lights to the exterior of a fighter plane.
I'm thinking about when Gunpla is made with the transparent exterior plastic. So that you can see the frame. But imagine a plane made out of that see through plastic or see through, you know, some sort of material and then running like LEDs through it.
To address these problems, only forward facing lights were mounted, and only on the nose and the leading edges of the wings. The lights were also small with a beam radius of only 3 degrees, so it only worked if the aircraft's nose were pointed directly at the enemy, necessitating a curved approach if there was a crosswind. Even this abbreviated system was highly effective, though in trials in 1945, a counter illuminated avenger was not seen until 3,000 yards or 2.7 kilometers from its target, compared to 12 miles or 19 kilometers for an uncamouflaged aircraft. In spite of this, the system produced by the Yehudi Lights project never entered active service because, say it with me this time radar. I was surprised to learn that as stealth technology improved in the 1970s, there was a brief period of renewed interest in counterillumination, and it was tested by McDonnell Douglas with the F4 Phantom and by Lockheed Martin on a stealth aircraft prototype that went on to guide the development of the F117A stealth attack aircraft and the B2 stealth bomber. In both cases, the use of active camouflage was ultimately rejected. The sources didn't say why, but it seems likely that the passive methods in use were deemed sufficient, and that active methods added too much cost or complexity for too little benefit. The more science fiction and fantasy version of active camouflage is called illusory transparency. Think invisibility cloak. Also appearing in Ghost in the Shell, Star Trek, Halo, Predator, Deus Ex, and the James Bond movie Die Another Day. This is the kind of camouflage the Gundam Spiegel uses. The mobile fighter is not truly clear or transparent, but by some unexplained means is replicating the appearance of the terrain behind it on its front surface, creating the illusion of transparency. Though this is on a lag, when the Gundam Spiegel stands up, the image doesn't immediately transition to the upper part, looking like the sky. This portrayal is likely inspired by optical camouflage, a technology where cameras project images onto the exterior of an object in real time, causing the object to disappear into the surrounding environment. I actually find it pretty ironic that, as Tom pointed out, Spiegel means mirror, because in space, mirrored surfaces can be employed to reflect views of empty space toward known or suspected observers. This approach is compatible with several radar stealth systems. Careful control of the orientation of the satellite relative to the observer is essential, so I had imagined that the original was designed for Space combat and just covered in mirrors. And then they changed the tech, but didn't change the name. But as it happens, optical camouflage also involves special mirrors or reflective surfaces. So maybe they were just way ahead of their time, tech wise. There have been prototypes and demonstrations of versions of optical camouflage over the last 20, 25 years, but little practical use. All camouflage is harder to achieve and rendered less effective by movement, and optical camouflage is no exception, particularly when it comes to compensating for any distortions in the surface and the time it takes for the image to catch up with the camera feed. Optical camouflage is also highly dependent on the position of the viewer relative to the object, and becomes much more difficult when there are multiple viewers positioned. So the camouflage has to be convincing at multiple angles. As one source put it, active camouflage works best in one direction at a time, requiring knowledge of the relative positions of the observer and the concealed object. Still, research is ongoing and there have been some breakthroughs, including in our ability to project images onto irregularly shaped surfaces and to correct for distortion by the surface. For example, in 2003, researchers at the University of Tokyo demonstrated an optical camouflage system that used retroreflective material, a wearable coat, to allow a viewer to see through the coat and the person wearing it. I've seen photographs. The image the viewer sees is somewhat grainy and washed out, but the basic concept is there. The thing about this technology is that it was intended for augmented reality applications, though the viewer has to be wearing a special headset in order for it to work, because the position of the projector relative to the viewer has to be just right. In 2007, the UK Armed Forces claimed to have a working prototype of this kind of thing on a tank. At the time, they said the tech would be battlefield ready by 2012. In 2012, the Mercedes Benz company set up optical camouflage on one side of a single vehicle as a promotional stunt for the hydrogen fuel cell powered automobiles they were making. Didn't know they had those. Neither did I. The most recent info I could find put the total number in use in the whole world at less than 1,000. In 2014, physics professor John Howell and graduate student Joseph Choi created a small 3D cloaking device that used ordinary optical lenses to provide three dimensional, continuously multidirectional cloaking that could keep an object hidden as the viewer moves up to several degrees away from optimal viewing position. The military focus has frankly been more on infrared concealment, since so little combat happens in visual range. One example that came up used special panels to make a tank look like a civilian vehicle when viewed with infrared camera. Perhaps intended for defense against drones that have been programmed to identify the silhouettes of tanks and other military vehicles. And back in the realm of fantasy cloak of invisibility stuff, there are metamaterials. These are nanoengineered materials. Think scientists, carefully positioning individual molecules and atoms designed for specific unusual properties. For example, a metamaterial that would cause light to bend around an object. And since what human eyes see is light reflecting off of objects, this would make the object in question functionally invisible to the light waves and the human eye that perceives them. The object might as well not even be there. And if the light waves can be guided by the metamaterial around the object and back to their original course, the object wouldn't cast a shadow either.
Though, to be clear, these metamaterials do not exist, right? This is the sci fi.
Hang on. Metamaterials have been used to cloak an object from radar and electromagnetic waves, and it's theoretically possible to create one that would cloak it from light. But it would be an exceptionally complex undertaking since it has to cover the entire visible spectrum of light, and we don't currently have the technology to manufacture metamaterials at the scale necessary for consumer or military applications. Successful lab tests have been on the scale of micrometers, so they can do it. Very, very small Monofsky particles may force Gundam Combat into visual range. But even then, Optical Camouflage seems more suited to infiltration and assassination than to battles involving hundreds of units. And despite the hype, it seems as though Even in the 90s, it was clear that Optical Camouflage's best use cases were on a more personal scale rather than a warfare one? And what is G Gundam if not a thought experiment? In what if instead of whole armies fighting, each country put their entire military budget into one ridiculously souped up fighting machine and picked a single guy to pilot it? Next week on MSB, episode 11.17, the fight and the Furious Tokyo Adrift we'll research and discuss. G Gundam Episode 17 and the Wind Rises Professor Asia's Strategy 101 it has been zero days since Domon rushed into an obvious trap. Smoke bomb Red for absolute filth. I am teased with the pasa del of a wilderness training montage. Cute little bunny ears. Two roads diverged in a canyon. This is Domon. I have trained him wrong on purpose as a joke. And your tactics and strategy are no match for my power. Flipping out.
Ready.
Go.
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 Dayaksun, the closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, and the recap music is window by 1000 hands. 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 you can get in touch with us by email@hostsundompodcast.com if you'd like to support the show, please tell your friends about us. Leave us a nice review. Wherever you listen to podcasts or if you'd like to support us financially, you can do so@gundampodcast.com Patreon or look for other ways to support the show@gundampodcast.com support most of all, thank you for listening. Are you ready to come down to Neo New York and throw hands over your Gundam opinions? No. You lack conviction. Or maybe you just haven't heard enough opinion worth fighting over yet. So how about this one from Turlock? G Gundam gets a lot of flack for its portrayal of national stereotypes, but not enough praise for highlighting key cultural identities such as Canada being the long Canada arm of the law when it comes to space criminals or Germany's rich and deep ninjutsu tradition. Thank you G Gundam, for honoring our heritage.
I can't get over how the Telemundo guys say Robinson.
It just reminds me of the guys from what we do in the Shadows talking about Colin Robinson.
Anyway, I ruined it. I'm sorry.
That's okay. That is okay. It's not okay, but I want to reassure. I don't want to ruin the vibes. I don't think it's spoilers to say what words mean.
If we are somewhat less cogent than usual, it's because we're having some growing pains with Mersey. She has been waking us up at various times of the night for food, play, comfort. We're not entirely sure she always has food water in her litter box available, but sometimes she wants different food. Fresh food? Unclear. Anyway, we haven't slept great the past couple nights.
If you're not on our Patreon, in our Patreon Discord, or following us on social media, Merzy is the cat we adopted a few months ago.
Yesterday was her three month anniversary with us.
She's a former street cat and we're still getting used to all of her ways.
Sa.