This is Mobile Suit Breakdown, a podcast about japanese Sci-Fi mega franchise mobile suit Gundam for new fans, old fans, and not yet fans, where we watch, analyze, and review all 40 years of the iconic anime in the order it was made. We research its influences, examine its themes, and discuss how each piece of the Gundam canon fits within the changing context in Japan and the world from 1979 to today. Om this is episode Zero Zero Gundam rises, and we're your hosts. I'm Tom, lifelong giant robot enthusiast, and.
I'm Nina, anime fan. But Mecca anime skeptic.
Next year, on April 7, 2019, Mecca anime granddaddy Mobile Suit Gundam will celebrate its 40th anniversary. In all that time, Gundam has remained a show dominated by its own contradictions. It is a show about war heroes that never shies away from forcing the audience to confront the horrors of what they do. It's a kids show about child soldiers and the long scars of childhood trauma. It's a toy commercial about the dangers of corporate power and the terrible costs of corporate greed. It's an environmentalist show about the ways humans abuse the earth that exists, literally because it sells plastic model kits by the hundreds of millions. It's a show about becoming stuck in an accelerating cycle of violence for what seemed like good reasons at the time, made by a team of creators who wanted to make something new and experimental and then became trapped by their own success in an endless cycle of sequels. But from its humble origins to massive success through periods of stagnation and reinvention in the 1990s, new directions, increasing commercialism, and a lot of waifus in the return to the franchise's roots with fresh eyes in the 2010s, Gundam has always tried to thread that needle.
Before we move on, I think you should explain what a Waifu is.
A Waifu is a cute anime girl included in a show as bait to attract young male viewers who lack a mature adult's sophisticated appreciation of giant robots.
Close enough. After nearly four decades of practically nonstop creative output, governed as much by the demands of the toy maker's business cycle as the artistic impulses of its auteur creator and his successors, there is an astonishing amount of Gundam out there. In fact, that's practically the only thing I knew about Gundam before we started this project. It may not all be good.
Trust me, it's not.
But it's a series that started because the creators wanted to make something that was bigger and deeper than just another good versus evil super robot power fantasy. They made a weird, different little show, and then somehow they kept making it over and over while the whole world changed as their world evolved, as the creators evolved and changed, so did Gundam.
Gundam has not always been good, but it has always been relevant, always been thought provoking, and always had more going on under the surface than you might think. Especially if your only Gundam experience was an episode or two from one of the alternate universe shows that made it to Cartoon Network in the early and mid 2000s, or some out of context screaming protagonist in name a Gundam. But there's so much of it that newcomers can be intimidated, and even true mecha files can get overwhelmed. So we are going to watch it, all of it, in the order that it was made, and will guide you through the lore, the context, and the deeper meaning from the perspectives of a longtime Gundam fan that's me. And a newcomer to the series. That's me.
We're two nerdy Sci-Fi and anime lovers who have been japanophiles since people like us were still called japanophiles instead of weeaboos. My earliest memories of anime are of watching Sailor Moon before school, when I was maybe eight or nine when my family moved to Southeast Asia. I suddenly had access to more anime than ever before and started watching shows like Ranmahath and Kaikano and the studio Ghibli films. I loved the art and complex interpersonal relationships, which is my fancy way of saying I loved the drama, but never really saw the appeal of mecha anime like Gundam. That is, until Tom got me to watch his all time favorite vision of Escaflone. And I realized that shows featuring giant robots weren't just about shiny tech or never ending battles. They could have romance, personal drama, and interesting things to say about humanity and society. Not to mention, I found I actually enjoyed the action sequences.
I grew up without cable, so I never had that formative Gundam wing on Cartoon Network experience. A lot of fans from my generation remember my first taste of Gundam was a trailer for Stardust memory on a vhs copy of the first three episodes of the Fox Kids version of Escaflowne. At that point, I had never even heard of Gundam before. I had no idea what was going on, and it still blew my mind. At 14 or so, I found a friend with a copy of the Gundam wing Ova endless Waltz and devoured it years before I was able to watch Wing itself, which ended up being pretty disappointing by comparison. At one point in college, I got a subscription to Blockbuster's dvd delivery service because that was a real thing that really happened for a hot second, and I used it to tear through whatever Gundam I could find in their catalog. Double Zero came out when I was still in college, only a few years after the US invasion of Iraq. And watching that show's depictions of terrorists who might also be called freedom fighters, and their use of preemptive strikes to destroy a country's ability to wage war, and the ethics of that question, I realized for the first time that this fun, giant robot power fantasy I'd been watching for years was actually trying to talk about something real. That was when I started to wonder about the older series. Had those been about things as well? It was hard to believe, but once I started looking, I realized that the nearly 40 years of Gundam were like a time capsule of postwar japanese thought through the lens of the imagined future. And I found myself wondering about this strange coincidence or that OD name. And there had to be more under the surface that I wasn't getting. But I could only get so far on my own.
When I met Tom, the very first thing we did was talk about X Men comics. And the second thing we did was watch the pilot episode of Firefly. Ever since then, whenever we experience art, music, films, paintings, anime, we can't help ourselves wondering who made this and who were they really? What was happening in the world, and what was happening in their world that inspired them to create this piece of art?
Nina was the perfect person to help me examine the entire Gundam canon. You know, by the time we finish this project, you won't be able to call yourself a Gundam noob anymore.
That gives me a good six years to think of a new tagline. I think I'll be all right. We're going to talk about the stories, the themes, and the historical context in Japan and the world. When each series or movie was made, we'll compare different translations, dig into the art, the science, and the politics behind the personal dramas going on in the center frame. We'll talk about influences and references, and.
Along the way, we'll muse about whether they should have stuck with the original title Gunboy, try to figure out why the franchise's most famous antagonist is named for a french armenian crooner, and cringe when he changes his name to fourth vagina.
Hopefully we can make this sprawling, complex universe a little more accessible to new fans like myself, and maybe prompt some fetty fanboys or Zeke diehards. I confess, I don't know what those are yet to think about their favorite show in a new way.
But no, we're not going to watch G savior. Live action doesn't count. Don't at me.
That brings up a good question. We keep saying we're going to watch all of Gundam, but what does that actually mean?
I've thought about this a lot, and I've come up with some basic ground rules for deciding what we watch. First, we're going to watch all of the Gundam anime.
Is there a lot of other Gundam media? Manga? Light novels?
Oh, tons.
And I've seen your Gundam video games.
You have seen some of my Gundam video games.
Is none of it canonical? Does none of it add meaningfully to the anime?
Gundam Canon is weird and flexible. We'll definitely talk about those other things sometimes when they help us to add depth to what we're talking about and what we're seeing in the anime, but there's just too much. It's only marginally relevant to the franchise as a whole. It's often hard to tell how canonical any of it is, and most of it is just not that interesting. I'm sorry if any of our listeners are diehard, Midnight, Fenrir Korps, or death kind of people, but come on. All right, second rule. We're going to watch in the order the shows were released, but we're not going to interrupt a series. This issue mostly comes up with the sporadically released movies and direct to video series that overlap the mainline televised shows. 8th MS team, for example, ran from 96 to 99 and overlapped Gundam's Wing and X in 96, endless Waltz in 97 and 98, and turn a Gundam in 99. So when this happens, we will watch in order based on original release date of the first episode. That means Wing first episode April 7, 1995, then 8th MS team first episode January 25, 1996 before X first episode April 5, 1996.
We really want to understand these shows by looking at them in the context of the time when they were made and in context with the other Gundam shows that were made previously. Watching in release order based on the first episode is the best way to do that. Some things about a show are necessarily going to change toward the end of a long development cycle, but most of the important creative decisions, the story, the themes, the art, the characters, that all gets decided at the start of production. They can change until the first episode gets released, but from that point on, they are mostly locked in.
Third rule, compilation movies are usually treated as part of their underlying series.
What is a compilation movie?
One of the hallmarks of the Gundam franchise is that after a show has ended, the creators will often recut or reanimate the series into one or more very abridged movie length compilation movies. This started with the original Mobile Suit Gundam series the three compilation movies were better animated and way more popular than the show, and they basically saved the franchise. We'll talk more about that in a minute. Ever since then, compilation movies have proved to be a great way to squeeze a little more life and a little more profit out of an already completed project, or to correct perceived mistakes from the first go round. Mostly, this won't cause our project any issues, because the compilation movies almost always came out within a year of their show.
And by mostly and almost you mean.
So for a bunch of fascinating reasons that we will talk absolutely to death when we get there. Zeta Gundam, which finished in early 1986, got the compilation movie treatment a whopping 20 years later. Not only that, but the new Zeta movies made major changes to the story that may have rendered the entire 47 episode sequel series Double Zeta non canonical. So we are going to treat the Zeta trilogy of movies, called a new translation, as a separate series, and watch it when we get to the mid two thousand s. The fandom has a.
Lot of opinions about which parts of Gundam are worth watching and which are better ignored. Are we going to exercise any sort of critical judgment about what series are not good enough or popular enough to be worth watching?
No. And that brings me to rule number four, the good, the bad, and the bizarre. We're going to watch the questionable stuff that includes pro wrestling, G Gundam, Tonal Whiplash, Double Z, baffling awakening of the Trailblazer, the somehow even more transparently commercial than usual build series, and all 100 torturous, forgettable episodes of Seed. We'll also cleanse our palettes with the weird parody stuff like Estigundum and Gundam san. Finally, rule number five if we can't find it, we can't watch it. We'll post our tentative watch list on the website www.gundampodcast.com and update it as we progress through the backlog. I was going to run through the whole list here, but it's more than 75 different shows, movies, and shorts right now, and no one wants to listen to me reading names for ten minutes.
How much content are we talking about?
By my count, as of this writing, we're looking at just over 1000 episodes, movies, or shorts, with a total estimated runtime somewhere over 400 hours.
So my six year estimate for this project was highly optimistic.
Next podcast we start with the very first episode of the very first series, mobile suit Gundam. It is deeply meaningful, layered with references, and establishes the basic tropes that are going to be copied, played with, subverted, inverted, and consciously avoided in every Gundam property up to today, it's going to be fun. It's going to be grim. Plus, special bonus. One very sneaky pun. But before that, let's take a moment to talk about how the whole epic thousand plus episode franchise got started. Because it almost never happened when Kido Senshi Gandamu, aka mobile suit Gundam, Gundam First Gundam, original Gundam, and Gundam 79 initially aired on Nagoya Broadcasting Network in 1979, it got ratings ranging from disappointing to terrible. And Gundam looked like it was destined for premature cancellation. And an ignominious spot on some Buzfeed list of 100 1970s anime you've never heard of. The thing is, it was like nothing audiences had seen before. There were giant robots. Sure, that was usual. And the protagonist was a teenage boy. Okay, this looks like another one of those kids shows, like the projects that series creator Tomino Yoshiuki had worked on before, and presumably what the toy companies sponsoring the show were expecting. But wait, that looks an awful lot like a murky, ambiguous morality with no clear villains. And now it's becoming a harsh condemnation of japanese imperial militarism. And an awful lot of innocent people keep getting caught in the crossfire between two characters who are both fighting for what sound like good reasons. Okay, so it's definitely for adults, right? But I mean, are cartoons even for adults? And now the main robot is linking up with a special fighter plane so that it can transform into a flying truck covered in guns and shields. And that's definitely available at the local toy store for the equivalent of a few bucks. And as of this writing, one of those is available on eBay for I swear this is true, $2,000. So audiences were confused, the ratings stayed bad, and that prediction about the Buzzfeed list turned out about half true when the series got slated for cancellation after the 39th episode out of an originally planned 52, sunrise, the studio behind the project, negotiated a one month stay of execution to finish the story as best they could. But the acts finally came down on January 26, 1980, putting the unpopular and confusing series out of its misery once and for all after 43 episodes. And that was very nearly the end of that.
But Gundam was popular in one very important respect. Gundam's main sponsor during its first television run was Toy maker Clover, famous at this point for their line of metal diecast models based on other mecha anime. These toys were selling fine. And that may be why Sunrise was able to convince their partners to pay for those four final episodes in January. But after the show was cancelled, Bandai licensed the rights to make cheaper, more accurate plastic models that appealed to teen and adult fans, these flew off the shelves, and in the opposite of the way this is supposed to work. The popularity of the Gundam model kits jumpstarted interest in the show, and over the next two years, Sunrise would recut the show into three compilation movies released in theaters to massive popularity. By 1985, the direct sequel Zeta Gundam was on tv, followed by double Zeta in 1986 and Char's counterattack in 1988. Gundam, which had never really arrived in the first place, was now back, and it would never go away after that. Literally never. The last year without new episodes or movies was 1984. By the time we're caught up, there will probably be another hundred episodes waiting for us. We are Sisyphus and Gundam is our boulder. Next week we'll be back with episode 1.1, to live and die in space for the first appearances of Amaro, Ray, Char, Asnable, bright Noah, salemass, Frabo, and all your other faves. Plus dead authors, intense jazz, space nazis in prussian cosplay, a principality without a prince, tight pants, weird names, and the mistakes we make because of our youth. Will you be able to survive?
Make sure you do all the podcast things like subscribe, share, and pledge your undying devotion to mobile suit breakdown on fine podcast services everywhere and on YouTube. Follow us on Twitter at Gundam podcast. Check out our website, gundampodcast.com for episodes, show notes, and more, and you can email your questions, comments, and complaints to gundampodcast@gmail.com. Or come shout your wrong Gundam Opinions to us directly by coming to scenic New York City and yelling that hey, see, destiny is actually good. You guys on any busy street corner, we'll totally hear you. The intro song is Wasp by Misha Dioxin. The closing music is long way home by spinning ratio. You can find links and more in the show notes, and thank you for listening. I'm Tom Giant, robot enthusiast, environmentalist, anti.
You can just do that section over done.
New directions and a lot of waifus.
In the some point you might have to explain what wifus are they know what waifus are.
You know what waifus are? Blockbusters dvd delivery service.
One. You sounded like you were trying to seduce the audience there for a minute.
Maybe I should seduce the audience. How are we to get the fans.
One sentence? Good God, it's a list. You're a monster.
Episode Zero Zero Gundam rises aka Podcast v. I'm pulling that. Actually.
I think it's too much of a deep cut. Yeah, nobody's going to know what that means.
Yeah. Pulling project v. Start over. Starting.