You're listening to season 10 of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of sci fi mega franchise Mobile suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
This is episode 10.49 in Hoch Signo Winkes and we are your hosts. I'm Tom, a lifelong Gundam fan.
And I'm Nina. Almost done with Victory Gundam and it doesn't come across in the talkback because by then I had had time to process. But my initial reaction to that scene, you know the one involved all the surprised exclamations, confused laughter and outraged interjections you could hope for.
I was there and I can confirm it.
Mobile Zoo Breakdown is made possible by our marvelous and magnanimous paying subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons, Cantilg and Condition Boy. You keep us Genki as longtime listeners know, we usually do a Q and A episode as part of our end of season wrap up and the time has come for you dear listeners to send us your questions.
If you yearn for A's, you must give us Q's.
These can be about the show itself, our thoughts and opinions on different aspects of it, our process, anything that relates to Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, the anime, and to this season of Mobile Suit Breakdown. We will collect our favorites and answer them in one of the remaining episodes of the season. Submitting your questions is easy. Email them to us@gundampodcastmail.com with the subject line Victory Q&A by 11pm New York time Friday, May 9th.
This week, Victory episode 49 Tenshi no wa no uede aka Atop the Angel's Halo. The episode was written by Okeya Akira and storyboarded by Nishimori Akira. It was directed by longtime Tomino collaborator Sekita Osamu, making his final contribution to Victory. He won't return to Gundam until the 2000s, but in the meantime he'll take charge of the Japanese branch of the Transformers franchise, serving as series director on Beast Wars 2, Beast Wars, Nioh and Robots In Disguise. Animation director Nishimura Nobuyoshi of Studio Dove is also leaving the project after this, but he'll be back in no time at all to work on G Gundam. Now the recap.
Laser focused on finding Shaak Ti USO cuts a swath through the Zanskar mobile suits, stopping only briefly when the Shrike team bring him the new V2 assault parts. @ the same time, Katagina has launched in a new mobile suit and is single mindedly focused on finding and destroying uso, her senses now honed by space combat experience Katajina isn't fooled when USO uses the afterimage of the Victory's Wings to create a feint. But even after she finds him, he manages to break away, shoot down yet another ship, and fly right through an Imperial Guard unit. Katajina takes charge of that unit, concentrating their defense around the entrance to Angel Halo. And in the subsequent exchange of fire, one Defender's shot hits a ring in the massive psychic weapon. The explosion and depressurization scatter the bodies of dozens hundreds of psychickers, civilians of all ages whose minds power the Angel Halo. Horrified, USO warns his comrades not to attack the rings directly. Yuuka, wracked with survivor's guilt and inspired by Marvit's pregnancy to protect the next generation no matter the cost, makes a suicide run at Katajina, creating an opening for USO to get inside Angel Halo itself. Meanwhile, Marbet brings the White Ark closer to secure USO's way out, and Odello and Tomash go looking for him to provide more direct support. Inside the key room, Shakti continues to pray for peace, but she can feel that something is off wrong, and her head aches. Having failed to keep USO out of Angel Halo, Katajina manages to get convince the Imperial Guards to go along with her latest harebrained scheme. They will abandon their mobile suits and attack the white mobile suits while nearly naked. And the sight of their beautiful bodies and outrageous bikinis will so overwhelm the enemy pilots that the guards will be able to defeat them. Armed only with bazookas. Uso is shocked at the sight. He wonders if they are taunting him, making fun of him, or if Angel Halo is coming, causing him to hallucinate again. But in the end, the bazookas do no lasting damage, and the Zanskar soldiers are easily defeated. Headbutted, swatted away with a wave of the Victory's hand, or burnt up completely with the wave of a Beam Saber, a gun Easy drifts unpowered into the passageway, where a still confused USO wonders if Junko or Mahalia is in it. Once it is close enough for USO to touch its chest with the Victory's hand, it powers up, forcing USO to scramble back with a swing of its own beam saber. Katajina. Even as USO outfights her and the Victory pins the gun Easy to a wall, Katajina taunts him, daring him to try to kill her, remembering the many times he couldn't bring himself to do so. But USO is perhaps finally free of his illusions about Katajina and about his feelings for her pain in his voice, he cries out, driving his beam saber into the gun. Easy cockpit. Katajino only narrowly escapes. The halls and passageways of the Angel Halo become too small for mobile suits. USO leaves the V2 behind to continue searching for Shakti. At the very door of the key room, he runs into Fonz Cagati and confronts the Zanskar official about the horror of his plans. But there is no changing Cagaty's mind, and while USO is distracted arguing with him, a guard grabs him from behind. It is only with Haru's help and with the timely arrival of Odello and Tomas that USO is able to get free and finally rescue Shaak Ti. Once they are back in their mobile suits and back out in space, they discuss what to do about Angel Halo. Odello thinks they should destroy it, psychic Urs or no, while USO thinks they can disconnect the rings and pilot them individually away from Earth. But it's too late for either plan. Angel Halo is already entering Earth's atmosphere, radiating a sound that is not sound. The horrible, eerie moaning of the psychic Urs. Shaakti, unconscious since they found her, wakes screaming in the cockpit of the V2 before fainting again. The White Ark and its mobile suits follow Angel Halo down to Earth, landing on the ocean in a fiery sunset. Shakti wakes surrounded by friends, but is somehow still connected, still resonating with the hearts of the trapped psychickers. So what do you feel like are your topics for this episode?
I only have two big topics. The first one is women. Women? Why women? And this is Katajina and the Nenaka team for the most part. And then a little bit about Marbette and Yuka and Connie and the Shrikes and all of that.
Can I just say, the minute I saw that line on the screen, that subtitle, I heard it in the Indiana Jones voice. Like snakes. Why did it have to be snakes? Why women? Why women?
Is Haro a misogynist? Is Haro complaining? Like why are there so many women in my Gundam story? And then the other one is Old man yells at crowd Fonz Kagetty and overpopulation. Mmm, yeah, overpopulation. As the persistent constant bugbear of Gundam villains. This nebulous boogeyman that they're all shaking their fists at. From Giren to Fonz Kagetty.
I initially found Marbette's behavior in episode this slightly confusing, mainly because she seems to take USO and Odello's comments about how she shouldn't be on the front line kind of to heart, but she already knew that USO had those concerns before she came out here in the first place. And I grant you, having your fetus tell you it's frightened might change a person's mind.
Yeah, I thought that was the turning point for Marbette, not the stuff that USO and Odello said.
Odello's comments talking about, make sure we have a place to come back to feeling very much like wartime propaganda about how women have to hold down the home front while the men are away.
Right.
But then to have Marbett come charging in with the White Ark at the end to make sure that USO has an avenue of retreat, probably not what USO and Odello were thinking when they were like, go back and keep the White Ark safe. And feels much more in keeping with the kind of person Marbet has been up until now.
Yeah, that was a nice touch.
As well as her comments about, you know, she's sort of sanguine about this. She's like, our luck will hold and we'll live or it won't and we'll be dead and it won't matter anymore.
Right.
It's a very soldierly way of looking at the situation, you know.
Very shortly after we get this sequence of all of the Shrikes and Marbet guarding USO as they change out the equipment for the V2, there's another cut to Katagina attacking. I think it's the Jeanne d' Arc, but it's some cruiser from the League Militaire Federation Combined Fleet. And there's a group of three Javelins who have all put their shields together in order to be able to block this really powerful beam weapon she's shooting. And it's just a nice little visual metaphor for the way, like, groups of people are coming together to protect their friend, their vulnerable ally, or. Or their mothership. Their place to go home to.
Total sidebar. But I cannot believe they really only just introduced the Buster parts, which felt like a shameless toy commercial.
Anyway, like, now available at your local toys are Bokutachi.
And now they are already being replaced with the assault parts. It's as if somebody was watching this show and went, oh, hey, wait, we're supposed to be selling toys.
Quick, guys, we've only got a couple of episodes left. Get the product out there.
As well as USO's comment. I think it's when Haro mentions that the Shrikes are late or, like, right when they arrive, where he's like, they're Reliable friends who always have my back. It was extremely turns to camera collect them all.
Even with the V2 with assault parts, USO can't do it alone. Make sure to buy the Shrike team gun easies as well or V1s with bunny ears etc. The whole marbette pregnancy, you need to retreat from the front lines. Three thing is especially interesting in light of the recent episodes which have pointed out that Marbette's pregnancy has actually given her improved battlefield combat abilities, that Marbette's pregnancy controls the battlefield. And it's not as though, as happened in Zeta and Double Zeta, we're looking at two different writers trading the scripts back and forth and bringing their own different biases and ideas to each episode. This has all been written by the same guy, so. So we really do have to read this in light of those prior statements. So I think on the one hand, USO and Odello, as well as Yuuka and Connie and everybody else on the league militaire side, has a laudable desire to protect Marbette, to protect the child, to protect the next generation. If you take it, if you abstract it, if you view it as metaphor, Marbette's child is not just a vulnerable fetus. Marbat is not just a vulnerable, pregnant, expecting mother. She is the hope of the future. And of course they all have to protect her. They all have to put their bodies on the line to defend the hope for the future. But the show is good enough and respects Marbat enough to, yes, have her retreat, but still have her participate, still have her be a warrior as she has always been.
She's still fulfilling that sort of motherly, emotional need for USO when she's spoiling him and cuddling him and letting him also feel that he is part of the group that gets to protect and safeguard the next generation.
Right? That moment where she has him put his hand on her womb and feel the pulse of the child to be, that's such an intimate moment, the kind of thing that really only feels appropriate with a family member.
And what you were saying about kind of abstracting Marbet's pregnancy outward, that really comes to a head with Yuka on her suicide run. And I wrote down the line in Japanese so I could really pick it apart afterwards. And there's kind of two different reads possible, I think, on the line, one of which feels a bit more positive and one of which feels a bit darker. If I were going to be very literal in how I would translate it, it would be something like Marbet is bearing our child for us. And one way of interpreting that is that sense of children are not simply the responsibility of their parents. They're the responsibility of the wider society. That this child is really all of our child to care for and protect and look after, not just the father who has already died and the mother who is still fighting all of us. The slightly darker read being that when women have children, they are like giving a gift to society. They are doing something for the good of everyone else.
And downstream from that is the idea that the woman's body is not her own once she embarks on the journey of motherhood, because the child doesn't entirely belong to her, then neither does her life, neither does her body.
And given everything that we have seen in Victory so far, victory takes both of those positions. I think the positive, you know, the next generation is all of our responsibility. And the slightly creepy women are doing good for society when they give birth to children. Like it is good for humanity. It is a gift to all the rest of us when women bear children.
I will say, I don't think USO and Odello's protective instincts come from that same place. Both of them especially view themselves as Oliver's successors. They have inherited Oliver's mobile suit parts. He trained them. He mentored them. They have inherited Oliver's duties as a man. And one of those duties is protecting Marbette and protecting Oliver's child.
Mm. And there is a bit of a schism between the two of them in that Odello, even after learning that the angel halo is full of civilians, still thinks they should just destroy the angel halo.
Mhm. Odello has always been a little bit more bloodthirsty. Odello has always had a greater tolerance for sacrifices and collateral damage in order to win the war. Maybe largely because, unlike uso, Odello is nowhere close to the level of superhuman skill that is necessary to be able to fight the way USO does. There's also a schism between Yuuka and Connie when they're talking about Marbette's baby. A schism that I think reflects those two different ways of thinking about what it means for a woman to carry a child. That for Yuka, it is a sacred thing, a holy thing, giving a gift to the world. And Connie's like, nah, I just want to see what the kid looks like. I just want to see if the kid resembles Marbet and Oliver. I personally, for my own pleasure, want that kid to grow up, and I want to be there to see it happen.
Well, which may be why Yuuka is the one to sacrifice herself. Yuuka is the one who gives us naked space ghost.
And Yuuka has kind of been coming apart at the seams for a little while now. The pressures of everything, maybe even the psychic influence of the angel halo. But she's been dwelling on this, this survivor's guilt that she has.
She has been. She has brought up multiple times that it feels like failure to have outlived all of the rest of her squad, to have outlived these other people. The vibe I get is almost like if a captain doesn't go down with his ship, like there is something ignominious, there is something dishonorable in having outlived all of these other people.
Well, and when she says, I don't want people to think I'm the Grim Reaper or to call me the Grim Reaper because I survived and everyone else in my squad died, there's a sense that she worries that she is the reason they're dead, that she is cursed, that being around her is dangerous for people.
In a way, it's a mirror image of Farah and Tassilo, both of whom have sort of overlived their lives, overstayed their time on Earth by surviving these experiences that were meant to kill them, by surviving these near death experiences. And because they are on borrowed time, it affects them mentally, psychologically.
Hey, that's a great transition to USO's argument with Kageti, but before we go there, let me just point out that, yes, people who have seen future Gundam, I know what you're thinking about. The Grim Reaper who survived the death of their squad. Yeah, we'll talk about that eventually.
That's so rude talking about that in front of me.
The spoilers which controlled so much of the podcast were something that Nina's knew nothing about.
At least you hope I know nothing about.
Anyway, on the subject of dying at your appointed time, USO and Kageti have a classic Gundam protagonist versus arch villain conversation wherein Kageti makes the by now extremely predictable Gundam villain complaint that the world is overpopulated. There are simply too many people. There are so many people that they have lost touch with the natural ways of living. And the only solution to all of this is to kill everyone. To which USO says, no, you weird old freak. But in the course of this, USO drops one of Victory's most memed lines, which is parents should die after they give birth. And one watching this show, seeing that line might think about USO's personal experience and be like, oh yeah, it does seem like Parents just have a kid and then disappear or die on you. But that's not really what he's saying.
I mean, I would have translated it more as parents bear children and then die. I don't think it's meant to be exhaustive, but the implication is of a sort of natural progression that living creatures reproduce and then sometime after pass away, and that their offspring surpass them, and that that is what is supposed to happen.
Like I've been talking about in recent episodes, a cycle of life in which people go through these different stages, eventually reaching natural death, live a good life and then die. But Cagaty seems to think that this natural progression has been lost. What exactly he means by that, I would love to know. I would love to know how life in the universal century today has deviated from what he views as the proper ordering of things.
My interpretation was not that he disagrees with USO in the essentials, like yes, that is naturally how things would go, but that the overpopulation of humanity has reached such a critical point that they can no longer rely on those natural processes to maintain like a healthy population or healthy environment. That he does not say this explicitly in the conversation, but given other things Cagati has said, the implication is that the violence of humanity, that the warring between peoples, he believes it to be brought on by overpopulation, which is another big part of a lot of overpopulation theories. That basically as you get more people, there's more contention over resources and that that leads to violence and warfare.
I just don't think at any point during this show we've seen anything that looks like overpopulation.
Oh, I agree completely.
I don't know if that's an unintentional weakness of the show or intended to show that Kagaty doesn't know what he's talking about, that he is, as USO describes him, just an armchair theorist, a pompous, out of touch old intellectual who doesn't know what life is really like out there. And his perceptions have become so warped by his neuroses that he thinks genocide is an appropriate solution to the imagined problems of the universal century.
In an odd way, Kagaji seems like a true believer in that. Consider his behavior in this episode. He has completely, for a couple of episodes now ignored the battle going on around him. All of his eggs are in the Land angel halo on Earth basket. He shows no sign of caring whether they win this battle. And he must believe that as long as they land angel halo on Earth, they will achieve their objectives regardless of Their losses in this battle with the militaire.
Well, it's a bit like Shar trying to drop an asteroid on Earth or Gato trying to nuke the fleet. As long as the warhead gets through, then the mission has been accomplished. I would like to propose a rule that no one who lives in what can unironically be described as a palace should ever be allowed to use the word overpopulation.
I like it. We might have some enforcement difficulties.
It's notoriously difficult to enforce rules against people who live in palaces. Real flaw in the system, that one. During this conversation, USO uses a term to describe Kagati. He calls him Atama Dekachi. Like big headed. An armchair theorist. Someone who's so wrapped up in philosophy that they have completely lost touch with reality. Credit where credit is due. Nino very hopefully translated this exchange for us, which is why I know that that's the term he uses. But that rung in my head, it rang bells like Far Griffin. And I realized why. It's because all the way back in, like episode five, Esther Chaveri, the token woman in the Old Man Polycule, who I assume is just really into Old Man Yaoi. Complete Fujoshi. It's why she joined the League Militaire. She's fighting for her right to ship them. That's what she calls Katajina.
Mmm. Yeah.
And in this episode, I think the whole thing with the Nenneka team with Katajina basically requisitioning this unit of Imperial Guards and then ordering or convincing them to go attack USO with bikinis and recoilless rifles. I think that is a intentional demonstration of how Katagina's Atama Dekachi.
Katagina's very theoretical way of looking at the world.
Yes. Her armchair psychology impression of USO is completely wrong and gets a bunch of people killed for no purpose. Because she is convinced, based on what she remembers of uso, a kid she never really understood, but thought she did. She is convinced that sending out scantily dressed babes to attack him will so ensorcel his mind, so entrance him that he'll become easy prey. And she's completely wrong.
Like every other woman villain on the Zanskar side, Katajina has developed an obsessive fixation with uso. Finding him on the battlefield is all she cares about.
What a change from her attitude at the beginning of the series when she couldn't care less about him.
And where the heck is Chronicle? What is he doing right now? I noticed that Katajina is in a new mobile suit. And the backpack on this mobile suit looks an awful lot like butterfly wing.
Hmm.
Which would imply a metamorphosis completed. Or imply that she is now fully an adult. Something along those lines.
And makes a sharp contrast to the feathered angel wings of the V2.
On the one hand, we see that she has this new type sense now. She's not distracted by the afterimages in the way that USO might have liked. She's like, oh, I know that light's not you. I can follow my sense of you instead of my eyes.
If anything, she has been entranced by him.
But as you say, she's totally wrong about uso. But her whole plan really betrays like a lot of really horrible attitudes towards women and men. Because it takes a bunch of soldiers, a bunch of women who are mobile suit pilots, and says, actually, your greatest weapon is being sexy, right? Is your physical body.
And these are elite mobile suit pilots. These are the Imperial Guard.
And that she thinks a bunch of, at this point, veteran mobile suit pilots, just because they're youngish men, you know, teens are going to be so completely, you know, wolf whistle, eyes sticking out of their heads, tongue lolling out, that they will be defeated by this. In my opinion, anyone would be distracted by a bunch of women in bikinis on a battlefield trying to attack your big armored mobile suit.
Even Haro, noted misogynist, is confused and distracted. But yeah, Katajina gets into her head that USO will be vulnerable to the charms of these women, and convinces herself of this terrible idea in the face of a mountain of evidence to the contrary, and then gets these seven women killed for nothing.
Yeah, Kata has always treated other people's lives very cheaply. That is a through line of her character. Even as she has completed whatever metamorphosis she's completed, she takes a. A similarly blase attitude towards other people being alive. I do not understand why she like pulls open her normal suit while she's talking to Neneka. Unless it's just supposed to be her kind of like drawing attention to her breasts. Well, like she sort of pulls it off of her shoulders and so it's not covering her chest anymore, but she's still wearing a turtleneck underneath. It's weird.
Well, she's. She's talking to Ninika about what she is asking this team to do, which is to put their physical bodies on the line to expose themselves for the sake of the Empire. And she does this just to demonstrate it's a part of the rhetorical gesture of making her point she is also exposing her chest, but not really, because in the show she's not really exposing herself in the way that she's asking them to expose themselves. She pulls off her normal suit, but there's still this turtleneck on underneath it.
She also continues to be hilariously hypocritical, going from at the beginning of the episode calling USO a pompous, self righteous little child to, during this fight, a child who lacks conviction disgusts me. It sounds like maybe just children disgust her.
Well, and when USO actually tries to stab her with the beam saber after she has like taunted him, oh, why don't you come over here and kill me? When he actually does it, her expression changes completely, her voice changes. She is like, oh, I was not expecting this. And in a way, the spell that's been cast over her seems to break for that one moment.
Well, she initially seems disappointed that the vibe I got was a little bit like a woman who constantly plays hard to get or treats men who are interested in her really badly, and somehow they still go chasing after her. But then when they finally stop chasing after her, she's like, oh, wait, no, exactly, exactly. But then she begins to laugh. She also calls him Boya, which is the thing that basically every adult woman in this show calls him at one point or another. But I don't think Katajina has ever called him that before.
I don't think so.
And from the Shrikes, it's affectionate. From the Zanskar women, it's creepy or menacing, but yeah. And she doesn't know this. But what was really heartbreaking to me here. Well, two parts. The first part is that when he starts seeing all the bikini women, USO wonders if he's hallucinating again because of Angel Halo. And then when he sees the gun, easy sort of float down the hall towards him, he thinks Junko or Mahalia must be in it, which they're both dead and they both died far, far away from here. So he has briefly lost touch with reality here.
Though in doing so, he makes explicit to the audience something really important about the Neneka team encounter, which is that they are a Zanskar mirror of the Shrike team. And USO cutting his way through them, killing them left and right, is a reflection of the way the Shrikes died earlier in the show.
Although it's a difficult scene from an animation perspective, because unless they were willing to go very gory, it is difficult to have a mobile suit attack a person in a way that doesn't seem funny. And silly.
Yes. And they didn't quite manage to walk that tightrope.
No. There's a pain noise from one of the women that sounds like nothing so much as. I don't know how many of you have seen the movie the Witches, but when the witches are, like, dying towards the end of it, or being turned into mice and rats and they're, like, shrieking horribly, I don't know, I can't mimic it. But one of the Nenneke team makes a frankly very silly sounding noise when she gets swatted away.
There are moments that capture the horror that I think is intended. When Nenneka herself gets disintegrated by the beam saber, when one of the unnamed women gets, like, headbutted by the V2 and her body just ragdolls. Those are truly horrifying moments. But for the most part, unfortunately, the scene does dissolve into unintentional humor. I mean, I think the goal here was to do something like Ero Guro, like Erotic grotesque. The horror and titillation at the same time, working in concert with each other. The reason why horror movies are more affecting when bad things happen to pretty people, that kind of thing.
The other aspect of this scene that was pretty heartbreaking for me is USO says right before he actually does try to kill Katajina, that he could never love someone who uses such dirty tricks. And we have watched him throughout this entire series struggle with the disconnect between the person he thought Katagina was when he was just stalking her and taking creep shots, and who she actually is, how she actually behaves, the things she actually says. And he has not been able to reconcile those things. And he has found that very painful. And in this moment, he finally comes down on the side of whatever I felt wasn't really love, or to the extent that it was, it wasn't for this actual person. I don't love Khatija. And it's that. It's freeing himself of that illusion, as Katagina puts it, that lets him finally treat her as an enemy and a dangerous one.
Yeah. Do you think the Nenneke team, like, where did they get those bathing suits? Was that the standard underwear of Zanskar soldiers? They all wear that. Where did Katajina come up with these outfits?
Are the men also wearing it?
Or did Katajina have all of these on hand for some reason? Had she come up with this strategy well in advance and was just looking for an opportunity to use it, or. And I think this is more likely, did Chronicle want to buy her a sexy swimsuit, but he didn't know what her size was and he felt too awkward to ask, so he just bought one of every size and gave them all to her. So she had like a dozen bathing suits just sitting in her cockpit, ready to go.
Why does she keep them in her cockpit, Tom?
Yeah, that's probably the one big plot hole in this theory of mine was.
Basically like the trunk of a car, right? I'm sure she keeps like a first.
Aid kit, emergency blanket, a Frisbee. There's another bit of unintentional comedy later, when Odello and Tomash are pursuing USO through the halls of the Angel. Halo and Odello, flying through a corridor littered with the broken bodies of women in bikinis, says USO was here and Tomash behind him. How can you tell?
Oh, gosh. Yeah. Woof.
Yeah. You brought up Katajin's new mobile suit. Do you want to talk about it for a second?
Sure. Although I already said everything I have to say about it. Butterfly Metamorphosis. Adulthood.
So this is the Gaterlaten. The designer, Ishigaki Junya, made it so that it could disconnect from the big backpack thing, because for whatever reason, it needed a big backpack thing. But as a designer, he really does not like big backpacks on mobile suits. A man after my own heart. A man of taste and refinement. So it was important to him that it be able to disconnect, which I appreciate because it's a pretty cool mobile suit on its own. It was designed to be used in concert with the Rig Kantio that was mentioned but not shown last episode. The 1 Chronicle is supposed to pilot because it was meant to be used in concert. They have slightly different battlefield roles. The Rig Kantio is meant to be the vanguard out in front defending the Gaterlaten. As in, the woman is supposed to stay behind and the man is supposed to go out onto the battlefield. But Katagina is transgressing that traditional gender role, just as the Zahnskar women have been throughout the whole series. She's out there in the Gotterlatin, fighting on her own.
You heard it here first, folks. Tomino thinks women should run the government.
Perhaps. Certainly he thinks women should be given the big guns. Women are, you know, genetically biologically better suited to artillery combat. Everybody knows that.
Am now imagining triangle strategy. But it's all genders. It's like all the different genders and how they which genders are strong against which other gender.
Further note on the There is a factoid that gets passed around in the English Gundam fandom about the Gotterlaten, which is that Tomino has said the reason it's the color it is, which is to say pink is because it's piloted by Katajina and she's a woman and it's the color of her genitals. This is not true. As far as I can tell. Tomino has never said that that is the reason the mobile suit is that color. And if that were the case, it would imply some things about Char Aznabal, most famous pilot of pink mobile suits that I don't think are intended. This factoid appears to come from a section of the Victory Gundam novels in which Chronicle sees the Gotta Launaten and is reminded of Katagina's bits by the color.
That probably has to do more with the way Chronicle's mind works than with the design of the mobile suit per se. I don't have a lot to say about Shakti in this episode. She's not a very prominent participant in the things that happen. But would be remiss. Not to mention the horrible moaning coming from the Angel Halo as it descends to Earth accompanied by Shakti waking up with USO and screaming.
Real horror movie stuff. Very affecting. Works in a way that the Neneka team stuff does not.
And then when she wakes up the second time with the crew standing around her on this bed, it's a parallel to a much earlier scene. I don't remember what episode, but.
Number eight.
Number eight, where USO wakes up on a bed in the woods surrounded by the Camion team. And she mentions that she can't stay, that her mind is still resonating with the hearts of those people. That regarding the psychic ers, their hearts are now connected to mine, which felt so ominous to me in that is that just for now. Is that forever? Like, is she now permanently linked to all those people?
Now that is some high concept sci fi. Imagine the world after this where there's just like a hundred thousand people running around in the world who are all permanently psychically linked to each other.
And when they reach Earth, when they land on the ocean, there is a particularly vivid, a particularly brightly colored sunset. But it doesn't feel beautiful. It feels ominous. It feels like fire. Like the whole sky is on fire.
Real apocalyptic imagery.
And Kagati seemed very confident that he could complete his objective without Shakti.
But can he complete his objective against Shakti?
And now Tom's research on those outrageous outfits.
You know the ones bikini bazooka battle babes alongside the motorcycle battleships, the flying tires and the guillotine. The sight of Nenneke and her squadron zipping around in outfits more suited to beachside revelry than aerial combat produce some of Victory Gundam's most memorable images, and I've been fielding questions about them from listeners practically since we started the podcast. You have already heard our thoughts on the scene in context, but we never really touched on the peculiarities of these peculiar outfits. Whatever we may think about the bikini unit of the Imperial Guards Division, we have to consider that the idea for this scene comes straight from the top. The Nenneke team appears to have been Tomino's personal brainchild. Their designs, from the chunky boots to the underarm holsters and radio communication headsets, are all modeled off of a remarkably detailed sketch drawn and annotated by the Chief Director himself. Knowing that, I think it behooves us to subject these battle tested bikinis to as much scrutiny as they'll bear. Starting from the bottom, it's actually the boots that puzzle me the most. At least the rest of the outfit could plausibly have been worn underneath the standard issue Zanskar Yellowjacket pilot suit. The boots are bulky with a hard sided look of ski boots, and if our reading of Tomino's handwriting in the original sketch is accurate, his handwriting is.
So hard to read, it's real bad.
But it does appear that he's saying that they should in fact look like ski boots. The bikini itself is a single garment. In the sling bikini style, the wearer's chest is covered by long diamond or star shaped panels of fabric that meet behind the neck like a halter top and attach to the bottoms via metal rings at the hips, giving an impression something like suspenders. In fact, the style is sometimes called a suspender bikini or suspender thong. The bottoms are in the Tanga style. Triangular panels of fabric covering the bits are joined together by tiny strings attached to those same metal rings at the hips. Another ring links the chest panels and another string connects them behind the back just below the shoulder blades, a configuration sometimes called pretzel style. From our vantage point 30 years on, it would be a stretch to describe the Zaanskar Imperial Guard standard issue bikini outfit as an ordinary or commonplace garment, but it's not especially novel either. Swimsuits like it have been around for a long time, approximately 30 years. It was in fact quite a novel garment on March 11, 1994, when this episode first aired. The sling bikini was a relatively new innovation at the time, only a few years old and mostly confined to certain Very niche communities. The history of the bikini, like the history of mobile suit development, has largely been driven by four distinct leisure, culture, politics, materials science and the French. Prior to the early 1900s, women's swimwear didn't really exist. Women went in the water for recreation, sure, but they weren't really supposed to swim, as we understand it. They were there to take in the waters, to bathe. Too much vigorous exercise was positively unladylike and probably bad for you. The garments reflect this with a focus on modesty over practicality or ease of movement. Early bathing gowns had lead weights sewn into their hems to prevent them from floating up in a revealing fashion when you entered the water. Victorian women could use bathing machines, tiny houses that would be rolled into the sea if they wanted to enjoy a refreshing, healthful and appropriately modest dip in the waters. Even into the 1880s, the standard bathing costume was still an elaborate, clumsy affair, high necked and long sleeved, complete with full woolen skirts, bloomers, shoes, all belted and buckled. But by the turn of the century, the world at large had started taking swimming, actual swimming, more seriously as sport, exercise and recreation. It debuted in the Modern Olympics in 1896, although women weren't permitted to compete in the new event until 1912 at the Stockholm Olympics, which was coincidentally also the first Olympics to include a team from Japan. In the meantime, women's swimwear changed dramatically. Photos from that first Olympics swimming event show the women in swimming outfits that would have, and probably did scandalize prior generations. Sleeveless, covering the legs only as far down as the mid thigh and partly transparent when wet. Much of the credit for the development in women's swimwear during this period belongs to the celebrity swimmer Annette Kellerman. Originally from Australia, Kellerman became internationally famous for her swimming skills and her beauty, eventually transitioning to vaudeville and film. To capitalize on that popularity. In the first decade of the 1900s, she wore and popularized the style of form fitting one piece bathing suit, later worn at the 1912 Olympics. The story goes that she was actually arrested for indecent exposure after wearing this scandalous number on a Boston beach. But if there's any evidence for that beyond her, say so. I haven't been able to find it. Perhaps the whole incident was invented later for publicity's sake. Kellerman would go on to be a Hollywood star, getting a star on the Walk of Fame and credit as the first major actress to appear completely nude on film in 1916's A Daughter of the Gods. She'd also go on to sell her own line of scandalously indecent thigh exposing swimsuits, which were reportedly extremely popular. Popular enough that the style was for a time simply called the Kellermann. And though the materials were very different, these Kellermann swimsuits don't look that different from the suits worn by competitive swimmers today. In a 1968 article on the history of women's swimwear for the Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology, Claudia Kidwell wrote that the insistent trend toward more functional costume reached its ultimate conclusion with the refinements of the knitted swimming suit in the 1930s. Subsequent changes have not improved upon the functional design of this classic suit. In many instances, these variations have been merely to satisfy the feminine desire for distinctive apparel and the industry's need for perishable fashions. Female competitive swimmers have continued to wear the simple knitted suit, now of nylon rather than wool. But Kidwell makes a mistake here. Suits with progressively less skin coverage were a functional adaptation because beginning in the 1930s, they had a new function to serve beauty. Standards for women had changed. The snowy pallor was out, the suntan was in, and there was a concomitant change in people's relationships to the sea and the beach. The vogue for vigorous active swimming as recreation was giving way to the more sedate practice of sunbathing. And for the sunbather, the less coverage you can get away with, the better. So that's the cultural piece. The political one is somewhat easier to explain. You see, two piece bathing suits had already begun to appear on more socially progressive European beaches in the 1930s, but they didn't gain traction in America until the mid-1940s. At the time, the world was going through something of a global kerfuffle. Europeans were not getting out to the beach so often, at least not for recreation and leisure. And so the locus of swimsuit development shifted to the relatively kerfuffle free beaches of the Americas. But the industrial demands of the kerfuffle still placed extreme pressure on fabric production in the United States. In April 1942, President Roosevelt issued General Limitation Order L85, which established strictly strict limits for the amount of fabric that could be incorporated into women's garments, banning outright such flourishes as French cuffs, leg of mutton, sleeves inside pockets, capes and capelets or pleats. Hem lengths were limited. Belts on coats were not to be more than 2 inches wide, sleeves not to be cut on the bias, and bolero jackets for children. Right out the order goes on like this for page after page of remarkably detailed regulation.
Incredible.
I'd love now to repeat the claim, which I came upon at least a dozen times during my research this week, that order L85 mandated a 10 or 15% reduction in the amount of fabric used in women's swimsuits. However, after spending way too much time reading the order itself and attendant documentation, I don't think that's accurate. The order doesn't specifically mention swimwear at all. And like I personally find it hard to believe that the federal government of the United States of America in the 1940s would, even at the height of the kerfuffle, order women to show more skin at the beach that doesn't really seem like their vibe. What L85 does do is set a goal of producing 15% more garments overall without increasing the total amount of fabric used for that purpose, which I expect is where people got the idea that it was mandating skimpier suits. More to the point though, there were fabric, cotton, wool, linen, and especially the new synthetic fabrics like nylon. You might have heard about how the nylon shortage led to women using makeup to paint seam lines down the backs of their legs to give the impression of stockings when none could be had. Well, by this point, nylon and other synthetics were also becoming popular materials for swimsuits. Designers, pinched at the one end by fabric shortages and at the other by price controls on consumer goods adapted by doing less with less. As for materials science, at the risk of stating the obvious, a minimum coverage swimsuit is still designed to cover some things, and it's got to cover them whether it's wet or dry. The less fabric you're using, the more important it is that it keep its shape untreated. Natural fabrics like cotton or wool are pretty terrible for this, but as I hinted a moment ago, synthetics or blends do the job far more effectively. New textiles like Lastx yarn, which consisted of a rubber core wrapped in natural or synthetic threads for the first time made it possible to create flattering, form fitting swimwear that would also keep its shape even when wet. With all of that in mind, in May 1946, the French furrier turned fashion and costume designer turned anti fascist resistance fighter Jacques Heim, debuted a two piece swimsuit, perhaps the first two piece bathing suit intentionally designed to expose the navel, which he promoted as the world's smallest bathing suit. Louis Reillard, an automobile engineer turned lingerie designer, must have said the French equivalent of oh come on, I can do better than that because he immediately started working on an even smaller bathing suit and in July 1946 he unveiled the bikini with the tagline smaller than the smallest bathing suit in the world.
Was it perhaps itsy bitsy teeny weeny, ha ha?
By modern standards, it was a very normal bikini. And this first bikini did indeed take its name from the US nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll, begun just four days before the garment made its first public appearance. Now let's skip ahead about 40 years, during which time the bikini went from provocative statement to commonplace. And let's look at the bacchanal of late 80s and early 90s Miami. The city was flooded with cash, drugs and drug related cash. Tourists filled the five star hotels, shopped at designer boutiques, partied in trendy nightclubs and displayed their bodies on the beach casually and in organized bikini or bodybuilding contests. If you were competing in one of those contests, if you wanted the glory of victory and the prize money, then you needed to stand out from the rest of the crowd wearing their standard issue bikinis. Enter therefore the sling bikini in its countless variations, which seems to have debuted in the mid-80s but remained pretty rare until around 1994 when the style exploded in popularity. So Miami in this era was glamorous, dangerous, chic. It was cool, it was hot. Major shows like Miami Vice capitalized on this, but so did schlockier production companies whose principals realized they could just go down to the beach whenever one of these bikini contests was taking place, place roll camera for a few hours and come away with a mildly risque VHS tape that could be titled something like Bikini Beach Party and then sold on to a thirsty audience. A thirsty international audience as it turned out, because on January 17, 1994, a Japanese television variety show called Sekai Marumie Terebi Tokusobu or World Great tv, which shows TV programs from around the world. This is a show that is still on the air today, incidentally. Anyway, Sekai Marumie aired a segment titled Zenbei Kofun Bakato Mizugi no Suiten or the All American Exciting Idiots and Swimsuits Festival which featured a panel of celebrity commentators including Kitano Takeshi, AKA the director and all around entertainer beat Takeshi watching a video of a Miami bikini contest called Bikini Beach Party. Several of the contestants in that video are wearing different variations on the sling bikini. And one of the women who competed in the contest, Cindy Rich, then appeared in the studio wearing a sling bikini to answer questions about her garments from the panel of hosts. That episode of Sekai marumie aired at 8 o' clock on a week day evening, the premiere golden hour timeslot which enjoyed the best ratings and commanded the highest prices from advertising sponsors. Three months later, which seems to have been roughly the amount of time necessary to take an episode of TV anime from original concept to finished product, the Nanika team donned their Imperial Guard extra high mobility combat garb for their date with destiny. It is impossible to be sure because neither Tomino's Nenika team sketch nor Osaka's cleaned up line art are dated, but I think that there is a fairly good chance. The Chief Director was sitting at home on Monday, January 17, 1994 with his TV turned to the Nippon Television Network watching Sekai Marumie when shortly after 8pm inspiration struck.
Next time on episode 10.50 the songs that remind them of the good times we research and discuss Victory Gundam episode 50 and behind every new type child soldier is his girl next door Powerful psychic Childhood sweetheart Hanger goes mask off Flights of Angels a better way this is my emotional support Psychic girlfriend the real enemy Haro in charge Make a name for yourself Good vibrations Creative and unusual effects well that was upsetting and I am no longer baby. I only want power. Please listen to it and remember to submit a question for our end of season Q and A. You should email it to gundampodcastmail.com with the subject line Victory Q&A by 11pm New York time, Friday, May 9, 2025.
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 Dayaksin. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio. The recap music is Slow by Lloyd Rogers. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the Lenape people, and more in the show notes on our website gundampodcast.com if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email hostsundampodcast.com or look for links to our social media accounts on our website. And if you would like to support the show, please share us with your friends. Leave a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts or support us financially@gundampodcast.com patreon you can find links and more ways to help out at gundam podcast podcast.com support. Thank you for listening. Wait, no, that's not right. Scratch that.
When the bikini Bazooka commandos come like flying into frame, it really feels like Ride of the Valkyries should be playing.
And where do you want that inserted in the talkback?
Maybe, but if it's too hard to put it in the talkback, just stick it in the outtakes. You got it.
I start started during the course of this episode. Instead of writing Marbette, just writing Mom. Bet.