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 10.32, the Snake and the Rat and we're your hosts. I'm Tom. Very happy to be back after our illnesses last week. And of the two of us, I think I'm more of a rat.
And I'm Nina, new to Victory Gundam.
And if these kids collect all the Dragon Balls, will they be granted a wish?
Mobile Suit Breakdown is made possible by our perfectly splendid paying subscribers.
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Thank you all and special thanks to our newest Ben H. Vinyl Vagabond, Godforgotten, Jake C. The wizard from Mars, the American Dream, and Eric N. You keep us, Genki. Additional supplementary thanks to Kuat Drive Yards for supporting us on Ko Fi and Elora H. For buying us a few books from our wish list.
I can't believe we got that coveted Kuat Drive Yards sponsorship. They make some of my favorite spaceships this week. Victory Episode 32 Dogore Gekishin or Dogorla's Violent Advance. The episode was written by Godou Kazuhiko and storyboarded by Ashizawa Takeshi, who also directed the episode. Osaka Hiroshi was in charge of the animation. And now the recap.
Its front rad destroyed by Oliver's kamikaze attack, the Adrastea will need to spend a half day docked for repairs before it can rendezvous with the rest of the fleet. Chronicle worries that the Lean Horse Junior will catch up, but Pippiniden is pleased to unveil Zanskar's latest weapon. The Dogorla and its test pilot, Broch, a machine and a man capable of destroying a battleship. The long, sinuous dragon like machine is segmented with grabbers and guns all along its body, allowing it to jettison damaged sections and continue functioning as normal. The Dogorla will fend off and hopefully destroy their pursuers. Although Brogh would prefer to go alone, a small group of Ainurads will accompany him on the Lean Horse Junior. The newest pilots continue their training with.
More enthusiasm than skill.
Yet when the bridge crew spot the Adrastea, Marbet wants Odello and Tomasz to sortie with the rest of the mobile suits, fighting off the terror she has felt since Oliver's death. Marbet instructs them to stay close behind her, and in moments they have made contact with the enemy. Despite her efforts to keep them safe. In the chaos of the battlefield, Odello and Tomasz frequently find themselves in danger. Her own quick Awareness and precise shooting save them several times, but Marbet feels she is failing them as a commander. At the same time, their quick intercept of the Zanskar forces puts pressure on Chronicle's flagship, forcing it to leave the dock as soon as possible, finishing its repairs. On the move, a flare from the Adrasteia recalls their Ainurads, leaving only the Dogorla on the battlefield. The planned operation against Earth takes priority. After hiding against the shadowed side of the moon, the Dogorla is able to surprise its opponents. Marbet takes a hit of beam fire, and Odello is caught in the Dogorla's tail. His mobile suit disabled by an electrical current hacking away at the Dogorla's body, Tomasz eventually outpaces its ability to repair itself, amputating the tail so that Marbet can pull Odello free. The next moment, odds, Odello pushes Marbek clear and activates his shield, taking a hit that knocks his mobile suit completely offline and sends it drifting from the battlefield. Odello tries everything he can think of, but none of the controls work, and by some incredible chance, his mobile suit drifts into the same Zanskar dock ship that was repairing the Adrastiya. When his mobile suit finally comes to a stop, fetching up against a bulkhead, Odello collides with the wall of the cockpit and is knocked unconscious. USO goes after him, and between the two of them, they manage to get Odello's mobile suit functioning again. On their return to the battle, Uso has figured out how to handle the Dogorla. Maneuvering into its blind spot and darting in close, he destroys it with a stab of his beam saber directly to the forehead of the dragon. A victory. But they've failed in their true goal. The Adrastea got away. Marbet is racked with guilt, fear, and uncertainty. She dreads that she cannot live up to the responsibility Oliver entrusted to her, that she cannot keep her young charges safe. USO and the others try to reassure her, but it's clear that her confidence is shaken. Hoping that it will encourage her, Uso, Odello and Tomasz swap out part of the head of her mobile suit, giving it the V fins that mark a team leader. While the lean horse Junior pursues the Atrastia. They hold Oliver's funeral, with the crew standing in a great line on one of the landing decks, scattering Oliver's ashes in the vastness of space.
This week on the pod, we are joined by longtime friend of the show and friend of the hosts, Sean. Sean, do you still go by flying Grizzly.
Yeah, but it's really Only functional on GitHub at this point, which is a very narrow segment of the audience, probably.
Are you kidding? GitHub is like the hottest social media platform. It's where everybody goes to share pictures of their code.
Ugh.
If our discord is any indication, at least from among the paying subscribers, we have quite a lot of people who might be able to find you there.
Wait, are there nerds listening to this?
So many. So many nerds.
But why? This is not a podcast for nerds.
I guess if you're curious, you can go look at my very quiet GitHub activity graph, because most of my commits are on private repositories for work these days. But you could, in theory, you could also go find me on the site, but I haven't been actually posted on that or even looked at it in probably months.
We started referring to it as the Bad Rectangle.
Yeah, bad rectangle works for me too. Formerly known as Twitter.
So, Sean, have you seen Victory Gundam before, or have you just been kind of watching it off and on with this season of the podcast?
So the really honest answer is I've watched like 10 episodes of victory Gundam in the past and then fell off of it because life got in the way. Not because I wasn't enjoying it, and then started watching it at the start of this season of the podcast and then fell off of it because life got in the way. And then when y'all said, hey, do you want to come talk about Victory Gundam? Watched over 20 episodes in the last four days.
So, you know, well, asking somebody to make a podcast with me about Gundam is my foolproof, 100% success rate tactic for getting people to watch Gundam they haven't seen. I was gonna say, as you were telling the anecdote about your victory experience, I was gonna say, that's all very typical. But then you got to the part where you stopped watching not because you didn't like it, but because something else got in the way. And at that point, I think you deviated a little bit from the norm. I know we have some die hard Victory fans in the audience, but let's. I mean, be real. This is not the majority opinion about this show. So, SEAN, after bingeing 20 episodes in four days and catching up with us here, how are you liking it within the realm of the Gundam we've already seen?
I have a lot of thoughts, and they're a little bit jumbled because I've watched over 20 episodes in four days, but generally the top of My list here is that this maybe has the most consistently kicked mechanical design thus far. And I'm going to include War in the Pocket and Stardust Memory in the contenders list for that. Like, not just like the long form TV series, but also the OVAs. There's something about this series that's like, I don't know. I thoroughly enjoy the Victory design. I love the grunt designs and the Zanskar designs are just constantly glorious.
Does that include mobile armors? Stuff like the Dagorla that appears in this episode? Or is that, strictly speaking, the more conventional Zanskar mobile suits?
The Dagorla is. Maybe it surprised me, but it is certainly it's a contender for one of my favorites so far. It's so weird and cool and they.
Really committed to the bit with the Nagorla.
Yes.
The guns come out of. Basically it's like the dragon is holding dragon balls and shooting from them when it deploys dummies. They are shaped like clouds.
Yeah, they do that over the top shot of it. Like twisting in the darkness in front of the moon. The silhouette of the serpentine body of the dragon. They really went for it. One of the things about this episode that strikes me, and actually about Victory as a whole, is there's an inconsistency of tone, which is actually, I think, even worse than in Double Zeta, because in Double Zeta there's a very consistent tone early on and then there's a hard shift and there's a very consistent tone later on.
Yeah.
But Victory is kind of all over the place. And part of the reason I think it is all over the place is because individual episodes will feel very reminiscent of different shows. Victory feels like a hodgepodge of its influences really coming up to the surface of the stew more often than not. And this episode felt like such a throwback to sort of pre Gundam robot anime or to Tokusatsu to very like Monster of the Week projects where the villains are all drawn in these, like, broad, arch, almost caricature esque ways. Like the enemy pilot villain for this episode brochure who comes out with a purple mohawk and the first thing he says is, let me at those women and children.
Yep, I felt extremely vindicated on that line based off of my commentary in the episode where Oliver died, which is.
The immediate prior one.
Right.
You were really calling this one. You were calling your shot like Babe Ruth.
I drew a comparison between Oliver and Prometheus and that Oliver empowering women and children specifically with mobile suits was like Prometheus giving fire to humans to Allow them to survive. The indifference of the gods.
Okay.
That, like, men and big institutions are sort of the gods of the world. They run everything. And that Oliver sort of training and giving mobile suits and mobile suit parts and, like, constantly encouraging and empowering these women and children was a similar parallel.
That's an interesting extension of the idea of the mobile suit as the equalizer for the child in the world of adults that y'all have talked about in the past, as well. So. Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting one.
And it really is a cast of women and children. I think I commented on this in a prior episode, so I also get to feel a little bit of that halo of vindication. Unlike in First Gundam or Zeta or even Double Zeta, there is not the feeling of, like, oh, okay, these are adults now. They're in child bodies, but they've done war, they've killed, they've fought, they've become adults. Amuro, by the end of First Gundam, is in every functional way treated like an adult. Camille at the end of Zeta Judo at the end of Double Zeta.
Yeah.
At least so far, Victory hasn't done that. Odello, Tomasz, uso, they're all, like, really explicitly kids. And the other pilots in the Ligue Militaire are all women now that Oliver's dead.
Yeah. I generally agree with you. There's one thing that I did notice at some point in the last four days, one of the things that was very striking to me was the extent to which the early episodes went to portray the impact of killing and witnessing death on uso. And that has fallen away. And there's a degree to which it has to fall away because the story is moving forward.
Right. We're in the back half of the series. The opening has changed to the second opening for the first time this episode. It's time traditionally for USO to now descend into a psychosexual nightmare of violence and desire and hatred and vindication.
Yeah. It does feel like it's happening somewhat unremarked, is the only thing that I'll say. Right. Which is a similar pattern to the path that Omaro takes. He eventually starts earning accolades for being a better killer. Right. And USO is. Is getting his attaboys for being a better killer. And we're not seeing its effect on him. And Shakti's not even there to mirror it any longer. Right. Because Shakti was also holding that space for the character.
Yeah.
And she's physically present, but her role in these episodes has been so minor.
Yeah.
And she retains this deep naivete yeah, like, the one scene she gets in this episode is her and Susie talking about the mobile suits sortieing and whether or not Odello and Tomasz will go with them. And Shakti is certain they won't since their training isn't completed yet. And I'm like, kind of a slow learner, aren't you, Shakti? How much training did USO get?
This is so funny because it's like. It's a hard swerve for Shakti, who previously, like, at the beginning of the show, Shakti was a source of deep wisdom. Frequently we could look to Shakti to say or understand things that were not immediately obvious to other characters. And now the whole point of her character for like, three or four episodes has been just how wrong she is about stuff. Everything goes wrong in the last episode because Shakti is wrong about her influence over the Zanskar Empire.
I did want to push back slightly against the idea that USO is only getting accolades for being a better killer, because this episode feels like it's much more about USO developing an increased emotional intelligence. He is not the one who lands the shots that save Odello and Tomas over and over again. He senses it. His new type sensory perception extends to them. He is aware of the threat that they are under.
I love that they give him new type anxiety when he thinks they're gonna die. And then they show, like, new type relief. Like, the new type space field turns brown. It means he's relieved of his anxieties.
And his awareness that, oh, Marbit is on edge because of Oliver. He, like, understands suddenly why she's behaving the way she is. And then towards the end of the episode, when it's clear that she can't accept his compliments and she's actually feeling really badly about how the battle went, he sort of helps take on the burden that she's under. He says, oliver left them to us. It's not only on her to safeguard these other young pilots. It's him too.
The other part of this is that Amura was very isolated by his increasing skill. He outgrew all of his friends and allies. There's that whole legitimately very touching bit between FRA and Hayato, talking about how, like, both of them had these relationships to Amuro. Hayato was his neighbor and kind of his rival. Phra was his neighbor and, you know, childhood friend, girlfriend in waiting, basically. But that those relationships have both been made completely irrelevant by his supernatural battlefield skill. He's not like them anymore. Uso, as his skills have developed, the Specific thing that he keeps getting praised for is his teamwork. He's learning how to work well with others.
That's true.
This felt like the other big contrast that Broch is meant to illuminate. Because his whole thing, even from Pippin Eden's perspective, when he says, ah, this is a man and a machine who could destroy a battleship. And repeatedly, Broch wants to be left alone to fight. When he saves Katagina and she apologizes, thanks him. He extremely gracelessly is like, this is why I wanted to do this alone. But what kind of modern army has a bunch of, like, solo fighters out doing their thing? That's not how war works. That's not how anything works.
Have I ever told you the story of the man who destroyed five battleships at the Battle of Loom?
I mean, in terms of what army has people who fight on their own? I mean, I've seen Sailor Moon. I've seen Kamen Rider. I've seen Super Sentai. Right?
Sailor Moon. They're the Sailor Scouts. They're specifically light infantry units.
Right? But the Senshi aside, all the people in the bad guy squads are always elbowing each other out for influence and preference. Right?
That's true.
And so it's not for nothing that you were comparing this to Toku to. To Toku shows, right?
His introduction, the man who Could Destroy a battleship could be the title of his episode if he were in a toku show.
Yeah, 100%.
The whole dragon theme. It's all super camp. And it's great. They pull it off really nicely. I love it. Even little touches, like the way Pipiniden introduces him half to Chronicle and half to the audience in this showy pro wrestling introduction style. It's good. They give Pippiniden kind of like a scheming Vizier kind of vibe to him in this episode. I thought so.
There's that moment after Katagina asks if she can sortie with the Dogorla. When they spend a long time on Pippiniden's facial expression and his eyes. He's like, smirking. That was the moment where I was like, hey, is he a Garma?
No, I think he's the Sharp Chronicle's the Garma. Katagina is also. The Shar Chronicle is such a garma. He can attract multiple Shars.
Oh, that's amazing.
Disaster waiting to happen.
Yeah, he really is. Man. If that's how this plays out, I will be thoroughly entertained. Because I've spent the last four days wondering what the hell is up with this guy's mask. Because it doesn't serve a functional purpose like Shars did, to hide his true identity. And he takes it on and off at will. But whenever he wants to feel bad, he pulls it up to cover his lower face. I'm like, okay, cool, so this is your thing. But if it turns out that he was in fact the red haired Herring of Ashar and in fact is the Garma, that will be delightful.
I mean, maybe he just like, you know, maybe he's just stimming. It feels good to move the mask around. Or he's nervous.
Also in keeping with Zanskar's general overconfidence, the fact that that they were already gearing up to mass produce this still in the testing phase mobile suit that they're so confident is going to allow them to demolish their enemy and finish the war. And then the test mobile suit gets destroyed in one combat.
That has to be a reference to the Big Zam, right? The same. Like, once we mass produce the Big Zam, the Federation will be finished. Once we mass produced the Dagorla, the Federation will be finished.
God.
At least the Big Zam took out like half a fleet. The De'Gorla, despite being so incredibly cool, is such a disappointment.
It took out my heart. That's pretty cool.
The one other sort of funny note I have about the Zanskar forces in this episode is apparently Katagina has a new rank, or at least for the purposes of this particular fight. She is team leader and the mobile suit pilot with her, Gazbaral, is an ensign, but he's basically the one giving her orders, even though he's couching them as like. Respectfully, ma'am, Team leader Katagina Luz.
I assume this happens a lot with like those old style armies where you had to be a noble and buy a commission in order to be an officer, but then you have a staff full of like veterans. 60 year old career sergeants. Yeah, Lieutenant, I don't think we should do that. Your Eminence.
Yeah, Lieutenant, you were going to order us to do xyz, right? That's what you were going to tell us to do now, right?
Well, Pippi Needen is doing that to Chronicle too.
Yeah, he's like.
It would be the right course of action, sir. Oh, thank you for looking after me, Senpai. He's gonna get garmed so hard.
He really is. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
We mentioned design stuff earlier. I even liked the design of the dock ship, which. Quick note, we have two different versions of the subtitles for this Show. And in one version, it's the Marilyn, and in one version it's the Meilin.
Huh?
Based on the Japanese pronunciation, I would think Meilin was correct. But I've been burned before, so I will hold off until I see the katakana.
I guess part of me was, I was noticing that, and I was watching the Marilyn version of the subs and I was wondering, because Le Vie En Rose, I'm like, also good to see it again. But every time I see it, I'm like, all I can think of is a deep piaf, right? So every time it shows up on screen, I have this internal interlude with.
Song starts playing in your head.
Right?
So I'm like, God, is this like a Marilyn Monroe? Happy birthday, Mr. President. What is happening here? I doubt that's actually it, right? But I was like, well, there's a big giant dock ship. Gotta be a. I don't think it is a connection.
You may have missed this in your rapid fire passage through the show, but it's not actually the La Vie En Rose. Not the one that we remember.
The Four, Right?
The La Vie Enrose Four.
Yeah.
The design was perfect, so why change it?
Yeah, basically. Or maybe we just had an animation cell floating around. We could quickly slap onto the camera. Jumping back to this thing of tokusatsu stuff, right? This is the thing that I've been thinking about the entire time. Because as much as I know that first Gundam did a lot of the same thing where they would just vary up the combination of the Core Fighter with different parts of the Gundam and with the. Oh, not the core booster. What's the mermaid version of the Gundam where they slap on the jet boots instead of the legs.
Mermaid? What is this, a spoiler?
No, it's a version of the G Armor thing.
Yes. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So where they slap. Instead of like putting the legs on the Gundam, they slap like the G Armor base on it so it can go super, super fast and keep up with the immobile armors and stuff. Right? So as much as first Gundam did, all of this combining and recombining stuff, it feels so much more in your face in this one with the way that like USO is hopping in and out of the boots and the top and like. And like, that's such a. It's such a tokusatsu thing where, like, all the different bits can combine into different things and each of them has their own name and they have their own, like, role in the thing. And I'm sitting here like, well, maybe this is part of the requirement that the toy company, the sponsor's like, hey, you gotta help us move some toys here, right? So really highlight all the different ways that you can combine these things. And it's fun. And one of the things that I've been really impressed with is that they've justified within the narrative the role that the Core Fighter Boots or Core Fighter Top has in different scenarios. So it's been nice to see them do that. But like, I've never been reminded so much of Tokusatsu while watching Gundam as I am constantly while watching Victory Gundam. It's a lot.
It's funny that you make the Tokusatsu connection there because I was just reading an interview with Kotoki Hajime where he talks about the influences on the Victory Gundam and especially in the first half of the show. So this is like when it's getting the various upgrade parts slapped on, you know, changing different pieces out when they get the different heads for the like bunny rabbit style versus the V fin style, like all of that. And the inspiration he identified for that was computer role playing games. Oh, with characters like getting new equipment, getting upgrade equipment, swapping out a sword, swapping out your boots for a different pair of boots, that kind of thing.
What games were popular at the time? Do you know?
I mean, Dragon Quest. No, I mean, I'm. I know. Of course Dragon Quest was popular. I'm sure there were others. I know there were a bunch of SD Gundam RPGs that were actually pretty popular.
Hmm. That's such an interesting. I wouldn't have thought of that, but it totally makes sense.
I had a totally different thought when you were talking about Tokusatsu and like super Senshi type shows that links with sort of like Marbet's emotional turmoil here. Because I think it's very clear to the other pilots. It's clear to us as the viewer that she's holding herself to an impossible standard. She keeps thinking, oh no, I used the kids as a shield, but you're fighting in space. There is no safe direction unless you had them completely surrounded by more experienced pilots. There's always a chance, even if you're trying to guard them, that someone is going to come up behind.
And from the audience perspective, I didn't ever feel like she was using them as shields. Maybe that's a failure of the show to convey it. Or maybe we are meant to think that she is grading herself too harshly.
I believe that we are. And in a way, I think she is holding herself to the standard of A parent in that as a parent, you're supposed to do everything you possibly can to keep your children safe. You're supposed to keep them absolutely safe and protect them no matter what. She's not holding herself to the standard of their team leader. A team leader is not a mom. A team leader is a first among equals kind of person. Right.
And a team leader's job is not just to protect people, but is, in fact, their job is to put them in harm's way sometimes when it's necessary. Right. So these are almost diametrically opposed responsibilities.
Yeah. And that a lot of what the young boys do to reassure her, a lot of what they say to her and them then putting the V fins on her mobile suit is to remind her that she's their team leader. She's the most senior, she's the one in charge, but she's one of them. They're all in a group together. And when they talk about how great her shooting was, like, she feels like a failure because they almost died. They feel like she did great because they didn't.
And it's meaningful in this that when Odello and Tomas are reassuring her, the camera frames Tomas with his actual family and his actual dad in the background. So it's like his family is there. They know what he's doing. His dad gave his blessing for this. You don't have to be his mom. But Marbet is in that impossible position. She's not only having to be a parent to them, she's a single parent. She's a single mother. And is there anyone in the world held to a higher standard than a single mother?
Not to mention that her beloved husband died and left these other pilots to her. So she feels. She would feel that it was her responsibility in any case, but she feels this added burden of needing to do perfectly at this because she's doing it in honor of her beloved husband who died.
And the way she's so protective of the little box that contains his remains, she's also protective of the kids because he left them to her. They are a link back to him.
That last shot was really lovely.
A really, really well drawn episode on the whole, I thought.
Yeah.
And I loved the outro music. There was one scene in particular that I thought they made some really interesting choices that I liked. And that's when Odello is in his cockpit, but the mobile suit's disabled because it's shot from a really low angle, like you're by one of his knees. And it manages to feel more claustrophobic. He's very hunched. It feels frantic. It feels. It really just heightens the emotion of that scene of him being trapped and drifting.
The moment where Marbet swoops in and saves Odello and Tomasz, it happens twice, but around like, 9,59 minutes, 50ish, depending on when you start and stop. The episode was strikingly well animated and really lovely. And I don't think I've ever seen the hexa look that good. And also the episode did really nice stuff with the angle cut ins, where you see the mobile suits in space, and then the angle cut in happens so you can see the pilot as they speak. And it was just really well timed and really well positioned. It worked really nicely.
There's that really showy one where they've got the whole squadron flying towards the camera, like flat to the camera. And then they do the cut ins one or two at a time as the person is speaking with the arrow hitting directly on the cockpit. They're just showing off.
That was a really cool. That was a really cool shot. I really like the shape of the legs on the hexa. I noticed. I was like, that's cool. They gave it that more animal like leg where it doesn't bend in the same way as a human leg. The proportions of what would be the leg bones, the different parts of the leg are different.
Yeah.
Nina, you must have liked this episode a lot because you were just telling me how much you like it when mobile suits are clumsy. And every scene with Odello or Tomasz is like, look at the mobile suits falling all over themselves.
I'm assuming you caught the Haro bouncing out of the crash between the two gun blasters in the V2.
It wasn't until my third watch that I noticed the Haro. But yeah, it was so good.
I did enjoy that. I just generally appreciate when they take the opportunity to remind us that piloting a mobile suit would probably be extremely difficult and hard to learn, and that just because our main character is usually a weird savant doesn't mean that that's generally the case.
Mm. It's like how there should always be one ordinary person competing in each Olympics event.
So we have a sense of a sense of scale.
Exactly. You don't realize how good Camille is until you watch Cats in action, Right?
Mm. Although I gotta say, especially after a second and third watch through, I'm not entirely sure what the point of the scene where Odello drifts into the Meilin is for.
It's completely pointless. I love it.
Well, so here's my other question. Though, who are these quote unquote mechanics who don't know the first thing about how to temporarily disable a mobile suit? There's just baby town frolics in here. Nothing that they did has any effect whatsoever.
Look, if it doesn't have tires on it, they don't know what to do with it. These are tire specialist mechanics. Although, actually, no. Okay, so I think this one actually does have an explanation. It's one line, but when Chronicle and Pippin Eden are talking before they leave the.
Oh, did they take all the good mechanics with them?
Take all the engineers we'll need. So these are just like. These are the cadets, the training crew, random janitors. I don't know who these people are, but they are not like the good mechanics.
Right.
Also, I do not understand. I mean, anything can happen. Sort of fog of war. But why neither USO nor Odello take an opportunity to shoot that place, Blow it up a little bit.
I mean, that doesn't seem like USO's style. Odello would do it if he had missiles to shoot.
Like, this is an important piece of enemy infrastructure that just repaired their big flagship of their new fleet.
Yeah, but his mobile suit is damaged and they're like, deep in enemy territory, and somebody's been sticking. Sticking weird things in the gears. I think they're on the right side of getting out of there.
So I'm generally enjoying victory. Right. But this is the last few episodes, so I'm enjoying victory. I'm also tracking, as it sort of retraces, the general patterns and arcs of Mobile Suit Gundam and Zeta Gundam, where you start on Earth, you go to space, then you move or go back and forth.
This is the first one to start on Earth, but go on.
You know what? I'm right. But, like, there's a lot of back and forth.
Mm. I just. I heard there were some nerds listening, so I had to pedantically correct you.
Yo, y'all can me if you want. I'm not on the Twitter site, so I won't see it. But in general, like, sorry, I need.
To correct myself, because if I'm going to be pedantic, I have to be super pedantic. 0080 war in the pocket does technically start on Earth also.
So what you're saying is he was right. Ish.
I was wrong and right and wrong.
And right and wrong. All the specific things he said were wrong, but the general gist of it was correct.
Yeah, so we're gonna go with the gist here. But the thing that I've been wondering. The last few episodes is. We're playing a lot of that. Like, it feels like we're moving people around. Cause we need them to be in a new position. And a lot of these episodes, I had a. There's a. There's a corollary thought that I'll get to here in a second. Right. But a lot of these episodes just feel pointless. Right. Like there's the big event in the last episode. Two big events in the last episode, one of which goes entirely unremarked, except for the opening here about USO's mother being kidnapped.
Yeah.
But like, we are. We are focused on Oliver. But like, otherwise, this episode seems pointless. Right. Because the ship was damaged. They go and get it repaired, but they don't stay long enough to get it, have the repairs finished, and then they move ahead. And then this is just a lot of sound and fury in a lot of ways. And we have some important moments with Oliver's funeral and Marbit's moving forward, but those could have happened with more interesting background action. Whatever's happening with Zanskaer. Look, don't get me wrong, I love the Dug Orla. It's gorgeous and amazing. But this episode is largely meaningless from the overall structure of the narrative. And the thought that this eventually brought me to. This is the Corolla that I mentioned forever ago is that Tomino really is a director who should have prestige format television. He just is not in a good position when he's got to fill out 50 episodes. His mind, or is constrained to a single movie. He needs maybe 10 really tight episodes and then he can probably tell an interesting story because right now he's just packing filler in to pack out the episodes. And CCA was too short. Right. But this episode, as much as I enjoyed a lot of parts of it, it felt kind of pointless sometimes.
Mm. I see what you mean. I see what you mean. And this is not the first time that Victory has kind of done sort of time wasting water, treading. Like a lot of the stuff with the camion going back and forth and one sort of minor crisis after another felt like it could have been condensed. Some of the infiltrating Zanskar, escaping Zanskar, infiltrating Zanskar, again, stuff could have been condensed, but there's something to be said for the journey. These are road trip movies, right? These are movies about getting in a car, getting in a van with a bunch of your friends, and tooling around, having adventures. And this is weird to say, but this episode that was like, very definitely Pointless was also one of my favorite that we've seen. It was just very fun. It was well drawn. It was, I thought, creatively directed and it was fun. It's kind of fun to see Pippin Eden be so sneaky and this Brogh guy be like a complete heel. Maybe it's just that it's refreshing. If there were 50 episodes of this, I wouldn't be into it, but every once in a while I'd rather have this than another clip show. And I know the two are not equivalent because this is way more effort, but like, if we're just wasting time, that's totally fair.
And I will also acknowledge that I watched 20 plus episodes of this show in four days, so my perspective on this is definitely skewed. And I agree this is a beautiful. The animation of this episode is beautiful. The De Gorla is legitimately fantastic. That shot in front of the moon, the kill shot on it, all fantastic. But I also respect Tomino enough to not let him off the hook. Because the difference the Kameon going back and forth at the beginning, sure, there's a lot of repetition there, but the emotional arc that we get with USO and Shakti over those episodes, it needs that goosing of the throttle, that back and forth for that to really shine. And it carries. It could have been done better, sure. But that back and forth really allows that Shakti USO relationship plus the Katagina dimension to really take space and shine and really tease out the tension between the two of them and what they both want and what they feel like they have to do. Whereas here I don't feel as much of the justification for it, But I still think it was a beautiful episode and I had a ton of fun with it. Right. But that's the. It could have been tighter. God, I should go direct anime and do it better. Right?
I actually think. And the proof of this will be in the pudding, of course, but that this episode basically was the first of an arc or mini arc that we're going to get about the emotional fallout of Oliver's death, specifically for Marbet, that we needed to establish what that has done to her as a pilot and this new position as team leader and how she's coping with that right now. And it's very possible they did not want that first episode of her back in the cockpit to be. Here's the huge battle where we're trying to save Earth from this fleet. They needed to kind of establish where she's at in the immediate aftermath of Oliver's death. And then it's possible that they will largely resolve that turmoil in the next episode. Or it's possible they'll take one or two more episodes before she reaches some kind of new equilibrium.
That's a really good point. I was actually thinking about the way the episode is structured and the way the last couple of episodes been structured. Because when we Talked about episode 30 with USO reuniting with his mother and then the clip show you Nina said it felt like what they had was either half an episode too much or half an episode too little. And then they had to add in some filler to pad it out. And I was thinking about this because the two halves of this episode don't feel very well connected. There's the whole fight with the de Gorla, There's USO and Odello like drifting into the Maylin, that whole thing. And there's Oliver's funeral. And the tone of Oliver's funeral doesn't really match the tone of the battle for all that we love the Dougorla. Why shove the Dougorla in between the episode where Oliver dies and the episode where Oliver's funeral happens? Except to give narrative space so that the audience experiences passage of time and development of emotion and character and all that sort of thing. In the same way that you have to split up USO's reunion with his mother from USO losing his mother again in the immediate following episode. That one episode difference. Even though it's just. I mean in the time it would have been a week, even though for us it's just like roll credits and then play the next episode. That space is really important narratively. And maybe that's why they felt like they needed to split up the events the way they have.
I agree. I think Marbet's Ark needs that breathing room. I think my complaint is really about the things that happen with the motorrad fleet and going to get repaired and then not waiting to finish the repairs. That's the thing that lets a little bit of the water out. You could have just had a straight chase out. You could have had a bigger set piece battle that meant they couldn't even get to the repair station. And then the motorrad fleet is fully repaired. The fact that there wasn't real pressure for the motorrad fleet to take off and leave early. Really. They weren't ever fully under. Obviously had to send out mobile suits to keep them back. Right. But the threat wasn't really communicated there. It just felt they're like, eh. We don't feel like waiting anymore. We're just going to go and finish the repairs on Earth.
Yeah.
That's the thing that is most odd to me about this.
There's the kernel of a story there where Chronicle makes the hard and and callous decision to leave behind mobile suits who he's sent out into battle.
Yeah.
Like, that's a story that is almost there that is occasionally, like, hinted that very nearly appears in the episode and could have been a really interesting character turn for him. Oh, will Chronicle abandon even Katajina if it's the right thing to do tactically?
Back to the note of Tomino needs prestige format television. Right. Like, there's so many good ideas here that are like, left. It's not even diamonds in the rough, man. Right. There's one facet of a rock that might be a diamond sitting in the rough. Sometimes I'm like, please spend the time to polish and unearth that. Because there's so many good things there. And this is one of them. Right. It's there, but it's not.
I know definitely that it is not in fact first draft work, but so many times, so many of these things feel like artifacts of not doing enough.
Script revisions or the production schedule which results in the script revisions not happening, whatever it is. Right. But yeah, Nina, a moment ago you said something that I can't remember exactly what it was right now, but there's something that I've also been noticing over these last few episodes. And in general with Tomino. Right. There's often a tension between the realism and the drama and the sponsor requirements that we sell toys. Right. And this feels like this is another thing that I think is getting. It ties into the tokusatsu thing coming.
Off of that tension of the toys versus the drama. We tend to think of this as a conflict between the studio, the artists who want to tell the best story they can and who want to tell a story in a particular kind of way versus the toy makers who want, like, whatever is going to sell those toys. They do not care. And sometimes artists feel very freed by that. As long as they can make something that sells, it doesn't matter what else they do. And they can. They can tell exactly the story they want to tell as long as the toys are selling. But there's another aspect to this too. There are other stakeholders who care about this because the TV stations don't care about the toy sales. Oh, they want the sponsor money to keep coming in. The sponsor money pays for everything. But the TV stations want a good show. So there is another Party fighting this fight. And that tension is going to be super important in the next few years as we go into the, like, Heisei Era Gundam G Wing X, because the TV stations are not going to be very happy with the way those are performing relative to the way the toys are selling. And that will definitely be coming up again.
That's such a fascinating thing. Looking at the trajectory of where the series goes from here. Like, on this note, right, the thing that I've noticed is that we started off with a. A metric buttload of Victory Gundams and like, just parts that USO could like, burn through, which was not super realistic, Right. But like, there was a degree of military realism here that, like, it's not just the one super robot.
It works when they're on Earth because Earth is so depopulated. You're like, yeah, I could imagine that they have the industrial capacity to mass produce, you know, a thousand Victory Gundams, but they've only got 10 pilots.
Yeah. Whereas we've now got to a point where. And like, there's probably material things that we could say are the cause of this, but there's only one Victory and there's 1v2, and we've got a few gun blasters at this point. And I was sitting there wondering along with the sort of, like this tokusatsuization of the show or the Gataization, as I. As I wrote in my notes to myself, right, like, we've. We've moved back towards like the couple of hero suits. So like the. It is the Gundam. It is the Victory Gundam. Now, not a Victory type. It is the victory and the V2. So that's another. Like, this is maybe not so much in tension with the drama and the realism necessarily, because you could easily say, well, they don't have access to the material to reproduce these things. But it is also easier to sell the Victory Gundam as the hero suit rather than one of many Victory types kind of thing.
Although there's this other element I started and have yet to finish a bunch of background research on kind of the anime industry at the time that Victory was being made. And one of the things that inspired a surge of interest in shows with teams, shows like Sailor Moon, is because then it's not one hero action figure to sell, it's five or seven. You have additional characters with additional personality types that different kids are going to sort of latch on to different characters. But you also, if you have the kid with very indulgent parents or the kid who's kind of a completionist, there's a whole team.
Yeah.
And other Gundam shows have, at different points, kind of had a team feel. The Gundam, the Gun Tank and the Gun Cannon forms a nice little team. Victory hasn't really had that yet, but is it going to. Are we working in that direction? With the addition of Odello and Tomasz and the loss of so many Shrikes.
Yeah.
Though apparently there is another team of Shrikes out there referenced but not depicted in this episode. Yeah, Shrike Team 1 who allowed themselves to be drawn out or something.
I was confused by that in this episode. I thought it was that Connie and Yuuka were off fighting in a totally different part of the battlefield and that they were actually talking about Marbet and Odello and Tomasz getting drawn out.
That's what I.
If that's true, then it's confusingly written because both Odello and Connie refer to Shrike Team One being somewhere else.
Oh, okay. Yeah, that is confusing because there's no mention of the Lean Horse junior Having caught up with another ship being in the vicinity of another League military ship being in the vicinity of any other League military forces whatsoever. And so any League military force on the battlefield I assumed came from the Leon Horse Jr.
I hate to do this, but pushing my glasses up on the bridge of my nose. You may remember that in the prior episode when they do a pan across the locker room of the Shrikes after Oliver's death, there does appear to be a unnamed woman who we haven't seen before, wearing the Shrike red armband.
I noticed that. But that was before they left the moon.
Yes.
So I assumed whoever she was, she's not still with them. But I mean, which, I mean furthers your like, okay, so where's her ship? Maybe her ship is also on the battlefield. But it's never explained or even hinted at and it's very confusing.
I just assume she's part of this other team of Shrikes that is also there on the Lean Horse.
Wait, what?
Either this we'll find out that there is yet another team somewhere down the line or will never be mentioned again.
Yeah. Look, I didn't write this show. I'm just trying to interpret it. I have heard that that trend to do like teams, at least in anime, starts with a Sunrise anime production called Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers, which came over to the US as Ronin Warriors.
I love that show.
From the late 80s. Yeah, I watched this before school as a little kid. It was one of the the only things that could get me up early was being able to watch Samurai Ronin was being able to watch Ronin Warriors.
I would love to hear at some point some justification for why they were putting all of these import shows at like 6am for kids to watch before school. Because that was when I used to watch Sailor Moon. I feel like I think they were.
Getting these shows for next to nothing and they were putting them up in the least profitable time slot. The before school time slot is the worst one. It's not as bad as 2am or whatever, but it's like one of the worst time slots.
You should see some of the that I managed to find on the international channel at the 11pm to 2am timeslots. This is all anime, but some of that is not anime I should have been watching for a 13 year old. Let me tell you, Angel Sanctuary is not a show that I ever understood and I don't think I'll ever watch it again. But hey, I watched it as a kid.
So Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers is credited for at least convincing the anime world that that kind of thing could be successful. Like it's a show where the voice actors like became superstars among the young teens. Almost like idols. And the director of the first half of Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers is going to be hired to make a Gundam pretty soon. And spoiler alert, it's gonna have a team.
To the end of making the team. Because Nina, you were saying that the individual senshi, if you have the completionist streak collecting each individual senshi model or whatever is how you finish out the team on your shelf or whatever you're up to. Right? So it makes the team vibe stronger here if there is a victory. So we have the victory and the V2 and then we got a few gun blasters because they're even better. But don't tell the sponsors that part. Right? So having just the one makes that team vibe stronger and makes it easier to sell it as a team when you've got a single identity that you can attach to that one hero unit rather than it's one of many. Well, I've got a little bit of a soapbox here. Victory's got the best mechanical design and the Lean Horse Junior is the single greatest ship that this metaseries has ever produced.
I'm prepared to agree with you on the first point, but purely because the Gwiggsy is so good that it. It really distorts the whole average.
Gwigsy's Victory should not have been counted.
And it's not enough to put it at the very top because 0080, in addition to having just stellar designs Top to bottom, also has the Drakken e, which is even like, don't tell the gwigsy I said this. But even better, I guess I have.
One final character note on brochure which really comes down to two things. One, that he kind of puts in Katagina's face the lie that she's been telling herself, that this is all about empowering women and having a society where women are in charge. Because here's a man who has nothing but disdain for women on the battlefield, who, you know, in contrast to her comments at USO that they, the League Militaire, are the individualists, here is a man who is annoyed that he has to fight alongside anyone at all who would rather try to do everything by himself. And also his repeated characterization of the Ligue Militaire pilots as mice, or that word can also be translated as rats in Japanese. Nezumi feels pretty pointed. It is extremely common in wartime situations for people to demonize and vilify the enemy. It's also really common, ahead of attempted genocides, to talk about the people you want to destroy as vermin.
And we've already seen what Zanskar likes to do on Earth and the fact.
That he does this three or four times, it's like over and over and over again.
Yeah.
So they wanted us to notice that that was important to them.
Did you recognize Broch's voice actor?
No.
He's your boy. That's Dryden from Escaflowne. Wha. Kosugi, Jirota.
The coolest dudes and the worst dudes. Everything works out alright for Dryden in the end, though, so it's all good. What was that? You don't like Dryden?
I like Dren just fine.
Good answer. Very politic. This interview can continue now.
I just want to go watch Escaflowne again.
I love a charming scoundrel who actually turns out to be a pretty good guy.
Yep.
Sean, any final thoughts? Not about Escaflowne.
No. I like. Thank you for getting me back on the victory bandwagon. It was the jumpstart that I needed to get caught up because it's, you know, it's a good show. It's not a great show, but it's a good show.
Moments of brilliance. Moments of brilliance.
Yeah, exactly.
We'll have to have you back on towards the end to see how the rest of it holds up. So I have two final thoughts. First, how does Warren feel about having been displaced by Tomasz? Because everything Tomasz is doing here you would have expected Warren to do before Tomasz was Introduced.
See, I think for all that Warren has risen to the occasion as needed, it has probably become very clear to him, himself and to his friends that he's not really a fighter. He'll do it if he has to, but he doesn't want to be a fighter in the way that Odello and Tomasz wants to be fighters or even Susie.
He doesn't have that bloodlust like she does.
I don't know if the show is going to do this, but I would not be at all surprised if we turn around one episode and he's training with the mechanics or he's taken a position on the bridge or he's doing some sort of support role on the ship that isn't being a pilot.
I feel like it would be nice to see him taking direct care of Carlman, but maybe that's not something the show is prepared to do. We cannot have the boys look after the baby.
I would be pleasantly shocked if they did that.
God. Was it Suzie who had the line a few episodes ago? Or it was Susie or Shakti who was like, well, we have to do the laundry. No, it shouldn't always be the girls who have to do it, but someone's got to do it. And we're not in the mobile suits. I'm like, oh, you're so close to getting it right. Come on, it's just a few inches further.
Yeah, and you're very close to getting it right because it's Suzy repeating something Shakti told her.
There we go, right. That it's not, quote unquote, woman's work in a dismissive way. These are very necessary tasks that have to happen for everybody's good. Yet somehow it seems only women ever end up doing them.
Well, I mean, you know, men can't be trusted to do them. We'll do them wrong or something.
As much as like we've moved a few inches in the right direction. This is still very much Tominoane's right, because we didn't have one or even two hot mommies in mobile suits. We had an entire friggin squadron of them.
I felt like they were more like older sisters. Marbet's the only mommy.
Okay, fine. But like, still, it's Tomino upon his still.
Yeah. I mean, the similarity to Amuro and his relationship with Matilda and Woody vs. USO with Marbet and Oliver, it's readily apparent.
Yeah.
And that actually brings me to my final point, which is it was a beautiful funeral sequence. Yeah. They should have done it for somebody cooler like Junko.
Yeah.
All right, Sean, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. We had a wonderful time talking with you.
Thanks for having me.
I need to do this more often.
Yeah, anytime y'all want. I'm down to watch 20 episodes of Gundam in four days.
Is that a promise?
I'm going to hold you to that, yeah.
You don't understand. We'll ask you to do that.
I will try and avoid it being a necessity in the future, but, yes, I will, if I can.
All right, thank you again and take care. We're out.
Next time on episode 10.33, Stella Maris, we research and discuss Victory Gundam episode 33.
And USO gets tired. Get it?
The lost continent of Mu Hula Hoop.
Of Doom Katagina gets hotter.
The student becomes the mistress. Oh, yeah. Yo Yos had kind of a moment, didn't they?
New religions.
The dragon's palace, a troublesome child.
Everything happens so much and, oh no, the predictable consequences of my actions. Please listen to it.
Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded and produced by us, Tom and Nina in scenic New York City within the ancestral and unceded land of the Lenape people and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Misha Dioxin. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio. The recap music is Slow by Lloyd Rogers. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode episode, additional information about the Lenape people, and more in the show Notes on our website gundumpodcast.com if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email hostsundompodcast.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@gundumpodcast.com Patreon. You can find links and more ways to help out@gundumpodcast.com support. Thank you for listening.
I wanted to just say horse ebook meme, but Tom thought that was too obscure. That could go in the outtakes.
It's only for the real ones. I had a wrong Gundam opinion prepped. But then you said it during the intro.
Oh no, it was about the dragon Balls.
Collecting Dragorla's Dragon Balls and making a wish.
Uh, should I come up with a new and I don't want to spoil your Ron Gundam opinion.
No, it's spoiled now.
I ruined it.
The vibes are off.
I killed the vibe. It's all My fault the wrong Gundam opinion is that Nina can ever kill the vibe.
I've had enough of your self serving Gundam opinions.
I think Hall. Is that Tigress?
That is. Yeah. Can you hear her?
Yeah, I heard that one.
This morning. She started grooming Tom's arm.
Yeah. For the. For the first time ever, she groomed my arm hair.
You know that means she thinks you're. She's your boss, right?
I have heard that. I have heard that. Although I've also seen some more reassuring comments that it just means that she really likes me and feels comfortable.
Aw.
But realistically speaking, she is my boss, so it's not that like. Yeah, I bow and scrape. I hold. There was a period where to get her to eat, I had to physically hold her bowl for her directly, like in front of her face at just.
The right height and angle.
Yeah, I did that for weeks. Boss is underselling it.
Yeah, that's. If that's how it be.
She would get a talking to from HR for half of the stuff she makes us do.
I think I cut myself halfway through answering your question and.
Oh, I didn't get any answers to your question.
Yeah, we didn't.
We didn't hear you say anything.
Oh, seriously? Yeah.
Excellent.
Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. We are talking about episode 32, Dagorla's violent advance.
The Dagron. The.
Just to be 100% sure before we actually start, like before we start the episode, just to make sure everybody's on the same page. That was not my intro.
We are in fact, on the same page. Yeah, we're good.
Cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah. Post Covid, my memory is a lot worse than it used to be and I have trouble remembering which episode number we're on in any given week.
Oh, wow.
And maybe this is also part of just having done so many of these. Now.
I find this funny mainly because I could never remember what episode number we were on.
I know, but that used to be a thing that I could remember.
It's true, it's true.
It was even a bit.
So I was a little bit afraid going into this that I'd be like, I had accidentally told you the wrong episode number.