You're listening to season ten of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of Sci-Fi mega franchise Mobile suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
This is episode 10.12, more pilot than child, and we are your hosts. I'm a new character who looks and sounds just like Tom.
And I'm Nina, new to Victory Gundam and increasingly curious about the weaponized nostalgia of this show. So many sepia tone photos. Mobile suit Breakdown is made possible by our paying subscribers on Patreon. Thank you all and special, special thanks to our newest patrons, Jeremy and freckled Sprague. You keep MSB Genki, and extra special thanks to slice the light for supporting.
Us on ko fi this week.
Victory Episode twelve girochi no fun sai SEO or smash the Guillotine this episode was written by Okea Akira, storyboarded and directed by Takase Setsuo, with Maeda Meiju as animation director. Now the recap.
Flying through the cloud cover, the Shrike team mobile suits hanging on to act as ersatz engines. The two transport planes carry the league militaire group south and west. They will not be able to go straight to Ireland as was originally planned, but even getting to arty Gibraltar will be difficult. The lead ship detects two Bespa scouts incoming, triggering what seems like a well practiced routine. The Shrike team mobile suits hide themselves inside the two transports, and USO puts the transports between himself and the scouts, flying just out of view and shielded by the clouds. When the Bespa pilots question why the transports arent on the commercial route and why theyre flying in a group of two instead of the usual three, USO emerges from the clouds to shoot around the group, and Gomez feigns terror at this league militaire attack on neutral transport ships. The transports are able to continue on their way while USO takes on the two scouts, evading them handily and returning fire until they run out of ammo and are forced to retreat afterwards, it is an easy journey to the rendezvous point. USO eats and naps in the cockpit.
Marvels at his first ever view of.
The sea, and sets the corefighter down on a beach next to a massive pile of metal junk. As he investigates, an old man comes out of a fishing shack nearby. His name is Rob, and as they talk he frequently mistakes Uso for Nicol, a son or grandson, nephew or Ward, taken away by war, which war and when is never clear. Robb drives UsO into the nearby city, clearly damaged by fighting but not flattened in the same way UiG had been. Shakti, Odello, Warren, and Suzy board of Mobile suit maintenance at the makeshift League militaire airfield. Go scouting in search of food and information and find USO in the citys library. While they wander, Warren hunts for food in abandoned homes.
Odello wonders if this would be a.
Good place to live, and Shakti admires the massive gothic church on the square. Suddenly, with a shout of one San Suzy sprints off, having seen someone who looks like her older sister. The others chase after her, coming face to face with none other than Pharah Griffin out on the town in civilian clothes. They don't recognize her, and she has no idea that they are involved in the league militaire or that Uso is the pilot of the white mobile suit. Brazen, Suzy follows Pharah into a bar and is treated to an ice cream. While Farah drinks a beer, the bartender frowns at the Bespa scrip. Farrah pays with telling her to finish her beer and get out. All the locals seem to be on edge. A convoy of Bespa military police pull into the square outside with a guillotine. Farrah heard about this plan that they intend to display the guillotine, hoping to frighten the locals and deter any league military activity, but not intending to use it on anyone, she disapproves. As a crowd of people gather around that symbol of death, she slips away with a brief smile and silent wave at Susie, increasingly angry and frightened, the crowd don't believe for a moment that the guillotine isn't there to be used. Rob begins to throw fish at the soldiers, even after the soldiers fire warning shots over the heads of the crowd. Worried for him, Uso drags the fisherman to his waapa and begins to drive away. The other kids return to the transports, knowing Uso will meet up with them later in the square. The armed soldiers and warning shots have only made the crowd angrier. Go back to space. They shout, throwing sticks and stones. One soldier shouts a warning against disrespecting this symbol of Zanskar, and when the crowd doesnt stop, there are no more warnings. Shouts and cries ring out through the square. Several soldiers chase after Robb as the instigator of the riot, and no matter how fast he goeso is unable to evade them. Robb asks, will they do anything just to make you go to war? Then, with his brow furrowed, he looks Uso in the eye and says, you, won't die today. I won't let you die. Before jumping from the waapa, he tumbles across the road and into the wall of a building, grabs a piece of rubble and is shot by their pursuers. Fear, sadness, and anger flicker across Uso's face. Rubbing away tears, he returns to the corefighter, determined to destroy the guillotine for Robb. This he manages easily, buzzing past just low enough to break the guillotine apart and knock the pieces to the ground. But then he has company. Kwan Li's Bespa team has been deployed to the city. On her way back to baseball, Pharah is picked up by the Recaro mobile armor as the Shrike team have been detected nearby. The past few weeks have given USO experience and confidence. Despite the teamwork and clever tricks of the enemy, hes determined to fight them even after Marbit arrives and orders him to rejoin the Shrike team. Instead, Uso flies alongside Marbit and Oliver, and the three of them send Kwan Lis team running. When the recarl emerges from the clouds, firing its beam cannon at their formation, USo charges in close, slicing right through the beam cannons barrel and damaging the mobile armor's main engine. Farrah orders the recarls pilot to withdraw, and the league militaire group continue their journey south.
So do you want to talk about victory Gundam this week, or do you just want to talk about last exile?
Ha ha ha. We have reached the point in watching last exile, which I've never seen but is an old favorite of Tom's, where the Gundam references within it are very, very obvious.
That's a masked villain. She's a shar.
They just deployed a weapon they called bits.
Yeah, just gesturing vaguely. Leo pointing. I'm Leo pointing. At last exile and going Korea. Gandham Dayo. Well, Gundam Madoki, really.
But also about car racing. But also about flying and airships.
Right.
You know, for a person who is obsessed with these shows, you're really not into racing at all. It's kind of weird.
It's true. I don't like races. I do like a survival race. I could be into that. Like an endurance race. That could be interesting. Something with obstacles. I just don't like, go fast.
I even around a track, even as they dodge each other.
That's less interesting to me. I like agility more than speed.
Yeah, the agility of having to maneuver around all the other racers.
Anyway, you'll never convince me of the appeal of cargo fast and circle.
What about when it's a squiggly wiggly circle?
Well, now we're talking. Can you powerslide? Do you get blue sparks? Are there, like, shells that you can throw at other racers?
This is how oblivious he is to the world of racing. I think he has missed the point, which is that I was talking about Formula One. Also, you don't really like Mario Kart either.
I like it well enough. If you didn't beat me all the time, I might like it more. Fine, let's talk about Gundam. Stop talking about my racing inadequacies.
Although it is not perhaps as revealing as some of the other episodes have been, this is a really interesting episode when it comes to UsO. Firstly that they bookend the episode with adults in his life who have previously been kind of hard on him or critical of him, speaking up for him in the face of criticism from other people. He has become part of the in group and as such he he is entitled to them standing up for him.
The bit at the end where Marbet is defending him against Oliver, telling Oliver, you know, you don't need to scold him. He already knows. Feels like mom coming to your defense.
When dad is mad and perhaps feeling very conscious of how hard they have been on Uso at other points and not wanting to dishearten him too much. As Romero and Gomez discussion us having Uso around has been a morale boost for the league militaire, this young kid who is willing to put his life on the line to defend his home from Zanskar. The fact that he is such a good pilot. Having an ace pilot around would be good for morale anyway. But he also makes such a good story, such a good symbol for what they're trying to achieve.
And aside from what he signifies, like, while they have pushed back against him, while they have argued with him about various things, the clarity of his intuition has to have an effect on them as well. It, I think, helps them to understand better who they are and what they're doing and why they're fighting. Because Romero doesn't just talk about what a great pilot and what a great inspiration USO is, he even has that line about how the intuition of children is usually reliable or something along those lines.
Can't help but hear him say that and think, well, when you want to listen to his intuition anyway, when you agree with his intuition, yeah, I mean, of course.
But also, like, who knows? Maybe while he argued against USO in the moment, he has taken some time and thought about the things that USo has said. As often happens with us in real life, someone says something to you and your initial reaction is no, no way, absolutely not. And you argue against it and you throw out a million reasons why it isn't true, but it sticks in your head and it keeps chewing away at you. And after a few days or weeks or months or years, you come around to the idea again and you think, you know, there might have been something to that.
There are a few pretty sad moments.
In this episode, but if you think about it too much, Romero's line, he's more pilot than child, is among the saddest. He has mostly made the transition. He is mostly not a child to them anymore or even to himself. You sort of see this reflected in the very workmanlike way that he pulls off this whole subterfuge at the beginning of the episode, which is so cleverly done, his little makeshift rear view mirror so he can still look ahead even as he reads the signals from the plane behind him.
How does the corefighter not have a rear facing camera? How is this not a thing he can just see on the display? This is bad engineering.
Yes. However, in our daily lives, we come up against bad engineering all the time, and we have to make do the way in which he is able to gauge how much ammo these bespa pilots are likely to have and so can kind of just wait them out and then chase them off. There's a whole sequence after he breaks from the transports and he tells them, oh, I'll meet up with you at the nearest city or whatever. And he's eating his packed food and he's napping in his cockpit.
At one point, he, like, gargles and spits what is probably mouthwash out of the cockpit.
He might just have been using a bit of water to clean and wet his throat.
It's the kind of detail that feels very Tomino to include.
It makes him feel very human. It makes this feel very routine.
It makes him feel very animal, very physically alive and in the world. And I focus on that because in this sequence, Uso is compared against this, like flock of gulls. They are soaring on the thermals just as he is gliding along.
He is as comfortable in the air, perhaps, as they are. And then his moment of childlike delight at seeing the ocean, because apparently he has never seen the ocean before. And they make sure that it's quite a beautiful bit of ocean that he gets to see this first time. The sun is lancing down through the clouds in that way that it does sometimes. That is so striking and feels so unreal, awesome in the old awe inspiring sense.
This probably is the first time Uso has ever seen the sea. I mean, he grew up in landlocked Cassarelia, but I also have this same reaction whenever I see the sea, like, ooh, the sea. Ah, it's so beautiful. I love it. This is really an episode about identity. Mistaken identity episodes almost always are about identity. When you present somebody with a mistaken identity situation, it acts as a challenge to their identity. The underlying point is usually to give the person a chance to try out another identity, to consider whether or not that's the life they actually want to live. USo here is offered a life away from the war, to step back, to be a child, and in fact, to step into the shoes of another child who left for a war.
Oh, see, I had an entirely different interpretation of this. Uso has felt very alone. He holds himself apart in a lot of ways. He very rarely expresses what he's feeling in an open manner or in an unguarded manner. He's in this weird in between place of vis a vis his age and his role. It is a lonely way to be. He may feel in his role, exceptional, both in a positive and a negative sense. And yet here we are confronted with the fact that he's not the only child who. Who's gone off to fight. Whether it was forced by conscription or forced by circumstance is not clear, but he's not that unique, at least in that sense. Although he hasn't met people in the same position. Although it's perhaps not enough people that it's this kind of, like, widespread trend. He's not the only one.
I think that's a good interpretation. But throughout the episode, there are these lines that I associate with challenges to or negotiations of identity. Romero has that one at the beginning about USO being more pilot than child. One of Uso's key lines in the show is after Mister Robb has been killed, when he says, I'm not Nicole, I'm Uso, like, reaffirms his own selfhood, his own identity.
Well, he vacillates throughout the episode between humoring Rob when he forgets, and correcting Robb, which is probably about what most of us would do. Either one to take one course exclusively feels cruel for different reasons, and it's awkward and he's trying to be kind.
There's also the bit where Odello suggests that maybe his crew will just stay in Barcelona. It seems kind of nice here. Seems kind of peaceful. In theory, that is the lure. That is the thing that USO may be struggling against. Yet there are no indications throughout the episode that USO actually is struggling with that choice. He remains laser focused on Artie Gibraltar.
That was part of the reason why I didn't really buy your initial explanation of him being offered this other life, because at no point does he seem legitimately tempted to take it to, right?
I was eventually working out.
Oh, sorry.
It's okay. It's all right. When you go for the slow burn, you can't be mad if people don't notice that anything is cooking. It's a weird episode because it has all of the hallmarks of a challenge to USO's identity and the possibility of him deciding to stay, which would then be foreclosed, just as it is in this episode by the arrival of Zanskar, the arrival of the guillotine, the death of Mister Robb, and the reaffirmation of the show's already established thesis that in times of war, no one can be both safe and free. And all of that happens except at the center of it. USO never actually feels challenged. There's even an entire parallel story about mistaken identity and a challenge to who you are and the impossible desire to leave behind your past and become something else going on. At the same time. With Pharah Griffin, theyre doing a parallel story, except one of the two characters has decided not to participate.
I would argue that Pharah doesnt have any intention of really leaving her life behind either. But before we talk about Pharah, that.
Was just a little bit of foreshadowing for you listeners.
I do want to go back to Odello and company and to Shakti because they legitimately might leave the current course. Shakti has decided that she is going to stay with Uso no matter what. Unclear for the time being, but she is still saying, let's go back to Kasarelia.
The specific way she does that in this episode feels kind of silly.
Well, yeah, I mean, she did agree to leave in the first place, though that might have been because Uso was so determined, it seemed at the time that she agreed to leave because she agreed with his assessment that they were not safe there anymore, that there wasn't any way to be safe in Cassarella any longer.
And then here they find him in the library. Props to Shakti for knowing that apparently Uso is a book monster.
She knows him so well that she knows exactly where he will be, wherever.
There'S a lot of books, but they find him there. He's pouring over navigational charts. He's like, I'm looking for a route to arty Gibraltar. And then Shakti's like, I think we should go back to Kasarelia. And everybody present just ignores that she said anything. No response whatsoever.
Well, what can you say to that, really? And with Odello in them. One of the things that I had wanted to talk about last week, and we didn't get to because we were running long and kept having audio interruptions. Odello shows it less than most of the kids he's with, but he is also traumatized by what's happened to him, his hypervigilance in the previous episode, which is to say, the way in which he is asleep, but the moment he hears a rotor overhead springs up onto the roof of the camion with a grenade launcher or a bazooka at the ready. That kind of hair trigger response to a stimuli that you associate with threat, on the one hand, it's very adaptive, right? Like it probably does help make people safer. The downside is it doesn't go away once you're no longer in danger. That kind of thing, if you have PTSD, stays with you for a really long time. And his physical aggression, which you could say is just typical of his age. But you could also credit his physical aggression and his bit of a hair trigger when it comes to being willing to brawl with Uso, to the traumatic things he's been through. He's being overprotective of Suzy and Warren. Yes, they seem sad a little, that Uso is even able to look for his parents because they know their parents are dead, but they don't seem horribly broken up. You know, they're a bit wistful, and maybe Odello knows them really well and knows that they're hiding, how sad they are. But the fight and his anger feel like an overreaction, especially given that he is, in fact, willing to help USo. He doesn't have a problem with Uso looking for his parents. And then again, their reaction to Barcelona, which we know it's Barcelona because of the church. Let's just jump ahead to that really quick. That church is, without question the Sagrada Familia basilica.
There's only one like it in the world.
Maybe we'll talk more about at some point. But it's unmistakable. They are in Barcelona.
And the guillotine gets set up in the Plaza de Gaudi, which is right outside the Sagrada familia, which is, in.
Fact, surrounded by shops, restaurants, cafes, bars all around the plaza. But we've noticed in previous episodes, although they are certainly willing to help out, to sing for their supper, as it were, with the league militaire and to work, to be part of this group that keeps them fed, sheltered, and protected, Odello always has an excuse for why they should be allowed to go off scouting, which is to, say, to get food or to investigate or to visit people or do whatever they want. And he's always on the lookout for a safer situation. And so even though Barcelona has clearly been attacked because it is not as heavily damaged as largaine was, they're like, oh, this seems pretty nice. Like, you could still live in some of these buildings. The fridge in this one was full of food. Like, they are focused on survival. And though it's not as evident now, early on, it seemed that if Odello were left to his own devices, he would happily just be a soldier of some kind or an engineer or what have you and be part of the war effort because he wants revenge, but because he is taking care of Warren and Susie someplace safe for them is even more important than the revenge that he wants.
I assume that Suzy's older sister, who she mistakes Pharah for her older sister at one point, and it drives a lot of the interactions of the episode. I assume Suzy's older sister is dead and that Odello knows this and hasn't told Suzie.
So I'm less positive he does say, there's no reason she would be here. There's no way she would be here. This sort of the grammar construction. But they are also very far from Largaine, and so he might just mean, like, there's no reason why she would be all the way in Spain.
Sure, but why would Suzy be with them if she had an older sister she could be with instead?
Her older sister might have lived another city over or another country over from where they were. She might have traveled for work or, I mean, there are a lot of, I think, reasonable explanations why the elder sister would not have been home in Largaine with the rest of the family, especially if the elder sister is around Pharah's age. I agree with you that it's very likely that if she were in largaine, she is dead now. But I don't think that the way he phrases his comment makes that a certainty or makes it that, like, he knows for sure. This felt like another one of those moments where the show wants to remind us that these are, in fact, children. Suzy, in a moment of seeing someone she thinks she recognizes is not being logical. She's not thinking through, like, what would my sister be doing all the way out here? She just runs for her. And then her delight at the ice cream and her willingness to just pester this stranger.
Full credit to the voice actor for Susie, who delivered an impeccable little squeak of delight upon getting this chocolate parfait ice cream. But besides being mistaken for Suzy's sister, Farrah is also briefly mistaken for a civilian by her own soldiers and clearly.
Wants to be on the down low for the day, to take a day.
Off to wander the city in civilian garb in a frankly incredible outfit on.
Her little e bike.
A little moped.
Yeah, well, it's not even a moped. It looks like an electric bicycle. It looks like a motorized bicycle. There's almost no body to it to speak of. It's just like a bicycle frame.
I thought that's what a moped was.
Well, more research required.
We'll come back to this when we know which one of us is right.
And by the end of the episode, I began to wonder if this show was going to make Pharah a bit, like, sharp in some ways. The fact that she is also an orphan. Or rather, they ask her, are you a war orphan? And she says, I never had a home.
And her memories, these intrusive thoughts she's having while she's drinking in the bar, make it seem like she didn't really want to do all the guillotining with which she is now associated. These were things that were sort of forced on her from above and actually carried out by her subordinates.
Ooh, I had a different read on that. I thought it was that she did use the guillotine of her own volition, on her own initiative. In the case of Count Oyn Jung and perhaps other times previously, we don't know, she mentions the guillotine's use in Zanskar. It's unclear what involvement she had with that.
Certainly with Count Young, it was on her own initiative. That's why she's being dragged off to this tribunal.
Right. And it was extremely high profile because she wanted it to be, and now it's become a big thing. However, the way she acts during the episode and the flashbacks, which I think are all connected to each other, are all related to this incident that we're witnessing here.
This is our point of disagreement. I thought the flashbacks were related to the establishment of the guillotine in Largaine in the first place, way back before the events of the show even started.
Nah, see, I think the flashbacks were about this incident. That one. I mean, clearly she thinks it's okay to hold public executions of people if it achieves a purpose, and she believes it does. She thinks it's ludicrous for somebody to make a request of her. She's like, give me orders or don't. What is a request what does that mean here? That you request that I do this and that she thinks it's ridiculous of them to set up the guillotine and display it in this town square without any intention of using it on anyone.
I think that's true. She definitely does think that this demonstration of the guillotine is counterproductive and stupid. But she has that memory where her pilot slash lover Metjet, where she says, okay, if you're gonna set up the guillotine, then you do it. It's your show. You take the lead on this. And she's so positive about him at the end, even to the point of, you know, saying, okay, if we're in danger, let's pull back. Let's not pursue them, and leaning back in her chair and closing her eyes and saying, you're such a good man, matchet. It's weird.
Yes, it is.
If she feels that positively about him, even though he was the one responsible for the guillotine in the square that caused all this trouble in the first place. But then again, sometimes you're really mad at a person, right up until you see their face, and you're just like, ugh, I can't be mad at you. You're my pilot.
Or she still thinks he handled things with the guillotine badly. But on the other hand, he's willing to risk his life and this, you know, rather important mobile armor, because he knows that fighting this white mobile suit is important to her. Hes loyal.
Well, when youre picking a toady, thats the important statistic to look for.
And although she on some level, wishes she could have a break from being Pharah Griffin, a woman who famously executed various people in public, and she resents this close association she has now with the guillotine, even though its used by all of Zanskar, she never seriously considers running away.
But I do think she's trying on a civilian identity. It doesn't fit her very well. She keeps being reminded of who she really is. Like when she tries to buy a beer with this military scrip that makes the bartender scowl at her and the guy sitting next to her inch slowly away. But like she is, at least for a moment, trying to be a normal person, something she has perhaps never been, if her line about not having a home and never having had a home is any indication.
And she does, after fashion, try to be kind to these kids.
That little wave and smile she gives Susie when they part.
And even just the fact that she warns them, oh, this might not be a good place to live. FYI, she didn't have to tell them that she's been leading groups in leveling cities full of kids like these. But face to face with these kids on this day, she feels some pang or some sense of wistfulness, almost right, because they all have each other. They're a group of friends.
It's easy to talk about the enemy in the aggregate, to talk about earth noids as a group. But then when you meet a bunch of war orphans, cute kids just trying to get by, you begin to see them as individual humans.
And it may well be that pharah and Uso have loneliness in common.
And I know we're hanging kind of a lot of weight off of this one single hook of Pharah's line about never having had a home. But it's a powerful line. I think it can bear a lot of weight. What was Pharah's youth look like? When did she join the army? When did she first start fighting? How much of a childhood did she actually have? It may not only be loneliness that she has in common with Uso.
The local population is pretty clearly on edge. There are very few people out in the street, which would be unusual for Spain in the middle of the day on a nice, pleasant day.
There are a lot of people getting drunk in bars in the middle of.
The day and having arguments.
And, well, when that one couple tell the kids to shove off Uso quite quickly, and I think accurately diagnoses them as scared more than anything else, another.
Couple of friends are talking about, what about the airport? Oh, vespas occupying it. They've already been attacked in some way, but they are clearly waiting for the axe to fall. The misjudgment of Bespa being that they think setting up the guillotine in this area where they've heard there is league military activity will frighten people into either turning league military over or at least not helping them, and instead it makes people angry because, of course, they don't believe these police when they say, we're not using it on anyone, we're just displaying, playing it here. They start yelling about things like, go back to space, stop polluting the earth.
There's one line among all of the various things shouted by the. What's the demonym for people from Barcelona?
I don't know.
Well, there's one thing that's shouted by these various angry Catalonians, and they say, this is a free city. The term they use is jiyu toshi, which is another word with a very strongly historical european flavor because it specifically refers to the free cities of Germany in the Middle Ages, like Cologne, Hamburg or Danzig, as well as like, Genoa, Venice, Florence. There is a japanese equivalent, but it's a different term.
So they were sort of city states of particular periods.
So what they are there are, I think, a couple of different, like, historical origins for them. But effectively what they are is like cities that are directly under the Holy roman emperor. So not, you know, not part of one of the constituent states of Germany, but, like, answering only to the emperor, essentially self governing cities. The japanese equivalent is Jichi Toshi, which is autonomous cities. It implies that Barcelona is like, not part of any other political polity except the federation.
There have been a number of separatist movements within what is now Spain for a really long time. And Catalonia in particular has a very strong identity of its own. Its own language, its own language preservation. I dont remember what exactly that movement was up to in the early nineties or late eighties, but I can count on there having been something.
Well, I think the idea is whoever Zanskar is fighting, because, like, it seems to be the case that somehow Sanskar is not at war with the federation. Zanskar is at war with, like, a bunch of other political entities within the federation, but not the federation itself. Barcelona should be effectively like a neutral city, but now it has clearly been raided by and is under the domination of Zanskar.
And the issue here is something that you can basically count on happening. It's happened so many times in history, it feels ludicrous that anybody tries it without expecting it. But if you put a bunch of armed soldiers or militarized police up to an angry crowd, people are going to get shot. The crowd are throwing fish and stones and sticks, anything they have to hand in this square, in this park. Initially, the Bespa military police are trying to kind of explain themselves, but then they start firing warning shots. And then, and here's another problem. One of them says anyone who insults the guillotine of Zanskar will be shot. And then they're not warning shots anymore, because suddenly the guillotine isn't just a weapon set up to scare people. Suddenly it's a symbol of their authority and they cannot allow it to be disrespected. And once that happens with this angry crowd, there it is an inevitability that they open fire on these unarmed people. But I wanted to come back to the idea of this alternate life that USo could have taken, because as they are taking Robb's waapa away from the riot, Robb says to Uso Nicol. Don't run. Don't run away from this. Don't try to escape it. We have to face them. We have to fight. Is all the unsaid stuff under that line in an episode that is extremely minimal in most of its animation and uses a lot of little shortcuts and tricks and some repeated shots or sequences, zooming in on stills and special effects to create the illusion of animation where there really isn't any. The animation of R O B jumping from the waapa, tumbling into a wall and picking up a rock to throw is so detailed and beautifully animated.
It is. It's gorgeous.
It just pops out at you. It's incredible.
And I think it's been animated or at least laid out in a somewhat different style from the rest of the animation because certain parts of it are repeated from other angles in the way you see in action films. And we almost never see that in Gundam, especially in Victory Gundam. And I like, it stands out so much. I was almost pole axed when it happened. I was like, whoa.
It is literally stunning.
It feels like a sequence that belongs in, forgive me, a better show, or at least a better animated show.
I can't argue with that.
Yeah.
When you mentioned the difference in style, I was like, are you sure that's not just because it's better animated and has more line work than basically anything else in the show? And in keeping with the established symbolism of the guillotine, after seeing this, after running through the gamut of emotions that USO feels, you know, shock, sadness, anger, tears, determination, he then knows how important it is, or perhaps just feels on some deep gut level that he must destroy the guillotine.
And Mister Robb wanted that guillotine smashed.
And this is accompanied by a change of music. There is a very sad violin playing. Not sad violin. Ironic sad violin. For real.
Well, it reminds me of last week there was another extended combat sequence set, not to action music, but to tragedy music, to sad music. Both of these sequences are beautiful. And although this episode does eventually bring in some more of that action focused adventure music for the rest of the combat, I love the way victory makes these fights feel so sad.
It may not seem very important to the episode, but in keeping with both the show's considerations about the environment and also the show's consideration for how harmful war is to the environment and to human progress, Rob mentions that he has gotten all this junk and he's using it to build artificial reefs for fish, which I don't know how long we've been doing that. Now I feel like I hear it periodically about cars or old subway trains or various other defunct pieces of equipment or concrete or whatever sunk in places where reefs have been destroyed to create new artificial bedrock for reefs and environments for fish. He also mentions offhand to USO that he was involved in some kind of research about the fish in the area in addition to being a fisherman, but that his research has been entirely disrupted by the war. He was already doing this good work for the environment, and it is the war that has upended it. And now he will never go back to doing that. Now if Nicole ever comes home, it's to an abandoned house, to an empty shack and an abandoned submersible and a fishing boat. Or maybe Nicole never comes back and these things are just like a sad monument.
I'm not sure that it was this war that took Nicole away. I don't know how long ago Nicole left. If Nicole is meant to be Mister Robb's son, then it must have been quite some time ago.
Long long ago. But Fitzs grandson, it could have been this war.
It could have been Zanskar and Bespa and all of that. But it could have been older. This is certainly not the first war that has touched the earth sphere.
Although obviously the timelines dont work at all. Its possible that this is meant to evoke the spanish civil war. It couldnt literally be that, but it is possibly meant to connect to that.
To that feeling of massive loss. You. I think you're right that these elements are not that important for this episode, but they are crucially important for the show as a whole. When USO first lands on this artificial reef, there is a sequence where they cut back and forth between USO and Mister Robb on the one hand, and the shrike team and the rest of the league militair transport group on the other. The cuts, I think, are very purposeful.
With the shrike team clearing forests so the planes can land, with the shrike.
Team clearing huge swaths of trees with beam saber slices, cut immediately. Mister Robb explains sinking panels from old destroyed mobile suits. He says mobile suits in the water makes a good habitat for fish to live in. Mister Robb is like the people at Kaerelia, engaged actively in trying to fix the environment, trying to help Earth recover. Not merely waiting for it to happen inevitably. Not by forcing everybody off of the Earth, not by killing all of the people, but by taking active steps, using our human brains and our human hands and our capacity to change our environment.
For good, and to try to beat swords into plowshares right?
Yeah. And also, I think it's important that he is a fisherman. He is a part of the cycle of life, too. He also takes fish from the sea, even as he gives them habitat. That it is about living in sustainable harmony with the earth rather than complete abnegation.
And one wonders how much of the attitude of the local populace, the anti spacenoid attitude, is a sort of bigotry at this newly created divide in humanity, at these different ethnicities, these different populations of humans. But on the other hand, do spacenoids in general, or Zanskar specifically feel any connection to the planet? Do they feel any sense of stewardship over the planet, sense of obligation or desire to care for and improve the conditions there? As yet, weve seen no sign of it.
Well, in the novels, I cant go any further to preserve my safety. I will say no more. Robb's criticisms of Zanskar later when hes talking about how hell never forgive the army that took Nicole away for the war also, I think, undermine the League militaire. Its an old trick to have a character say something about one circumstance that is also equally applicable to another.
Like you pointed out, as a free city, Barcelona was theoretically not involved in any of this, was theoretically neutral. We do not, beyond the landing of these two transport ships, see any sign of the league militaire in the city at all. But the city is still going to suffer and the League military is still using kids to help out. We argue back and forth with ourselves about this all the time, but this is part of why I wondered when Robb says that, whether he's being literal, like his son or grandson was conscripted or being figurative, in that the people who started the war took you away from me for the war, in the same way that there's the irony of these soldiers saying, catch that fisherman who started the riot, when, like, didn't putting the guillotine in the square start the riot? Hmm.
Well, but who did start the fire? It wasn't us. One more note. I consulted with my cars expert about the motorcycles briefly ridden by the Bespa military police. And with his expertise, we were able to conclude that these appear to be very similar to the kinds of motorcycles that were being ridden by military police, gendarmes, Gaudier Seville and Carbonieri in like, the fifties and the sixties. And they come from a couple of different brands, but they all sort of follow this same, like, body plan for a motorcycle. So that's neat. And I bring this up because I know I'm being a little bit silly here, but this episode has both a moped or e bike determination of whether or not those are the same thing pending. And these motorcycles, when we know canonically, it was Dukkur ick who revived the tradition of biking from the Middle Ages. So did he, like, did he completely change Zanskar society by reviving motorcycles? Did he discover them in an archive somewhere? Or did he recreate the motorcycle from first principles? Did he dig up ancient riding manuals and distribute them? Is he a motorcycling influencer or is.
He being a little imprecise? And he really means he revived off roading and dirt biking, because we haven't seen anyone else do that.
I want to believe that Dukerique is like a world famous, an earth sphere famous stunt motorcycle rider who just happens to also be a soldier, that if he had rolled into Barcelona, all of these people would be rushing up to him like, can I have your autograph?
That's not a terrible place to end it.
It isn't, but it hasn't given me the opportunity to point out a very annoying continuity error in this episode. Annoying to me personally. The Bespa MP's leave the square on motorcycles and in the chase of Mister Robb, they are shown to be riding motorcycles. And then there's a cut and suddenly they're on wapas and the motorcycles just disappear. I don't know where these incredible transforming Wapa motorcycle machines came from. Well, I guess probably from Duke or Eek.
Something has been nagging at my brain since we first watched this episode last week, and maybe one of our listeners will be able to figure it out. Pharah's civilian outfit in this episode feels so familiar to me, like I'm positive I've seen this outfit before but cannot for the life of me remember where I want to say it's from. A music video from maybe the eighties or early nineties. Tom thought maybe a movie. We cannot place it, so if you think you know what this outfit is from, please share it with us. It's gonna be such a relief to know.
And now Toms research on possible origins for the League militaires name in episode.
Ten, USO has a brief conversation with League militaire engineer Otis about the etymology behind the organizations name and the name of its mysterious commander. Its a rapid fire succession of good research prompts, but the one that stood out from the rest as the most bizarre was Uso's statement, confirmed by Otis that League militaire actually means holy alliance and that it comes from ancient Roman. Id like to explore this claim a bit. Its an odd one. The more info were given, the more confusing the illusion seems to become. Rousseau makes it fairly clear that the name is meant to be a reference to something, but the terms he uses and the things he says about those terms point in different directions. The name of the league militaire is pretty odd overall. The english name combines the english league with the French militaire. The japanese riga sounds like a straightforward japanese pronunciation of league, but in fact, both the english league and the french league are normally rendered as rigu in Japanese. Even the spanish liga is written with a long e. Soundlla is similarly weird. Standard japanese pronunciation of the french militaire is miriteru, as used for the famous military academy Ekoru Miriteru or an Hermes bag available in Miriteru Beiji military beige. The english military would be Miritari after Gundam's league militaire. The only other prominent use of the word miritea that I could find was in the title of a super Famicom game developed by Namco. Released in the United States in December 1993 as metal Marines, and in Japan in November 1994, the japanese version bore the title Militia, written in English but with Furigana showing it was meant to be pronounced militeia, just like the militaire in league militaire. The game is set in a Sci-Fi future world where humanity has established orbiting space colonies around the earth in the aftermath of a terrible war that left much of the planet devastated. One colony garrison commander Zorgeff declared himself to be the emperor, conquered the other space colonies one by one, and then invaded the earth. The player, an officer in a civilian resistance force called the Myritea and leading a force of 16 meters tall mecha, must liberate the people of earth from Zorgefs tyrannical rule. Im guessing that this game was what you might call an unauthorized adaptation of victory Gundam, and that they got the spelling Mirytea for militia directly from victory. Still, this is good evidence for how contemporaneous audiences interpreted the term militeia. Obviously that means militia, so the term as a whole feels just a little bit off in the way that so many names in Gundam have. It's probably meant to capture the way language and pronunciation drift over time. I wonder if in the translation, the anglo french ligue militaire was chosen specifically to capture a similarly uncanny feeling of linguistic discontinuity. Militia actually strikes me as a better fit for the organization anyway, militaire implies a certain professionalism, an organization of soldiers, but the league militaire is, as people keep saying, a civilian resistance movement operating behind enemy lines and outside the formal hierarchy of the federation forces. This becomes a bit clearer when we look at the sorts of real organizations historically known as league militaire, or military league for one. In the early 20th century, the french army officer Emile Drian remembered principally as the first high ranking officer killed at the battle of Verdun, and before that as a writer of epic war fantasy novels in which the glorious armies of France crushed the perfidious Germans and British, was also one of the key figures in the creation of a political pressure group called the League Militaire. The story goes like Drian was a rising star in the french army in the 1880s, when he married the daughter of his patron, the general and minister of war, Georges Boulanger. Boulanger himself had been one of the french commanders responsible for crushing the Paris commune in 1871 and became a major political figure in the latter part of the 1880s. The nature of the movement he led has been characterized as everything from far left to far right, as one of the precursors to fascism, as socialism gone astray, etcetera, into infinity. But it was definitely populist, nationalist and animated by a mixture of anti government resentment and desire for revenge against the hated Germans. In 1889, amid fears that Boulanger was preparing to seize power in a coup d'the, government issued a warrant for his arrest. Boulanger fled Paris rather than defend himself and his boulangist movement collapsed, as did the career prospects of his son in law and protege, Drian. Drian remained in the army for several years and all reports suggest that he was an exceptional officer. But despite the promising start to his career, he found further promotion out of reaching. In 1904, it transpired that the new minister of war had collaborated with masonic lodges throughout France to secretly gather information about the political and religious positions of the members of the officer corps, creating a vast index card record so that republican and masonic officers could be preferred for promotion, while catholic, nationalist or royalist officers were held back. At first this revelation caused a major scandal, but not enough of a scandal to stop them doing it. Instead, the system of political preferment continued out in the open for a further eight years. Unsurprisingly, Driant found himself on the naughty list, partly because of his association with the disgraced Boulanger and partly because he was catholic. When news of the index card affair broke, he resigned his commission. Now a fervent opponent of Freemasonry, Drian got into politics. He started running for office and he formed a series of political leagues, the Anti Masonic League, the Joan of Arc League, and in 1908, he and a group of other former army officers created a league that they called the old army. The old army billed itself as a political pressure group affiliated with no party or broader political ideology, but exclusively focused on the reform and strengthening of the army. Well, no political ideology except strengthening the army, promoting nationalism, reviving old traditionalist values, and purging the country of Freemasonry. In 1910, in response to complaints that the term old army made them seem rather backward and narrow minded, Drian and his comrades changed the organization's name to la Ligue militaire, the military league for maintaining the traditions of the army and the defense of its interests. The league militaire endured for four years, ending with the start of the First World War. Ironically, the main thing it did during that time was to publish its own index of undesirable officers, which is to say, those soldiers that they believed to be affiliated with Freemasonry. At around the same time, but somewhat further east, a bunch of nationalist junior officers in the greek army formed a secret society which was called the League militaire in French or the military league in English. They were as nationalists frustrated by greek impotence and incompetence in a recent disastrous war against the Ottoman Empire and in the geopolitical maneuvering that followed the war. As career soldiers, they were frustrated that their own prospects for promotion were stymied by the rampant nepotism dominating the upper echelons of the armed forces. In 1909, while Druon was getting himself elected to the Chamber of Deputies, this military league went into open revolt. Rather than trying to suppress the military league, the government opted to negotiate. After months of political wrangling, the king agreed to hold new elections and the military league dissolved itself. The elections were held one year after the league went into revolt, and a reformist coalition led by the now famous cretan statesman Elephios Venizelos triumphed. A decade later, and just across the border in Bulgaria, a group of current and former army officers formed their own military league to put pressure on the government of Prime Minister Alexander Stomboliski, whose program of downsizing the army, cultivating good relations with the countrys neighbors, and focusing national resources on economic development really cheesed off the officer corps. Unlike the greek military league, who got what they wanted without spilling any blood, the bulgarian military league conspired to launch a violent coup along with other dissident factions that took the government completely off guard. Stambouliski was caught five days later by allies of the military league and was murdered in quite sickening fashion. Many of the other leaders of his movement were killed as well. Folks, I just don't think that any of these leagues militaire are a very good fit. But what about Rousseau's notion that it actually means holy alliance and comes from ancient Roman? What an odd thing for him to say. At first glance, it seems to confuse more than illuminate. Where in ligue militaire are we meant to find any sense of the sacred, even the reference to ancient Roman? Literally, he says, furui roma no cotaba. The words or the language of old Rome is not as straightforward as it might seem. It's true enough that both league and militaire, or militia, derive from latin terms league from ligare, meaning to bind together, and from which we also get words like ligament, liaison, and alliance militaire from militaris. Yet neither of these latin roots convey any sense of sacred or holy. The classical latin terms for a military alliance don't use ligarettes. When Livy describes how a military alliance of gauls and tiburtes, the people of what is now Tivoli, were defeated at the very gates of Rome in 360 BC, he called them a societate belli, an alliance for war. When Caesar wrote about an alliance of gallic tribes against his invasion, he called it both a societate, an alliance, and a foidus, a confederation. But the term ligua was used rarely in this sense by medieval latin writers. And to add another wrinkle to this shar pei of a problem, Uso doesn't actually say that the league militaire got its name from Latin. He just says it's a word of old Rome. Since Gundam has already played with the flexible nature of terms like Middle Ages, which we now know to be a period in earth history that gave rise to both bicycles and Hitler, old Roman could well mean the modern Italian spoken in Rome today. It could just as easily refer to the people of what we call the byzantine empire, who knew themselves to be roman and mostly spoke greek. Or the connection with holiness, the Shinsei in Shinsei dome might instead suggest that the origin lies in the Shinsei roma te koku, or the Holy Roman Empire. And this would not be entirely without precedent. As listeners soup and Luna pointed out, the name of Bespa officer Pipinidan is a japanese pronunciation of the german term for the descendants of the medieval frankish lord Pepin of Landon. In English, we call them the Pipinids. And the most famous scion of that house was Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III and thus became either the first holy roman emperor or a precursor to that position, depending on your opinion about the continuity between the carolingian and autonian empires and how much you want to get into an argument today. For our purposes, let's just agree to call it close enough to bring the Holy Roman Empire, its frankish predecessors and its austrian successors into victorys orbit. As for the connection between the austrian holy roman frankish empires and the League militaire, well, that will have to wait for next week when I start looking at holy alliances and sacred leagues throughout history.
Next time on episode 10.13, flesh and blood in a war of machines. We research and discuss episode 13 of Victory Gundam and Mandela effect. False flag Uso's dad went out for a pack of space smokes. The ogre and the serpent go to space, young man. The careful dance of neutrality war paint.
Is that an earthbound reference?
The hottest new UC band that Uso kid and the Shrike team gals and out of the frying pan and into the firefight. Please listen to it.
Mobile suit Breakdown is written, recorded and produced by us, Tom and Nina in scenic New York City within the ancestral and unceded land of the Lenape people and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Misha Dioxin. The closing music is long way home by spinning ratio. The recap music is slow by Lloyd Rogers. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the Lenape people, and more in the show notes on our website, gundampodcast.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email hostessundompodcast.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@gundampodcast.com. Support thank you for listening. It's probably actually the Mediterranean, since he's flying towards Barcelona, not the ocean proper, but still, it's gorgeous. He calls it the ocean.
Even for you, that's a nitpick. The Mediterranean Sea is not the ocean, Nina.
I'm not correcting you, I'm correcting him. But I wouldn't expect a boy who I'd never seen the ocean before to know the difference.
I'm fairly certain in Japanese there is no distinction.
Yeah, you're probably right.
It's the exact same word.
So it's the translator that I should blame for this.
Oh, hasn't the poor translator been through enough?
You're right. I'll cut this section and only include it in the outtakes.
The song, it's the end of the world as we know it started playing in a Spotify playlist for me the other day. That song hits real different right about now, gotta say.
You mean following the earthquake in New.
York starts with an earthquake? Bird, snakes and airplanes. Is the airplane going on? Is there any freaky stuff going on with birds or snakes? Probably. I don't think any of this should be in the episode, by the way. This is outtakes. This is extra. I don't really know how to end this. Did you want to end with we didn't start the fire?
No. I do have one more. I was looking around for costumes that might have inspired this one. And I realized that for a significant portion of roman holiday, Audrey Hepburn is wearing most of this outfit. There's no jacket and the shoes are different. And she doesn't have the hat, but she has the haircut. And she has the white shirt with square tie and a very full skirt of the. Approximately the same length.
And then.
Do you have interest enough to record?
Yeah, I'm just imagining a speckled frog.
Sprog. Tom Sprog.
You said it was a freckled sprog, so it could be a speckled frog.
I bet a lot of frogs have speckles.
But do they have spectacles?
I've been saying guillotine are both correct. Guillotine and guillotine.
Yes.
It's one of those where both are correct.
Okay.
At least in English. That game, militia, there was a. There was a pc port that was handled by the american company mindscape. And as happened a lot at that point, there were small changes made to the story when it was localized for the american market and onto the pc. And the pc version of the story is like, even more transparently a ripoff of Victory Gundam.
Tsk, tsk.
These are serious complaints, Nina. Don't demean them with your sarcastic tsking.
I have no response to that.