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 10.44, Hope Springs Eternal, and we're your hosts. I'm Tom, a longtime Gundam lover and since I was born a podcaster. Of course, I love to hear myself talk.
And I'm Nina, new to Victory Gundam and wishing Tigress would be more constructive in her comments on the show rather than just criticizing our takes all the time. Mobile Suit Breakdown is made possible by our generous and genial paying subscribers. Subscribers. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons, Mira G. Nob, Martin T. Jamievdr and Rayconxp Youkibas Genki.
This week we're covering victory episode 44, Aiwa Hikari no Hatani or Love Lies at the End of Light. The episode was written by Sonoda Hideki, storyboarded by Takizawa Toshifumi, and directed by Takei Yoshiyuki, who has been the assistant episode director for about half of the episodes so far. And here gets a chance to step up into the more senior position. SEO Yasuhiro directed the animation. The storyboards for this episode are Takizawa Toshifumi's only credited contribution to Victory, but he was a regular on Sunrise Anime, including as the main series director on Dirty Pearl and as Chief unit Director on Armored Trooper Vadhams. There won't be a research piece this week. I got a bit over ambitious and ran out of time, so you can look forward to more from me next week and the recap which is coming right now. Can love bloom on the battlefield of Angel Halo? For Kishal and Kalinga, elite pilots from Maria Pure, Armonia's own Imperial Guard, the answer seems to be yes. When they stop to inspect a lone spacecraft hauling salvage from the battlefield to the Angel Halo, the crew of children and their obviously pregnant chaperone inspire Kishal to ask his subordinate and longtime friend if she would like a baby of her own. His baby. Once the lovestruck soldiers return to their Rig Shaco mobile suits, Marbette, USO and the rest can finally breathe easily again. Marbette starts to remove the wadded up cloth stuffed down her jumpsuit to simulate a baby bump, but USO tells her she'd be wise to leave it, and better yet, maybe hide a gun in there too. With Kishowl and Kalinga escorting them, the White Ark has no trouble slipping past the formidable defenses around the Angel Halo. They dock at a support space station Blue 3 and find it full of people psychics who have been summoned to the new Zanskar weapon. Tomash guesses they've been brought here to power the new machine. He's heard of a device called a Psychomu which might be involved somehow. There is an unsettling dullness to them, perhaps the result of brainwashing. And something about the energy this close to the Angel Halo fills Shakti with dread. Her fear is so strong that Queen Maria aboard an approaching warship, can feel it. Realizing that Shakti must be nearby, she orders a search for her prodigal daughter. Without Shaakti's remarkable sensitivity, they won't be able to use the Angel Halo to erase all the warlike thoughts of the human race. But speaking of warlike thoughts, the the League kids are busy planting explosives all over the Blue 3 station when the guards from before catch up to them. It's a desperate scramble, but USO and the rest are ready for it in mere seconds. Odello takes out the lead suit, while USO and some bubblegum pink birdlime capture Kishowl and his mobile suit intact. Faced by such a ferocious onslaught, and apparently convinced that her beloved commander is dead, a tear stained Kalinga beats a hasty retreat along with the rest of her unit. Kishal's captivity aboard the White Ark turns out to be short lived. While her friends are distracted, Shaak Ti reveals her royal lineage to the prisoner and then frees him so that he can deliver her to her mother or her uncle Chronicle whichever to Kishal. She says that she wants to help Maria with the Queen's great work. When Kishal holds her friends at gunpoint, she says that she needs to go so she she can ask her mother about the Angel Halo. Either way, whatever her purpose, there's nothing to do but hand over the captured rig Shako and let them go. USO and his wingman catch up to the escapee just as a Bespa squadron arrives from the other direction. It turns out to be the remains of Kishal's unit, with Kalinga in the lead, reinforced by Pharah Griffin in a new mobile suit, the Gengalzo. But this is not a rescue mission. Kalinga believes her fiance to be dead, and she has brought these soldiers here for vengeance. Her resolve falters when she sees Kishal's Shako. Could he be alive? But Farah, sensing her hesitation, reminds Kalinga that USO's specialty is stealing enemy mobile suits and repurposing them. Why, just look at how Kishal's rig Shaco seems to be leading this League militaire formation. USO tries to warn her, and when words fail, he does his best to draw the enemy's attention away from the fleeing prisoner. But it does no good. He has his hands full, just surviving Pharah's relentless assault. There's nothing anyone can do but look on in horror as Kalinga pounces on Kishoul. Beam saber burning hot, the two shakos impale each other. By some miracle, the pilots survive, but only temporarily. They leave their stricken machines and drift together in one last mortal embrace, talking wistfully of the beautiful future they will have together until wounds or exploding wreckage or the vast and empty void of space silence them both. Forever satisfied, Farah and the remaining best pursuits retreat, bringing with them a precious prize. Shakti, who is thrown free of Kishoul's suit during the battle. She'll make it to Angel Halo after all. We gotta talk about Shaak Ti.
Yeah, we certainly do.
Once again, Shaak Ti has voluntarily gone back to Zanskar to attempt to convince her uncle and mother to stop being so gosh darned evil over the objections of everyone else on the team and to their great danger.
Or has she? Oh, here's the thing. Throughout most of the episode up until she gets recaptured by Farah. I'm in agreement with you. She thinks somehow that despite having tried and failed multiple times to convince her mother to change things or to convince her uncle to change things, that maybe this time will be the different. Maybe this time she. Maybe this time can convince them to behave. She still thinks her words have power.
And that her position gives her influence.
She is shocked that her mother never told her any details about Angel Halo, didn't tell her about Angel Halo at all.
Was she shocked? Or was she feeling defensive in the sense of, oh, here's this horrible thing that Zanskar is going to do. But my mother didn't know anything about that.
I interpreted that less as her mother not knowing and perhaps a sense of betrayal. Everyone keeps telling her how important she is and then they don't tell her anything.
This is a small divergence, but maybe we should talk about Maria here and what the Angel Halo project seems to say about her. Because she's at the Angel Halo, she gives no indication of surprise or reluctance to use the thing. It becomes apparent that, yes, she did know about this and this was part of her plan all along. So what does it say about Maria as a person that she is planning to use a giant mind control space station in Order to purge from humanity all warlike thoughts.
I was puzzled about that initially, because it had seemed back on the Zanskar home city of Emeria, that Maria was helping USO free Shakti, that she wanted Shakti to be able to escape from all of this.
But they need Shakti to make angel halo work properly because Shakti is an even more sensitive psychiker than Maria.
And Maria didn't have to tell her generals that she could sense Shakti nearby. She chose to do that and then chose to say to them that Shaak Ti is even more powerful and would make the angel halo work even better.
Or her emotions ran away with her, and she spoke without thinking. I mean, you know how women are.
We don't have time for me to address that.
I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You know I'm kidding.
This actually brings us back to my theory about Shakti's changing motivations, though, because Shakti's horror at Kalinga and Kishal's deaths is, I think, the most horrified we've seen her, the most emotionally shattered we've.
Seen her at least since they were on Earth. And she was planting all those fireweed seeds in the middle of a battle. That was probably a bit farther, but it has been a while.
Well, and that felt a bit like she was going temporarily insane, like she had lost connection with reality because of so many traumatic things happening in such a short span. This felt much more like the combination of the, you know, on their face, horrible circumstance where two people who love each other dearly wind up killing each other and dying with all of these unfulfilled dreams and her proximity to them, meaning that she's getting hit by all of their emotions because of how sensitive she is as an empath.
Mm.
Just amplifying her horror. There is a strong possibility that by the end of this episode, Shakti agrees with the use of the angel halo to make the war end.
I think that is possible. It's one of my three interpretations of what might be going on with Shakti.
Like her mother, she is so desperate for the war and violence to end. And part of this is self preservation. This is not completely altruistic. This is that they experience so much of the, like, aura of emotional pain around people and potentially even the, like, physical pain around people, that it is agony to them and that if they could just make everyone stop, please, they think they would feel at peace.
It's a bit like. And I'm sure this was intentional. It is a bit like a mother coming upon her Children squabbling and yelling, hey, knock it off. That imposition of the external smothering maternal will to crush all those warlike, violent tendencies. I'm really glad that you said they were desperate, because I think that's what the angel halo shows us about Maria. She has reached a stage of desperation, and that desperation comes from despair. They have despaired of the possibility of humanity setting war aside, of humanity as it is now, being able to achieve real, lasting peace.
I thought in particular of chronic pain. Basically, I think the worst migraine I have ever had lasted two or three days. And by the second day of being in horrible, horrible pain constantly, I would have done anything. Like, it's the kind of thing that makes you understand why people would have agreed to trepanning or other really wild out there treatments. And it was horrible. But, like, compare that to people who are in chronic pain for months or years on end with very little effective to deal with that. And emotional pain can be the same. You know, depression and the like are like emotional pain versions of that, where you're just in pain for so long and you. You would do anything and you can't really think clearly anymore at that point.
And it makes it easy to see how she could be led around by people like Kagati or Sugen, people who say, we will end the war if we only do this thing, we will end the war if we cleanse Earth, we will end the war if we put wheels on battleships, we will end the war if we make a giant psychic mind control ray. And if you are so desperate, if the suffering of the many affects you so keenly, then you'll try anything, because no matter how horrible, at least it will be an end.
The other thing that I enjoyed about this episode, because it can feel it's getting old for Shakti to do this.
How many times has she done this now?
And seems decidedly naive. But one way in which she has clearly observed things going on around her, both in Sanskar and in the League Militaire and actually learned some lessons, is that if you project authority, a lot of times people will just do what you tell them. Yeah, it doesn't always work.
Hardened Shakti especially.
You know, I think she is to some degree aware that she's a child and people want to treat her like a child and not like an authority. And I think her ability to start to project that authority and to make demands in that way, as if saying, like, okay, I have accepted I am a princess, therefore I demand you all treat me like a princess. I think that's part of what unsettles Tasilo. Yeah, because he is ready for an easy to use pawn. But the fact that she seems to know and understand that that's what he wants is really unsettling. He thought he was going to be able to use her without her being any the wiser, and that was much more comfortable.
And look at how Farah reacts to that.
Ooh, Pharah gets angry.
So annoyed by this little brat who dares to show so much backbone.
Well, he gets angry too, by the end of it, but initially he's more shocked than anything else.
If you look at the way the characters in this episode are talking about childhood versus adulthood, they are describing a kind of hard line between the two. There are childish tricks that get mentioned. There's the shame of being beaten by a bunch of kids at one point. USO is like Shakti. The adult world isn't so simple. Does this scene show us Shakti crossing over that line and becoming an adult the same way uso, through his skill at violence on the battlefield, has forced his way into the adult world?
And is adulthood about making sacrifices for things that you value?
Hmm.
Because what else is Shakti agreeing to when she says, if you want a symbol, I'll be your symbol. I'll play the part? Because she thinks that will put her in a position to end the war. More or less the bargain Maria probably made. Although it might not have been about war, it might have been about, like, the suffering of the Zanskar people or, you know, but this mass pain on one hand and giving up your freedom, giving up your autonomy, because some people have convinced you that if you do that, then they can make the bad things stop. And her letting this prisoner out in order to go to her mother felt not dissimilar to Mira's escape. It felt like an echo of Mira's escape, which is yet another reason, on top of Shakti possibly changing sides here, that has me dreading a possible Amaro Lala type ending to USO and Shakti.
One could imagine Shakti becoming the pilot of the Angel Halo. Ooh. Maybe it transforms. Maybe it becomes like a cool dragon snake thing.
Maybe there's a little core part of it that's pilotable and a weapon.
And then USO has to fight it and kill her. Yeah, I could imagine that happening. We've been noticing these repeating dyads, these pairs on the Zanskar side for a little while now. But here we actually get a triad where Kagetti, Maria and Sugin form a triad of politician. Psychiker. God, I hate that term so much. Not just psychiker, but the way they've spelled it, like psychiker. Let's just go back to espers.
Well, they basically represent the temporal power, the spiritual power and the military. Right?
The politician, the esper and the soldier. Now look at Tassilo, Shakti and Pharah in this triad. Also, the soldier and the politician are roughly the same age and the esper is significantly younger than them. It's a new generational conflict between the younger generation of Zanskar and the older.
One, I gotta say, Farah seeming more and more monomaniacal, more and more obsessed with violence and vengeance and pain.
It's really unclear here if she actually knows.
Oh, I assume she knows Kishal's alive.
I mean, she has the ability to hear the echoes of the light or whatever. She has those powers. She probably can tell.
And she didn't need to say anything when Kalinga was like, oh my gosh, is that him? Is he still alive? And the thing that she chooses to.
Say, precisely calculated in order to make Kalinga fight Kishao to the death for Pharah's amusement.
And I don't know if you noticed this, but in the scene where she's talking to Kalinga before they launch, her pupils are slitted like a cat.
Yes, vertically slitted cat eyes. Cat eyed Pharah.
Gosh, they are always combat testing some new mobile suit, huh?
Are you talking about the Gengalzo? Pharah's new mobile suit?
I like it, I like it.
The Gengalzo is the partner to the Zanak, right?
It is the Furin to the Zanak's Raijin, the wind God to the Xanax thunder God.
And it has the like sort of the arc behind its back that looks like the bag of wind that Fuden is always carrying. And it's in Fuurin colors. Recently a listener asked me on Blue sky whether or not we were like enjoying victory, whether we were eager for it to be done. And I will say this for the show, I have started enjoying it a lot more since Pharah came back and has brought with her a succession of really cool mobile suits. Like, it is just so nice to have a charismatic, erratic, scenery chewing villain like Pharah who is just piloting some of the coolest robots of the show. This episode in particular, I thought was great. Really, really liked this one.
I always find those questions very difficult to answer because since it's our job to talk about it. There is a certain self preservation instinct in convincing myself to like everything that we're watching. Because if I don't, then geez, what a slog it is to get through a whole 50 odd episodes. And frankly, as long as there are interesting things to talk about in a series, I'm probably going to like it well enough. I can't imagine ever rewatching it for fun. Unlike some of the other Gundam we've watched so far. Now that I have some distance on it there, there are some series that I'm like, yeah, I could see watching this again. And there are series where I'm like, well, that was an interesting experience that I never need to revisit. But even when I dislike Victory, I've generally found it interesting. And so it comes out slightly ahead there.
But would you agree that it has been stronger in the last half dozen episodes or so?
Yes, they're ending pretty strongly, it seems. I mean, obviously we're not quite there yet. I think we have what, seven or eight weeks left after this, but seems to be going, going out strong.
Do you feel any more positively about the mind control aspect now that you know that Angel Halo is made of people?
Not especially. Although there is a really dark irony in the idea that they keep feeding people to Angel Halo to control everybody else, but then eventually there's just no more people because you've fed them all to Angel Halo and and the universe is finally at peace.
It made me think of Warhammer 40K, the golden throne of the Emperor of Humanity, to which thousands of Psykers have to be sacrificed every day just to keep the Astronomicon active. Psykers. That's a much better term than Psychikers. Psychikers don't like it.
I had some questions about that whole sequence while they're on. Was it blue 3? Why on earth would Kishaou tell Marbett and these kids like, oh, it's our job to transport these psychics. Why would you tell some random strangers that?
Well, they've already said our mothers came to Angel Halo ahead of us.
And we just believe that.
They seem like a pretty credulous pair, Kishao and Kalinga. They're prepared to accept most things that are said to them.
How do they know that these specific people, these refugees, are psychics? Do they have a special screening tool or something when they capture people or when refugees arrive?
Like they do kind of like a Voight Kampf test on them or, I don't know, new types can feel each other right? And there's the Flanagan Institute and the various new type labs. They've had a long time to do experiments on new types and, like, at least figure out how to identify potential candidates.
And it felt like a bit of a leap for Warren to be like, ah, they seem brainwashed. They seem tired and sad, which I imagine most refugees would be in the middle of a war zone. I don't. That feels like such a. We meant to fill in more information here, but we didn't. So we're just going to tell you these people have been brainwashed.
Like, they look like they're in a daze. A lot of them just kind of sitting around staring at nothing. It's not that big of a leap.
Well, but what. What do they even mean, brainwashed? Like, yeah, or they could be drugged.
Or they could be like, maybe Shakti was brainwashed. Mother and daughter calling to each other psychically, just like Ciroco and Rekoa and one tiny bone.
I have to pick with some of the subtitle translation in this episode, which is a small thing and is a thing that I can imagine is very difficult to handle translating Japanese into English. But a lot of the lines where people in the subtitles make declarative statements are couched in such a way in Japanese as to convey some amount of uncertainty. Possibly just a tiny bit. Just enough to be polite, sometimes a little more. But like, when Tomas says they're using people to power the angel halo, he says that in a way where it's speculative. He's fairly certain about his speculation, but he's not just saying it outright. This is definitely happening.
Maybe they're using people to power the angel halo. Is that even possible? Well, there's a device called the Psychomu that can turn psychic waves into energy.
Or like, they're using these people to power the angel halo, aren't they? You know, like that kind of a thing. Similarly, when Shakti says to Marbette, you're pregnant, it's more like, you're pregnant, aren't you? And, like, that's fairly certain. But it is not 100% declarative. You are pregnant.
It reads as super rude the way Shakti says it.
Yes, it does. And Marbet Demur. But clearly in a way where it's more like, I don't know if I am or not. And I'm certainly not talking about that with you children right now.
Mm. That could be used to establish some timeline. We sort of have an idea of what the outside amount of time that could have passed between Oliver's death and this episode.
Oh, gosh. My first thought on seeing Marbet in this episode was, wait, how much time has passed? She looks super pregnant.
You got taken in. You were fooled by their clever disguise.
I was. I was fooled by the clever ruse.
I love USO being like, you should keep a gun in there.
Gun pregnancy.
Okay, first of all, that could be the title of Tomino's next work. Second of all, can you imagine a more Victory Gundam scene than Marbette looking heavily pregnant, confronting a villain? Then a gunshot. Where did it come from? Camera pans down. Smoking bullet hole in the front of her jumpsuit because she's just fired her pregnancy gun in order to kill the patriarchy.
When Meera was pregnant with uso, she was pregnant with a weapon.
Are not all pregnant women carrying weapons? Every baby has the potential to grow into a warrior. That's why we need to purge the warlike thoughts from them before we talk.
A little more specifically about Kalinga and Kishaul. Their romance is obviously a huge part of this episode, but various other romances from throughout the show are hinted at in other ways. Mostly in the visuals, mostly in the background. But the possibility of Marbette being pregnant recalls Marbette and Oliver. When they are all entering Blue 3, all of the couples are holding hands. Uso and Shakti are holding hands. Odello and Alicia are holding hands. And Warren is holding hands with Martina and has actually a little heart floating above his head as they go by.
Good for him, though. I don't know if you caught this, but Warren and Martina and Odello and Alicia are both looking at each other as they are being carried along by the lift grips. But USO and Shakti are not looking at each other. USO and Shakti are both looking forward.
USO and Shakti are on a mission and also have not acknowledged their feelings for each other. Whereas I think the other couples, it's quite clear to both parties, like, yes, I am romantically interested in you.
Thank you for telling me. I am also romantically interested in you.
Kalinga gets to deliver a classic Tomino line about being a woman. Being a woman. I'd like to be a mother at.
Some point, having been born a woman.
Yeah. Oh, that's right. And, you know, it doesn't feel like a huge stretch in this particular show for us to say, okay, the position of this show as a whole is that women naturally and intrinsically want to be mothers and that the subversion of that instinct makes them maniacal killing machines.
Yes. Or worse. In the case of Lupe. Yeah, that's one thing about Victory in this last run of episodes. It is definitely clarifying some themes for us. And, yeah, going all the way back to, like, episode three or something. When I think Shakti looks at Katajina and goes, oh, Ms. Katajina hates babies. Like, okay, I see what we're doing here.
Mm.
The intrinsic purpose of any woman is to have babies, to become a mother.
Even a career woman like Mira, who's an engineer. I mean, come on.
Or Marbet, soldier, engineer, commander.
So women can work and women can be good at their jobs, but obviously only if they are also mothers. The capture of the White Ark seems like a really odd moment to propose, but what do I know?
And also, the proposal is, hey, do you want to have my baby? It's not even, hey, is there room in your octagonal dream cabin for me and my seven motorbikes? At least that recognized a shared interest.
I don't know. Japanese media has me convinced that, at least in Japanese media, men tend to propose in these really sort of, like, oblique and indirect ways.
What's indirect about, hey, do you want to have my baby?
Well, it's not a proposal of marriage necessarily.
That is true. Are there any married couples in Zanskar that we know of? Has Zanskar abolished marriage?
I guess there aren't any that we know of.
Hmm.
I highly doubt that they've abolished marriage. Loved the kids hamming it up about the proposal. Even Flanders appears to be snickering at the events.
They're also kind of, like, embarrassed when they then kiss, which they interpret as an acceptance of the proposal.
Shameless. Kalinga and Kisha will just kiss it in the hall where anybody can see them.
Even Marbette is blushing.
Well, you know, remember the research I did way back about kissing in Japanese media? And obviously, things relax somewhat over time. But kissing is still seen as, like, a very intimate act and not something that happens in public, really. Not something that you just see people do.
But the public proposal that is like, an object of delight, especially for the girls in the League militaire group. They're all giggling and smiling and cheering them on. But the idea of kissing in public, oh, that's a step too far.
It's a little racy.
Kishal and Kalinga go through the whole life cycle of a Gundam romance in the course of one episode.
There's a bit of a gift of the Magi thing in their last fight where he is like, well, I'm in my mobile suit, and I taught her to fly, so if I Just pilot the right kind of way, she'll be able to tell it's me and her. I can't let someone else dishonor his mobile suit by piloting it. I must destroy them. That they both have this sort of highly tuned sense of honor. Kishael tries to save Shakti when it becomes clear just how much danger that mobile suit is in. He's like, whoop. I'm not going to keep the princess here just so she can get murdered when my mobile suit explodes and does.
It in such a fun, clever way, like hard breaking his mobile suit and opening the cockpit at the same time so that Shakti, who is not secured in her seat, not wearing her seatbelt, goes flying out. I thought there were just a lot of great moments like that in the episode. A lot of clever little things when.
USO kicks Shakti over to the white arc to get her away.
I mean, just that whole sequence of them planting the bombs and then drifting over the edge of the lip of the space station rig shackos waiting for them on the other side. Beautifully directed.
USO holding his body in front of the muzzle of the beam rifle made me think of nothing so much as all those photos of, like, hippies and anti war protesters during the Vietnam War putting flowers into the muzzles of rifles.
Mm.
They do some beautiful things with the way tears would scatter in zero G with the way blood would scatter.
That bit when they do that monochrome color image where Kalinga is all in red and then Kishaol and Shakti are blue on a yellow background. The whole bit with the bird lime is really clever.
Oh, yeah. The end of Kalinga and Kishal. Their deaths made the two of them seem like one of the imagined possible futures for humanity and humanity in space snuffed out because as Maria's personal guard and presumably Zanskar citizens, they are probably spacenoids. They were probably born and grew up in space. Kalinga talks about the two of them cutting class or cutting training to just like play drifting around in the void. For them, it's not a horror, it's something fun and beautiful. And yet when they finally die, which is super drawn out and don't get me started, both of us looked at each other after the scene in which the beam sabers go through the cockpits, like, oh, they're both dead. And then somehow they're both not dead.
At least not yet, but also dying as a result of unclear internal injuries.
Right, that somehow didn't, like, melt off any part of their bodies or anyway.
Insufficient body horror for the level of horror of what happens to their bodies.
Yeah, but they get to spend their last few moments together. They talk about their dreams and how they were gonna raise their children to be good people, and that even without a ceremony, they can say that they're married. They can at least achieve this one dream that they had before they die. And then when the mobile suit explodes, which visually seems to indicate the moment of their deaths, their bodies drift in front of Earth almost as if they're going towards Earth. And again, it's this notion of the return to the Earth, the return from whence we came, the return to the mother. They seem to represent a person who could somehow retain that connection to Earth, but still enjoy living in space, still glory in the wonder of living in space, but still have that connection, which is a point of conflict throughout so much of Gundam. Like, can people have both of those things, or does it have to be one or the other? And is one of those things bad? Or is it the other one? Or are they both harmful? Or.
And as with so much of Gundam, love is not enough. Love is not enough to keep these two from being forced by circumstances to kill each other.
You mentioned the birdlime and how fun that fight is with all the little tricks, right? The dummy that has a trap in it. It's very cleverly done. And perhaps it's various events that have been going on recently, but I can't help but see all of these tricks, disguises, ruses, etc. That the young folks contrive as a means of making the fight a little more, even when they are so clearly outnumbered and outgunned. And the ways in which various people pooh pooh this, the childish tricks, or try to describe it as dishonorable. And yet so much of what various other people do in the show also involves disguise and trickery. Like, that's our speculation of how they've gotten Maria to do what they want her to do, that she is being coerced or tricked in some manner. That is what Farah did to Kalinga. That is what Tassilo and Farah want to do with Shakti.
It's like that comic with the two different sides. Our glorious defenders, their evil raiders, our magnanimous king, their tyrannical despot, like our clever ploy, their childish trick.
Something I want us to sort of keep in mind as we learn more about the Angel Halo and see more of it in future episodes. Is there any significance in the fact that it looks like an atomic symbol?
Hmm. That is not something I've thought of. Looking at it, I thought of, oh, it kind of looks like, you know, the meme of the. The actual, like, biblical depiction of an angel. And also of many wheels, wheels within wheels, interlocking wheels. The Zanskar wheel obsession brought to its utmost divine form.
Well, you will have to, if you're not watching the show, look up images of it in order to decide for yourself what you think it looks like. But I thought atomic symbol and wondered if they're going to take that as a visual metaphor in some way or if it's incidental.
I mean, it is the ultimate weapon. I don't think we have enough time left in the show to introduce any more, yet more ultimate weapons. In the last couple of episodes, thinking about Angel Halo again and its hideous imposition on free will if they're actually able to do this thing with it. And it's such a totalizing solution. It's such a desperate gamble to completely alter human nature in such a big way. Out of this desperate impatience, this unwillingness to accept that some conflict is inevitable. This simple desire to flatten and squash all of the aggressive impulses in humanity. To create a world with no conflict is not to create a paradise. It is simply to freeze forever the state of things at the moment when you do it well.
And to give anyone who is somehow not so subject to that control total power over everyone else, because nobody else will fight back. You have removed their warlike nature.
Who controls the controller?
One final thing that this episode made me think about. I want to say there'd been at least one mention of piracy in space before in this series. And it comes up again in this one when they first find the White Ark strapped with all kinds of debris in mobile suits. Super clever, by the way.
I think there might have been another one of those visual callbacks in that, because I'm pretty sure one of the pieces that they've used is like a bit of a bra, bro. Like one of the wire guided all range attack bits from the bra, bro. That I don't think that specific design has been reused on anything since then.
But it is fun to imagine the sorts of people, the probably myriad small ships like the White Ark, hovering around the edges of this battle, hoping to pick up valuable bits of war material.
That sounds like a really good show, right? They should make that show, right? Why did they make this show instead of that show?
I don't know.
Kids love pirates.
And yes, I know I need to watch planets. We have it. We haven't watched it yet I hear people rave. I know they're not pirates also, but.
You know, I mean, it's kind of sounding like you need to read Crossbone Gundam.
I don't know. I get so much Gundam already.
Well, if you want space pirates, but you don't want Gundam. Have you considered Bodacious Space Pirates?
Oh man, after my own heart. He says that to be silly. I'm the one who got him to watch Bodacious Space Space Pirates. Just not nearly as silly as it sounds. Although it is pretty silly. Next time on episode 10.452 Wings and a Prayer, we research and discuss Victory Gundam episode 45 and a secret third recap episode. But is it really a recap episode of Some of the Things Didn't Happen?
Yes.
I don't know, man.
We'll just have to argue about it next week.
We're all mad here. The true form of adult love. So, vegetarianism. Not one of the tenets of Maria ism, I guess. An unrelenting stream of horrors beamed directly into my brain. Yeah, I've been on social media. New and improved Beam strings. The accumulation of kind acts voluntold. It kills only animals and death and hatred to mankind poisoning their brainwashed minds. Please listen to it.
Doing them in that order makes it sound like you're asking them to listen to War Pigs.
Well, they should.
It's a good song.
It's a very good song.
Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, record, 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 Dayoxin. 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 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.
Been wrangling a cat this whole time? She's a little squirmy. I can stop her before before she comes over there, that's fine if she.
Wants to come over here, but she.
Might step on the board.
It'll be fine. All right, I'll keep an eye on her. If she turns off the recording, I can just turn it back on again.
There's no butter up here, kitten, no.
Matter how you search.
She recently discovered an intense interest in butter. Don't worry, we have not buttered the tigress. This is very strong. Like, that's my secret cap. I'm always angry energy. I mean, like, laughing at your own jokes.
Oh, my notes.
Yeah, those could probably helpful. We probably do need those. Oh, no.
Wrong Gundam opinion this week.
All right, so we're done.
Stretchy stretch. Yep, we're done. All right.