You're listening to season eight of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of Sci-fi mega franchise Mobile Suit Gundam, researching its influences, examining its theme, and discussing how each piece of the Gundam canon fits within the changing context in Japan and the world from 1979 to today.
This is episode eight point twelve. The center of danger is here, and we are your hosts. I'm Tom, Gundam fan and the laughingstock of space.
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This week. Stardust Memory episode Twelve kyoshu Soshi Genkai ten Its English title is Assault on the Point of no Return. And its original English title was Assault Waves. It was released on August 21, nine two, one week before the theatrical debut of the compilation film Kito senchi Gandhamu 83 Gion Nozanko originally given the English title Last Blitz of Zion and now known as The Afterglow of Xeon, the chief director for episode twelve was Imanishi Takashi. He also wrote the script and drew the storyboards. Watanabe Shinichiro directed the episode. The animation director was Kano Hiroki, future character designer for Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood. Nishimura Tomomichi reprised his role as Jamatov Hyman. And now the recap.
It is November 12, UC 83, and pilots on both sides are exhausted. They have been fighting unceasingly for hours and will have to keep going. There are 9 hours left until the colony reaches the Point of no Return, the point at which they will not be able to guide it away from the Earth. Cole and the Unit Three cut through enemy mobile suits like a scythe through wheat, but there are too many of them, and he cannot get past Gato and to the colony. De Laos is confident the Compaeto fleet will arrive too late, and the Albion on its own, will not be able to stop them. But Gato remains vigilant. He feels deep down that they cannot count on Shima's fleet for help in Jabaro. Admiral Cowan wants the third orbital fleet to intercept that colony and can't understand why the first orbital fleet is waiting on the Earth's side of the Point of no Return. The hours pass. The Albion fends off a direct attack and continues to harry the fleet around the colony. The minutes kick down inexorably and it's clear that no backup or reinforcements are coming. Captain Synapse instructs Mina to take one of the ship's launches and get to safety. Realization dawns on her face as she looks around the bridge at the crew and sees in their faces that they are all prepared to die trying to stop the colony. Nina decides to stay while they fight with everything they have. Cowen confronts the head of the Federation forces, demanding to know what the plan is, why? It seems as though they aren't doing anything to stop the attack. And is arrested for his trouble, and Shima launches a surprise attack, taking over De Laz's flagship and taking him prisoner. She's made a deal with the Federation and has no qualms about changing sides to ensure her own survival. The one part Delaz doesn't understand is why she makes no effort to stop the colony drop. With a Unit three Cole can destroy whole ships. He and his fellow mobile suit pilots breach the enemy line and race toward the colony. But it is still not enough. The point of no return passes. The fighting stops. Hopeless silence fills the bridge of the Albion and is broken by Synapse's declaration that this can't be it. There must be something they can do. Now that the battle is closer to Earth, both sides can see what the first orbital fleet has been up to. They are setting up and calibrating the solar system two weapon an array of mirrors used to create a horribly destructive beam. The ruling faction within the Federation forces always plans to incinerate the colony here, though their reasons for keeping the plan a secret are a mystery to us. Shima laughs horribly at the surprise and disappointment on Delaz's face, and Delaz, unable to accept that his plan has failed, orders Gato to fight on and to see their mission through. Somehow, his final cry of Siege Xeon is cut off when Shima shoots him in the head. Gato attacks the ship's bridge, but credits role before we learn of Shima's fate.
You does this feel like the penultimate episode of this show?
Not unless the ultimate episode is going to be longer than the other ones. There's just too many loose ends. Still, nothing really has been tied up.
Yet, and the loose strings haven't even really been revealed. We don't know what they connect to.
It's funny that the opening narration describes it as the climax, but I would have thought the climax would be either the impact of the colony or the destruction of the colony. With the colony still literally hanging over things. How was this episode the climax?
It also feels like the show has swerved hard from this very tight small story about Co and Gato and the pursuit of the Unit Two and the attempt to recapture it into this very high level story. About skullduggery within the high commands of the two different sides, only they've swerved at such a late point that right now they're doing all of the like who's that guy? What's his agenda? Who's that guy? Who's that guy? How are they all connected? What are the secret plans? They're doing that stage of the story, which is a normal and necessary stage in a story about intrigues and backstabbing. Only you have to do that at the beginning so that you can then spend ten episodes steadily revealing little bits of information and allowing the audience to put the puzzle together by the end. By the penultimate episode, we ought to at least know who the players are. We shouldn't be meeting the guy who appears to be the top of the heap on the Federation side and going, who are you?
Again, I actually almost completely disagree with you about this. I was just going to let you talk through the whole point before I said anything, but I'm mostly suspending judgment until I see whether or not they stick the landing. But there's something very thematically interesting about starting with this smaller story about these specific individual people with pretty concrete, limited goals, apparently, and then undercutting all of that very dramatic heroes, journey, dueling, whatever stuff by suddenly revealing all these aspects of the big picture. It potentially says that while we have been watching Cole and Gato and paying all this attention to their feelings, how they change their development, all this interpersonal stuff going on, none of that actually matters in the great big scheme of things. It doesn't change. And in some ways, leaving that until the end, after we've already spent all these time with these characters, feels that much more crushing. It makes it feel that much more tragic to have at the very end this reveal that, oh, and all of that pain didn't really change the big picture.
I'm on board with you as far as it goes. You're describing a pretty good show. I'm not sure that this is that show. There are parts of it that I think they do really well. I like the use of Cowan that he's introduced early on as just a face on a monitor away in Jaburo somewhere and easily gets lost among the sort of carousel of Federation high admirals that we meet in this. Show and that he's referred to periodically while off screen, as the patron of the Albion, but then returns now to give us an inside glimpse into what's going on in Jabaro high Command. But I struggle to see in the show itself what the objectives of the other faction are.
It's almost more depressing that we don't know because it doesn't matter. It's a power struggle. That's it, that's all. We don't really know what DeLaus is fighting for either, which means that we don't really know what Gato is fighting for. It adds this layer of nihilism to the whole thing that none of it matters. The little power struggles, the big ones, it's all just people trying to reach the top of the ladder and kick down everybody below them forever.
I will agree with you that it's very nihilistic as a show. I have in my notes here, circled and underlined. Was removing Cowen the means or the ends of this whole plot? Everything we're talking about here is us reading between the lines. And the lines are very far apart. You could read a lot of different things into those gaps. Why do they not tell the Albion about the solar system? Oh yeah, I mean, is that part of the plot? Is that an oversight? Why does Shea really want the colony to get across the line of last resort even though she also seems to want it to be destroyed? There are a lot of weird things in this episode that suggest motivations, but either they're inconsistent or there's not enough there to fully understand them.
Well, you brought up two very different issues. I think the issue of why all of these different parts of the Federation are not communicating with each other, I think goes back to that power struggle idea. If you're not part of Cowan's faction, letting them try to stop the colony ahead of your use of the solar system weapon doesn't really hurt you. They will probably fail. In which case that's a bunch of Cowan allies out of your way and some people you can cast blame on for messing up. If they succeed, great, wonderful. And you have to deal with the fallout of that afterwards. But you don't have to deal with the colony anymore. There's no real downside to it. Whereas if you tell them, oh, hey, we're setting up a solar system weapon, you don't need to do this, you don't get that potential benefit of them all dying.
Sure. But this goes back to my question of whether removing Cowan is the means or the ends because what you've just outlined makes a lot of sense. If the point of all of this has been to get rid of Cowan and his faction, on the other hand, if that was the point, then why did they try to keep the Albion out of the fighting entirely by assigning them to guard the LeVian?
Rose I'm not sure the distinction you're making matters much in this case. I think it's safe to say that Cowen and his faction are not purely power motivated. It's not just about amassing a bunch of power and then they'll figure out what they want to do with it. And so Cowen's faction is not a direct competitor for power. But whatever Cowan's other motivations, those might be counterproductive to the pursuit of power by these other factions. He is likely to make it more difficult for them. He is likely to stand in their way or to try to undermine or undo those efforts.
I would just like them to convey at some point in this show a sense that these admirals feel like Cowan is a threat to them because that would justify this whole elaborate plot to get rid of him. On the other hand, if he is merely an obstacle to something else that they want to achieve, I'd like to know what that something else is.
Oh, no, Tom. I think I'm finally brain poisoned by having watched too much Gundam, because I cannot watch this show without thinking about all the various cameos of characters who are going to come up in shows that are chronologically after this within the universal century. And so whatever motivations we discovered of theirs in those series, I'm attributing to all the machinations now. And that's the dramatic irony of this whole series from the beginning. We know what is going to happen after this.
You're so right. And frankly, I don't think you're brain poisoned in this case. One of the biggest things this show has going for it is that they can safely assume basically everybody watching it is familiar with the events of Zeta. And they know we know these characters, characters who have had a lot of work put into them already to develop them. They have a shortcut that they could be using, and at two points in this episode, they do have cameo characters. In one case, I think they use the character brilliantly, and in the other case, I think they really drop the ball on it. The good example, Basque Om is commanding the fleet that is operating the Solar System Two, and we don't see very much of him. We just see him on the bridge and he smiles. And every one of us in the audience should look at that and go, we know who Bascom is. We know what he wants. If he's smiling, whatever he's doing must be bad. If he's smiling, I'm worried. Perfect usage of a legacy character. But the other one is this scene with Cowen confronting Admiral. I know his name, but it's never said in the show, and there's no reason anyone in the audience would need to know that his name is Admiral Jean Colini or Karini, but he's the guy with the cat. And also Admiral Jamatov Hyman. If it were just Jamatov, I would have a lot fewer complaints about this because we know Jamatov's deal. If he were the guy at the top, a lot of these stupid machinations would start making a lot of sense. But instead, he's just the lackey. He's the guy with the gun at the shoulder of the admiral who's actually running the show. Maybe he's a secretly plotting grand Vizier, pulling all of the puppet strings. But is there any evidence for that in the show?
Yes. Cowen tries to talk to the admiral and is not given an opportunity to do so alone .1.2 he wonders, what could the admiral be thinking? And once he sees Jamatov there, he kind of knows how the Admiral is being managed or led or choose whatever word for manipulation you like. At one point, he asks the Admiral a question. Jamatov answers and he's like, I wasn't asking you. I think it's quite obvious that Jamatov is trying to control access to and control what kind of information the Admiral gets.
If only they hadn't had the Admiral speak at the end of that scene. If he had been completely quiet, and I was expecting that if he had been completely silent, I would be much more on board with your reading. But at the end of the scene he does say, why were they allowed to take the Unit Three? Like he's at least in on it.
Right? But based on what information? After how many months or even years of the Jamatov aligned faction convincing him or working on him? Or maybe he was in on it all along. But I lean more towards that initial, as you said, scheming vizier type. The more I think about that line, the more it sounds like maybe they thought someone on their own side should have taken out the Albion when they had the chance.
Well, they did choose to assign a military police officer with a penchant for shooting first and asking questions. Never. Maybe they were hoping Nakato would just shoot everybody on the Albion.
I just think it's a very old story within these kinds of organizations that they breed distrust between the various factions, they breed competition. And so, in the worst possible sense, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing because everyone is trying to undercut each other. Everyone is trying to look impressive or grasp at power or build alliances and hamstring their competitors all the time. So of course they don't communicate with each other. Of course it's confusing and feels counterproductive to the current situation.
I also want to point out that even within Zeta, gemmatov's motivations are not entirely transparent to us. And depending on how much of the background materials and novelizations you read, you might come away with two very different impressions of what the guy wants. You might think that he wants to build a personal power base, dominate the Earth sphere through the Titans, oppress the Space NOIDs, et cetera, et cetera. But if you read the novels, you know that he is secretly trying to use warfare to exhaust the economic potential of the Earth in order to force all humans off of the Earth, because that's what every Gundam villain wants to do. And which of those motives you impute back onto Jamatov at this moment in this series really does change your understanding of the point of all of these plots.
I said a little while back now that you brought up two very different points going to the second of those, which was talking about Shima, even if it's not very clearly conveyed to us. Shima's comments, I think, are based on the strategizing around this whole takeover and whatever plan she's worked out with the Federation officials, that given where they are setting up the solar system weapon, probably the colony has to get past the point of no return to reach it. Theoretically, once the colony passes the point of no return, there's no reason for these armies to be fighting so much anymore. Because what does fighting each other accomplish when the colony is going to hit? You can't stop it. There it is. I do agree that it's confusingly written, it's not laid out super clear why she wants these things to happen in this order, but it does seem like part of the plan, and maybe that will become clearer in the final episode. Once we see what actually happens with the solar system weapon, it's easy to.
Come up with counterfactuals. Like if Shima really wanted to betray Dela's to the Federation, there are probably other stages in the plan when she could have done it, like they could have done it at the moon. Instead of redirecting the colony to hit Earth, she could have just slowed down the whole operation to give that pursuing fleet a chance to catch up.
Basque's faction may have wanted to be able to point to, Ah, see, Cowan's faction completely failed to stop this thing, but we stepped in at the very last moment and saved everyone. She may have known somehow about the mobile armor and wanted to be able to capture it and give it to the Federation as part of the deal she made. In addition to the dramatic irony hanging over the whole series, which certainly becomes stronger here at the end, they use a lot of little cliffhangers within the episode to add to the tension of everything. That moment when Shima is standing in a doorway and says, oh, preparing for the unexpected, and sort of tosses her hair and walks out of frame and it's all very brightly lit and then we just hear gunshots and then we don't know what has happened to them for several minutes.
I think when we first watched it, you were like, did they just shoot Shima?
That's what I thought, because I foolishly thought de Laz actually understood Shima and knew what he was doing in controlling, manipulating, making deals with her. This episode honestly made me feel real disappointed in Delaz.
He does not pull it off. No, he a bad day for De Lazas.
I really thought he was a smarter schemer than this. He makes that comment about, oh, I should have known better than to try to guide someone with no ideals. It's like, no, she has ideals, survival, money, power. There are levers there, you just couldn't identify them. Weren't willing to work those levers, weren't aware of how little you can trust her, which seems like a foolish mistake, an incredibly foolish mistake from such an experienced person.
I think he's also missed that Shima has like a personal resentment towards him, or perhaps merely to his rank, to his position, to authority as a concept. Because that moment when she grabs the space epilet on his shoulder and tears it off with her bare hands, that's metaphor, she's not just betraying him because the Federation is offering her a better deal. She hates Xeon Admiral Delaz, and it's an open question to the audience whether it's the Xeon, the Admiral or the Delaz that makes her hate him so much.
She has that comment about all the people sitting safe and warm on side three, right? That if people formerly affiliated with Xeon feel like outcasts, they still have outcasts amongst themselves, they still have upper and lower classes amongst themselves, and that Shima has been at the lower end of that spectrum. And God, I got such Scarlett O'Hara vibes from her when she's declaring that she will never go to a backwater like axis. This is how she survives. It's very, God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.
And it also suggests that there is some reason Shima can't come in out of the cold. The Xeon characters depicted in this show have all had some reason they couldn't give up the fight, whether that's Kelly Leisner and his sense of personal loss, his devastation and his feeling disconnected from the world, or it's Gatto and his deep shame, or it's Delaz and his there's got to be some reason for Dela's. He's got to have something going on anyway. There must be some reason why Shima can't just give up the fight. Some reason why they couldn't go live safe and warm on side three with the rest of the survivors. Maybe Shima could sell off her priceless fleet of warships and mobile suits and get a cushy job running corporate security at some dubious arms manufacturer like Xeon Metal. No, wait. Amaro raytheon. And it's pretty clearly not that she's a diehard for the grand old Xeon.
Cause then at the end, this is a more normal end of episode cliffhanger. But after she has shot De Laz and what an incredibly animated scene. I am not sure I have ever watched anything animated or live action that decided to give you a POV view of a person being shot in the head. Unless the shot was coming from straight in front, right. The gun pointed straight at you, the audience, but to have it be sideways and you're just seeing the head flopping around. Yeah. And then Gato attacks the bridge. Shima ever so slightly anticipates this and looks as though she is in the process of trying to get out of there, but whether she gets out in time or not, we have no idea yet.
And she actually looks a little bit surprised after shooting Dela's, like she didn't entirely know she was going to do it.
Well, she probably intended to turn him over and is just so exasperated by him she loses her temper.
Well, something about him starting to say the Xeon slogan really gets her, because that's when she does it.
Not even just that, but in the face of total defeat, of his aims, de Laz once again refuses to give up. And I think that's what gets Shima, that she is won. She can feel it. She's thought through everything. Her victory is so complete, what is the point of fighting on? And yet de Laz is, in his own way, still fighting on.
And just as he has misjudged her, she has misjudged him. We saw him a couple of episodes ago saying, if things go wrong, I'm prepared to pull out, withdraw, abandon the mission, get away with as much of my fleet intact as possible and start over from the beginning again. And maybe seeing that kind of attitude, she thought that he would put his own life above the mission. But here, when it's a choice between being captured or dying and maybe succeeding, he's willing to die.
The parallel to his refusal in this scene being Synapse, because as soon as the colony passes the point of no return, everything stops. Everyone feels it, that they've failed. And having pursued this one very specific target with all of their energy for hours, for days, it just knocks the air out of the room. And Synapse says, no, there has to be something we can still do. This cannot be it.
And like Dela's, Synapse gives the order for a suicide mission, though it's never explicitly laid out that way. When he tells Nina to get off the ship, it's because they all know they're going to die doing this.
They're all in their normal suits on the bridge, which we've never seen them do before. And Nina looks at all of the members of the bridge, and they all look back at her. And you can tell, I think, from their facial expressions, their body language. Most of them sort of smile lightly at her. One gives her a thumbs up. Simone's smile looks a little ironic, but still a smile. Nina looks shocked and a bit frightened. She has realized why Synapse is saying, Take a launch and get out of here. And she realizes that they all know why, that everybody around her understands. And none of them would blame her. None of them would be upset with her for leaving or feel betrayed or anything. They all get that this is not what she signed up for. I thought that was such a beautiful scene, and with so little dialogue, and it parallels a scene of Delazes after he's been captured. He is sitting in his captain's chair with a gun trained on him, and he looks around the room at the documents floating everywhere, at the dead crew, at Shima's crew, at Earth, so close out the window. It's right there. And it's after that that he makes the decision, I think, to keep fighting.
And this is revelatory for our understanding of him, especially that long look at the Earth, because we know now that all along his caution, his willingness to retreat, to fall back, to eat shame, has all been because it was necessary to put him in a position to see that colony hit the Earth. He's looking at the Earth and all he wants is to punch it. Punch it right in its stupid planet face.
You know, I actually think that to some degree, his goals and his attitude change from the beginning of the episode to the end. I don't think that feeling was necessarily true at the beginning of the episode, but it becomes true as he's looking out the window at the Earth and now that he's been captured and everything's been thrown into chaos. Because when he first gets captured, he kind of mutters to himself and there's no way that Gato would hear him, but he says, don't go, Gato. Because he understands Gato is his most powerful, most helpful ally, and that without Gato. Delaz is basically at Shima's mercy. At the end of the episode, he says, Go, Gato.
Step over my body.
Keep going. That first reaction, even though there wasn't any way for Gato to actually hear him enact on it, was about self preservation and about power and about dealing with this infighting internal politics stuff. The second one is that emotional reaction, that desire to punch the Earth in the face.
I'm going to propose an alternate interpretation, but I do think that's a really brilliant read on it.
Well, thank you for calling me brilliant.
Delaws is very surprised later in the episode when he realizes that Shima is not going to stop the colony drop at that stage, before Gato leaves, delaz probably thinks that Shima is going to order the ceasefire now, that she is going to redirect the colony herself and then surrender the whole fleet. And so Gato staying could prevent that. It's only at the end, when Shima can no longer stop the colony, that he says, Gato, go. Because at that point, the biggest threat to the colony is the solar system.
That's certainly more practical, but I like.
Your interpretation of it better anyway.
Okay, here I was, ready to defend myself.
She's got her dukes up. I like your reading, especially because it shows how in crossing this point of no return, all of them have become captured by the gravity of Earth, by the inevitability of what's happening. Everything is proceeding along its course. Everything is intersecting at a single point.
The loosed arrow. Right? It'll stop when it hits something.
The Albion, too, is a loosed arrow, having been given its orders by Cowen well, not even orders. Having been given informal consent by Cowen days or weeks ago, the Albion is just going to continue on its course, and nothing can stop it except destruction.
That same sense of futility. Oh, we just keep fighting the same fights over and over again to no purpose, because. We just keep fighting them, gets reinforced again by the use of the solar system weapon, because I had to ask Tom for this because I didn't remember, but the first usage we saw was in the Battle of Solomon. We're not at Solomon, but the demon of Solomon is here.
And also in that Cowan and Synapse both assume that the colony is aimed for Jobaro because that's where they aimed in the One Year War.
And I can imagine a faction within the Federation wanting Jabaro destroyed. You take out a bunch of the command structure above you, makes it a very opportune time to move up the ranks. You get to point to these horrible space NOIDs, and this is why we really need to take them in hand and come down hard and exercise more control, because look at what they do when we just let them have all this freedom. There are certainly people who would benefit from the destruction of Jabro. And it's not just former Xeons, it's.
Not even former Xeons, because the end game for them is that they go off to Axis. They could have gone off to Axis at any point. They get some transient satisfaction from poking the Federation in the eye. And speculatively, maybe this weakens the Earth sphere in anticipation of the Axis led reconquista of Zeta and double Zeta. But in terms of like, tangible, definite benefits, guys like Jamatov or that one, Admiral Stephen Hepburn, who's commanding the pursuit fleet, they stand to gain a lot more than any soldier or officer in the Dela's fleet. Ironically, a weakened federal government probably also strengthens the position of the Republic of Xeon, which they all hate so much. I mean, look at terror attacks in the real world. The primary beneficiaries are usually reactionary political movements and the military industrial complex.
Before we get too far away from it, I do want to say that the one thing that added to my feelings of disappointment in De Laz was at the end when he says to Gato, are you going to let them make me a laughing stock? Oh, it's all about you. This whole big thing for which hundreds of people have probably died already.
Oh, I'm sure it's way more than.
Hundreds, thousands is really all about you and your ego. Nice.
Well, so he and Gato have something in common after all, besides desperately wanting to punch the Earth. Actually, Dela's has that scene of looking at the Earth, but Gato, too, seems fixated on the Earth, and his hatred for it we see reflected in his visor. And I wanted to talk about the visor reflections. They've done a lot of cool things with visor reflections in this show so far, most notably last episode when Lucette dies. We see her through the reflection on Co's visor. For instance, here, Gato's visor reflects the Earth, he's fixated on it. Nina's visor, at a really crucial moment, reflects the expanse of stars. This is when she's in a moment of really severe distress. She's dissociating real badly and staring off into space. My sister and Daikun. That is Camille behavior. You are in danger.
In that scene. Gato says, I've never been so excited to see the Earth before, which is so Hecken dark. So, so dark. I am about to wreak unimaginable destruction and kill possibly millions of people. Nice. That is his whole vibe there.
I'm going to kill so many civilians. This is so honorable.
I'm so happy right now. Never been this happy in my life.
I am the best arrow. I'm so glad that I was loosed for this purpose. What do you think Ko's visor reflects Gato? No, only his gunsight.
Well, Co is exhausted.
Co is focused.
This series has been very different in its handling of time. I noticed it most in this episode, but it's been going throughout the whole OVA. Not every single episode, but on many of them. They give us touch points for dates so that in theory we could plot out a timeline and get a sense for how quickly all of this is happening. A 9 hours elapse in this episode. Slightly more, but about 9 hours with more and more check ins about the time. The closer we get to the point of no return, steadily speeding up. The pilots have basically been fighting the whole time. There's not enough of them to cycle them out in shifts. They are just out there for hours and hours and hours, sleeping when they get refueled and get new ammo if they can, and then back out again.
I really like the use of time. They did a similar thing in 80 with Christmas Day and the nuclear attack. As the time progresses forward, we know we're getting closer and closer to Annihilation ditto here, but even more of an emphasis on the time. The ticking clocks in every episode. The dates and now the hours, the minutes, the seconds. It's part of what makes the battle that plays out in this episode so compelling.
There's that great shot that allows us to check in with all of the Albion's pilots at the same time. It shows every face and everybody looks exhausted, everybody looks sweaty. Anger, aggression, shock on each face. And then there's one other moment that I thought felt slowed down. When Cole attacks one of the enemy battleships and he uses a Beam saber not to stab. We've seen mobile suits and mobile armors basically just punch through a ship with their Beam saber before, but it's painfully slow. It's like he's slicing through the underside of this turret to sever the bridge from the rest of the ship. And it's so slow.
Well, it does that kind of classic Gundam death sequence, which has not come up many times in Double 83, but where you slow everything down, you stop time to show the face of the person who's about to die as they contort into a scream of fear and rage and then dissolve.
Cole might be too tired for me to attribute this kind of logic to the action, but he may be considering conserving his ammo. Though it makes it feel like a crueler kill, it feels painful in a way that a lot of the other kills don't feel painful.
That ship, by the way, is, or I guess I should say was the pure gint like from before.
And the fact that the captain of this ship calls out togato as he's dying makes Gato feel like a kind of parental figure. There's the stereotypical calling out for your mother, calling out for home, for your parents, in this case, to Gato.
I like that you mentioned him calling out for home. Because Gato is rapidly becoming an avatar of the idea of Xeon. Since starting this crusade of his, Gato has wanted to transcend the limits of humanity and to become the distilled essence of the perfect Xeon soldier. And he's already more legend than man. Almost no one alive has seen him in action. Karius mentioned that he was the only living person who had ever fought alongside Gato, and then getting into the mobile armor is the ultimate sacrifice of his humanity for the sake of becoming his ideal of the spirit of Xeon. Unlike the Unit Two, which at least maintained the outward form of a human body with a face, legs and hands, the Noya Zeal is all claws and beam cannons. Gato's ideal vision for the spirit of Xeon is a faceless specter only capable of violence, and we'll have more on that in the next episode, probably. Speaking of typical Gundam things that have not been present in this show so far is Nina a new type? There's that one moment when the Unit Three gets shot. Co is in danger, and it cuts to Nina looking up, staring off, and being like, oh no, my pilot is in danger. Classic new type moment book ends one.
Of the earlier episodes, one of the few new typey moments we've gotten in this series was when she is on the Albion and they're in Africa looking for the Unit Two and the ship gets attacked. She screams, and the color of the animation changes. Things get a bit more abstracted. Cole somehow senses her and shows up and saves the day. They haven't done enough with it to make me confident that they want any of these characters to be new types, but they've left room for interpretation.
Certainly the truth is out there, people. Open your eyes. And now a research topic suggested by Megan D military use of stimulants.
There is an extremely long history of military use of psychoactive substances stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens all, as one source put it, tolerated, facilitated and promoted by the state. For the purposes of this research piece, I'm going to focus on psychoactive substances administered to soldiers in active duty by their own command, not on those used offensively, so I won't get into the US military's efforts at weaponizing hallucinogens or cannabis, and not on incidental or illicit substance use. Another point against cannabis, which has seen widespread use by soldiers at various times and earlier than you might expect. But I didn't find any examples of cannabis use encouraged or facilitated by military command. Why might the military provide these substances? To motivate, reward, desensitize or distract, to help soldiers cope with the stress and trauma of war and to improve performance. There is ample speculation that Viking berserkers may have consumed Amanita muscaria, a hallucinogenic mushroom, or Hiaschimus niger, also known as henbane or stinking nightshade, before going into battle. Both cause, quote, delirious behavior, twitching, increased strength and redness of the face, and h. Niger is additionally known to have pain numbing properties. In the 16th century, a Spanish Franciscan scholar in what is now central Mexico recorded that the nomadic and seminomatic tribespeople there consumed peyote before battle. Peyote being a cactus that contains large amounts of mescalin and when consumed, causes visual and auditory hallucinations, synesthesia, and feelings of intense spiritual or philosophical insight. But outside of these examples, the psychoactive substances used by armies fall into two camps what are often in the US. Called go pills and no go pills stimulants and depressants. Within the category of depressants, let us start with a classic good ol liquid courage itself alcohol. In addition to its use for decreasing or removing the effects of fear and anxiety, alcohol was also used as anesthesia before other options were invented, or when those other options were unavailable and was administered to boost morale. Generally passes the time, pacifies, calms. Of course, there were downsides. Excessive alcohol consumption and drunkenness makes for ineffective and unmanageable troops. It has been speculated that excessive drunkenness among their troops was a factor in Russia's loss of the Russo Japanese war and a subsequent attempted vodka ban in the military during World War I may have contributed to the public. Anger that fueled the Russian Revolution.
And the navies of the world never did figure out what to do with a sailor once they were drunken. There's a whole song about it.
Many navies famously provided a daily ration of alcohol aboard ship. The British Royal Navy began by allocating each sailor one gallon of beer per day. Although this was often what's called small beer, it had less than 1% alcohol by volume. But one gallon of beer per day per sailor is a lot of liquid to have to transport and store on a ship. And so, in 1655, the regulations were changed, and the ration became one half pint, or 284 rum. Plantation owners in the Caribbean exerted a lot of influence to make sure it was rum and not some other liquor. This ration was changed a few more times. In 1740, they decided the half pint of rum should be watered at a ratio of four parts water to one part rum and split in half, one serving in the morning and one in the evening. In 1795, the regulations required the addition of lemon or lime juice to the mix to prevent scurvy. Hello, grog. By 1824, they decreased the ration even further, to a quarter pint per day. In 1850, the Admiralty's Grog Committee yes, there was a Grog Committee recommended ending the practice entirely, but instead the Navy halved it again to one 8th of a pint administered once per day. Although they tried to discontinue the practice again in 1881, it wasn't until 1970 that it was actually ended. The last day was referred to as Black taught a day taut, as in a small amount of something, and was humorously funerary, with black armbands tots of rum buried at sea, one ship had a mock funeral procession with pipers and drumming. All of this when it turns out they were still receiving a daily alcohol ration. It was just all beer, no hard liquor. The Royal Canadian Navy got rid of their rum ration in 1972, and the Royal New Zealand Navy kept it until 1990. In the United States, the Navy had a spirits ration from 1794 until 1862. After that, it was only kept aboard for medical purposes until it was fully banned from vessels in 1914. Opiates have, by and large, been used to treat pain in wounded soldiers rather than for any other psychoactive effects, although there are examples as far back as the US civil War of opiates used to sedate agitated troops. Sedatives were also liberally administered to US soldiers during the Vietnam War to address anxiety and, to, quote, prevent mental breakdowns. Allegedly, the rate of mental breakdown was much lower for US soldiers during the Vietnam War at 1% than during World War II. 10% but there's no evidence of a causal relationship between that number and the use of sedatives, and this was in terms of a soldier's ability to continue fighting, not their general or postwar mental condition. In recent years, various sleep AIDS are more common and are used to ensure that regardless of anxiety or excitement, troops get adequate rest before important missions. For example, the US Air Force Special Forces are commonly administered to Mazapam Zalaplan or Zulpoderm, also known by the brand names Restoril, Sonata, or Ambien, and then there's a restriction on how soon after that dose they are considered safe to fly.
There's a whole thing about this in the Starship Troopers novel. They use pills, and I think hypnotism, to help the Marines sleep, I remember.
Not with sedatives, but with go pills, with stimulants. There's a bit in the more recent Battlestar Galactica series where a pilot does not want to take them because they make the pilot feel jittery, but they've been awake for so many hours that regulations require them to take the pills. They get scolded by their commanding officer. When we think of soldiers taking psychoactive medications, we're more likely to think of stimulants than depressants because of their widespread use during World War II. But it goes back at least to the American Civil War, when Union troops received coffee rations during World War I, the convenience of instant coffee made it a popular choice for soldiers on the front lines and led to a massive increase in the production and consumption of instant coffee. On a personal note, my grandfather drank black coffee all day, every day and always attributed this habit to his time in the US. Navy during World War II.
I'm just imagining those, like, kitschy coffee mugs with slogans on them, but from the Civil War era like, don't shoot at me until I've had my coffee.
Though it doesn't exactly fit my parameters. One source mentioned that the coffee break at work in the US. Was introduced during World War II to give factory workers a little productivity boost. However, with regard to caffeine, it's worth noting that some recent studies show caffeine will keep you awake, but it will not counteract the decline in physical and mental performance that lack of sleep causes. 24 hours without sleep causes impairment equivalent to being very drunk. It's a small study, but I'll link to it in the show notes. Another stimulant we're so used to that we often don't think of it in those terms is the nicotine in tobacco. There have been noted increases in tobacco consumption during wartime, going back at least as far as the 30 Years War in the 18th century. Cigarettes decrease appetite, increase alertness, and supposedly calm nerves. For a long time, they've been considered a morale booster and a way to cope with boredom. I suppose smoking is a way to pass the time. During World War I us. Army General John J. Pershing said, quote, you ask me what we need to win this war, I answer tobacco. As much as bullets, tobacco is as indispensable as the daily ration. We must have thousands of tons without delay. And at one point, the US. Government was the largest single purchaser of cigarettes, including them in soldiers rations and making them available for purchase at discounted prices on military bases, which lasted until they realized how harmful smoking is for physical fitness. Cocaine saw the most use during World War I, since in most places, it wasn't a controlled substance. At that time, the British army distributed a brand of pills called forced march to their soldiers, which contained, among other things, cocaine. It was considered a performance enhancer, made soldiers more alert, increased their endurance, boosted mood, suppressed appetite. Yet before the war was even over, a moral panic about cocaine's effects on society led to an official ban on unauthorized sales of psychoactive substances to service members. And before long, cocaine was replaced by amphetamine. As the stimulant of choice for armies, amphetamines increase alertness, decrease appetite and fatigue, and decrease sense of boredom. Unlike coffee, amphetamine does compensate somewhat for the mental and physical impairment caused by going without sleep, first synthesized in the late 18 hundreds. This was one of those scientific discoveries that happened in a couple different places at the same time. A Romanian scientist in Germany and a Japanese scientist both synthesized amphetamine in the same year. Irony the first ever medical products containing amphetamine were inhalers for nasal congestion in the 1930s. But by the end of that decade, the various other benefits had been identified, and both the German and Finnish militaries were giving it to soldiers. By World War II, many of the participating militaries were using it to some degree. There is some interesting back and forth between different sources about how to characterize Germany's use of amphetamines during World War II. One source stated that from April to July 1940, german service members on the Western Front received more than 35 million methamphetamine pills. Another points out that this is only three pills per soldier per month. But averages can be misleading, so I wonder what the pattern of use really was. Regardless, some scholars have suggested that amphetamines were a major part of Germany's early success. Oler writes, quote Allied forces were entirely caught off guard by the unprecedented speed of German advance into France. In May of 1940, German tanks covered 240 miles of challenging terrain in eleven days, including through the Arden Forest, bypassing the entrenched British and French forces who mistakenly assumed the Arden was impassable. General Grafavon Kilmanseg ordered 20,000 methamphetamine pills for the First Panzer Division, which took them the night of May 10. No one slept that night. As the Germans began the invasion, the German soldiers took three days to reach the French border, many not having slept since the beginning of the campaign. Later on, German army scientists wanted to develop a drug that would give soldiers, quote, superhuman strength and a boosted sense of self esteem, which led to the creation of D IX, a pill containing five milligrams of cocaine, three milligrams of methamphetamine and five milligrams of Oxycodone. It was tested on prisoners at a concentration camp and found that a person on this drug could March 90 day without rest while carrying 20 equipment that is nearly 56 miles carrying 44 pounds. The war ended before Dash IX could be mass produced or distributed. Germany's wasn't the only army using amphetamines to keep soldiers going. Britain distributed 72 million amphetamine tablets to soldiers throughout the duration of the war. The United States began giving them to pilots in 1942 and added them to soldier medical kits in 1943. They were supplied to service members during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. According to a government report, the armed forces used 224,000,000 tablets of Stimulants between 1966 and 1969 and continued to be administered during the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan, although in these later conflicts, use was largely restricted to pilots. I assume this is because in contemporary warfare, they are the people most likely to have long, mostly boring missions who took amphetamines, changed and so did the methods of distribution. Some Korea and Vietnam War veterans describe amphetamines, made readily available like candy in a bowl, but poor quality pills of inconsistent dosage and no oversight of how much or how often soldiers took them, leading to negative side effects like jitteriness and anxiety by the Gulf War. The whole process was much more regimented, better quality drugs administered in smaller doses, and only for specific circumstances, all overseen by doctors. As of 2012, amphetamine is no longer approved for use by the US air Force Special Forces and has been replaced by a drug called Modafinil, which is thought to carry less risk of abuse or dependency. Modafinil is used by several other militaries for the same purpose. What was fascinating to learn is that this change was at least a little bit contentious within the military. One paper I read found that there was little or no evidence of amphetamine abuse or dependence among current and recent Air Force pilots, and no evidence of adverse mission or personal outcomes associated with the drug. Their perspective was that amphetamine's only problem is a PR one. Japan is an especially interesting case because there have been intense legal and social prohibitions against drug use since at least the 15th century, when production, importation or sale of drugs at that point, mainly opium, was a capital offense. It was considered a racial and ethnic point of pride that Japan didn't have the same problems with drugs as many of its neighboring countries did, that this was an example of Japanese strength and superiority. Although, like many countries, before and since. They supported and participated in the drug trade in their colonies and occupied territories, both for the revenue it generated and for its destabilizing effects on society. Yet somehow these social taboos were got over, and amphetamine was, for a brief time considered a kind of miracle drug. Stimulants were referred to as seniorku zokyokai, or drugs to inspire the fighting spirit. One brand was called Pheropon, for the Greek, fila for love, and Ponos for labor. So love of labor, it has been estimated that 1 billion pheropon pills were produced between 1939 and 1945. And that's just one brand. There were more than 20 other drugs on sale in Japan at that time that contained amphetamine. And in the Japanese case, these stimulants were given to factory workers in war industries as well as to soldiers. The style of warfare and Japan's limited resources meant that soldiers and factory workers had to work longer hours with less food and less rest in deteriorating conditions and with deteriorating and defective equipment. Stimulants made difficult conditions endurable and increased productivity, and it was, in fact, considered patriotic to take them. After the war, the occupation government imposed a strict ban on cultivation, manufacture, import and export of intoxicants. Most of the unsold product stockpiles disappeared into the black market and made up a substantial portion of yakuza revenue in the following decades. But returning to the war, and especially to Japanese pilots. Amphetamines weren't only used to promote wakefulness and attentiveness on long flights, but also explicitly to get kamikaze pilots high before their missions. One source mentioned large doses of methamphetamine administered via injection, which would be faster acting than tablets and produce more of a high. Another described special pills reserved for kamikaze pilots called Totsugeki Joe or Toko Joe or storming tablets composed of methamphetamine and green tea powder stamped with the Emperor's crest. Now, I don't think Cole is using medication to get high before a suicide mission. He's using it because he's been fighting for at least 9 hours with no real rest and has to keep fighting. But it does raise a few more questions. As I mentioned before, an injection gets the drug into the bloodstream faster, producing faster and more pronounced results. But for selfadministering medication, pilots were usually given pills. Pills are cheaper to produce, they're more stable in storage and have a longer shelf life. They're easy for someone to take themselves without any special training. Enter the auto injector. The reason Cole doesn't have to unwrap a syringe and needle, carefully fill the syringe with liquid stimulants from a vial and give himself an injection is thanks to a piece of medical technology called an autoinjector. The most familiar example for most of us is the EpiPen, an autoinjector for administering epinephrine to someone experiencing a severe allergic reaction. The basic structure of an autoinjector is that it has some means of accelerating the needle forward to puncture the skin, a mechanism to move the piston in the syringe injecting the drug, and something that covers the needle afterwards. Some helpful additions have been an audible click, so you know the drug has dispensed a color coded indicator. So you know when an autoinjector has been used, and sometimes adjustable needle depths. It's fast, it's safe and easy for someone who isn't a medical professional to use it. And the speed and technique mean that it bypasses many people's mental resistance to stabbing themselves. Ha. But actually, really, people with no experience are frequently kind of squicked out by the idea of giving themselves a shot, and an auto injector makes it easier. One article I read stated that automatic syringes have been around since the 1910s and that various spring loaded auto syringes with needle protectors existed in the first half of the 20th century, but that widespread adoption was prevented because no one could find a cost effective way to mass produce them. Sounds reasonable enough, but the source is a dead link, so can't be sure about that one. Then, in 1977, a United States patent was filed for a new, easier to produce model. These were used for epinephrine, as I said, but also for other medications that needed to be administered quickly. For example, migraine medications work much better if they're taken as soon as the migraine starts. Another use case. The US. Military supplies soldiers with autoinjectors that contain antidotes for nerve gas. Co is somehow both part of an extremely long human warrior tradition and at the cutting edge of science and technology. Next week mobile suit breakdown takes a break. But when we return for episode 813, Part of a System of Messages, it will be time for a rapid fire recap of the whole saga of three baby Gundams and the men who would lie, steal and kill to get custody of them. En route to what might very well be a thrilling conclusion, here's hoping the danger is still present in your time, as it was in ours.
Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded and produced by us, Tom and Nina in scenic New York City within the ancestral and unseated land of the Lenape people and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Misha Dioxen. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio. The recap music for this season is 80s synth rock guitar improvisation by Zombiefish. 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 and on our website, Gundampodcast.com. You can get in touch with us on Twitter or Instagram at gundampodcast or by email to hosts@gundampodcast.com and thank you for listening. The wrong Gundam opinion this week comes from galaxy Cyclone Veri, who is still wondering when De Laz is going to start cooking meth to pay for his cancer treatments. The show's nearly over and they've barely foreshadowed that plotline at all. I probably should have done that one last week before Delaz got shot in the head, but you know, you could come back from it.
He got better.
No body, no death.
I ought not attribute motivations to people because I truly don't know.
Although we are about to spend roughly an hour attributing motivations to people who we truly don't know.
But it's different when the people are made up.
What if all people are made up? Let's get solipsistic in here. I am the only person who exists. Maybe you you're around enough that I'm prepared to grant your existence.
This is a very elaborate simulation and I want to know why they didn't simulate an easier life for us.
If he's smiling, I'm frowning.
Waiting for the thunder to stop.
Think I need to get better. Especially when we're disagreeing about something at like fully articulating my points.
Well, it's like I was saying the other day, we're so used to talking to each other and not needing to fully articulate the conclusion because we know the conclusion is evident to the other party.
I think mostly trained by the podcast, I've gotten into the habit of basically leaving a thought half to 75% finished because it gives you an opportunity to say the other part of it, which gives a nice back and forth of a flow and is an issue if you go off in. A different direction.
Right?
Or if we're disagreeing, I end up not making my argument. And then you rebot my unfinished argument, which is why I had so many inserts. So many inserts this week. And now I have to do two more super.
So fun for you, I'm sure.
Forced March is so on the nose that if you were writing a parody, you would probably strike it out as too much.
You gotta ignore pills, Giorg.
He's an outlier and should not have been counted. Regardless, living in a cave, taking pills.
All day, I don't know if we can include that or not, but it's a fun outtake either way.
I don't know if Phil's Gear I don't know if Spiders georg is a well enough is a well known enough meme. It's just very tom core.
Yeah, I think it might be too niche. Pillsky.org. A pill containing five milligrams of cocaine, three milligrams of methamphetamine. It's probably micrograms, isn't it? For drugs. Wrote it as mg.
But a microgram would be that symbol that looks like an upside down ATRA backwards Y. Or it would be like MCG if they were writing it in letters. Okay, I think it's milligrams.
If you.
Were seeing Mg. All right? Or master grade.
We read about those before. Maybe not.
I mean, we might have. We've done a lot of these. Yeah.
Like you said, there's an infinite number of counterfactual.