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 themes, and discussing how each piece of the Gundam canon fits within the changing context in Japan and the world from 1979 to today.
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This Week Stardust Memory Episode Five Gandhamu Hoshino umier Its English title is Gundam to the Sea of Stars. But its original English title was SIG Xion. It was released on VHS and LaserDisc on September 26, 1991. Kase Mitsko and Imanishi Takashi remain as co chief directors this time around. Kase handled the storyboards and is also credited as the episode director. It's the only episode of 83 in which she filled all three of those roles, and so it may well be the episode most reflective of her directorial style. With writer Gobu Fuyunori leaving the production script writing duties were handed off to Gundam veteran Endo Akinori, one of the two principal writers for both Zeta and Double Zeta. In the interim, he wrote for City Hunter, Relic Armor Legacyam, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, five Star Stories and more. The animation director was fellow Gundam Veteran Kawamoto Toshihiro. New to the show this week is voice actor Mashiba Mari playing Shima, her first and only Gundam role to date. Before this, she played mostly bit parts. Waitress c. Child Sukeban b. But in 1992, she's going to land two recurring roles on Crayon Shinchan that have kept her busy ever since. She's also done some dubbing for foreign language shows, including playing the roles of Rod Flanders and Ralph Wigham on The Simpsons. Now the recap.
The Albion followed Gato to space, but has not been able to track him down. While they search and wait for reinforcements, there is plenty to do. Cole and Keith lack space combat experience, and Moncha seems almost gleeful putting Keith through his paces. Cole remains absorbed in the Unit One and neglects his other training in favor of working on the Gundam with Nina. They are on better terms now, and Nina seems almost flirtatious talking through the data gathered so far, demonstrating the Gundam's controls with her hand over Cole's and teasing him over the mistakes in his calculations. The reinforcements they've been waiting for finally arrive, but it's just two ships. Apparently, Admiral Cowan is the only one at Jabaro they can count on. Gato's homecoming is marred by the arrival of Commander Shima. In tall boots, a long brown coat over her uniform and a white tiger skin draped over her captain's chair, she looks like a pirate queen, an impression reflected in her haughty attitude. Her ship nearly runs down the one carrying Gato, for which she apologizes by saying they mistook the Musai for colony wreckage. She interrupts Gato's meeting with Admiral Dellaus, offers to deal with the approaching Federation shifts, though Gato had already volunteered himself and cannot resist the urge to taunt him again as she leaves, suggesting he stick to easy mission from now on. Once she leaves, Gato voices his concerns. Surely someone so black hearted and lacking in principles can only bring shame to Xeon. It seems Delaz knew that Gato would object, but is ready to calm the Lieutenant's doubts, explaining that they need to focus on the big picture, not get bogged down by trifles. Shima takes just one ship to intercept the Federation forces in the area, and Delaz laughs at her brashness. While Shima fights, he has his own plan to execute. In the women's showers on the Albion, mora tries to get to the bottom of how Nina feels about Cole, but even she can't get a straight answer, except when she asks which do you like more and Sin Uraki or the Gundam? With no hesitation. Nina says the Gundam. Afterwards, they go to lunch, and even though Nina seems disappointed that Cole isn't around, she seems just as dismayed when Mora spots him and waves him over without so much as a hello. Cole launches straight into talking about the Gundam, stumping his long reel of paper tape calculations onto the table and into Nina's food. He seems oblivious to her irritation until Moncha joins them and resumes his campaign to be assigned to the Unit One. The two men argue over and around Nina until she coldly mentions that maybe it would be better to give the Unit One to a pilot with more experience. She's sick of Cole's cocky attitude and accuses him of treating the Gundam like a toy. Cole is deeply hurt and pleased the room. Nina regrets her angry words, but before she can do anything, an alarm sounds. All crew to battle stations. The pilots launch quickly to keep the enemy mobile suits away from the Albion, and despite being outnumbered, they manage to hold the line. Frustrated to see her mobile suits held at bay, shima launches in her own gelgoo Marine. Cole, still angry after his confrontation with Nina, wants to prove that he is the right pilot for the Gundam, and instead of following orders and launching in Lieutenant Burning's gym, he takes the Unit One. On the Albion's bridge, a call hijacks their system. It is Delaz Gato at his left shoulder while Shima darts through space, easily dispatching the two Federation ships sent to support the Albion. Delaz declares the Republic of Xeon government illegitimate, the armistice invalid, and the Federation treacherous. As evidence of the Federation's hypocrisy and lust for power, he reveals the Unit Two and its nuclear capabilities a direct violation of the Antarctic Treaty. The same speech is being broadcast all over the Earth sphere. Cole struggles in the Unit One without the necessary retuning for space. The mobile suit's maneuvering is clumsy, lulled into a false sense of security by this flailing. One of Shima's wingmen is killed by Cole's seemingly random shots. She turns her attention and her fire on the Gundam. Cole cannot outmaneuver her, and no one else can help him. All too cognizant of the danger, burning, still wounded, launches in his gym. Shot after shot hits the Unit One, blasting chunks out of its face, its leg, its body. Electricity arcs inside and out, and some bit of shrapnel cuts through Cole's normal suit, sending a spray of blood through the cockpit. It is only the Gundam's cutting edge armor that saves him. Lieutenant Burning arrives, sending off further attacks from Shima. She and her forces pull back, having already done significant damage. The Albion's forces are ordered not to follow, but to return to the ship. As Cole and the Unit One struggle back to the Albion, Cole barely conscious Delaz, announces the return of Xeon and declares war on the Federation. Captain Synapse wonders what Delaz's true goal might be, and a weeping Nina rushes to catch Coal as he falls from the Gundam's cockpit, horrified by his and the Gundam's injuries. But inexpressibly relieved that he survives.
This episode marks the return to Gundam of an old friend of ours, head writer of Zeta and Double Zeta Endo Akinori wrote this episode.
Oh, interesting.
Welcome back endo. And one of the things that I was constantly noticing in Endo's work on Zeta and Double Zeta is that Endo loves episodes that create a parallel structure between two characters that allows us to learn things about each character based on what the other one is doing. And I think this episode does a lot of that, principally in contrasting these two triads on the Federation side cole, Nina and Mancha. Although Mancha has a relatively small role in this episode, it's still very important to driving the drama of the episode. On the other side, though, they are mirrored by Gato de Laz and Shima, with Gato and Co both playing the role of serious, dedicated, straight laced, by the book young man. Nina and Delaz are the ones whose attention and regard they desperately crave, and then Shima and Mancha are both the unconventional, heck the rules kind of outsiders who come in and challenge the status quo.
I would not have drawn those particular comparisons. This might just be a forest trees kind of difference in looking at it, but I saw one of those triads you mentioned, the Gato de laz Shima. But I wouldn't have contrasted it with Nina and Cole. I barely thought about mancha. He's practically a nonentity in this episode, because when I watched it, it was more that each of these particular sort of relationships, each of these particular clusters illuminates a lot about the people within them. But I wouldn't have contrasted them to each other. I think the way Nina and Cole interact in this episode and interact with other people, just everything about them in this episode, we learn a lot about them. Similarly, the Gato Dela's Shima interactions tell us a lot about these three people. Even though they're all ostensibly on the same side, I wouldn't have contrasted them to that other relationship. That's interesting.
What really clued me in on this is the, I think, almost back to back scenes in Delaza's throne room when Gato arrives, and then Shima is already there, and there's a bit of a tense moment. Gato screws his face up into a look of absolute hatred.
This is what I have started referring to in my head as the Gato grimace. It gets used a lot, actually. It comes up quite frequently. It's probably his most common facial expression.
This is probably the most deeply graven version of it, though. The lines are so sharp, it's like he just ate something incredibly sour. And within this we see Gato has these lines about, like, shima's reckless and immoral actions will taint the glory of Xeon. But he's so clearly jealous. More than anything else, he is afraid of being supplanted in Delaz's retinue. Initially, Dela says, Sorry for doing this behind your back, but I knew that if I did it in front of you, you would complain very much. Like sorry. Not sorry. But then Delaz is able to mollify him by reminding him how important he is, how great he is, how vital to this mission he is. He starts tearing up. His eyes are clearly watering with the emotion of this speech from Delaz, but the way Delaz talks about taking on Shima while Gato is gone makes it sound like he's taken on a mistress.
I absolutely see the jealousy element, and once you make the point about the mistress, it reminds me of Koi in The Lunchroom, but I thought you had already chosen me to pilot the Gunnam. It's like they're engaged or something. He's acting like a jilted husband.
Well, like Gato, he thought that he had attained this position that he desperately wanted, and he was confident in it. And then suddenly he shows up and it's like, oh, there's a threat.
I just also, even more than that relationship dynamic, which felt much more prominent to me in the Nina Cole relationship. On the Neo Xeon side, all these interactions felt very illustrative of maybe different people's approaches to what's happening to Neo Xeon, to Operation Stardust, because these were the scenes that I watched, and I went, oh, Godo is an idealist, and in his own way, deeply naive. While he obviously doesn't think of it this way. He's not that dissimilar to Cole. His weaknesses are not. But this isn't just about being jealous of attention from an authority figure. Gato also needs someone powerful to tell him what he's fighting for. To tell him, we have righteousness on our side. We are fighting for the good cause. This all has meaning, this all has purpose. That's not internal to him. He didn't come up with it himself when he lost that the first time when Geren died and it looks like Xeon was going to be defeated. He wanted to die rather than live in a world where suddenly he would need to find some new reason to live. De Laz steps in and says, oh, you don't have to do that. Here is the new reason. And every time he starts to doubt things about how it's all going again, de Laz steps in to reassure him to reaffirm that, oh no, we're fighting for a reason. We're fighting for a good cause. That's not like it's internal tagato. It's still coming from outside.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. More to Gato's misfortune that he ends up attaching himself to Delaz, who I don't know for certain, but every indication is that Delaz is not a true believer. Delaz is not really an ideologue. Delaz is playing his own little political game here.
When I said that Gato was naive, part of what made me realize that is that he thinks Shima is a bad person. And untrustworthy, he respects Delaz and looks up to him. Therefore, Delaz must not know that Shima, this horrible person, is lurking around. It doesn't even occur to him that of course, Delaz would already know that she was coming, that he in fact.
Invited her, probably paid her off, too. But this throne room scene, which we'll definitely talk about later, because it's really core to Delaze's whole image of himself that he's projecting, and his propaganda as like the ghost of Giranzabi, the heir to Xeon, the continuation of the principality. But then it goes from there right into the lunchroom scene over on the Federation side, which shows that other trio also having a very similar confrontation, where Cole arrives. He's so excited. He's brought the data to Nina in the same way that Gato has brought the Gundam Unit Two to Delaz. And then he gets there and she's not as excited as he thought she would be. And then, mancha, is there. Mancha. And it's devastating for Kohl in the same way that it was for Gato. Only Nina is not delaz. Nina is not committed to manipulating him to make him useful.
The issue I run into with your comparison is that beyond both of them being idealists, I don't think Gato and Cole have much in common. Gato is polite and formal, and even though I'm not entirely certain I believe him, tells his commander, my doubts are asswaged. Cole is extremely rude, and I don't think it's on purpose. No, he's just but like, Cole thinks.
A social cue is when you wait in line outside the club.
He has no boundaries. Waiting for her outside the bath is real messed up.
Oh, yeah. But he has no conception of it being messed up. And in his mind, he's just really excited to show her the data. He just wants to show her his.
Work and interrupting her lunch without so much as a hi, how are you? And dumping papers in her food.
Yes. Well, so the the really revealing part here is when she's like, I'm eating right now. And he says, oh, then you can have my carrots. He's so innocent. He is a babe in the woods, and he's hyper fixating on the Gundam and this data, and he's just like he is in a world of Gundams.
Mora is the one who calls him over, and he doesn't even acknowledge her. Oh, quick aside, in case anybody younger is watching this for the first time, that big, long roll of paper he had old school Calculators used to do that. Old school Calculators used to print on a paper tape because since it wasn't saving the data anywhere, since there wasn't a screen, you wanted a paper record of all the calculations you had done. And so fancy Calculators actually just printed on this huge roll of paper whatever calculations you were doing. And that's what he dumps so unceremoniously onto the table and into her lunch.
If you've never actually seen one or held one, they're basically like receipts. Like those super long receipts you get at the drugstore.
I also love that at one point she just takes her cutlery and sort of like, stabs the papers and moves them off of her plate.
Yeah, her body language, everyone's body language in this episode, really good.
As always, he and Moncha also argue over and around Nina. Again, pretty rude. And when she first says in a moment of anger, well, maybe Montcha should be the Gundam pilot, he looks horrified. And she briefly looks like, oh, I really hurt his feelings. And looks as though she feels bad.
And she's surprised she didn't realize it was going to hurt his feelings this way.
Then he gets right in her face and she gets mad.
Yeah. I think of a lot of this episode as like, what I would call a high school story. It is a story where if these characters were in high school, you would not even blink at the ways that they react to these situations because they're a little bit older. It feels a little bit, like, immature, but in very recognizable ways because we all like, none of us grow out of our high school mindsets as quickly as we would like to. And so Co is being very rude to Nina and frankly, taking her for granted in a way that no one would appreciate. And so, of course, she gets a little bit mad at him. And of course, she says a couple of things to hurt him.
And frankly, his obsession with the Gundam is on a level that is not, strictly speaking, helpful.
No.
He does need training in space, if Keith is any indication, and if his performance in the Gundam is any indication, he needs experience training in space, and he's foregoing it because God forbid he leaves the Gundam alone for even a moment.
He probably should have taken the gym. It was stupid to take the Gundam. But he loves Gundams. It's got to be Gundams or nothing for him. The thing is, though, when Nina says maybe it would be better for mancha to take the Gundam, I'm not entirely certain that she said that to hurt Cole. Certainly, once she gets angry later, they both say some things, but in that moment, I think she might be worried about Cole.
So here is one of the very interesting things I think about this episode and about Nina. Every time there's a fight, it is very difficult to tell whether she's worried about Cole or the Gundam.
The episode is definitely written to maintain that ambiguity, to make us uncertain, and.
Frankly, I think it's both. I think she's almost equally worried. Like the Gundam puts him in danger, but he also puts the Gundam in danger.
Right back in episode one. Episode two, even going into episode three, nina did not care about Cole. She didn't even really know his name. He was just some kid who kept Budding in and wanted to pilot the Gundam. And then over the course of the past couple of weeks, the two of them have really bonded. She really cares about him, or at least she's starting to, whether she's willing to admit that to herself or not. And so she's gone from thinking of him as a pilot, a Federation soldier, an organic component in the Gundam, that annoying guy, to this kid that she's starting to like and maybe fall in love with. And now she's scared for him. And her her fear for him is exactly the same as in I think it was episode two when she was like, my beautiful Gundams. I didn't make them for war. It's like, my beautiful baby Cole. He he might die out there.
Yeah.
One of the very realistic aspects of.
This episode is that I don't think.
She entirely understands her own feelings, which how many of us do, really?
I mean, me, but not any of.
The rest of you, because I really do think she likes Cole and also has the impression that he is only interested in her insofar as she is the gatekeeper of the Gundam, and she resents that. She's willing to use it, but she does resent it. Mora tries to kind of suss out Nina's feelings about him. She's trying to figure out, well, do you like him or don't you like him?
What is going on here?
She keeps making him do these calculations over and over, but she also refers to him by his first name, not by his last name and his rank, which is a sign of familiarity, one.
That Mora takes pains to call our attention to.
Nina also blushes when Mora points out that most of the men on the ship act like starving wolves. But I almost thought the blushing was more that nina wishes Cole would act a little like that. Like, it's nice that he's not as intense as Mancha or as annoying as Keith in the first episode, but he doesn't demonstrate any interest in her at all. In fact, when she flirts with him, he immediately changes the subject back to the Gundam.
Yeah, they have that scene at the very beginning that is so horny. Like the two of them working in the cockpit together. It's all double entendre, or at least everything Nina says has the feeling of.
Double entendre and her tone of voice and the fact that she touches his hand on the controls.
Oh, yeah, she, like, puts her hand on top of his and guides him on the joystick. Not so rough, more gentle like this until it's warmed up. It's very horny, very flirtatious, very body. The camera work kind of emphasizes this. You know, that trick where you can crop or censor an innocent image in order to imply that something laschevius is going on. They kind of do that here.
Even just having two people crammed in a cockpit, it's already quite close quarters.
But Cole is completely oblivious to all of this.
I'm not sure he is, though. Like, the speed with which he changes a subject back to, oh, no, let's back to talking about Gundam, when he kind of notices her hand on his hand and her flirtatious tone of voice, I cannot suss out whether he's uncomfortable but pleased or uncomfortable and not pleased. And I'm not sure if he knows.
Having been in a similar situation myself at a similar age, I can say that perhaps Co does not have any confidence in his reading of the situation and does not believe that Nina is flirting with him, even though all evidence points in that direction. Or maybe Ko's Rapid Redirection back towards talking about the Gundam is simply because Gundam is the only thing he wants to talk or think about. We've certainly had conversations where the other person was constantly steering the conversation back to their own special interests.
And we've discussed before how the Gundam is kind of a proxy for Nina sometimes and kind of a proxy for, like, a theoretical child. I think we're more on the it being a proxy for Nina in this episode because yeah, on my second watch through Nina's line about the Gundam's not just a toy for you to play with when you feel like it, I was like, oh, that's about you. That's about you. And that so much of her behavior to me, feels like well, like, one, she is the expert, and she's annoyed by this frankly extremely cocky young guy acting like he knows better than her, but also because she's afraid. Of losing control over the Gundam, both as a thing she created and a source of, frankly, her only source of power in this situation on this ship, but also because of the relationship it gives her to Co. She may well feel that when she is no longer the expert on the Gundam and its gatekeeper, co won't care about her anymore.
The reason I point towards the parallel structuring of the episode isn't just because I think the relationship dynamics are similar, but because it's also a signal to us to look for other points of similarity or contrast between these characters. Delaz and Nina both stir up conflict between themselves and their favorite Gundam pilot. But why? In Delaz's case, it's because Operation Stardust's success is more important to him than Gato's feelings. And then I find myself wondering if it's the same for Nina.
They may well be trying to create a competitive environment. A lot of people believe competition brings.
Out the best in people. And so setting themselves in between two people who dislike each other and are.
Competing for power in whatever form that might take, they might see that as.
A way to get the absolute best out of those people.
She may be feeling that the way Cole behaved when Cole was less certain of his position as Gundam pilot, when he was feeling that sense of competition and rivalry with Mancha, she may have feel like that was better.
And I really don't think he is purposefully being disrespectful to her when he's like oh well, I'll just change this control, or oh, I'll just change this thing, or oh no, I don't need to do that, I can just do XYZ. But the fact of the matter is he is younger than her, doesn't know the machine as well, and doesn't have that much combat experience.
Sure.
And so for him to be kind of like Lecturing at these other people is kind of ridiculous. He has no conception of the optics of that or how it feels to those people.
It's like he's playing a different game than everyone else. Like the conversation is chess and he's playing checkers. He is behaving according to a set of rules that we can perceive and understand and that make a kind of logical sense, but are not the rules that everybody else is adhering to.
Part of the reason I cut him some slack on his mansplaining tendencies is that by the end of the episode we see ample evidence that he really does listen to her. He really did hear her and remember things she told him. He's in that cockpit saying like okay, just like Nina said, I have to center the balancer like he was listening.
There is a particular shot of him manipulating that same joystick control lever again at the end of the episode, just as there was at the beginning and on the other side. It's revealed quite clearly at the end that Nina does care about Cole more than the Gundam. Because when the Gundam is getting dismembered by Shima, it's Cole's name that she's yelling, it's Cole that she's concerned about.
She catches Cole in a way not dissimilar to the nets catching the Gundam when it lands. It's a really sweet moment, and it's very public. It's about as close to a declaration of love in front of the whole crew as a person could make.
As for Gato and Cole, it occurs to me that they are both people who feel like if they just do everything right, then things are supposed to turn out the way they want them to. They just have entirely different ideas of what do everything right means. For God, though, there's this very precise kind of code of conduct way to carry himself and to behave. And if he does all of that, he expects to be taken care of. In a way, for Cole, it's not about rules. He seems almost to not be aware.
That rules exist, but it's about his.
Own internal judgment about the right way to behave, the right thing to do. And in this case, it's becoming more and more clear. If the Gundam is important and he is trying to help them get the most out of the Gundam, then he.
Is doing everything right.
I kind of wonder if Cole might not have school brain where he thinks if he gets his calculations right and he passes his piloting test and he wins the big fight against Mancha, then he's doing everything right and he should get an A plus.
And perhaps also feels that his interest in the Gundam, his curiosity about it, his hours of study of it, should weigh more than Mancha's experience.
Or even if Mancha does have superior skill. Mancha's superior skill.
Gato is always so guarded, so controlled, but Ko is mostly an open book. They seem different at first, but perhaps they have enough in common that Ko's overreactions can reveal something of what lies beneath Gato's grim facade. Gato doesn't follow the same set of social rules that Ko does, but Gato also has this worldview that sets him apart from everybody around him.
This is really our first opportunity to see that, though, because generally speaking, the other neo Xeon soldiers we've seen around Agato are so consumed with hero worship for him that while we might see some are a little more lax in dress or a little less formal, there is a sense that they're all on the same page. Now that we're seeing more of Gato's superiors and peers, it's like, oh, no, just as factional as it ever was.
For most of the show. So far, Gato has been a stranger in a strange land, and so his strangeness. Has not been strange. Now he is a stranger in his.
Own homeland, but he also, in a way, and this is one of the other things that makes him seem a bit naive and like he may turn.
Out to be quite a tragic figure.
We'll see. The way he talks about what they're doing has a lot in common with how the soldiers he's interacted with up to this point. Think about what they're doing, this big, righteous ideological battle. I mean, we'll have to see. But there's a sense that, oh, yeah, we tell the rank and file that so that they'll fight for us, but that's not really what we're doing here.
Yeah, Gato exhorted Co to see the big picture, but Gato, I don't think, does see the big picture. I think Gato is limited to the medium picture. Gato believes very strongly in the ways that a soldier should behave. And as far as he's concerned, the extent of his responsibility is to behave correctly. Strategy, ideology, agenda, those are concerns for someone above him. His duty is to be loyal to that someone. And he and Delaz talk in flowery terms about xeon and their ideals and space. Noid autonomy, but anyone can talk about freedom. And frankly, everyone on every side of every political debate talks about freedom and justice and righteousness in basically the same terms. Just saying, like, freedom in the abstract is meaningless. You have to say who's, freedom to what? An individual's freedom to travel is directly contradicted by a government's. Freedom to exclude foreigners, the freedom to discriminate and freedom from discrimination are both justified by appeals to freedom. If you live on a water course, your freedom to dam the stream, negates your downstream neighbor's, freedom to enjoy it, autonomy and space. Noid, autonomy is slightly more specific than freedom, but it's still so broad that it's basically useless. It equally justifies a liberal democracy inside six autocratic Zavi rule and the genocidal aristocrats of cosmo Babylonia. You have to go beyond that. You have to have a vision for what you're actually trying to build or else you might as well just be saying that you're in favor of good things and opposed to bad things.
I had started to wonder about this before, but it became more solid for me in this episode that the neo xeon comparison is less Nazi Germany and more various neo Nazi movements in the time since the war. Because look at the veneration of Geren. Look at how everybody has portraits of him and busts of him and that he is almost this martyr now that you take this dead, failed leader oh, yeah. But then instead turn them into a martyr of a glorious vision.
When we meet Delaz, the scene opens on a close up of a gigantic bust of Geren and then the camera pans down to see Delaz sitting beneath it.
It's mounted directly above his throne chair thing. I mean, it's like Popes being God's representative. Or it has this vibe of, like, oh, it's not really me in charge, it's the spirit of Gurin.
And this is what I mean about Delaz's propaganda. Delaz has positioned himself as Gurin's heir, and it is from that position of authority that he is able to weld together all these feuding factions within what remains of Xeon. We've been calling them Neo Xeon, but that's probably not strictly correct. Certainly Delaz would argue that actually it's the same Xeon. It never went away. That other thing, the Republic of Xeon out there, that's fake. We are the real Xeon.
And in that throne room scene, he dresses up a bunch of frankly very pat statements with flowery language. You mentioned him saying to Gato, oh, you would have objected if you had known I was going to bring in Shima. That's just better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
Although he doesn't actually ask for forgiveness.
And he had another line that I wrote down in its entirety because it just hits so hard. One who fights for what's right shouldn't concern himself with trifles, which is trifles like treaties or human rights or whatever the ends justify the means. And he follows that up with all of these sort of comforting nothings.
Oh, I will deal with Shima.
Look at the big picture. What's most important is for us to be as strong as possible. That's not ominous at all. And the emptiness of it all gets hammered home again when he broadcasts his big speech, laying out all these different reasons why they're doing it. That the Xeon government that accepted the armistice wasn't the real government, and so the armistice is void. That the Federation is untrustworthy, that they are violating their own treaties and building all these weapons in secret. And so, obviously they're preparing to further subjugate Space NOIDs or why would they be doing this? And that freedom for Space NOIDs still hasn't been achieved, and so the original reasons for fighting are still there, to which Synapse thinks, okay, but what is this really about?
There is some textual implication that Delaz is not wrong about the Federation building up its strength to further subjugate the Space NOIDs, simply because when we see the reactions to his speech who is in the frame? What old friend has reappeared?
Basque Om.
Cameo.
Yep. Basque om in a Federation soldiers uniform. So, like, we know where this is going. We know that we're just a couple of years away from the Titans and Zeta and Ayug and that whole thing.
Right.
Like, the Federation is bad.
Yeah. But at the same time, what Delaz is trotting out here is just a rehash of the old, like, stabbed in the back myth from Germany after World War I. This idea that the glorious army could have won it all. We were on the threshold of victory, except that we were stabbed in the back by those sniveling politicians, those civilians, those business leaders, those rich elites, and then a whole bunch of antisemitism. And never mind that the army had been completely defeated and was on the verge of absolute annihilation, and that the invasion of the homeland was mere days away. Never mind all of those things. And his speech is long on backward looking, revenge focused language. We are not listening to the whispers of the false peace. We hear only the echoes in our heart. Lots of talk about all of the sacrifices that have been made in the past and how we need to retroactively justify them by continuing the war now. There is a brief mention of the pursuit of space. Noid autonomy, but that rings as hollow here as it always did in First Gundam, because Xeon was already independent. Side Six was already independent. Like the One year war was about Xeon domination.
And there's something about his speech and.
The whole thing that feels a bit suicidal, because he talks about the young throwing themselves into the fire of battle and that they are doing so once again. But this is a good thing. Like, oh, it's great that our few remaining young people are going to die in war. That's awesome. Hooray.
So glorious, so beautiful. Like the falling soccer of blossoms, right?
This willingness to sacrifice all these young people whose passion you've exploited. And Shima mentions that every mobile suit is precious. Like, even if they're old, even if they're cobbled together, they really can't afford to lose too much material. They don't have resources. So what kind of a position are they really in to stand up to the Federation? I don't know. They're doing okay so far.
But it's clear that this is the big push. Shima and these others, the base commander in the previous episode, Delaz, has convinced all of them that there is something here to achieve, that it is worth all of these sacrifices. For three years they've been husbanding these resources, preserving, collecting, welding together their own personal little units. And Delaz has somehow convinced all of them that this is the moment to spend what they have, to gamble it all in the hope of winning something. But what that something is, as Synapse so aptly says at the end, remains a mystery. What is his agenda?
What exactly is it that he wants to achieve?
The speech reminded me of two things. First, Delaws looks suspiciously like Ming the Merciless from the old Flash Gordon serials.
Oh yeah, I hadn't thought about that. That's true.
And second, this episode has a very similar structure to episode twelve of First Gundam. This is the Garma's funeral Girinzabi speech episode. Both of them feature the Albion or the White base encountering a new threat. Romba Rawl in one case, Shima in another, who are coincidentally the same age. They are both 35.
She makes it look good. Not that Ramba looked bad, but Ramba looked old.
Shiva makes everything look good. The episode title here makes reference to the Albion Voyaging Across a Sea of Stars, while the first Gundam episode saw the White Base starting its journey across the Pacific Ocean and all of it framed around this big propaganda. Speech broadcasted on all channels with the crew of the ship at the end hearing the end of the speech and giving their reactions to it. Synapse challenging Delaz's speech in much the same way that Bright challenged Guerran's. And given that Delaz has consciously positioned himself as the ghost of Giran Zabi, I guarantee he must have watched that speech over and over again as he was writing this one.
A question you might be able to answer for me. What are the relative ranks of Gato and Shima because they each get called Commander in this episode? I thought Gato was a lieutenant commander.
Gato is a lieutenant commander. Shima is one rank higher at Commander.
Okay?
I assume that they call him Commander as a matter of politeness, in the same way that you would call a Brigadier General, even though General is actually a higher rank. And this confusion about the ranks is specific to the English versions, both the dub and the sub, because in the Japanese, they just call him Shosa and her Chusa.
And for all that, as you mentioned, gato feels a lot of jealousy, a lot of desire to be the one who is closest to Delaz, the mentee. He is the one in the video. He is shown there, standing at Delaz's left shoulder.
He's famous. He's in all the textbooks.
And so Delaz is almost certainly using him for propaganda reasons. But it's also a show of confidence, a show of closeness. All right, I think we've reached the part of the talk back where I can just gush about Shima because we stand a space pirate queen.
Now. Beginning shima hour.
I very much enjoy that she just has, like, classic villainous energy. They're not trying to make her relatable or redeemable or nice. No, she is evil and awesome about it.
She is wicked. She lounges. She has her big fan that she's always tapping on her hand and her.
Huge coat and her white tiger skin flung over a chair that she never sits in properly.
She revels. She revels in everything.
She's as tall or taller than Gato. She might not be taller because of the perspective of the shot in which you see them next to each other, but she's very nearly as tall.
She wears the big baggy pants like a Delinquent of the 80s.
Again, that felt more Pirty to me because they're tucked into her boots, but.
I point them out because those very full cut trousers are unique. The other Yuzon officers aren't wearing those.
The painting behind her throne chair is of like, a stormy sea, which I thought was really cool. Also, this is probably a design engineering physics thing, but the platform that her chair is on appears to be suspended on cables. I don't know why. I mean, in theory, you could rig it up so that it is less sensitive to the movement of the ship as a whole.
Her ship has clearly been set up to resemble an old fashioned pirate ship. The crew are all wearing disparate uniforms.
They also look like pirates.
Sleeveless chests revealed that's the vibe.
One of them even has like, a bandana tied around his head and suspending.
The throne chair in that way kind of feels like a hammock for a bunk in an old ship.
There's another question that I had. Both of the Xeon ships have, like, old wooden looking style helm control, like steering it's a big wooden wheel with spokes on it. Have they always been like that? Is that new? Did I miss it? In previous Gundam shows that all these ships have this extremely old fashioned control.
If you go back to first Gundam, I think you'll find that they do.
And that most obviously controls Yaw. But what about pitch and roll? Is it like, can you move the whole wheel from the base to control pitch and roll or assume so other controls for that what is going on?
Yeah, I assume that it's all on a pivot. You can pull it towards you, you can push it away. You can do it at different angles for those kinds of turns.
Shima's mobile suit being purple and gold, is also very queenly, very imperial, one might say. When we see her in combat, there is a calm and very cold blooded brutality and then that cold bloodedness goes away. But when she first takes out the bridge of that other ship that's a whole ship destroyed, she just, like, flies in, attacks the bridge, flies out. Oh, whole ship full of people gone.
She doesn't quite just fly in. She flies above the two ships. She looks at them and she sort of says to herself, oh, which shall I attack? Which shall be my prey enemy?
Minimo.
Well, exactly. She says, yoridori Mitori, which is like it's a playful little rhyme for choosing between different options. It is effectively the Japanese version of Enimini minimo.
But then once she's fighting the Gundam Unit One, she starts to get agitated, she starts to get angry. The fact that she keeps shooting it and it feels so brutal, chunks of it keep flying off. It takes a hit to the face, it takes a hit to the shoulder, it takes a hit to the leg, it takes a hit to the body.
It is a gorgeously animated sequence, but.
Because it has such strong armor, she's not breaking through in a way that causes the mass explosion and destruction of the machine. And she gets angry. And she gets angry at the loss of one of her wingmen, but she doesn't lose sight of what this is all about. And when the time comes that it makes most sense to withdraw, she withdraws.
She would not have made it this long if she didn't know when to pull out.
And there is another demonstration of caution. Let's say she's rude and insulting tagato, but she's very polite to Della's, and she makes efforts so that Della's does not overhear her being rude, that she has plausible deniability. Her taking a run at Gato's ship when he arrives is meant to be intimidating. She plays it off as, oh, we just came out to welcome you.
And again, it evokes the idea of Delinquency. She runs the pure gint off of the space lane like Bolsozoku running somebody off the road.
She insults Gato's ship with, I thought, a fantastic insult. Oh, I didn't see you there. I thought you were just some more space garbage. And then insults him again when she I wrote this down as drive by insult. When she's leaving to go take care of this fleet, she describes it to Della's as, oh, well, I haven't presented you with a gift yet, which is in a lot of different cultures, it's traditional. When somebody visits you, they bring a gift. This will be my gift to you. I'll run these guys off. But then, as she's walking by Gato, she says quietly enough, presumably in the hopes that Della's won't hear it, that, oh, she'll see to it that Gato gets easier missions from now on, and maybe he should just go polish the Gundam or something.
Double entendre.
Again, so she clearly respects Delaz and doesn't want to anger him, but does not share that feeling with Gato.
Kind of like how mancha interacts with Nina and Ko. She sees this very self, serious young man, this Gato with his immaculate uniform and his upright posture and his dreams of glory and ideology, and she just wants to poke him. She just wants to poke him with her fan. Before we close out, I want to highlight how good the directing in this episode is. The composition of shots, the choices of angles, the framing.
Yeah, I really liked just the production, the way in which this episode was animated.
It's almost always beautiful. It's frequently very interesting. Like, doing a significant portion of the shower scene just focused on Mora's feet was really fun.
Yeah, it managed to walk a line of feeling a teeny bit fan servicey, but not excessively so.
And it conveyed the mood of the conversation between the two of them.
This is one of the things that I wanted to bring up about Nina that has nothing to do with Cole, because she's a person. She clearly has, like, a mischievous streak. She likes to tease people. Her continually turning the hot water on Laura, for instance, and we see a little bit of it in her telling Cole, like, oh, you have a mistake in those calculations, and then just, like, letting him redo it over and over. There is part of her that would like to just be playing pranks and having fun, I think, and cannot under the circumstances. They also manage to really convey, and a lot of this is, again, in how the episode is shot, that she is super comfortable in space. She's a lunarian, she's from the Moon and is used to moving around in these low gravity environments.
By contrast, even though he's in a mobile suit that is adapted for space, when Keith is getting hard pressed by the enemies, it kind of looks like his Jim Cannon is trying to walk. You can see him trying to walk backwards as he retreats, even though he's in space.
And Moncha admonishes him in a thing that I'm sure he doesn't mean it in a new typey way, but which made me think of new types that you can't just know in your head what's around you or that you've checked certain things or done certain things. You have to feel in your body that you've covered everything, that you're keeping an eye on the 360 degrees plus every direction around you. And because we do not see Coal pilot in space before then, seeing Keith struggle is also our indication that Cole is not ready for space combat. We know Cole has some additional aptitude, but he and Keith have had the same training and same experience. They are year mates from the academy. They then got the same posting afterwards. So seeing Keith's struggle ends up foreshadowing for us. Cole's struggle and Adel steps in again to be the least horrible of those guys and is the one who provides the comforting words to Keith when they finally go out. Keith, who is clearly pretty downhearted at this point with how much he's struggling because his only response is, yes, sir. Sorry, sir, but yeah, Adel calms him down a little before they head out there and Keith survives another fight. There were two other scenes that I really, really loved. One that's big and one that's less big. I'll start with the big one burning, taking his crutch and destroying his cast on his leg so that he can go out in the gym and help Cole like, oh, my God, this is so powerful, while the voiceover of Delaz's speech is playing. That was incredible.
Yeah.
And I don't know if you caught this, but in the lunchroom, everyone has stopped because everybody is watching this fight between Nina and Mosha and Cole, and then the sirens go and everyone gets ordered to battle stations, and it's like, everybody unfreezes.
Yeah, there's one guy who's, like, just shoveling food into his mouth while everyone else is running off to battle.
That is probably very smart because who knows how long they'll be at battle stations? Who knows how long it will be before they can grab another bite to eat? Yeah, one guy is clearly like, oh, better try to cram my lunch down my gullet before I rush off to wherever I need to go.
Also, in the lunchroom and just going back to how completely oblivious Cole is to any kind of subtext. Every time he asks them to give him no carrots, and every time they give him a double or triple helping of carrots. Cole, if you don't want carrots, stop telling them that.
And I assume that's supposed to be another nod to just how young he is, that he is in some ways, like, emotionally and behaviorally younger even than his age. I don't want to eat my vegetables feels very how old are you?
So I think the carrots thing is actually an inside joke. So the guy who played Kohl also played vegeta in Dragon Ball. Vegeta noted hater of Goku, also known as Kakarat, aka carrot.
Well, then.
Nina'S research on Japanese world War II holdouts.
We've mentioned in our discussion segments the connections that 83 seems to draw between the one year war and world War II xeon, neozeon and Nazi Germany. These connections, plus the arc of the series itself, in which survivors of the war bide their time, waiting for a chance to resurrect the conflict, not to mention the discovery of the hidden Kimberide base, made me wonder about World War II holdouts. Most of us have heard some version of this story that a Japanese soldier either never hearing about the surrender or believing any news of surrender to be lies and propaganda, hides out in the jungles of insert remote South Pacific or Southeast Asian island here, fighting on for years after the war has ended. We could almost call it a trope, and it's a story that's appeared in episodes of Gilligan's Island, the $6 Million Man and Archer.
But what about the specifics?
Who were these men, and how long did they hide out for? Did any of them organize counter offensives? This won't be an exhaustive list, both because of time constraints and the lack of detailed information about some of the cases. I would have liked to look into holdouts in Europe, whether there were any famous ones and what they got up to, but ran out of time for it this week. I won't get into the hoaxes, other than to say there have been a few. And it's worth noting that in the aftermath of the war, there were a number of Japanese soldiers who chose not to return home for any number of reasons, but were not holdouts per se. They accepted the surrender and that the war was over. Yet among them were soldiers who, for ideological reasons, did not lay down their arms but fought in the Chinese civil war, the Korean War, or various wars of independence in Southeast Asia. They might have been procommunist anticommunist, those who wanted to see Asia freed from European control, even if that would no longer be under the auspices of the Japanese Empire. You get the idea. I've focused on Japanese soldiers first because the most famous World War II holdouts, at least when it comes to english sources are Japanese, which is no surprise when you consider the Pacific Theater, the vast number of isolated islands, many of them lightly populated and densely forested, perfect places to disappear. Matsudorikyo and Yamakage Kofuku were Navy machine gunners and spent three years, 130 days hiding out in caves on Imojima, sleeping during the day and foraging at night. What finally convinced them that Japan had surrendered was a discarded magazine with a photograph of a US. Soldier and a Japanese woman in a rowboat spending time together at a park. They surrendered and were taken back to Honshu in 1949. Not long after, Matsudo returned to Iwojima to look for the diary he kept during his time there. He wasn't able to find it and committed suicide by jumping from the top of Mount Sudibachi volcano. The peak of Mount Sudibachi was also where Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph of marines raising A-U-S. Flag during the battle of Iwojima was taken. Matsudo had previously expressed shame at surviving the war, that he ought not to have returned, and that if he didn't find his diary, he would not return to Japan. After his suicide, there was speculation he wanted to die where his comrades had died. Akatsuyuichi held out for four years, 210 days until 1950 on the island of Lubang in the Philippines. This despite efforts by the US. And Philippine armies to clear the island in February of 46 and the surrender of a Japanese garrison of 41 there in April of that same year. In fact, there were surrenders in the Philippines throughout the late forty s. A mortar team of seven on Palon Island, 15 soldiers in Luzon, 20 army personnel on Corgador Island, and a group of 200 soldiers on Mindanao. In 1947, a group of 33 soldiers led by lieutenant Yamaguchi A attacked A-U-S. Marine corps detachment on Palelou island in Palau. Believing that the war was ongoing, a Japanese admiral was brought to the island to convince the group that the war really was over and that they should surrender. Susumu Murata was stationed on Titian in the Marianas Islands, and was not captured until 1953, eight years and 120 days after the war ended. In 1955, just over a decade after the official end of the war, kinoshita Noboru was captured in Luzon, Philippines, and hanged himself, another soldier who could not live with the shame he felt in defeat. That same year, four airmen shimada Kakuo, Shimokubo Kumau, Ojima Mamoru and Jay Gishi Sanzo surrendered at what was then Holandia in Dutch New Guinea, now Jayapura in the Indonesian province of Papua. Then, in 1956, another small group surrendered on the Philippine island of Mindoro. Lieutenant Yamamoto Shige and the corporals ishi umitaro izumida Masaji and Nakano Jujier in Guam. Private Minagawa BUNZO surrendered after he was shot while trying to steal food may of 1960. Several days later, his superior officer, Sergeant Ito Masashi, surrendered as well. They'd been living in the jungle for nearly 15 years, ever since, they'd been separated from their unit during the liberation of Guam. By the time Ito returned to Japan, he was in his late thirty s and had spent nearly half of his life hiding out in the jungle. One source made a point of saying.
That the two never really became friends.
Despite their time in isolation together. Yet it seems they may have wound up working together, or at least in the same place when they returned home. Another source mentions that both worked as watchmen for Toy Studios in Tokyo. After their return, Ito wrote a book about his experience yokoi shot in Guam when the war ended, going into hiding with nine other soldiers. Before long, the group split up. Seven of them left for a distant part of the island, and the remaining three went their separate ways, but would visit each other periodically until two of them died in a flood in 1964, leaving Yokoi completely alone. He was so effective at hiding himself and surviving the wilderness that he wasn't found until 1972. Yokoi later admitted he'd known the war was over since 1952, but quote, we Japanese soldiers were told to prefer death to the disgrace of getting captured alive. He became an instant celebrity. His arrival was broadcast nationally, and his first statement, quote, it is with much embarrassment that I return became a popular saying. He went on to tell reporters, quote, I have returned with the rifle the Emperor gave me. I am sorry I could not serve him to my satisfaction. Yokoi married and went on to become a TV personality, speaking about simple living and survival skills, but was never entirely comfortable in his new life in Japan. Like Ito, Yokoi wrote a book about his experiences, and more recently, his nephew wrote a book about him that has been translated into English. For those of you who might like to read more, it's called Private Yokoi's War and Life on Guam, 1944 to 1972. The Case of Private Nakamura Teruo, born atun Palalin and also known as Sunyo, highlights just how much the world changed in the decades after World War II. He was an AMI. The AMI are an indigenous Taiwanese ethnic group also called Pangcha, and during World War II joined the Takasago Volunteer unit of the Imperial Japanese Army, a unit comprised entirely of indigenous Taiwanese recruits. Despite the name, he asserted that he was forced to enlist. Stationed on Morotai Island in what was then the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, he survived the Battle of Morotai in 1944 and remained on the island with other holdouts until the 1950s. At that point, he decided to cut ties with the rest of the group and set off on his own, eventually building a small hut and fencing in a field around it. A group of nine Japanese soldiers were discovered and sent home from Morotai in 1956. It's unclear if they were the same holdouts he'd been with before. To Sunyo. The frequent air traffic overhead was a sign that the war was ongoing, the changing characteristics of the planes a sign of the never ending arms race between the two sides. So he remained hidden and kept himself busy surviving. In reality, there was an airfield nearby, and both local air force operations and air travel increased by leaps and bounds once the war was over, accompanied by technological developments in planes of all kinds. Depending on which source you read, either a pilot spotted the hut entirely by chance or locals reported sightings of a wild man in the mountains, leading to the search that eventually found Sunyo and took him to Jakarta in 1974. This is when things get complicated. Sunyo chose to be repatriated directly to Taiwan, but he received a cold reception. As a member of a volunteer unit, he was perceived to be a Japanese colonial loyalist. The press there was also referring to him by the name Li Kwang hui, a name he had never heard before his repatriation. He had never had a Chinese name previously. On the other hand, since he was not ethnically Japanese, the attitude toward him in Japan was also pretty cold, especially when compared to the hero's receptions received by other holdouts. Plus, as a private in a colonial unit and a noncitizen, he received back pay but was not entitled to a pension from the Japanese government. This caused some significant outrage, and there were fundraisers for him in Japan, Taiwan and even Indonesia, but it was still a difficult transition. Sunyo's parents had died and his remaining family had all started using Chinese names. His wife, thinking he was dead, had remarried and had been with her new husband for more than ten years already. Sunyo himself lived for just four more years after his return, dying of lung cancer in 1979. Although Sunyo was the last holdout to be found, the second to last found just nine months before him may be the most famous. Onoda Hiro enlisted at age 18 and trained as a commando and army intelligence officer. In December of 1944, he was sent to Lubang, Philippines, with orders to hamper enemy attacks by any means available, in particular targeting the island's airstrip and pier. Joining a group of Japanese soldiers already stationed on the island, onoda found himself outranked and largely disregarded. When United States and Philippine Commonwealth forces landed in February of 1945, it didn't take long for them to sweep through and control the island. Soon, all but four of the Japanese soldiers had died or surrendered, and here is where another aspect of Onoda's orders becomes important. Many Japanese soldiers committed suicide rather than surrender. However, Onoda's orders were clear that, quote under no circumstances was he to surrender or take his own life. Having been promoted to second lieutenant in the course of events, he was the highest ranking officer remaining and ordered the three men still with him into hiding. Private AKATSU Yuichi, Corporal shimada Shoichi and Private First Class Kozuka Kinshichi lived with Lieutenant Onoda in the mountains carrying out guerrilla attacks while constantly on the move to avoid detection. The group were already suspicious, even paranoid, and assumed that everyone they saw was an enemy or spy. In 1945, leaflets were dropped on the island announcing that Japan had surrendered. Locals left notes where they thought the soldiers might find them like one that read, quote the war ended on 15 August. Come down from the mountains. Another bunch of leaflets contained an order two remaining troops to surrender from General Yamashta Tomoyuki himself. General Yamashta had led the invasion of Malaya and the Battle of Singapore. Onoda's band studied each of these messages carefully and in every instance decided the messages were not genuine. These were propaganda to demoralize them or falsehoods meant to trick them into surrendering. Onoda's brother was even brought to the island. But Onoda was certain the man was merely a lookalike, that the whole thing was another ploy. According to one source, Onoda, quote, believed attempts to persuade him to leave were a plot concocted by the pro US government in Tokyo. In September of 1949, AKATSU Yuichi left the group and after six months surviving on his own, surrendered to Philippine forces in March of 1950. This creates yet another fascinating wrinkle in the whole saga. Thanks to information provided by AKATSU when he surrendered, the Philippine government, the locals, the Japanese government, all the military in the area they would all have known that Onoda was still alive. On Lubang, 1952 saw the government dropping letters and photos from the soldiers family members urging them to surrender. But again, the group thought it must be a trick. Shimada was shot in a confrontation with local fishermen in 1953 and survived only to be shot and killed in 1954 by a search party. Around 1959, after years with no clear sign of Onoda, he was declared dead. Then, in 1972, more than 27 years after the end of the war, Onoda's last remaining comrade, Kozuka Kinsichi was killed in a shootout with local police when the two of them were caught sabotaging food stores setting fire to recently harvested rice. Onoda wasn't seen, but there was speculation that if Kozuka had survived all these years, it was possible Onoda was still alive. Enter Suzuki Norio, an explorer and adventurer who was traveling around the world with the express purpose of looking for quote, Lieutenant Onoda a panda and the abominable snowman in that order. Which sounds like a joke, but apparently wasn't. He was killed in an avalanche years later trying to find evidence of the abominable snowman.
I assume he also found a panda at some point. That seems like the easiest one.
Reading about him was one of those.
Moments where under normal circumstances, down the.
Wikipedia rabbit hole I go. But this time it's like no, that is not relevant to this research. I digress.
In February of 1974, Suzuki went to lubang and found Onoda after just four days of searching. The two talked extensively and became friends, despite Onoda thinking of Suzuki as a quote. Hippie and Suzuki tried to convince Onoda to come out of the jungle, but Onoda refused to surrender without orders from a superior officer. With a photo of the two of them together as proof of the encounter, Suzuki returned to Japan and the Japanese government located Onoda's commanding officer, Major Taniguchi Yoshimi, who had long since surrendered and become a bookseller. By March 9, Tanyguchi was in Lubang meeting with Onoda and issued him the following orders. Quote in accordance with the Imperial Command, the 14th Area Army has ceased all combat activity. In accordance with military headquarters command number A 2003 the Special Squadron of Staff's Headquarters is relieved of all military duties. Units and individuals under the command of Special Squadron are to cease military activities and operations immediately and place themselves under the command of the nearest superior officer. When no officer can be found, they are to communicate with the American or Philippine forces and follow their directives. Properly relieved of duty, Onoda finally surrendered, handing his sword directly to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in an official ceremony. He also turned over a functioning Arisaka Type 99 rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, several hand grenades, and the dagger his mother had given him for the express purpose of killing himself in the event of capture. It was March 11, 1970, 428 years and 210 days after the end of World War II. In that time, Onoda and his men had killed 30 people and wounded many more. The Philippine government granted him a pardon given the circumstances, but this was not reflected in local feeling. Onoda was very popular on his return to Japan and was encouraged to run for a diet seat, but never did so he donated his back pay to Yasukuni Shrine. We've explained the history and controversy around this shrine in a previous research piece, but long story short, it is strongly associated with Japanese nationalism, militarism and imperialism. Reportedly uncomfortable with the amount of attention he received and struggling to adjust to life in Japan, dismayed by the quote withering of traditional Japanese values, onoda decided to follow his elder brother and emigrated to Brazil in 1974, where he became a cattle rancher. An active and prominent member of the Japanese Brazilian community, he continued to spend a significant part of every year there, even after he married and moved back to Japan in the 1980s, he started a series of nature camps for young people, though what exactly these nature camps were like isn't clear. One source mentions that he was inspired to start these camps after reading news stories about the increasingly violent criminality of Japanese young people, specifically the story of a Japanese teenager who had murdered his parents in 1980, which makes me wonder if they were, like reform schools or the kind of wilderness camps people sometimes send troubled teens to. Onoda lived until he was 91 years old, dying in 2014 of heart failure, a complication of a case of pneumonia. The Japanese government continued to search for holdouts throughout the 1980s, even though many reports were thought to be hoaxes, like the newspaper reports of holdouts on the Solomon Islands, which may have been falsified to stoke interest in the islands and encourage tourism. Though government searches ceased in 1989, rumors of holdouts continued through the 1990s and even into the 2000s. But obviously, with each passing year, any veteran remaining alive in these places becomes less and less likely. A Smithsonian magazine article about Yokoi mentions that his return quote stirred widespread soul searching about whether he represented the best impulses of the national spirit or the silliest. This divide was largely generational, with older residents of Japan interpreting his actions as an inspirational reminder of a bygone era, and younger people more often viewing his refusal to surrender as pointless. Too focused on the past, on doing what he'd been ordered to do, and not thinking about the future or about what it was all for, what purpose it could possibly achieve. Sounds an awful lot like Gato and Cole, doesn't it? One focused on the glories of the past, stubbornly dedicated to something that no longer exists, the other mystified by this and focused on the new and the now, but seemingly with no deeper principles to guide him. What stands out to me in these holdout stories, one element that ties most of them together is that most holdouts weren't really fighting on. They didn't try to regroup, to gather a fighting force, to make plans, to retake territory, or take over the now US allied Japanese government, or bring back the empire. They didn't even really harry the local military in any organized way. By and large, they were alone, and it took everything they had just to survive a hostile environment. They held out not because they wanted to fight on, but because they could not bear the shame of surrender. It was better to die than to be captured alive, yet they had not been killed in battle, which is just.
Gato to a Tingey.
The shame he felt when they lost the one year war was nigh unbearable, and he would have been just as happy to have died at Abawaku. It didn't seem to occur to him that he could try to continue the fight to promulgate Xeon's ideals, to work for space. Noid sovereignty, no the grand plans were all Della's, and without the orders to the contrary, gato would probably have flung himself back into battle, hoping never to return. The fact that Onoda was also a lieutenant throughout his time in hiding makes me think he was a likely inspiration or influence in the creation of Gato's character as well. Of course, in our own time, efforts to resurrect the defeated empire are more mundane, but no less sinister. It's not hidden fleets or stolen tech or even nukes, but far right militarist political movements gaining power not through warfare and violence, but through money, politics and influence. Next time on Episode 8.6 nothing valued is here. We research and discuss Gundam 83 stardust Memory episode Six And when you have to tell your mom and dad that.
You totaled the car.
Nina's mysterious past. What's the word for a group of engineers?
A harem.
Okay, Monsha dang. It's like fleet week. Of all the gin joints in all the world.
Cole dasol.
Cuckoo's. Doan's. Scrap yard.
These are my six girlfriends. And yes, they design Gundams.
Learn to code desertion.
Yeah, that's what they call it when you don't come back from leave.
Full. Berner, bernier.
Bernier.
Bernern.
Brunon. Hold. No. That's a Titans test team mobile suit.
From advance of Zeta and Sasuga.
Anaheim.
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. You know, there are some Gundam opinions out there that feel so right, even though they're wrong, like Shima and Ramba Rawl. Being the same age proves once and for all that nothing keeps you looking young and beautiful, like Spite. If you've got a wrong Gundam opinion that feels right, you know where to send it. We are recording.
Hope you're ready for paper shuffling sounds.
I have so many pages of notes, I'm going to be shuffling these papers, too. I have two notebooks open in front of me.
So I assume you caught the mention of Pierre Gint, and you know that's an Ibsen play?
I do.
Okay.
Did you catch the mention of Lily Marlene?
No.
When was that?
Lily Marlene is the name of Shima's.
Ship, so I didn't remember much about Piergint. I never learned about it, but from a quick browse, there's potentially meant to be a parallel to Gato. It pulls heavily from Norwegian fairy tales. And the bit that made me think about Gundam is apparently one of the things that Ibsen did a lot in the play is he didn't really worry.
About how difficult or easy it would be to stage.
He jumps back and forth a lot in time, and he jumps back and forth a lot between realism and more like surreal, fantastical scenes. And I feel like Gundam does that a lot. Gundam is like, here's something that feels very real. Here's something that is definitely, like, metaphorical fantastical.
And Gundam also, I think, plays sometimes with the contrast between Earth and space in the same way that, depending on the setting, sometimes Earth is the fantastical, the fairy realm. Sometimes it's space. Yeah. So there's probably something there. One of us needs to read Pure Gantt, probably to properly understand this show.
Yeah. So that went on my list of potential research topics.
Cool.
Could be very interesting.
Yeah. All right. You read Pure Gant, the rather long play, and I will listen to the song Lily Marlene, and we'll meet back here.
See, I feel like you're missing an obvious shortcut here, which is that we have a bunch of friends who were theater students who have had to study piergent, and we can just make them talk about brilliant.
We should send messages out, dispatch the.
Pigeons, having gotten through that warm up.
You feeling ready?
Yeah. You should need to stop tapping on your water glass because I can hear it.
Sure.
Do you have a soft fidget item?
No.
You need a soft fidget item.
I guess I do.
You will never know what Tom's soft fidget item is.
You'll never guess.