You're listening to season ten of mobile suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of Sci-Fi mega franchise mobile suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
This is episode 10.16, shipping up to orbit, and we are your hosts. I'm Tom and I'm working on a pitch for a rom.com about Dukkur and Renda, tentatively titled biking for two. Call me Bandai.
And I'm Nina, new to victory Gundam and hoping for an appearance from visiting feline co host Tigress, who has taken up residence at MSB Studios. She may be shy, but I expect she has some strong opinions about Gundam. Mobile suit Breakdown is made possible by our paying subscribers on Patreon. Thank you all and special thanks to our newest patrons, Jonathan G. Willis H and Sylvia Dragoness. You keep MSB Genki. I would also like to thank Wi for supporting us on Ko Fi.
Hey, before we start, I have a personal announcement. I've written an original audio drama. It's a blend of family intrigue, magical realism, and mystery with light cyberpunk elements called the disappearances of Lydia Fontaine. Sarah McClintock, who you might know better as occasional MSB guest Sarah McCostumes is directing, and a really phenomenal cast of more than 20 voice actors and a couple of editors have all volunteered their time and talents to help us make a pilot episode, which you can listen to right now@lydiadisappears.com.
Dot it's so good.
Aw, thank you. We're gonna be running a Kickstarter in June to raise funds in order to produce a whole season of episodes. Disappearances of Lydia Fontaine is a bit more serious than the Titans news network and Radio free Shangri La bits that we did here. But if you enjoyed those, if you're into radio dramas in general, or if you're just curious, I hope you'll check it out. It would mean a lot to me if you did. I'm really excited about this project and I have been champing at the bit to tell you about it for ages. So Lydia, that's l y d iadisappears.com. i hope you like it, but in Gundam this week were covering Victory episode 16, rin Hosu Fujo or reinforce lift off. The episode was written by Oka Akira, storyboarded by Kase Mitsuko and directed by Egami Kiyoshi with Shinbo take as animation director. This is Shinbos first gundam credit, but hes going to be a staple on Gundam shows going forward, including most recently, acting as the character animation director for three episodes of the Witch from Mercury. After narrowly surviving their journey through the debris field, Uso, Marbet, and the others on the PCST shuttle are alarmed by the sudden appearance of a Bespa warship carrying two space use zoloat mobile suits. Uso is ready to fight in the victory Gundam, but Marbet calls him back. She fears he is not yet ready for space combat. Meanwhile on Earth, Duker Ik and his second, Renda lurk just offshore of arty Gibraltar in brand new Gal Guyu aquatic mobile suits. The remaining members of the League military's Camion team have somehow gotten their hands on the space cruiser, and they're preparing it for action. The Bespa soldiers plan to destroy it before it can leave the planet. Besides the old men Romero, Otis, and Leonid, the trio of youngsters Ness, Khufu, and Stryker, and the three surviving shrikes, Junko, Peggy, and Connie, the ship is mostly crewed by Federation soldiers on leave from their regular postings and a handful of survivors from the Bagley team. The transport pilot, Gomez, has gotten over his initial reticence to get involved and will serve as the vessels captain. Unbeknownst to them, they will also be accompanied by a party of stowaways. Shakti makes good on her promise to Susie by sneaking the two of them, plus the baby, Karlman and the dog Flanders, onto the ship. As the ship leaves port, accompanied by a flotilla of tugboats, Dukkur and Renda launch their attack, first firing off waves of torpedoes, then leaping out of the water to fight on the decks of the ships. Themselves. Outnumbered and facing veteran pilots in state of the art mobile suits, they are soon forced to withdraw. Even with two of their tugs disabled by the attack, the League militaire warship makes it into space. Now the real challenge begins. Can one old ship and a handful of part time soldiers take on the full might of the Zanskar Empire? Elsewhere in space, soldiers from the Bespa patrol ship inspect the PCST shuttle. Captain Genus pleads innocence, claiming he was forced to carry the victory Gundam without knowing exactly what it was he was hauling. The Bespa troops aren't entirely convinced. They confiscate the shuttle and take everyone present into custody. Aboard the patrol ship, our heroes find another group of kids, including one just six years old. These children are hostages, kidnapped from the nearby highland solar battery and held to ensure their parents compliance. It only takes Odello a few moments to work out a plan. While Marbet uses the sharp edges of harrows ear flaps to cut her bonds, the kids form a plan to escape using equipment from the patrol ships supply cupboard. While USo and Haro create a distraction, Odello and the others attack, gluing pilots to their controls with birdlime, flooding the cockpit with pesticide, and snarling the hatch with wires from the grappling hooks. This gives Marbet and the kids the time they need to get back to the shuttle. UsO, in the victory, disables the Bespa ship's engines, but by now, one of the enemy pilots has managed to escape and board his zolohat. The battle between them is intense. Uso has adapted to space faster than anyone expected, but he has never faced anything like the Zoloat's all range attack before he falls back on a favorite trick, separating the victory's legs and attacking with just the torso. For a moment, the Bespa pilot thinks he has defeated this Gundam replica, but the next moment, Uso has him at Saber point. Open the hatch and surrender or I'll cut it open and you with it. Uso has no interest in killing this man. Henry and the remaining Bespa soldiers are not willing to continue the fight if it means the death of their comrade. They agree to a ceasefire. As the two forces go their separate ways, the exhaustion of the day's events finally overtakes Uso, and he slips into unconsciousness, sweat beading on his face.
It took me a little longer than usual to get my notes done this week because I had to pause the episode and do some side research almost immediately before the episode had really even started, the moment they displayed the episode title. Because while I did not understand the entirety of the japanese title, I had never seen reinforce romanized in this particular way, and I was pretty sure that was wrong. However, I couldn't have figured out this puzzle without Tom. So let me take you on a little journey.
It's a long walk, folks, but it's worth it.
So the english title is given as reinforce liftoff. In Japanese, it's Rin Hosu Fujo, and that's ri with a dash that indicates a long vowel sound and then long vowel sound. So I plug this into the dictionary. Nothing. I split it up into two parts because rin sounds an awful lot like lean. And it is. It's also how Rin, as in wings of the Tomino novel. I always thought it was Rayan, but it's Rene, wings of Reen. And then hose can be hose, horse, or maybe sometimes force. So then I started trying to think of, like, okay, like a lean force or a lean hose or a lean horse. Like, what could those combinations be? And because that first part didn't make sense to me. I thought I'd better check the second part as well. The kanji used are fujo, which can mean surfacing, rising to the surface, or more abstractly, emerging to prominence or rising in rank. At this point, I was a little stuck. So I go to Tom and I say, hey, I've been spending the past half hour looking at the title of this episode. Here's what I've got so far. Do you have any ideas? And Tom lights up like a light bulb because it turns out that the lean horse is the name of the ship.
This ship's name, which is romanized a couple of different ways. Sometimes it's done as just reinforce, like the word to reinforce, to strengthen. And sometimes an e is inserted in there so it becomes reinforced f force. And I'd always sort of wondered why that was done. I think the official localization is that is with the e. And it occurred to me once, Nina said it as lean horse, that this is a skinnier version of the white base, aka the Trojan horse or the wooden horse. So I don't think it is reinforce the way it's always written in English. I think this is supposed to be the lean horse, just like a skinny little palfrey, just a skinny version of the white base.
And surfacing, rising to the surface because it's taking off from the water. And this becomes one of those localization questions that I'm very curious about, like who and at what point was it decided that this ship shouldn't be called the lean horse in English, it should be called something else because someone made that decision at some point, we may never know, but that felt like a very exciting lightbulb moment for both of us. The fact that they are piloting a ship that is built along the same lines as the old white base, which they even call attention to in the episode. Some of the Old League military engineers describe it as a spacecraft that helped forge an era and describe themselves as old relics who know old relics best. And this theme comes up again and again in this episode because it also gets mentioned when the shuttle out in space gets captured by this Bespa patrol. They take a look at the Gundam Moodoki, and they see that the League militaire, it's not just a matter of building on old designs, of iterating on things you know already work. It's also about trying to invoke the old history and the heroicism and the. I think the word they use is legend in Densetsu Gundam. Densetsu in the episode as part of their cause to align themselves with this particular kind of imagery and this particular sort of fable of righteous warfare.
Victory as a whole has been really invested in the Gundam mythology, the legacy of Gundam, both within the show and within the world. I noticed in this episode all of these federation forces soldiers, we finally meet some, like, formal federation forces officers. The uniforms they're wearing have not changed meaningfully since Shar's counterattack. And that's doubly interesting because between first Gundam and shars counterattack, the federation uniforms actually changed quite a lot. And in F 91, they're wearing different uniforms. In F 91, they have these, like, one piece jumpsuits that are the same color and have some of the same sort of embellishments as the old federation forces uniforms. But those jumpsuits have been abandoned or I guess, were never adopted by the local forces deployed on earth. And they're wearing, like, 60 year old uniforms, piloting 60 year old ships, flying 60 year old mobile suits. There's a lot of very old stuff here. And Zanskar, a conscious throwback in a lot of ways. You know, the maroonings, the use of.
The empire title, their emphasis on an aristocracy, a nobility.
And we've talked about Tomino's use of consciously archaic language a few times already. And this episode introduces another really interesting example of that archaic language. When the captain of the Bespa shuttle is doing this hostage exchange at the end and he's talking to Marbet and they have this little bit where he's like, you realize the consequences for your actions today will be very severe. And Marbet tells him that they're prepared to endure anything until the guillotine of Zanskar can be destroyed. A metaphor, of course, for the. The imperial power, the authority, and the tyranny of Zanskar, all of which is embodied in their use of the guillotine, then he says to her, oh, ideologues in every era have always said that kind of thing. The word he uses for ideologue is sugisha. Sugisha means an ideologue. It's a very decent, literal translation, but it's also an archaic term. And every dictionary entry that I consulted for this and the japanese Wikipedia entry and everything for Sugisha are very clear that it doesn't just mean like an ideologue in the abstract. It historically refers to left wing agitators who are anti colonial, anti imperial, and anti militarist before and during the second World War. It is a term for communists, socialists, and anarchists. So ideologue in English very neutral. The term in Japanese has some connotations, and I'm pretty sure those would have been evident to a contemporary audience.
That conversation between the BESP officer and Marbit felt like a bit of a throwback in one other way, which is that it begins more confrontationally. He mentions to her, I can't forgive your involving children, which feels awfully ironic from some people who just kidnapped a bunch of children to use them as hostages to force their parents compliance.
But yeah, I'll come back to that once you finish.
And Marbet's reply is something along the lines of like, it is regrettable, but under these circumstances, in these conditions, fighting for what we feel the need to fight in, this is what it's come to. And he acknowledges sort of understanding that position. And there's this moment between the two of them of like we're fighting on different sides, but we kind of understand each other, and neither of us really wants to be here doing this in a way that hearkens back to a lot of depictions of world War one, that there was this sense of everyone was doing their duty for their country, but there wasn't necessarily the same sense of ideological conflict between the sides, and so there was a certain amount of mutual respect for the enemy. This moment between the two of them made me think of that, where they're both kind of sighing over this regrettable state of affairs.
The conventional reading of Gundam is that war is bad and children should not be involved in it. And this is displayed by the way that children keep getting involved and their experiences are very horrible and scar them in really severe ways. Think about how messed up Amuro is when he appears in Zeta. Think about how Camille is at the end of the same series. But a conversation like this, I think, challenges that conventional interpretation, because what this scene is really about is skewering the hypocrisy of these adults, like this BesPA officer who has no problem, none at all, with involving children in the war, imperiling them, taking them hostage, using them as pawns, as leverage to get their parents to do what they want. Like, he is absolutely involving children in this struggle. What he objects to, apparently, is children having agency and power to be able to do something about the war that is affecting them so directly and threatening their lives and their livelihoods and everyone they care about.
I would argue that the core message of early gundam is not so much that children shouldn't be involved, but that there is no way to protect children from war. When war is happening, they cannot help but be involved. It touches everyone. The only way to protect children from war is to not have warm.
And you see something similar in the way Gundam treats neutrals. In the depiction of side six, for instance, in first Gundam, this idea that neutrality. I don't even know why I need to go to first Gundam, because we've got the PCST right here. That neutrality is at best a paper shield. At best, you are delaying the inevitable moment when you need to bow to one of the two sides. By refusing to take a side, you are simply accepting the domination of whichever side ends up winning. And really, when you remain neutral, you are throwing in with whichever side happens to be more powerful. And the idea that the children should be excluded from the war is basically to say that, oh, all children are.
Neutral, or almost to relegate them to be a resource. Not a resource in the way personnel are a resource, but in the way.
That iron is a resource.
Right? Because if you say it's all right to take a child hostage to force their parents compliance, you're still involving children, you're still using them to achieve an aim. It's just not something in which they have any active participation.
Again and again, Gundam has said war is inevitable. And by this, it means two different things. First, that there is something in our human nature that causes war to recur, that going out into space, changing the circumstances, does not get rid of that inherent warlike nature, that bellicosity. Until we can change what it is to be human, then war will continuously recur. But also, war is inevitable in that when war happens, no matter what you do, it will come for you. It will touch your life. It will define your existence. Katagina hates war and doesn't want to be involved and doesn't want to help the league militaire. And as a natural result of that, she has inevitably become a captive of vespa, of chronicle, and to some degree, a participant in the war. Through that, Shakti didn't want to get involved in the war. Shakti just wants to hide in Kasarelia, but that's not possible. And now she's stowing away aboard the lean horse and getting ready to go into space.
There's a line when they sneak aboard. I think it's when they first sneak aboard the mobile suit that's gonna be loaded onto the lean horse. When Susie says, sasuga, one that gets translated as the best sister, Shakti is the best sister. But it could also be interpreted as Suzy saying, this is so you. This is so Shakti. I can't believe we're doing this. This is so you. And what she means is how daring and brave it is. And in this episode in particular. But throughout the show, we have been witness to bravery and resourcefulness on the part of children. Think about how the whole group of them escape from that bespa shuttle and get their own shuttle away. Obviously, it's a show for kids, and so it makes sense to depict the kids as active participants, as capable. But this is another point that kind of pushes back against the idea of children as helpless in the world, as completely at the mercy and at the whims of world events and the adults around them.
Maybe this Bespa captain is just sore because he got beaten by the kids. Kids shouldn't be involved in war because they're too powerful. They're op. Nerf the children. Please.
Nerf the children has got to become a new slogan for this podcast.
Maybe when Suzy is like, oh, shakti, this is so you. What she means is bringing a younger child into danger. Cause Shakti is always carrying Karlman into dangerous situations.
But what's the alternative?
Tying Karlman to Flanders back and saying, go, boy, run. Get as far away as you can.
Flanders does do a very good job of taking care of Karlman. I love the. It's a background moment, and it's very brief, but Karlman is sitting on the bed, and Flanders is sort of, like, bouncing up and down and playing with Karlman while the ship is taking off. It's very sweet. Oh, before we move on, I paid very close attention on my second watch through to the moment when Shakti gets them into this quarters, into this, like, vip room or whatever, because the first time I watched, I was like, hang on a second. How does she know the code? However, on watching the animation, I'm pretty sure she just puts in 1234, and then it looks like she hits three again. But I think it's meant to be her hitting enter or. Okay.
Mmm.
And so I think she's just like, well, they probably didn't update the code. People often don't update the codes. 1234, and it worked.
Hmm. Counterpoint. Maybe Shaak Ti does actually realize what the code is because she's a new type and she's got that intimately understanding how machines work just by looking at them. Power that we saw Omaro have all the way back in first gundam, remember, Amuro could just look at a spaceship and determine the exact point where if you stuck a beam saber into it, it would cause the whole thing to explode. Shakti just has hacker vision.
I know there's been a moment or two that hint at some new type ability in Shakti, but she's also just so practical and sensible. I like my description better. However, speaking of new types, the kids who live on this highland solar battery with their parents, which we have no idea how many people live there. If it's like, is it like a town? Is it like living on Antarctica? We don't know, but they sort of discuss Oso a bit, and one of them wonders if he's a new type. And another rebuts this by saying, oh, he's just a normal Earth noid kid. So clearly there is a perception, at least among space noids, that Earth noids cannot be new types, that you have to be a space noid to be a new type. Again, events of this series pushing back against that idea that even as the show presents us with various sort of cultural and practical differences between space noids and Earth noids, which we'll come back to because they're a bunch of fun examples in this episode, on a human level, in terms of our brains, our emotions, we are the same. Still, it's not like we've become different species by spreading, spreading out into the galaxy.
Yeah, I mean, the notion that new types have to come from space is pretty frequently repeated within Gundam and within the Gundam fandom at large, but it's also directly contradicted by actual Gundam. Lala is like the, er, new type, and there are a couple of different versions of her backstory, but basically all of them have her growing up on Earth, developing her abilities initially on Earth. So it's clear that you don't actually need to be out in space.
It's also worth remembering that the idea that moving to space was going to lead to this sort of new human development and new abilities for humanity was propagated by a person whose current and future power was predicated on getting humanity out into space and then saying that space humans were better than Earth humans. So, you know, vested interests totally at play.
And, like, at various times during the course of the series, various people have said, hey, nobody really knows what a new type is. And there have been so many different competing definitions of them. The only objectively correct one was birgit Pirro in f 91 saying that new types were all miserable individuals.
Truth. Has a new type ever gotten a happy ending?
Well, Camille and Fa have that running on the beach together thing at the end of double Zeta.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah. Well, and Purutu, who just kind of got tired and went to sleep and then was never seen again at the end of double Zeta. I mean, I'm sure she's doing fine.
Suppose that depends on your definition of fine.
And this is art reflecting reality. The idea of new types was sort of generated at the last minute. Like, I think as they were making first gundam, nobody, not even Tomino, like, really fully understood it. They were just kind of making it up as they went along. And it's been the same way ever since. We know from watching the shows that there are space psychics and there is this concept of newtypism and that the two have been entangled but are not necessarily actually the same thing. Some people are just espers, okay?
But it's also always been kind of a. An amplified, magic ified version of things that we're already vaguely aware of in life. It can seem uncanny to adults the way children just instinctively understand new technology. It does feel almost creepy, like, that they can just pick up something new and figure it out really quickly. That can seem magical. The way certain people pick up on others emotions can seem otherworldly. The way one very charismatic person can influence others can seem creepy and magical. And so much of new typism feels like it's just sort of taking those observable phenomenon that already feel a little creepy and weird and otherworldly and making them bigger, making them more.
I mean, I think that's a big part of why it meshes so well with the mecha genre, because what is mecha like? What is a mobile suit except a body made bigger, made stronger, made real, all of its differentiating characteristics amplified to the point of not quite parody, but to give them a larger than life presentation, give them larger than life presence, to take a pilot's personality traits and make them real, make them tangible.
We haven't yet in this season really delved into some of the real conflicts that we think inspired the war and victory Gundam. However, there are a few different points I feel like are maybe related to that. The federation letting soldiers take paid leave, not even just a leave of absence, but paid leave to go serve with the league militaire, for one, but also the kind of back and forth technological development and depth of supply on each side. Early on, the league militaire is totally outgunned. Later on, we discover their new mobile suit totally kicks butt and is in fact, the best mobile suit on the field right now. Bespa is stunned that the league military managed to do this, and even their.
Secondary line mobile suit, even the gun easy, is still substantially better than anything the federation is deploying.
However, at the same time, Bespa seemed to have plenty of mobile suits, plenty of pilots, and yet, in the amphibious attack in this episode, we find out that the Galguyu was only just finished the night before and emphasized by the fact that one of them springs a leak almost as soon as they begin the attack.
Yeah, they're not great mobile suits, but.
They look so cool.
They do. Why do the aquatic ones always look so cool?
I love the sort of pointy, beaky back piece it has. I love when they can shoot claws at people.
They're very cool looking. I like the cockpits, all the, like, discreet monitors and things coming off of weird long arms and surrounding the pilot.
I also feel like orange mobile suits are very cool. I don't know why so many orange mobile suits are really cool, but they are. It's true.
I don't know why, but the trope of spaceships also being capable of ocean traffic, like, also being ocean going ships, is really cool. I love it. Love this underwater attack.
The biker guy also mentions that he would.
The biker guy. The biker guy?
Yeah.
That man is Duker. Eek. Put some respect on his name.
I couldn't remember his name.
He is the man who revived the tradition of biking from the middle ages.
Right, so the biker guy.
But anyway, he would probably feel honored to be called the biker guy.
He even mentions that there was some other mobile suit he would have preferred to bring for this mission that wasn't ready.
Well, no, he means the bike. He wanted to be in the bike mobile armor.
Did we know that they are called gaelic songs?
I knew that, and I think I said it on the podcast, but it was never said in the show, so there's no reason you would know it.
Okay, that's confusing.
You should have been reading the contemporary anime magazines as they were coming out, like any good Gundam fan.
How dare you.
Do you not have a direct neural link to the wiki?
You'd think they'd have made one of these bike mobile suits that was amphibious. I just. For him.
Yes, they should have. I have seen bikes that can ride on the water. They're not good, but they exist. I cannot believe that he would compromise his values and pilot something without any wheels at all just because he was going on an amphibious mission.
I was very moved by his apparent care for his second. The minute she gets into trouble, one of her mobile suits arms has been cut off, and now she's facing down two gun easy rather than one. He provides some covering fire to make them back off. He tackles her into the water to get them away from the enemy in general. Just demonstrates a lot of care for her. Once they're in there, he checks in like, are you injured? He's not even worried about his own mobile suit leaking. She's the one who notices.
Hey, so that's Renda. Renda de Paloma.
Renda who I noticed very early on as extremely cool.
Right? Glad she made it through this.
Her and Yuka. Yuka being one of the few surviving members of the Bagley team to have made it back to them. But also a tall lady with short hair that is brightly colored.
Yeah, there's a lot of those in this show for some reason.
Did you notice the guys who are with her hold an umbrella over her, but not themselves?
That's good characterization. Good umbrella characterization in general. In this episode, there's that brief bit in one of my favorite shots where there's like, they're doing the sort of three layers of composition. In the middle ground, there's a couple of big shipping crates. In the background, we see the old man polycule walking along. The leader of them is still holding a gun on a guy who, based on his hair color and suit, must be Mandela soon. But then in the back, the other two members of the old man polycule are walking along like one of them is carrying an umbrella covering two of them. It's very cute. And then in the foreground, Shakti and Susie do their little, like, sneaky ninja metal gear. Solid.
Running the rain adds such great atmosphere to that scene. It's really lovely texture.
And that level of depth feels very much like a classic Tomino shot. I do want to note Dukkr's concern for Renda is rather in contrast to his callous disregard for the number of deaths his squad suffered in prior battles. Like, his biker team were just getting mowed down the previous times that they fought. And his reaction in those times was always like, yeah, battle. I love fighting. It's so exciting. But he either really cares about Renda specifically in a way that he did not care about anybody else, or he doesn't want her to die unless she's in a motorcycle. Because if you die when you're biking, you can go to biker Valhalla. But if you die in a regular mobile suit, the unlimited shame of it all will weigh your soul down.
Truly terrible, they mention. And part of this is because of the amphibious attack, but that they don't have the full complement of mobile suits they wanted. They don't have as many ships as they wanted, and they just have to make do whether it seems possible or not, this is what they have to work with.
The difficulty of space noids developing and building mobile suits for Earth combat has been like a low key kind of background thread in a bunch of gundams so far. And the idea that the space noids are particularly unsuited to developing aquatic mobile suits has come up in, like, some side materials. I think all the Xeon submarines were originally federation designs that the Xeons stole when they took over the California base.
That feels odd to me, though, because you'd think if you're making mobile suits to operate in space, you're used to using them in this no gravity environment, and they have to be airtight. We even do astronaut training in big, deep pools. Like, a lot of their training involves them moving around in their equipment in, like, a deep pool of water, because the experience of moving through water can be closer to the experience of moving around in space than many other environments we can replicate on Earth.
But you have to deal with different pressure differentials.
That's true.
Hydrodynamics, I think it's just that out in the colonies, there really aren't significant bodies of water. There's this great bit in Futurama that I think about very often where their ship, I think, crash lands into the ocean or something and is sinking. And someone's like, how many atmospheres of pressure can the ship withstand? And the professor is like, well, it's a spaceship, so less than one.
And perhaps that lack of knowledge, lack of expertise is also revealed when they think that having taken out one or two tugboats is enough to prevent the lean horse from taking off. But then we find out, actually, that they only need one working tugboat. The fact that they need any tugboats at all is mystifying to me, but okay. The tugboats feel like a huge throwback. The various people seeing them off from the dock and waving them goodbye as they leave feels like a huge throwback.
I said the old man polycule had three members, but it feels like they might be inaugurating Gomez onto the team, like he seems to be joining the club. They have some nice scenes together.
There is something very funny about seeing the bridge of the lean horse, and it's all these really old men, old.
Relics to command an old relic.
And then there is the very ominous, you know, as they are leaving Earth's atmosphere, they cross paths with a ship burning up, a ship that has been defeated in the recent fights in Earth orbit that they hope there's nobody left alive on. Things feel fairly precarious for both sides. It doesn't feel as though either side is clearly winning at this point.
Mm hmm. The war is so much larger than what we can actually see in any given moment in any given theater. Maybe one side or the other has the advantage, but we're too small. Our characters are too small to see the big picture. Maybe Tasilo Wago has an idea for how it's all playing out. Maybe Queen Maria knows how it's going. Maybe Jin Jahannam, but not these guys. All they know is what's directly in front of them.
I'm glad you brought that up, because there was a moment when marbet sort of voices a question aloud that I thought was a pretty foolish question. It's when they found out that Bespa has captured the Highland solar battery. Now, I would assume solar battery means either solar battery like solar batteries for storing electricity, for storing energy, or battery like battery of guns. And either way, it makes sense why an army would want that. I don't understand why she thinks that's confusing.
Maybe she thought this particular one was far away from the front lines. Maybe she thought it was too small to be of significance. I don't know. I assumed it was like a solar power battery. I assume it's not like a military installation.
I assume that also. But it could be either. But even if it's a power station of some kind, controlling resources and in particular, controlling energy, which on Earth meant oil, but in space would mean solar, or mostly solar, although also helium. Right? Or hydrogen, what is it that they mine out in Jupiter?
Helium. Helium three.
So controlling access to these things would be hugely important both to supply your own army and to deprive the enemy. That line might be there more to make the audience wonder than to actually tell us anything about Marbet. But Marbet, for all that she's very skilled in combat, may not have a great grasp of the larger picture.
Sure. Did it seem to you like there was any narrative connection between the two halves of this episode? Cause I was trying to work this out. Both individual stories, the earth story and the space story, are like good stories with good character moments. They have exciting bits. They're told well, but because they don't connect to each other, the episode as a whole ends up feeling quite disjointed.
I can manufacture some connections, but, no, my impression watching it was that these are totally separate storylines. Perhaps less jarring to me because of a lot of shows that I've watched more recently. I feel like, have a tendency to do this when characters are in different places. You spend part of the episode with one and part of the episode with another, and there's not necessarily a clear connection. You're just trying to keep up with everybody at the same time. From a practical production standpoint, they may have felt that neither of these story beats warranted a full episode or could necessarily fill a full episode, but they were both story beats they wanted to hit. In terms of manufacturing connections. They're both escapes.
In a way, they almost feel at odds with each other, because the earth one shows the league militaire's growing strength. It's growing military power on the battlefield. Like they beat Duker ick purely out of their own strength. No need for help from Uso, no gundams involved. It's just a battle between professional soldiers and the stronger side wins. Dukkur drives that home at the end, he says, it seems like they're just getting stronger and we are getting weaker. Then on the other side, in space world, it's all about the small and the weak using clever tactics and deceit to overcome with asymmetric warfare the stronger adult armed enemies. And that's a more satisfying story. It's almost always more satisfying to see the weaker person overcome the stronger one through clever tactics. That's why in Princess Bride, Wesley doesn't win at the end with his superior swordsmanship. He wins through courage and deceit.
But what the two stories do manage is to maintain that sense of balance that I mentioned earlier, that neither side is really dominant right now, and perhaps to begin to set up a storyline in which it was a mistake for Bespa to invade Earth, that if they had stayed in space and confined themselves to space for the time being, the federation might have waited longer to get involved. The league militaire might not have gotten involved at all. And space is where their expertise is. Perhaps by coming onto Earth, they overstretched themselves and got themselves in deeper than they should have done. And by the similar token, is the league militaire getting in over their heads, going out into space. They're passing one of their own ships that's been completely destroyed. There were not a ton of survivors from the Bagley team who managed to escape. I imagine some of them are prisoners of war. We did see quite a few mobile suit pilots surrender.
This feels reminiscent of Napoleons career and the ever haunting historical questions of what would have happened if he had not.
Invaded Russia, if he had just stopped. But the thing is, it was Napoleon, and he couldnt, right? He was incapable of doing so.
The characteristics that allowed him to get to the point where he could have won if he had simply stopped, made it impossible for him to stop to close. On a lighter note, do you think Warren has a crush on Martina?
I did not have any indication of that in this episode.
Okay, so there's two things that made me think this right. The first one is when the kids are like introducing themselves to each other. It really seemed to me like Warren was specifically asking Martina for her name. Like not really caring about everybody else. Just like, hey, I'm Warren. Who are you? What's your name? But then the real kicker, because I only noticed that on the second watch through after having seen this other bit later on and noticed it and been like, hmm, curious. It's when they're flying from the Bespa ship over to their shuttle and Warren hits his air gun too hard and goes flying off. And Martina is like, hey, use your air gun less. And he specifically says, martina, wait for me. Like ah, matina san mate. And the way the voice actor plays it and the emphasis on her name. I don't know. I got crush vibes.
I just got scared. Earth noid Kid is afraid he will be left to drift in space forever and has glommed on to the nearest competent spacenoid kid for help vibes.
I guess I just believe in romance. And you don't.
If either one of us were going to remember what it was like to be a 14 year old boy with a crush, it would be you.
So can an earth noid boy and a space noid girl find love?
Gundam says yes, as long as it's tragic.
And now ninas research on the name of this kind of bespa patrol Sinope.
The initial plan for research this week was to identify and discuss the history of the song one of the crew is singing aboard the lean horse. We hear him as hes cleaning a hallway while Shakti and Suzy sneak by. According to the japanese closed captioning, he sings yokame no nichio biwa hangen joriku. If its a real song it would be a navy one. Hangen joriku is a naval term meaning shore leave for half of the ships crew. But I searched and searched and could not find a song. I watched YouTube videos and listened to recordings, searched Wikipedia in English and Japanese, skimmed academic papers on japanese military songs, tried japanese language Gundam fan blogs and tried plugging the whole line and parts of it into japanese song lyric websites to no avail. It's possible that it's not a real song, that this is just a scene of a crew member looking forward to their upcoming shore leave and singing a little made up ditty to themselves. But if you happen to have any resources or insight on this one, please let us know. I am stumped and I hate to be stumped. So having come up empty and lost a day, I needed another, preferably easy research topic. Enter Bespa patrol ship Sinope 321 Sinope, or Sinope, is a city in what is now Turkey. Built as a walled town with a vast citadel and a strong wall defending its seaside. In antiquity, it was the foremost port on the southern shore of the Black Sea. Strategically located on the coastal trade routes, and from the 6th to the fourth century bc, it was one end of the caravan route between the Euphrates and the Black Sea. Its lack of easy access inland and competition from other nearby port cities eventually decreased its influence and strategic importance. But it has been the site of several historically significant events. There are numerous legends about the citys founding. According to one, it was founded by the Amazons and named for Cinnova, their queen. In greek mythology, there are several different origins given for Cinnova Sinope, of which queen of the Amazons is just one. The greek historian and philosopher Strabo credits mythological figure Autolycus as Sinopes founder. Based on the archaeological record, the area was first settled by the Colchians approximately 2500 years ago, then by iranic peoples and then colonized by the Greeks sometime in the 7th or 8th century BC. Sinope eventually became the capital of the hellenistic kingdom of Pontus, though it has through its history, changed hands with some frequency to the Persians, to independence, back to the Greeks, then to the Romans, then to the Byzantines, then to the Turks. You get the idea.
I have a weird personal affection for the kingdom of Pontus because I used to play a lot of Rome total war and had a really good run as the kingdom of Pontus in terms.
Of significant people and events in the citys history, Sinope is famously the birthplace of the philosopher Diogenes, though I doubt Zanskar is trying to invoke his legacy. While under ottoman control in 1614, the city was looted and burned by cossack raiders. In the modern era, circa 1920, Sinope was considered the safest port between Bosphorus and Batum. The city would later host a us military base, its radar surveillance an important piece of the us intelligence apparatus during the Cold War, though this base was closed in 1992. The outermost satellite of Jupiter is named for centipe, as is a crater on Mars. In the case of the satellite, although it was discovered in 1914 it was not named Sinope until 1975. Its certainly possible that the Bespa ship is named in honor of Sinope the mythological Amazon or perhaps even more likely the jovian moon but there is a more complex and significantly more interesting possibility that its name is inspired by the Battle of Sinop. During the crimean war attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflicts between the russian and ottoman empires had failed and in November of 1853 the ottoman government ordered the squadron of Vice Admiral Osman Pasha to go support their ground forces on the Caucasus coast but they were forced to shelter at Sinipe due to bad weather and while they were anchored there the russian navy attacked. On paper the Ottomans should have had an advantage seven frigates, three corvettes, two steamers, two brigs and two transports plus friendly coastal batteries which is to say the defensive artillery mounted in the city itself versus six ships of the line and two frigates. Yet as one source put it the ottoman ships lacked of everything including trained gunmen and crewmen and had fewer guns mounted on their ships than the Russians did. 510 guns under shore defenses with 38 pieces of artillery versus 720 guns. But the most decisive factor was technology. The Battle of Sinop is considered the first use of explosive shells in a naval engagement. Up until then many experts disparaged the new weapons and the larger ships required to carry them as too heavy for naval warfare. But success speaks for itself. Only one ottoman ship escaped three to 4000 men were killed, some 200 taken prisoner, the vice admiral captured and much of the city itself destroyed. Russian losses were fewer than 100 killed and about two to 300 wounded. It was a pivotal moment in the history of naval the last major naval action between sailing fleets the first broad use of shell guns marking the end of the use of the smooth bore cannon and the first use of explosive shells in a naval engagement hastening the introduction of ironclad men of war to replace the vulnerable wooden warships as well as setting the stage for not just iron sheathing but for all metal ships hulls. Let us not forget the geopolitics. Russia could not imagine that christian nations like France and Great Britain would ever side with the Ottomans yet in the contemporary western european media the Battle of Sinope was presented as less of a battle than an ambush, even a massacre and the french and british governments were ultimately less concerned with religious affiliation than with maintaining the balance of power in Europe and putting an end to russian expansionism. Shortly after the Battle of Sinope France and Britain joined the war on the side of the Ottomans. In a previous research piece Tom drew a potential connection between Zanskar and the Ottoman Empire, though if the Ottomans are the Zanskar parallel, I can't see them naming a warship for the site of a horrible defeat. And in this battle, the Russians feel like a clearer analogue, winning a resounding victory, but having seemingly misjudged how other powers would react to their actions, the jovian moon and the Amazon queen remain the likeliest inspiration, but how could I miss a chance to talk about naval combat technology?
Maybe the secret is that the Zanskar empire is every empire.
Next time on episode 10.17 royal audience we research and discuss episode 17 of Victory Gundam and yep, that's me alright. I bet you're wondering how I got here. State of the art infographic technology susurrations, the Ministry of Truth reviving the PowerPoint presentations of the Middle Ages mommy tyrant girlfriend the mobile suits of victory Gundam for dummies. You lie.
Eek.
The greater space noid co prosperity sphere, which Tom said I need to tell all of you is a line I came up with entirely on my own and listeners, weve got ourselves a recap episode. Please listen to it.
Mobile suit Breakdown is written, recorded and produced by us, Tom and Nina in scenic New York City within the ancestral and unceded land of the lenape people and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Mischa Dioxin. The closing music is long way home by spinning ratio. The recap music is slow by Lloyd Rogers. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the lenape people, and more in the show notes on our website, gundampodcast.com. if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can email hostessundompodcast.com or look for links to our social media accounts on our website. And if would like to support the show, please share us with your friends. Leave a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts or support us financially@gundampodcast.com. patreon. You can find links and more ways to help out@gundampodcast.com. support thank you for listening. I don't even have a joke. Wrong Gundam Opinion this week the wrong Gundam Opinion is that people have been writing and saying the name of the horse wrong for 30 years and it is time that we did something about it.
Well, I'm deeply committed to calling it the lean horse forever, so I'm with you Tom. I'm trying to think of a funny way to like mention doom doom pet but not doom pet cause that's like too online.
Tragedy yay, tragedy. There's tragedy here.
That one might have to go in the outtakes.
It'll go in the outtakes. No one's gonna get that.
Some people might get that.
The fact that you and I are obsessed with that one line from our own high school host, I don't think that line ever, like, caught on. I don't think that was ever a meme.
It's so good, right?
Do you feel like we need to do any more warming up or are you ready to jump into it?
I think I'm ready to jump into it. I also thought it could be fun to just open with talking about the title.
Sure.
Unless you have another opening that you'd really like to do.
Not really. I was gonna ask if you thought it might be a short episode this week.
I mean, I do, but we'll see once we get talking. Right. The infographics.