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 10.21, a warm light in a cold place, and we are your hosts. I'm Tom, a gentle word and a rough time.
And I'm Nina, new to Victory Gundam.
And I will feel compelled to change the subject if you start telling me what a talented genius Tom is. Mobile Suit Breakdown is made possible by.
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This week on MSB Victory episode 21 Senraku Eseo Tatake or strike the strategic satellite.
I do love that alliteration.
The episode was written by Tomita Tsukihiro, storyboarded and directed by Nishimori Akira with Shinbo Takuro as animation director. The battle around the Kailas Gili satellite and its big cannon rages on the fishbone, with Odello, Warren and most of the highland kids aboard and carrying backup weapons. For UsO's victory Gundam skirts the edge of the battle. The lean horse remains safely shielded behind the Gowan land and the defensive perimeter formed by the shrikes and Gundam team. Uso struggles. He narrowly avoids a salvo of nuclear missiles, but is caught off guard by a passing zoload and loses his rifle in the scuffle. Oliver sends Junko to pull the lad out of the fire with the enemy soldier. Dealt with, the two pilots take a breather in the cleft of a passing asteroid Junko chides Uso for getting distracted in the middle of the battle. His usual fighting spirit is nowhere to be found. How about you quit fighting like you want to die. He fires back. Despite their sniping, Junko seems to understand whats really bothering him. Dont give up now. Its possible that Shakti is still alive. She might even have been rescued by one of the enemy ships. If we can capture that ship, well be able to find out. Their heart to heart is interrupted by a passing enemy and its back to business for both. Marbet, too is not her usual self. Frustrated to find herself assigned to the rearguard again. Distracted by self pity, she fails to notice an enemy suit until its right on top of her. It dives for her with saber ignited. But a shot from Olivers victory vaporizes the saber and the metal hand that held it. Uso may not be in top form, and he may have lost his main weapon, but he is still a force to be reckoned with on the field. After dispatching one enemy suit, he feels, hears, sees something wash over him. It is the last scream of the life he just ended. It rattles him badly, but in the distance he notices a flare from the fishbone. The signal radiates more than just light. It carries the warmth of friendship too. He goes to rendezvous with his pit crew. He needs their companionship as badly as he needs the auxiliary weapons theyre carrying. On the Bespa side, Tassilo has ordered one of his battleships, the squid two, to return to the homeland. With Princess Shakti aboard, Chronicle is there too, under orders to escort his niece. Instead, he chooses to join the battle aboard the new kontio mobile suit. The Gaonland decoy ship has closed with the Zanskar fleet as enemy ships and mobile suits move in for the kill on the old battleship Otis and Romero prepare to trigger its self destruct. Chronicle narrowly avoids the first blast, but many of his compatriots are not so fortunate. Bespa ships and mobile suits that got too close are caught in the fireball. Before the intense light has even faded, the lean horse charges through the opening in the Bespa line on a collision course for Tussie Low's flagship, squid one. The two battleships slam together, and the league crew, armed with machine guns and bazookas, flood onto the squid. The fighting is ferocious, but surprise works to their advantage. Tasilo gives the order to evacuate to the other ships in the fleet and to fall back. The captain himself escapes, thanks to chronicle, who thrusts the contios hand through the hull. Of the squid and plucks Tasilo out of danger. Junko tries to pursue them, but chronicles return fire, very nearly destroys her gun. Easy. And Marbet, of all people, stays her hand. The battle has proved to be a great victory for the league militaire, greater perhaps, than any of them expected. And there are personal victories, too. The rivalry between Marbet and Junko seems to have mellowed. Warren gets a spontaneous celebratory hug from Martina. And best of all, Connie relates a strange incident to Uso during battle. A girls voice contacted her over the radio and asked her to tell him that Shakti is still alive and safe aboard the Zanskar ship. Alright, it's time for the big battle. And listeners, I think this one might just decide something. We might have finally arrived at the decisive battle. I mostly have a lot of sort of small notes about various different things, a scattershot approach. But Nina, you said that a lot of what you want to talk about connects back to the single through line, the main central trunk of Uso.
Not even just of Uso in this case. The real core of this episode feels as though it is motivation what motivates people to fight, because this comes up again and again with respect to a whole bunch of different characters and how it affects their behavior and how it's perceived by others and the importance for each and every one of us going about our lives of how others perceive our motivations because it affects our relationships with them, it affects how they treat us.
Before we dive into that, I was reading an interview with one of the head writers, Okea Akira, who wrote quite a few episodes of this show. I think probably he was the most prolific of all the writers. And when he was talking about the writing in the show, he said in an interview that it was around episode 20 when he and the other writers started to feel like they had their feet under them and they could start doing more interesting and more exciting things with the script and putting more of themselves into it. They were able to loosen up a little bit. This is episode 21, so from here on out, the writers are starting to feel a little looser and more creative and more free. Although to contrast this, Tomino has said that he felt like in the first, you know, 20 episodes of the show, roughly, he let the writers get away with too much. He didn't have enough of a control over the script, and that that resulted in a lot of superfluous storylines, things sort of ballooning and bloating, and that he needed to come in and bring things back under control. And sort of create a tighter focus on the story that he wants to tell. So those are two competing visions of how the writing for the first half is gone and how the writing for what remains to be seen is going to go.
I love that, because neither approach to telling a story is wrong per se. They can both be great, but it would make for such a difficult production environment, such a difficult sort of workplace, and attempt to manage relationships with people in the workplace. To have both of those competing types of story being told by the same team of people, one a more narratively tight, directly causal one event causes another event causes another event kind of story, versus something that feels a bit more naturalistic, has more events that don't directly seem to affect things or to cause what happens next. But that's life, right? Things happen and they're not always clearly connected to each other or relevant.
And in a long enough series, it makes sense to have different phases. You know, naturally a story is going to tighten up as it gets closer to its conclusion, as different plot lines are woven together into one single, really dramatic central thread. We'll see how well it works here. Well, see whether this feels like a hard swerve into an entirely different kind of story, or if it continues to feel like the same show, but with a greater focus. I wouldn't have said that. I thought the first part was out of control and excessively sprawling, though it did feel at times like they were just sort of doing the same storyline over and over again. Or subtle variations on a theme, especially during the part where they're just sort of driving around in the camionous. In any event, this episode is pretty tightly focused on this battle. It is just one big fight. And because it is the second half of last weeks, it is really about resolving the tensions that were introduced in that prior episode. Uso's struggles with team combat in space, Junko Jenkos death wish, the rivalry between her and Marbet, the status of Shakti and company, Jinjahanam's general aura of uselessness, enthusiastic uselessness, let's call it.
I guess we'll have to come back to talking about motivation, because your mention of Jahanam reminds me this episode sets up a fairly direct compare and contrast between Jin Jahanam and Tasi Luago in a way that seems meant to illustrate just how complex people are and how difficult it can be to make judgments about others. Because as much as we've seen wago do horrible things in a very cold hearted manner, and as much as he is a cog in the Zanskar imperial machine of conquest. He also is presented as a much better commander than Jahanam throughout this entire episode at every turn. And I say that the comparison and contrasting is direct because frequently they're scenes about each other. We get a scene of Jahanam followed directly by a scene of Wago, or vice versa.
There is also that line about ship to ship combat, like a battle between the two ships. It is part of one of these dueling scenes, and it is, you know, Wago and Jahannam, as captains, are represented by their ships. It is a conflict between the two of them. Wago also gets a rare moment of interiority. It's one of the very rare times that we see somebody who is not the main character or the main rival having a moment where we get to hear what he's thinking. And you said we would need to come back to motivation, but I think we can talk about these guys motivations. Wago criticizes himself for being too eager, too aggressive in his campaign to conquer the earth, presumably for the sake of his own power, prestige, rank, legend, achievements.
And a certain amount of overconfidence, perhaps that having achieved so much with relative ease, he thought this would be easy.
Also contrast Jin Jahanam achieving a lot with relative ease. Very confident in himself all of a sudden. There's that bit where he's like he's framed head on by the camera. It's just like his face filling the whole screen. There's no shadows. He's staring directly into your eyes and just, like, laughing. And it's so uncanny.
Well, it's when their attack is going particularly well, however, and this has come up with him before, he does not feel or seem aware of how many lives are being lost, and that reacting this way, even to enemy death in combat, is kind of gross.
Yeah.
And their own people are also still being wounded, still being killed, still at risk, even though their plan has been successful. I do have a note in here that it is perhaps Jahanam's aptitude for taking credit that has gotten him this far, because anytime things are going well, his attitude is my plan, my orders. I am in charge here. My plan is going perfectly.
Uh huh.
But he's also more emotionally volatile. The slightest thing going wrong makes him panic, makes him angry, makes him yell at people. The slightest thing going well makes him laugh, makes him giddy, makes him overconfident. Wago maintains more or less the same level of seriousness throughout the fight. He does make that transition from I'm not preparing to lose when he says he won't put on the normal suit. And then the next, when we see him and he's wearing the normal suit.
That'S the second time they've done that, by the way. There was a bit with Gomez where he was like, I'm not gonna put on a normal suit until things are really dire. It's bad for morale. Very next scene, he is wearing the normal suit.
In this fight, the entire league military force are all wearing their normal suits from the beginning, perhaps because they know they are overmatched. It's going to be a very difficult fight. They're going in at a disadvantageous. But the main point here of vis a vis wago, I think, is that he doesn't panic if he's going to make the decision to put on the normal suit. He wants it to be in this calm, measured, non reactive kind of way. He's calm about the realization that, oh.
We need to prepare to be boarded.
Everybody take up small arms. Here's our plan. We're going to evacuate the Kailas. Gili.
He's somewhat slow to pick up on what's going on, but he is a bit ahead of everybody else on the bridge.
Once he realizes that the lead ship was a dummy, as he puts it, once he realizes that the lead ship was really just a feint, I think it comes to him fairly quickly. Jin Jahanam, on the other hand, was.
Not even privy to the entire plan.
Because he is surprised when they self destruct the gaonland.
He's also surprised when they hand him that handgun to, I think, everyone's glee on the bridge to see his discomfort in that moment.
Oh, they did that on purpose.
Absolutely. But also for a boarding action. Presumably everybody else on the ship knew in advance what they were going to do. They had the guns ready. They were ready to move. The captain is the only person who didn't know.
And his first question is, oh, in mobile suits, right, we're going to go fight in mobile suits. Has he ever been in a mobile suit?
No.
He is very blase about risk to other people and panics the moment he is at any risk himself.
I love that they just completely ignore him on the bridge. Like the old man. Polycule is not taking his orders. He would have been exactly as useful if they had mounted him on the bow of the ship as a literal figurehead. He could wave his arms and legs and be like, my plan is working.
They are clearly annoyed by his wrongheaded attempts to exert control on what's happening and enjoy the opportunity to put him in his place. Although he seems to have the kind of personality that is entirely impervious to that kind of action, he will forget about it the moment it's over. He will probably talk about how bravely he boarded the enemy ship as part of the boarding action.
I'm just saying, if you're running an illegal operation, like, if you are a rebel organization, having a guy who is not actually particularly important to your organization, who is willing to be out in front going, it was all me. It was my plan. I did all the illegal things, might actually be really useful.
The one name that everybody knows.
And let us compare him to the way they talk about USo. Uso the brilliant pilot. USo the genius soldier. Uso who inspired Gomez to stick around. I don't think that's entirely true, but it's at least partly true. USO is also a kind of mascot for them.
Did you notice how after hearing multiple people comment on USo's genius, Jahanam had to change the subject immediately? He was, like, so uncomfortable hearing them praise someone else.
I hate whenever people are talking about someone who isn't me.
That was the point at which he tried to order the remote charge even though the time wasn't right, and he really ought to leave that up to the person. Yeah. Man doesn't understand how delegating works.
At least not well.
Talking about Tassilo and his motivations also makes me want to talk about Chronicle.
Ooh, really quick.
One thing that doesn't come into play in the contrast between the two of them, but for all that, I'm very confident Wago wants and still intends to use Shakti for his own political aims. I think he also legitimately believes she is the current heir of Queen Maria Harmonia. She is the only known heir, and as such, is of incredible importance to the continuation of the Zanskar project. Yeah, he legitimately wants to make sure she gets away from this battle safely for the future of the empire.
And people sometimes when discussing this episode in this battle, ask, why did Tasilo order the retreat when he did? Even with the loss of their main battleship, the squid one, they still have an overwhelming superiority in numbers and firepower. Probably still in mobile suits. Despite the losses. I think it's possible that he considers getting Shakti away safely to be more important than holding this position.
I did wonder why they decided to evacuate the Kylas Gillye since. Yes, it's clear there's not a whole lot mobile suits can do once you have humans in ships fighting each other. With guns. But my understanding was that they had significant superiority in numbers, even on the human level, not just on the ship or mobile suit level. And so I wouldn't have thought that it would make sense to evac at that point.
Well, but remember, the lean horse is carrying two ships worth of crew because they've got all the soldiers from the Guan land as well.
And the decoy, Gaonlan, takes out two of the Kailaskili fleet ships. Like, two whole ships full of people gone.
And in a boarding action, surprise matters.
Plus all the mobile suit losses. The impression of the battle overall is certainly that it's gone even better than the league military thought it would and considerably worse than Wago and the Kailaskili fleet might have expected, particularly when he mentions, like, why aren't our mobile suits able to hold them off? Like, why aren't our mobile suits able to hold a defensive line to keep this ship back? So he clearly thought they had the numbers to be able to do that. And the fact that it's not working is bad.
Well, and the ship. I think he's sent Shakti off on the squid two.
Yes.
So the squids are the biggest battleships they have also.
I'm glad that they're actually called that, since I'm pretty sure I called it a squiggly wiggly ship.
And presumably he hasn't just sent the squid, he's sent some, like, escort cruisers with it. So probably he sent off a significant portion of his fleet with Shakti. So the imbalance in firepower is not nearly what it would have been.
Yeah, I thought it was so clever when Gomez initially orders the Gaonland's guns to back off, because he's basically laying a trap. If the anti mobile suit and anti ship guns on the Gaunland fire less often, the mobile suits on other ships will try to move in, which means they'll take out more ships in mobile suits when they hit the self destruct. Jahanam, not knowing about the self destruct and also just not having a head for this kind of thing is like, no, do it now.
More shooting.
I'm the one giving the orders here. But there have been a few different moments in chronicles dialogue where he says very ironic things. Extremely ironic.
Go on.
As he is getting into his new ms, the contio, he mentions that broken down ship has come to die.
That is little.
That's such a good line.
It goes so hard.
Right.
See, I don't think that's ironic. I think he has figured it out. He has intuited it. He's not on the level where he can be, like, giving orders about it. Like, this is a decoy. But I think he realizes that it's.
A suicide mission for the gauntlet.
Yeah.
I thought he was still in his cocky Zanskar. So great. Look at these broken down old ships they're sending against us. They're doomed.
No, for me, this is contributing to a view of chronicle as pretty discerning, but also, I think he has a lack of initiative. I think that's his big problem. He's too willing to go with the flow and do his duty and serve as a regular lieutenant despite, or perhaps because of the elevated social standing that gives him more power on the field.
I was gonna say lack of initiative is a pretty healthy and potentially life saving characteristic in the second in line to the throne, overly active, overly ambitious, overly take charge. Younger siblings often need to be dealt with.
Sure, sure. I'm just saying, like, imagine that scene at the end of the episode where chronicle rescues Tassilo from the stricken squid.
I love that scene so much. The way he does it is so cool.
It's very creative, right? Jabbing the hand through the skin of the ship. But why does he do it? Why does he go to such lengths and risk so much to rescue Tasilo in the middle of a losing battle when he could have just fled when.
His orders were to leave before the battle even started?
Yeah. And does he like Tasiloago? Does he respect him? Did he get over the whole executing Pharah Griffin thing?
I don't think he likes him. I do think he respects him. I think he has a lot of respect for Wago's skill as a commander and a fighter or a planner and organizer of battles. I also suspect that ultimately, chronicle is a soldier through and through in his adherence to what he owes to his commanding officers. I mean, the one thing that throws it off is that he was ordered to leave before the fight fight began, and he didn't see.
I don't think he's much of a soldier. I think he's a patriot. I think he's an imperial nationalist, and.
He thinks Wago is good for the empire. Yeah. Cause I think his distaste of Wago's decision to execute pharah was very obvious, but he still carried out the order.
Shar would never have rescued Tusilo in this situation. Shar would have opened up a circuit and taunted him and then flown away and left him to die.
Bashar would also have engineered this situation in the first place, he would have done everything he could to wind up directly in the command of the person who he wanted vengeance against, so that he could find his perfect opportunity for vengeance.
And in the lead up to the battle, he would have offered good advice, but said in a way that would guarantee it wouldn't be taken, so that afterwards he could be like, I'm not at fault. I offered him good advice. That's the thing. Like, Shar, real early on, showed all of us that he had some sort of agenda of his own that he was always working on in the background. And so you could never know whether his behavior was intentional, whether it was accidental, whether it was in service of his nominal mission for the Zeon, or if it was in service of his other secret mission. Unknown motivations. Chronicle doesnt give any indication of having that deeper layer.
I wonder if Chronicle didnt become a soldier in the hopes that it would keep him out of politics, not realizing that once you rise high enough in the army, its all political anyway.
Mm hmm.
Its all politics, kid.
Or maybe Chronicle does have some kind of secret agenda, and we just havent been privy to it yet. If so, I think thats probably bad plotting. It would have made the show more interesting if we had some sense that Chronicle had his own ambitions.
I dont necessarily have much to say about this, but with respect to chronicle, why bother coming up with a diegetic explanation for why he needs to wear the mask, the dusty, filthy earth air, and then just keep having him wear it even when he's not on earth anymore, and we're just never gonna talk about it again?
I feel like that explanation was probably forgotten as soon as it was said.
Just sort of feels like it would have been better not to bother with the explanation at all under the circumstances.
It can't be easy to breathe through that thing. Does it give him more confidence in battle or something?
Is he immunocompromised? Is it a special particulate filtering mask? Is it to keep all the earth germs away?
Is it because of all the Minovsky particles? Is it a special N 95 Minofsky particulate filtering mask?
What effect did do Minofsky particles have on humans?
Artificially induced new typism.
I'm picturing somebody standing in front of a Minovsky particle ray. Now give me powers.
I think that's how the Hulk happened. In the Gundam context, the Hulk is probably Yasuhiko getting really angry and throwing Tomino through a window.
What do you think is Katagina's motivation for risking her life going out in the middle of this battle to try to get a message to an enemy mobile suit that Shakti and company are still alive and are okay.
I think this is evidence that she is secretly in love with Uso and he should believe that and act on it. What could go wrong?
It's funny you draw the connection to USo because my read on that very last scene of the episode was that even though he's glad to hear that Katajina is alive, and it's a nice idea that she would think of him and want to help him in this way, that he's happy because he knows Shakti's not dead.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like, he almost immediately forgets about Katagina.
I thought that was actually really heartwarming, that Uso is really focused. What makes him happy is that Shakti is alive.
It is. It's just. Your joke just now made it sound like he was like, oh, well, that's cool. I guess that Shakti is alive, but Katagina helped me, which is the opposite of what happened.
But Katajina is thinking specifically about Uso. She's not just like, hey, tell somebody that Shakti is alive. She's like, hey, do you know that kid Uso?
I suspect that Katajina thinks, or rather hopes, that deep down Uso loves Shakti. And eventually he will realize that his obsession with Katagina is inappropriate. And he will realize that his feelings for Shakti have evolved out of childhood best friends and into something more. She wants them to be that to each other. And so that's part of why she's interfering, maybe. I do think it's kind and she does risk herself, like I said.
See, I think if Uso did move on, that would actually be kind of unsettling for Katajina. I don't think she would like it.
Hmm.
Cause there's a certain attitude where maybe you've never experienced this yourself, but there's a certain attitude where somebody likes you and you don't like them, but you do like that they like you.
Oh, certainly.
And you would like them to continue liking you. And when they stop, it's like, hey, hang on a second. You were obsessed with me.
But at the same time, throughout this whole series, as long as Uso and Katagina have been in scenes together and have been getting to know each other, what is her near constant litany? What about Shakti? What are you doing about Shakti? She is constantly reminding him about Shakti over and over and over again. When he shows up at the spaceport with tickets and is like, let's go to space together. She says. What about Shakti?
Well, sometimes people's interests are in conflict with each other.
Absolutely. I'm not saying she wouldn't feel a little bit of a letdown to not have an admirer anymore, even though it also clearly makes her kind of uncomfortable and is weird. I just also think she's kind of trying to push Uso and Shakti together.
She ships them.
She does.
Here's my question about this scene. Why did they do both the Katagina scene and the haro scene? Why two independent scenes of two different people, both finding out that Shakti is alive and well?
In a way, I think this comes back to the motivation question, because they want to show that even though Katagina has thrown in with Zanskar, she still cares about her old friends, cares about how they're doing, how they're feeling, wants to provide a kind of help to them, even if it's not particularly material to the war effort.
I think this is also the first time she has put herself in danger like this, when she's taken a really active role in what's going on.
There was that one time on the commune when she helped fire some of the guns. But, yeah, this is even more so than that. Also demonstrates that she's gotten pretty comfortable in space pretty quickly.
I like her cool little skiff.
Whereas the harrow finding Shakti scene does a couple of things. One again shows us Shakti being extremely resourceful, that it has occurred to her, I can use the lights in this room to try to. So's maybe someone will see it. Maybe it will catch someone's attention. We've got to try anything we can. Brilliant. Great idea, kid. And she still wants to get home. She still wants to get back to her friends. And Haro, now, having had these little jets installed and his little grappling hook wire, has so much more agency even than Haro had before to move through space. I did find myself worrying.
Does Haro keep track of how much.
Air he has left in his canisters and make sure he has enough to get back?
Imagine the capacities of a fully armed and weaponized Haro, or perhaps an army of weaponized Haros.
Did you notice that Haro makes shudder sounds when he takes pictures through the window of Shakti and the others?
Well, you know, they have that law in Japan.
Yes, I'm aware. Although I think that law post dates.
Haru was ahead of his time.
Yeah. Cause that law came out of. So what he's referring to is that phone cameras and probably digital cameras of all kinds in Japan have to make a shutter sound so that people can tell if you're taking pictures. So that it is easier to catch people who are trying to take upskirt and other inappropriate photographs in public places, like on the subway. Pretty sure that came out of digital cameras or phone cameras.
Yeah, I think so. Does Haro actually have a film camera built in there also?
We already know Haro's a spyenne. Haro taking video of junko. And she's like, Haro, what are you doing there?
Stop that, Nina. The term is voyeur.
I suppose my final word on Katagina.
Here would be that this returns to the idea of how our motivations are perceived by others. Because even though Uso can't confirm that it was Katagina who gave him this news, he can't imagine who else it would be. And her only possible motivation for sharing this would be because she knows it matters to him. One place in the episode where the perceptions and the reality come apart a little bit is, I think with Odello and Warren.
Odello once again talking about what it means to be a man. These teenage boys with no, like, adult male mentor figures or father figures are really struggling to work out what masculinity and manhood is going to mean to them. The show takes a dig at them, I think with Odello, like, very seriously telling Warren, being a man means getting the job done, even if it kills you. While they're doing this, Martina just, like, very casually flies out and does something exactly as dangerous as what they're doing. Being a woman apparently means doing all the same things. But.
But without talking about it so much, I think it's pretty fair to say that often what motivates young soldiers in this context, particularly men, though I don't think it has to be men. It depends on the sort of cultural context around the whole thing. But the idea of bravery, the idea of enacting bravery is hugely motivating to not just be brave, but to be seen to be brave.
And Odello is kind of struggling with this because Elisha is not here to see him be brave. And he has to come up with this internalized motivation to still do the stuff he's committed to doing, even though the girl he is trying to woo is not there to perceive it.
And it's very clear that Martina being here is motivating Warren to volunteer to do tasks and to be, you know, a bit more active, a bit more aggressive. However, then for the kids from the Highland to distill these two boys entire motivation to the crushes on these girls feels grossly unfair. They've been fighting with the league military longer than the Highland kids have, and for deeply personal reasons, which is to say, having seen the massacre of their hometown and having been made orphans.
But the Highlanders have known them for approximately, like, four days. And during that time, they have both been absolutely gaga for girls.
I don't know if it was done on purpose to sort of emphasize the age difference between Odello and Warren, or at least the. The developmental difference, because the difference in years is not very big, but the difference in the hormone gap, the hormones, the social role, the way they think of themselves, the way their lives function. Because Odello has been put in a difficult position that Warren hasn't.
Because Odello has a crush on a.
Girl who is not cut out for war. She doesn't want to fight. That is not the role she wants in what's happening. And that, by necessity, means that if he does want to fight, if he feels he's committed himself to the league militaire, they have to be apart. He doesn't seriously ask her to stay. He's kind of yelling it through a window. And I believe the implication is that she can't hear him anyway, right?
It is the scream of his heart, his longing.
And there was no point, it seems, when he offered to go with her, he was not about to give up his commitment to the league militaire. So hes in this difficult position of being torn between something he wants very much for himself and a different thing he wants very much for himself. And if that isnt adulthood in a nutshell, I dont know what is.
Aw.
Whereas Warren is not yet in a position where he has to make those kind of calls.
Uso even says this when he sees Marbet and Junko making up and says, oh, they've compromised. I wonder if being good at compromising is what it means to be an adult.
The changes in that junko Marbet Oliver relationship are so cool because it hinges largely on Marbet and Junko having kind of independent self realizations, and that bringing them to a point where they can have a relationship with each other independent of Oliver on the battlefield. Right after Oliver has told Marbet that she's gonna be part of the rearguard, she gets really angry, ashamed, competitive. She specifically mentions Uso. This is not about Junko, but that Uso is fighting up at the front and she's here at the rear. She has mentioned before that she feels shame that Uso is in this position. She feels he really shouldn't be.
He shouldn't have to fight like this.
She has also demonstrated previously a certain blindness to sort of, like, tactical concerns. Cause the rearguard is actually an extremely important position, especially when you're outnumbered and you think you might have to flee in a hurry. This is a position of immense responsibility and significance. But what she hears is, oh, I'm back here safe, and the kid is in danger.
Well, the kid is in the glory position. It's not just about danger.
No. And then her distraction over this puts her in danger. Oliver saves her, and she thinks to herself, am I becoming some horrible woman? Am I becoming some horrible type of woman?
I think she says, iyanna Ona, which is like, nasty woman, hateful woman. Yeah, I looked up the term, and it's like, whatever negative stereotypes you can imagine about women, that's what I. Ana onna means. A lot of the stuff that comes up when you look for it online is, like, how to deal with that nasty woman at work or characteristics of women that no one likes.
Right.
So Marbet realizes that her sense of competitiveness with others is a bad trait, especially vis a vis it's being a distraction during combat, during the things she's supposed to be here to do.
And I think this goes back to her disdain for the shrikes, their girly girl exterior. Marbet is a tomboy in her own conception of self. She's not supposed to be the kind of woman who gets jealous of other women and allows that to affect her performance on the battlefield. She doesn't want to be that person. And it's extremely unsettling to see herself turning into that person.
And until it put her in danger, she could maybe ignore it. But once it necessitated a situation where someone had to come save her, it was like, oh, I have let my feelings get out of control.
And also this realization that the feelings she is having are her feelings, they're not really Junko's fault or Oliver's fault. Neither one of them has done anything wrong.
And then on Junko's part, when Marbet goes to Junko at the end, Junko's chasing down chronicle and getting beaten back at every turn. Marbet keeps it professional. It isn't stop trying to throw your life away. Stop chasing a death wish. It's we need to protect our soldiers that comes first. That's more important than chasing down a fleeing enemy who is probably at their most dangerous. And I think Junko appreciates that. She's got all these men nagging at her about, like, stop trying to die. And putting all this emotional pressure on her to, like, I care about you, so I need you to stay alive. Marbet is, like, all business, but also.
I think only Marbet could talk to her this way and get through to her. It's not just the message. It is also the messenger.
And after she has made that very practical and professional point, she says, I can't just let you kill yourself now. And Jungkook hears Uso's voice in her head asking, asking about her and Marbit, and it cuts off before he gets to the. And Oliver. And I think Junko realizes that she can have a relationship with Marbit that is separate from whatever it is either of them feel about Oliver, that that doesn't have to affect how they relate to each other.
And that even though Marbet has not.
Exactly hidden her jealousy here, Marbet is saying, I also don't want you to throw your life away.
And just as Marbet had that realization herself, that her jealousy was hampering her on the battlefield, I think this is the moment where Junko realizes that whatever it is that is driving her to seek glory in this way that is driving her to be so aggressive is making her bad at her mission.
I want to talk about Junko and Uso in this episode in a little more depth later, but there's also a degree to which Junko's role as mentor to Uso has, I think, reminded her that she can have a little bit of this role for Marbet. Also that Marbet is also a younger and less experienced pilot. She doesn't need as much help as USO and Junko can't and probably shouldn't try to talk to Marbet quite how she talks to USo. But that would seem to maybe be the inspiration for her olive branch after the fight of saying, oh, you really helped me out there. Like, it's thanks to you I'm back here safe.
Are we going to get an episode where Junko and the shrikes give Marbet a makeover?
It's possible, but I hope not. But I make over.
Makeover, makeover, makeover, makeover.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's quite the compliment for an experienced pilot to say to you after the fight, oh, it's thanks to you I made it back here safely.
Let's go have a drink together.
Right?
Let's have a drink together. It's quite the nice olive branch and a way of reciprocating Marbet's stated care of this other person. Also the stinger that USO sees this and thinks, oh, that's nice, isn't it? And Oliver's extremely non committal. Yeah, sure.
I guess Oliver recognizes the potential danger of the situation. It's a little bit funny. Only a little bit, but it is a little bit funny that Junko's favorite drink is lemonade. I wonder if lemonade was having a moment in 93.
But didn't she say bitter lemonade?
I think she said special lemonade. Maybe the Japanese was bitter.
We might have to check that. I'm pretty sure bitter Lemon is the name of a drink or a soda or something for Junko's part throughout this episode. Junko and Uso actually, in this episode, are contending with some very understated, never expressed aloud grief. I thought Uso's was played very subtly. He never mentions Shakti early on, but Junko sees it and she takes him aside and she doesn't say, I know you're worried about Shakti, but she does say one of these enemy ships could have picked her up. It's like she could still be out there. She could still be alive. So she knows on some level that this is weighing on him, even if he's trying not to show it, even if he's trying not to express it. And a lot of the intensity of her instructions at USo, her admonitions, her trying to tell him, get your head in the game, do this, do that, is because she's already lost so many pilots, she's already lost so many people who she feels some responsibility for, who she fought alongside for years, and this time, at the beginning of his space pilot experience, is the most dangerous for him. And whether she acknowledges it aloud or not, I think she desperately wants to do anything she can to help him get through it. She cannot lose another pilot.
This is Camille like behavior from junko, flying out ahead of everybody else, trying to kill everybody by herself so that no one is ever in danger. She warns him at one point not to let transient emotions control him.
Ooh, I want to address that whole scene because there are some earlier bits of it that are significant. At first, she accuses him of making a game of the fighting, and there I think she's wrong. We know that he is basically incapable of making light, of killing people, but.
I don't think that's what she's saying. He thinks that's what she is saying, but she clarifies. It's not the killing, it's the way he's firing, sort of without thinking, giving away their position. He's being reckless. He's just testing out these new weapons without really knowing what they do.
So she means game not in making light or having fun with the situation.
She means you're just messing around out here, right?
Not having thought through what he's doing. And the fact is, he does not have the experience or the knowledge to think through it that way yet. But having her point these things out to him is certainly speeding up that knowledge acquisition process.
And his creativity, his tendency to experiment, is actually one of his great strengths on the battlefield. He does that again. He combines multiple different weapons in order to get a new effect. Like before, he did the spinning shield with the Zolavat wires for distraction. Now he uses the spear combined with beam from his beam saber to create this, like, shotgun effect that catches several patrol ships in it. You know, he's always experimenting. He's always doing things that people haven't done before. I mean, even the idea to use the Gaon land as a shield came as such a shock to the professional military. But, you know, it's the sort of creative idea kids like Uso come up with. When Junko tells him, don't get distracted by these transient feelings, she says, a new type doesn't get distracted by transient feelings, which I think is a new definition of new type. I don't think that was part of the package before. She makes them sound like Jedi.
I have in my notes. How would she know?
Hey, you don't know what she studied in college. Maybe she did a minor in Newtype studies.
It's possible she sees new type as a possibly motivating thing for him, that he might be sitting there thinking, I want to be the legendary new types. And so telling him, oh, new types act like this. New types act like that might inspire him.
Well, again, it's revealing the difference between the way people in the fandom usually talk about new types and the way people in the show talk about new types. That in the fandom, we say there's the new type noise. Oh, there's like, a psychic connection. They must be a new type. It's an almost binary kind of thing. You're either a new type or you aren't. And it's easily determined based on these objective criteria, like, are you a psychic?
But also it's about, like, something experiential that that character undergoes. They hear things, they see things. They have these psychic experiences, like the one USO has during that one death, that awful sound and the bright light, and then the sort of reimposition of reality on his consciousness, which is a very cool effect.
The way it feels like he's going through a window or a tv screen.
I thought it felt like a tv.
Screen, but the way characters talk about new types, it's like a state of mind. It's a spiritual condition. And if you go all the way back to first Gundam, you get people saying that espers psychics are not the same as new types. Newtype is this other thing, and maybe there's some overlap, but that being a psychic doesn't make you a new type.
I strongly suspect that in a universe, the definition of what exactly a new type is is as hotly debated as it is in the fan community. And it would be a very useful term to, you know, use to your own ends to define however you want to win an argument or achieve some goal.
Just like Gundam.
At the very beginning of the episode, Oliver mentions that Uso is still struggling to fight as part of a team in space. He sends Junko to back up USo, not only because Junko has a lot of experience and presumably some amount of experience helping new pilots. I bet Oliver thinks that Junko and Uso will be good for each other, that Junko can help Uso, but also that working with Uso might make Junko act less recklessly because she's got this young boy, this young pilot who needs her help and guidance.
This is like Quattro in Zeta being like, I think a little experience as a father figure will be good for me. Is Oliver thinking like, oh, if I force Junko to, like, mother this little boy, it will make her more mature and less reckless? Junko, no. You're fighting for two now.
But this idea of fighting as a member of a team is mental and emotional as well as practical. The practical effects are pretty obvious. In the fight scenes, we see how people team up to take out an enemy to cover each other's backs, how necessary the support ship is for Uso to get him weapons.
I love the little pit stop in the middle of the episode because the.
One thing that most reliably motivates Uso to keep fighting in this episode after he has had this horrible experience of, I'm gonna say, feeling someone's soul leave their body when he kills them, is thoughts of his friends. That if he dies out here, he'll never see Shakti again, that everyone worked really hard to get me these weapons. Everyone went to a lot of trouble to support me on the battlefield, so I have to fight well. And that quintessential new type experience of seeing a light in the distance and saying, oh, but that light has the warmth of my friends seeing a different beam in the distance and going, that beam feels different. He doesn't know it's his rival, but that's. That's rival stuff right there. Chronicle would be so deeply embarrassed to have a rival who's 13. There was one scene that they included that had a huge impact on me, even though it's extremely brief. And it's during the boarding of the Kailaskili when a couple of league military soldiers show up in an engine room and ask for the surrender of the engineers there, who both say something about an engine going into meltdown or overheating. Major engine problem. And the league military soldiers immediately stop pointing their guns at them and come over to the controls to help solve the problem. Because some problems are so urgent, so imminent, so big, that they in fact supersede even a current battle. Even being in the middle of battle, some things are more important. Why include that scene unless you want to make that point totally.
Speaking of really brief scenes that left a big impression right at the beginning of the episode, Uso narrowly avoids getting caught in some explosions and mentions that they were nuclear explosions. And this is said quite casually. It's apparent that nuclear weapons are being used regularly again, and without too much concern. I had a lot of very interesting discussions with people around when we were doing 0083 and the whole thing around the Antarctic Treaty and the nuclear armed gundam and, like, whether the Antarctic Treaty and its restrictions continued in effect after the events of the one year war or not. But however it turned out, by now it seems like the Antarctic Treaty is fully dead and forgotten and nuclear weapons are just being used all the time.
Yeah. The other thing that I think is interesting, we might just want to talk about later, but this episode used a lot of the, like, omnidirectional positioning, having seats on the floor and ceiling, if we want to orient to one direction, having people stand on a wall of a room, having people stand on the ceiling of a room that ships mobile suits. People are not always oriented the same way in space because they did quite.
A bit of that, and I always enjoy it.
But it did make me wonder about whether there's, like, a Goldilocks level of this, both practically, like, if you were really going to do it, and also in fiction where, like, there's a level of it that would be useful, and then there's probably a level of it where you're, like, over complicating things.
Well, the Zanskar warships, the amalthea, the squid, they are symmetrical both vertically and horizontally. So they have like four bridges. There's one main bridge and three sub bridges. And the weapons are duplicated on the.
Four all around the central axis.
Right. And they didn't have to do four. They could have done five, they could have done six, they could have done three. Four works pretty well. And actually, this is foreshadowing some future research a little bit. But there are good reasons why they should have done five, but they chose to do four instead. Four looks good.
I also. I suspect they stick with two or four because that's a little easier for our brains to wrap themselves around. I also suspect that's why they don't necessarily use more of this effect in designing settings for the show, because it adds this nice level of disorientation. It emphasizes the foreignness of the environment for us, but that disorientation can go too far. And if you need the action of a scene to be very legible to the audience, then having too many things happen on too many different orientations is more confusing. We're used to the four directional system, north, south, east, west, up, down, left, right. And so, sticking with four, we can kind of wrap our heads around two or four. But when it's five, what do you even call those points if it's seven? In all likelihood, if humans actually lived in space in the way that humans live in space in the universal century, they'd come up with some totally different way of organizing things that worked well for them. That would probably be really hard for us Earth noids to comprehend or get used to.
And now ninas research on junkos favorite lemonade.
Well, I must have hallucinated that bit about bitter lemon, because I went back and rewatched the scene, looked at the subtitles and listened to the japanese audio. And junko does in fact simply refer to her favorite lemonade, which feels, frankly odd. And because I love any opportunity to research food, the topic for this week's research became lemonade in Japan. The history, the brands, the products, and the hunt for meaning in this brief exchange between two pilots. Lemonade, that is to say, lemon juice combined with water and a sweetener to form a soft or non alcoholic drink, has been sold commercially since at least the 17th century. There are records from 1676 of a parisian association of manufacturers called the compagnie de Limonadier, who held some kind of monopoly rights for the sale of lemonade. Tantalizingly, the japanese Wikipedia page for lemonade lists hachimitsu remon, which is honey lemon, as a local variation and describes the name of the carbonated citrus soft drink, ramune, as being derived from the japanese word for lemonade, remonedo. The Japanophiles and weebs among you, I include myself in that description, are probably familiar with Ramune, but the drink's history proved far more interesting than I had anticipated. Lemons weren't cultivated in Japan until the 1870s, but lemonade came over on the black ships. In 1853, Commodore Perry offered carbonated lemonade to shogunate officials, who grabbed their sword hilts at the loud pop that accompanied opening the bottle. At the time, such bottles were stopped with cork, then wrapped with wire to keep the cork in place, a bit like the way sparkling wine bottles are still sealed today. This is a very dramatic story, but it may not be true. The introduction of lemonade may have been in the 1860s instead, when british ships brought carbonated lemonade to Nagasaki, mainly for sale to foreigners living there. It wasn't until 1865 that the first locally produced lemonade was sold by Fujise Hanbei, also of Nagasaki, who I suppose must have been using imported lemons or lemon juice. He sold it under the name Remonsui, or lemon water, on May 4, 1872, the fifth year of Meiji, Chiba Katsugoro of Tokyo became the first to manufacture and sell carbonated lemonade, or radamune, in Japan. This is why May 4 is Ramune day. Yet another source claims that Ramune was actually introduced in 1884 by a scottish pharmacist, Alexander Cameron Sim, while he was living in Kobe. It's possible that the disconnect between sources depends on how exactly they define Ramune. Is it any carbonated lemonade? And introduce the first time the drink is consumed in Japan, the first time it's sold, the first time it's manufactured and distributed. In that sense, it's a tricky question to answer. When I was a kid, I considered ramune a real treat, not because it was a sugary carbonated drink or because.
Of the flavor, but because of the bottle.
Now, the earliest ramune, the stuff Chiba's factory was making in 1872, was sold in what are called, in japanese, kyuribin or cucumber bottles. These are sort of vaguely ovoid in shape, wider in the middle and tapering at either end, and were sealed with cork and wire. They had to be stored on their sides to prevent the cork from drying out, which would cause the corks to shrink and the gas to escape. The iconic bottle that we now associate with Ramune, the bottle that I thought was so fun and fascinating as a kid, is called a cod. Bottle, or cod neck bottle, named for its inventor, the english engineer Hiram cod. These bottles have a glass marble inside, and when filled, the internal pressure of the gas pushes the marble into a rubber gasket inside the lip of the bottle, creating a seal. Early on, the bottles were manufactured in two parts, then soldered together after the marble was inserted. Later, the bottle was whole but with a larger mouth. After the marble was inserted, the neck and mouth of the bottle were heated and then formed into the final shape. To open a cod bottle, you push the marble into the bottle itself, where it's caught in a specially shaped chamber in the bottleneck. Cod patented his design in 1872. By 1887, the bottles were being imported to Japan from England. And in 1892, just as the invention of the crown type of bottle cap was making cod bottles obsolete in the United States and Europe, the Tokunaga Glass Company of Osaka began local manufacturing of cod bottles for the japanese beverage industry. Japanese manufacturers started using the crown type bottle caps shortly thereafter, importing them from 1900 and manufacturing them domestically from 1903. One difficulty associated with the bottles is that because of the glass marble inside, in the post war period, they could not be recycled through normal channels. They had to be returned to the manufacturer via special collection points, often at point of sale. It wasn't until 1982 that one way glass bottles were developed, bottles that didn't.
Need to be returned.
And in 1993, tombow beverage company began to use a new bottle design that still used a marble seal, but into a screw on cap that allowed the marble to be separated for recycling. Side note that kids used to smash the bottles rather than return them if they wanted the marble inside. I thought I knew exactly what Ramune was, but I was wrong. I assumed Ramune was a brand name, like sprite or fanta or seven up. But Ramune is a generic term in Japan. Soft drinks in bottles that seal with a crown cap are often called cider. But soft drinks in a cod bottle, regardless of flavor, are called ramune, although these definitions set in over time, during the Meiji period at least, cider was always apple and Damone was always lemon. If you look up contemporary articles, you'll find ramene in all kinds of different fruit flavors, as well as some very strange savory flavors like cream, stew, curry, and wasabi. Many different companies have manufactured and distributed Ramune over the years. I'll link to a page from Japan's National Soft Drink Cooperative association, which includes pictures of different brands. Ramune drinks sorted by prefecture. I'd hoped to check and see whether any Ramune ads aired during episodes of Victory Gundam. But sadly, Nikoniko, a japanese video hosting website that has a compilation of ads that aired during Victory Gundam, is down right now due to a ransomware attack against its parent company, Kadokawa. But Morinaga, a food and beverage company that was one of Gundam's sponsors at least through the 1980s, was marketing Ramune at that time, and I'll link in the show notes to a 1993 Morinaga Ramune ad that I found on YouTube. According to Tumble Beverage company, during the Meiji period, cider was luxurious and expensive, but Ramune was cheaper and more accessible for common people. An unsourced japanese blog post claims that Ramune was popular with sailors in the imperial Navy during World War Two and that its association with the navy made it more popular at home. One possible bit of corroboration, the Tobikiri Food and Beverage Company, founded in 1925, was, at least according to its website, the official Ramune purveyor for the japanese navy, and also provided the navy with instruction and expertise on how to make their own Ramune aboard ship. To this day, one of Tobikiris Ramune brands features a drawing of the bridge of a warship on their label and claims to follow the recipe that the navy used. There's a decent chance that the design is meant to depict the battleship Yamato. Tobikiri is based in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, which is also where the Yamato was built. According to the Hatakosen company's history of Ramune page production peaked in 1953, when Ramune accounted for 60% of domestic carbonated drink production. Ramune lost some of its popularity in the post war period due to competition from an ever increasing number of soft drink brands imported and locally produced. It wasn't until the retro boom of the 1960s that Ramune's popularity revived. It became a nostalgic beverage heavily associated with summer festivals, beach trips, and the like. Although the association with summer dates back much further ever since the first plant opened. In fact, Ramune has been used as a season word in haiku since the 1870s. Nostalgia remains central to Ramune's appeal. The bottles are more complicated and expensive to make. Yields are lower, but to roughly translate an industry website, Ramune is only Ramune if it inherits the traditional bottle shape. I want to treasure it and pass it on to future generations. Several Ramune manufacturers share this romantic attitude. The website of Tokyo Inryo, a small beverage manufacturing company, ends its Ramune page with a bottle of Ramune is filled with a long history. The wisdom and efforts of our ancestors and above all, the fond childhood memories of those who drink it. The next time you see one, please take your time to savor it with your heart. So one of Japans unique lemonade drinks, Ramune, carries a strong sense of nostalgia and would have done so even in 1993 as victory was airing. Tomino and his contemporaries would have been in their late teens through early twenties when the nostalgia boom first hit. And perhaps junkos comment about lemonade is meant to mark her as part of an older veteran generation to make her seem old fashioned or prone to nostalgia. Yet when I searched in japanese for lemonade trend or lemonade boom and 1990s, it was the other special lemonade drink that came up, Hachimitsu Remon. First sold in 1986 by Suntory, hachimitsu remons popularity peaked in 1989 or 1990. Santori alone shipped 15 million cases in 89 and according to Nikkei Shimbun, 22 million cases total were sold in 1990. At the time, 10 million cases was considered a hit. Most of what I found about the trend was published recently because a similar bout of nostalgia has led to suntory launching new honey lemon beverages, even though the original was discontinued in the early two thousands. Apparently a consumer poll conducted in 2010 found that honey Lemon was the discontinued drink that working 20 somethings most wanted to see revived nostalgia again. Theyd have been young children. At the peak of the faddeen, the drink was marketed as refreshing, natural and good for you. There are tons of early nineties ads for it on YouTube, and the ads themselves present some interesting possible connections. One series features a trio of beautiful young women, frequently color coded in pink or red, yellow and blue, doing activities like hiking, playing golf, snorkeling, or dancing. One series of ads features children who seem to be in victory's target age demo, middle school, perhaps addressing the camera directly. I couldn't understand all the dialogue, but they seem to be talking about kind of grown up things they want to do, grow breasts, talk on the phone late at night, go out to meet and flirt with girls, have boyfriends. Then they add cuts to Suntory hachimitsu Remon Ciderhouse and the tagline kimi ni yasashi, which I think in this context would mean it's good for you. Many brands of honey lemon also marketed themselves as not too sweet, presumably in contrast to drinks marketed to young children, which were sweeter and junk food, making hachimitsu remon more of an adult option. Suntory was denied a trademark for the name hachimitsu remona, since it was simply a combination of two ingredients, so competitors flooded the market. Over 100 different companies made their own versions. Intriguingly, Bandai holds a trademark for the phrase hachimitsu remon in the toys category. Their application was submitted June 29, 1990, and the trademark was registered August 31, 1992. What exact product or series of products that trademark applied to I wasnt able to figure out in time. This is purely my wild imaginings, but what if thered been a conflict between different advertisers or show sponsors? Or between Bandai and an advertiser or show sponsor? Writers might have been told to use the generic term remoneedo rather than something more specific. Or maybe its meant to convey what we might take it to mean now that she doesn't drink alcohol, that she's watching her health. Maybe that she has old fashioned tastes. Even though there isn't enough information for me to be confident about any particular conclusion, the one thing I am confident about is that the line was meant to convey something. Someone or a team of someones wrote it. Of all the beverages in all the world, they chose lemonade. As ever, if you have some insight into this, please do let us know. Now if youll excuse me, there is a heat wave on and I am suddenly craving lemonade. Next time on episode 10.22 the Tiger and the Turtle we research and discuss.
Episode 22 of Victory Gundam and Pinball Wizard. A conversation literally over USO's head lean.
Horse junior like a fish on the line.
Marbet jumpscare does harrow feel pain? Goldilocks problem a student soldier no, I'm not in school.
Buso's mom's argue about parenting Ojisan Beefcake.
Actually do fear the reaper tears of.
Various types and it was only a matter of time.
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 hostsundompodcast.com or look for links to our social media accounts on our website. And if you would like to support the show, please share us with your friends. Leave a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts or support us financially. At Gundam podcast.com patreon. You can find links and more ways to help out@gundampodcast.com. support thank you for listening. In space, no one can hear you scream. That's why you need to use light switch Morse code. The secret to communication without misunderstanding is light switch morse code. And when you don't have a light switch, you can always fall back on semaphore. I think if I say mu sneaks one more time, they have to pay us.
If only fair beetlejuice be like, if you say it three times, it summons money.
It summons the ad dollars. Well, the best way to make friends, especially older women, is to start piloting the Gundam.
Nice transition.
Thank you. I'm actually a professional podcaster. I make transitions all the time.
Do you happen to have the episode.
Title or do you need me to.
Give it to you again?
Is it a warm light in a cold place?
It is.
I love a little squawk. She does. When she's so excited for the food you're giving her, it's not even a meow.
It's like she's like, so. She's so excited, she can't actually get a meow out.
It's like, yeah, it's strangled meow.
Anyway, she also hops a little bit. And this is an 18 year old cat. She doesn't get active for much, but when you are holding her favorite food or treat just out of reach.