Mobile Suit Breakdown: the Gundam Podcast

Show Notes Is this what all mothers are like? This week, we recap and review Mobile Suit Gundam episode 8, "The Winds of War," discuss our first impressions, and provide commentary and research on: Canadian geography and the town of Saints-Anges, Tomino's influences, Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, The Grand Illusion, and what is furusato and why is it so important in Japanese culture? The only source we have for Saints-Anges (St. Anges in the show), is Google maps and the deductions we walk you through in the podcast. Still, we're pretty sure its a reference to a real town. Even if they probably picked it by stabbing a finger at a map. Click here for an overview of Akira Kurosawa's career, style and themes. To learn about Yasujiro Ozu, Senses of Cinema has a wonderful overview of his career and explanation of his style, and the Japan Times has a discussion of Ozu's current popularity in filmmaking circles. You can read more about Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion) here. This article gives a thorough explanation of the concept of furusato and its place in Japanese culture. If you'd like to listen to the song Furusato, the one all Japanese school-children learn, you can listen here. You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Show Notes Noh drama! A "mother complex!" and Mobile Suit Gundam Episode 7! This week, we recap and review Mobile Suit Gundam episode 7, "The Core Fighter's Escape," discuss our first impressions, and provide commentary and research on: hostage crises and Flight 472, how fighter jets land on aircraft carriers, laser measurement, "fool" and "coward" archetypes in European and Japanese literature and theatre, and what on Earth is a "mother complex"? Wikipedia has a list of major hostage crises, and more detailed information on Flight 472. We only covered the basics of how landing on an aircraft carrier works, but for more information on the myriad bits of technology that contribute to that process, check out this page on How Stuff Works. Here are links with more information on laser range-finding and laser measurement. In our research of possible literary and theatrical bases for Kai's character, we started with this overview of fool archetypes in European literature and theatre. The blog post that started us down the research rabbit-hole of "skeptic" characters in noh drama is here. For English-language information on noh (that isn't behind a paywall), the definitive source seems to be www.the-noh.com. It is from that site that we pulled definitions for the Ayakashi mask, the waki character-role, and the rongi question-and-response section of plays. ** Special note: We included this bit about Acting Captains in the 1.6 show notes, but it was meant to go with this episode. To find our what exactly an "Acting Captain" is, we consulted the United States Navy Regulations, 1990, Department of the Navy, Washington, D.C. Chapter 10: Precedence, Authority, and Command, Section 4, 1074. Some nuances certainly vary from nation to nation, but the Imperial Japanese Navy took Britain's Royal Navy as its model (and the United States Navy originates in the same system). You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Show Notes Ever wonder if Char and Garma were more than just friends? There's more evidence to float that ship than you might think... On the Gundam podcast this week, we watch Mobile Suit Gundam episode 6, "Garma Strikes," discuss our first impressions, and provide commentary and research on: soldier psychology, inspiration for the names of Zeon ships and tech, romance between men in Japanese history, and what exactly is an acting captain? For our discussion of soldier psychology, we consulted the helpful and detailed website, Military Science Fiction. Trying to decipher the inspiration for the names of Zeon ships came down to scouring German and Japanese dictionaries on the web (our favorite online Japanese dictionaries are Jim Breen and Jisho. There are a few great resources on romantic and sexual relationships between men in Japanese history. We enjoyed Tofugu's great article "The Gay of the Samurai: All About Homosexuality, Buddhist Monks, Samurai, and the Tokugawa Middle Class". The following books were also helpful in our research: Pflugfelder, Gregory M. Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse, 1600-1950. University of California Press, 2007. McLelland, Mark J. Queer Japan from the Pacific War to the Internet Age. Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. To find our what exactly an "Acting Captain" is, we consulted the United States Navy Regulations, 1990, Department of the Navy, Washington, D.C. Chapter 10: Precedence, Authority, and Command, Section 4, 1074. Some nuances certainly vary from nation to nation, but the Imperial Japanese Navy took Britain's Royal Navy as its model (and the United States Navy originates in the same system). You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Show Notes This week, we recap and review Mobile Suit Gundam episode 5, "Re-Entry to Earth," discuss our first impressions, and provide commentary and research on: hot towels, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the history of spaceflight, childhood trauma, Japanese migration, and physics in science fiction! with special guest, Iraj. The East Japan Oshibori Cooperative Association has a brief history of hot towels (oshibori) in Japan (site is in Japanese). Wikipedia has a thorough overview of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, while the following news articles talk about those who refused to leave the exclusion zone, farmers returning to tend their animals, and the high percentage of returners who are 65 and older. I go over the history of spaceflight very quickly - you can learn more here, and click here to learn specifically about Skylab (the space station that broke up on re-entry, it's pieces crashing into Australia). For our discussion of transitional objects, we reference online articles here, here, and here, as well as this article from the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth: Enrique Roig , Clelia Trelancia Roig & Nancy Soth (1987) The Use of Transitional Objects in Emotionally-Disturbed Adolescent Inpatients, International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 1:1, 45-58, DOI: 10.1080/02673843.1987.9747625 In case, like me, your high school science knowledge could use a refresher, here is a handy chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, which Iraj references several times in the episode. And here are the promised links with more information about reinforced carbon-carbon and ceramics used on space shuttles. Our discussion of Japanese migration is based on this article from UCLA's Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, and on this book: Masterson, Daniel M., and Sayaka Funada-Classen. The Japanese in Latin America. University of Illinois Press, 2004. You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Show Notes On this episode: space-refugees, soldiers as police, cultural changes in the Japanese post-war period, the "granddaddy" of anime, and anime history and aesthetics. To learn more about Japan's response to the Indochina Refugee Crisis, check out these articles: Havens, Thomas R.H. “Japan's Response to the Indochinese Refugee Crisis.” Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 18, no. 1, 1990, pp. 166–181. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24491760. Wain, Barry. "The Indochina Refugee Crisis." Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations, Fall 1979. Web. 21 Sept. 2018. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/cambodia/1979-09-01/indochina-refugee-crisis I'm not posting links to photos of soldiers and civilians from the Vietnam War years, because there are hundreds and it's depressing, but a Google image search will quickly show you what we mean if you're unfamiliar with photography of the period. In the US, when we learn about Japanese history it is usually in the context of WWII. For a great overview of Japan in the post-war period, check out this book: Hane, Mikiso. Eastern Phoenix: Japan since 1945. Westview Press, 1998. Wikipedia has an extensive overview of anime (with a great bibliography of further reading!). I also enjoyed the two books below. The first, on the history of Might Atom/Astroboy, is written by Frederick L. Schodt who also translated the Gundam novels Tomino wrote between first Gundam and the compilation movies. The second provides some analysis of anime aesthetics and philosophy which I didn't always agree with but did find interesting. Schodt, Frederik L. The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution. Calif., 2007. Brophy, Philip. 100 Anime. BFI Publishing, 2006. You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Show Notes In this episode: Astrography of the Gundamverse in UC79, what keeps the sides in-place?, collective decision-making, introducing the Minovsky particle, and developments in physics of the 1970s prove Clarke's Third Law, that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." A map of Lagrange Points and a map of the UC79 Gundamverse, showing the sides and Luna II. (Ignore the maps that refer to future series)" The Zaku I, which seems inspired by Roman gladiators. It's worth pointing out, many empires throughout history (including the Nazis in WWII) have styled themselves after the Roman Empire. All of the sources we read on collective decision-making focus on a business context, but the practice has it's foundation in Japanese history and so will certainly affect other aspects of Japanese society. You can read a detailed breakdown of the process here and here. A timeline of developments in physics. Pay special attention to developments during the post-war period, when a number of sub-atomic particles were discovered. This more detailed explanation of quantum entanglement is well worth a read. And finally, a report by the US Energy Research and Development Administration on the projected timelines for development of fusion power, published in 1976. Skip to page 10 for a chart of development progress over time as a function of research spending. You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Show Notes In this episode: Space-Okinawa, society has a short memory, was childhood ever sacred?, nuclear allegory, fancy uniforms, and mutually assured Gundams. You can read more about the Battle of Okinawa in these pages. While estimates of the number of Tekketsu Kinnotai boys (middle-school aged conscripts) vary, we are going with the 1,780 local Okinawan estimate given by their Peace Museum. Wikipedia has a good overview of the use of child soldiers in WWII generally, including the fact that the International Criminal Court did not make use of child soldiers a war crime until 1998 (and they define "child" as "under the age of fifteen years." Further reading about Yasukuni Shrine and the controversies around it. Did you know the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan "has lasted longer than any other alliance between two great powers since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia"? The essay I mention, that discusses anime portrayals of childhood, is: Ito, Mizuko. “Migrating Media: Anime Media and the Childhood Imagination.” Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children, by Marta Gutman and Ning De Coninck-Smith, Rutgers University Press, 2008, p. 301. These Prussian uniforms are reminiscent of the uniforms on Zeon's rank-and-file, while all Zeon soldiers, including the officers, wear helms inspired by the coal-scuttle-shaped helmets of the German Empire circa WWI. Char's uniform is more specific, harkening back to the uniforms of Prussian cavalry officers circa 1868. Note in particular the collar (like the Zeon uniforms it is a stand-up style, in red with gold detailing), the similarly decorated cuffs, the epaulets, and the single-breasted tunic-style jacket. While none of these features is unique to Prussian cavalry officers or Zeon, the combination of all of them in one uniform is quite rare. You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Episode Notes In this episode: the 70s in our universe and in the Universal Century, in belum medium, aesthetics musical and visual, and... what's my age again? (what's my age again?) High-level overviews of events of the 1970s, in the world and in Japan. Here is the book cover (center) that Thom mentioned, with an example of Tomino's preferred color-scheme for the White Base. You can find more great information from the translator at his website The Zeon "Zaku II" mobile suit, and a photo of Japanese soldiers from the Special Naval Landing Force in the gas masks that, we think, inspired the design of the Zaku. Additional information about The Death of the Author and its place in literary criticism. And finally the intro song, "Tobe! Gandamu" (for pre-karaoke practice!). You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, and email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected] Find out more at http://gundampodcast.com

Episode Notes In this episode, we discuss who we are, what this is, and why we're doing it. Read this and future show notes for visual aids like photos, charts, and videos, bibliography and research references, and miscellaneous ephemera related to each episode. Speaking of which... Here is an example of the early Clover models, chunkier and less detailed than the models many of us are familiar with, and a TV commercial from 1982, for the various Bandai model kits created for first Gundam. You can subscribe to the Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, follow us on twitter @gundampodcast, check us out at gundampodcast.com, email your questions, comments, and complaints to [email protected]. The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both edited for length. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. All Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise Inc. or Bandai or any of its subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to [email protected]