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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Superhero Ethics podcast. I'm Matthew. I'm joined by my regular co host Riki, and today we're talking about Gundam. Gundam is, for those of you who have probably at least heard about it in some way those who may know it very well, a long running anime franchise that has had many different brands and video games and anime shows, and most recently had a anime that came to Netflix. We're similar I
believe to Terminator zero. This was recorded with the intention of having an English and a Japanese speaking cast, and so I watched the English version. Riki, I think you watched the Japanese language version, but we'll talk more about that, and we wanted to talk about it today through a couple of lenses. Gundam is something that has come up
a number of times when Riki are talking. We've talked about the Mecca anime genre, and this is by many people considered to be the first and often kind of like the dominant one out there, so that shaped a
lot of what became known as the genre. We've been having conversations a lot about the way fascism can play into stories of superheroes, and uh anime being one particular area where that can come up, and Riki had said this was a good one to watch, and then kind of a related issue the way that Germans and Germany are often portrayed in anime as one that sort of I've been interested to talk more about with Riekey because I've seen it a lot and not exactly sure what
it means. Had some thoughts, and we'd suggested that this one might be kind of part of that conversation. I think that though that and the Fascism may wind up being their own episodes, and it maybe we just kind of dip our them today as part of talking about Gundam. But I wanted to kind of frame what we're gonna be talking about today grially, because I know this most recent show is one that has sparked a lot of conversation, a lot of controversy, with a lot of people really
not liking it for a lot of reasons. I can really understand. I am someone who Riky definitely being one of them. I am someone who this was my introduction to Gundham. I'd actually ask Riky what he thinks I should have watched first, and he suggested I watched this one because well, obviously this story fits into a larger narrative that I'm gonna learn about today. I watched it going in knowing nothing, and I found it a complete story and I didn't find myself like there's a lot
that I didn't know. But I think the show kind of intentionally takes advantage of that. So we're going to talk first about the show itself, because I think a lot of people this is just the only one they've watched, and then we are going to talk about in the larger contacts. So if you're listening to me to talk about what I know just from the show and you're like, wait, wait, no, but don't you know the larger context, I promise you
we will get to that and on. Here in superhero ethics, we're mostly concerned with the ethical choices, the moral choices, the messaging of a show, and it's it's who is the protagonist and what is their point of view and why are they fighting and all that. We're not really
as interested in the artistry of the shows. But it is an issue that has come up quite a lot, and I think it's going to illustrate a very interesting difference between Riky and I. So Riki, let me first ask what do you think of the animation in the show?
I hated it?
Yeah, So I want to address a couple of points. First, I did. I actually didn't watch the Japanese language version. It just it defaulted to playing in English and I didn't really think of it.
But I also think.
That's fine because this is not something that was like most anime, was not something that was recorded and like drawn for Japanese and then translated, right. I like, I don't know what the process was, but it does seem like it was a just will animated GENI like, I didn't pay too much attention to the lit movement and such, so I'm not sure, but it does seem like it was just like, yeah, we're gonna make this in Japanese and English at the very least. Gundam in general, yeah, is.
I think it's considered the longest running anime franchise or meca franchise one or the one or both, and it's it started the like real robots anime genre. Prior to Gundam, there was what's called super Robots, which is a little bit more like Power Ranger style, like fighting against monsters, and and there's no like mechanical realism to the robots, and in fact, they're often not robots. They're just like beings that are robotics sometimes.
And the discussion of Neon Genesis Evangelian for a long un.
Well, that's that's also that's like another that's after Gundam and is a separate newer thing. Gundam specifically like started this. We want to think about robots realistically and like how they would be used in military and it is very beloved because of that, because it started this whole genre, and you can really feel the realism in much of
the Gundam franchise. And that's one of the reasons I love it is that I kind of consider myself a Gundam historian, and I've obsessed over the franchise so much that I like know all the dates, I know the people, and like the treaties, and it very much like the what it's called the Universal Century, which you say in Japanese, is the main Gundum canon timeline, and then there's a bunch of like alternate you know, like the way Marvel does.
Six one six and then other ones.
Right, the Universal Century is the one I love the most and consider myself a historian of like I just I live and breathe this stuff. So coming back to this gun Requiem for Vengeance, you asked about the animation, it's I just think it's bad. It's like very bad
two thousand's video game animation. And in fact, it was made on the Unreal Engine, which I think has started out as like video game animation engine, and you can just see it like it's it's just cheap in a way that like characters don't move realistically, like they clip into like their arms clip into their sides and stuff, and all these kinds of problems that for a video game like you, you often don't care like you see in video games like whatever. For an animated TV series, I don't.
I don't like it at all.
Like I think it's a problem that they use this. Either it needs to get better or that they need to not do this. In my opinion. The other thing about the animation, I just like the faces were like weirdly glowing and slick. It like seemed like they always had a sheen of sweat and yeah, like they were in stressful situations and sweaty, but it was it didn't seem like a realistic sweat sene.
Yeah, I think the video game description is very apt. They felt to me very It felt to me very much like a long video game cut scene.
Yeah, I mean it was like the unreal engine is like four videos, so and interesting that they're using it for television. I'm not I don't want like, I don't want this to be like the animator suck. Yeah, right, Like they're doing a job and they're working. They were told to work with this technology, and they did it. I just think the technology is not up to like a television standards of animation.
I think all of that is completely legitimate, and what I'm about to say has nothing to do with the discussion of the artistry of it. And I can completely understand and why people who love anime and love animation hated this. I thought it looked weird and it's far and away the easiest to understand anime I've ever seen, and for that I loved it. One of the biggest frustrations that you talked about, like the artistry of the battles Neon Genesis Evangelian, I just didn't understand what was
going on. I didn't have a sense of what robot was where, and who was attacking what and what was happening because it was done in this very impressionistic artistic style. And it may well be just like my brain. I've always had a brain that doesn't really grock art in a physical way. Like I looked to the Mona Lisa and I was like, it's a woman smiling. I don't forget why it became the thing it became, and again it because.
I mean, it became what it became.
Like, I think it is a good piece of art, but largely like because it was stolen, it got a lot of notoriety.
Oh that's possible. I don't want to get into that tangent. I just mean as an example of people look at art and tell me all the things they see in it, and I don't doubt them. I don't think they're wrong.
I just don't see it. And so for me this felt like someone's saying, we want to do animation because it's a lot cheaper and easier, especially all the crazy special effects we're doing, but we're just going to try and make it as close to reality as we can with the animation technology that we have right now or
that we can afford. And again, I don't know if it's because I just don't have an artistic mind, or maybe because I didn't grow up watching anime, Like I haven't seen most of it, so I just haven't kind of learned the artistic language of the genre. But for whatever it is, I loved it because it kind of said to me, you don't have to worry about it.
This is just the story is the story, and I really loved the story of this because really and I'll give a summary of it in a bit, but it's really its idea of like starting from the perspective of these soldiers and their desire for vengeance in a defeated situation and are they going to survive? And like it really does some great things I think with playing with is the protagonist necessarily the hero and drawing the camera
back on that. And for me, because I didn't have to think about what is the intention, what's the meaning of the art, it was just like, here's where this robot is, Here's where that robot is, so you understand why they're saying these things that they're saying. I loved it me. I totally not what other people like, and that's fine, but well, okay.
I want I agree with you that the mobile suit fights in this are they were the best part of the animation. And I also want to kind of broaden the scope that in Gundam, like I already said, you know, it's it's more realistic, like treating them as real weapons of war. The time period that this story takes place in is the is during the first Gundom the original series, and that is also when the gun dams were the
least technologically advanced, and so they're more grounded. Like when you get to future Gundams, they fly around faster and like do all of the anime things and like spinning and stuff. In this one they are the technologically they are walking tanks, right, And and this Requiem for Vengeance specifically like taking place on Earth, like because part of
the story fighting takes place in space. You know, they're like even like they do fly in space, but here like they they kind of like do rocket jumps, yeah, exactly, And so the movement of the fighting is all like much more grounded.
Yeah. Literally, Yeah, it felt a lot more realistic in that kind of a way. I think there's good and bad parts to that for sure that we'll talk about. So with that, let's talk about the story itself. And again, I know that there's a much larger story. I'm just gonna give. I'm gonna give my understanding of the story, and let's talk about the story itself and then talk
about it in larger context. So we opened with this group who is piloting a bunch of mobile suits that at first I thought were gonna be Gundams, but I learned they were called Zakus, and they're doing this on behalf of this group from outer space who it's described as the Revolutionary War, and they're fighting a rebellion, as they say, for their independence, and they are all people from space fighting against Earth's domination, but they're doing it.
Most of this battle takes place in southeastern Europe, primarily in Romania, and then moving southeast towards Russia and the final exit point in Odessa. And immediately part of me was thinking, like, huh, huh. The American Revolution didn't invade England in order to get its freedom, Like there's something off here about a group that's all about how we're fighting for our own freedom, but we're also here fighting in Earth on Earth, we're invading Earth, and I thought
that was really interesting. But it's about these group of pilots and they fight some battles and then quickly into the battle is inserted a mecca that is far more powerful and far more technologically advanced than theirs. And this is what they describe as a Gundam, and which was
kind of threw me a little. It's like, oh, that's interesting, and they're fighting against the Gundam, and the Gundam is kicking their ass, and then they're kind of looking for survival and they have this whole plot line about rebuilding two new zechas of the you know, their kind of version of the Mecca suits, and there's interesting dynamics there.
But they get these two built, and they learn that not only does this other side the enemy, the Federation or the e f after is referred to have this one hugely impressive gundam, they also have these other things called GM's or gyms, which are.
It's yeah, it's weird, it's spelled GM.
It's just for.
Gym, yeah, or gem and and so and and the gyms are not quite gundams, but are certainly much more powerful than the uh uh that our heroes meccas. There's more fighting. They're able to take down the gym, but still can't stand up to the Gundam, and a lot
of their friends die. And there's a lot of talk about how our primary protagonist, a woman named Iria Solari and uh her her kind of buddy and second in command, Lieutenant Lashan, that they are just filled with anger and sadness and grief about the law of all of their friends, and at one point Lasehan almost is gonna kill the helpless pilot when he escapes the gym that they've destroyed, and she gets him to stop, and then there's a
there's a doctor character. There's a lot of discussions about like is there room for mercy in this world of battle and what's the role of vengeance and things like that, and our captain, our protagonist, seems to be mostly against
the idea of vengeance. We then decide that the best way that we can kind of survive dealing with Gundam is to steal one of the gyms, because then at least we can understand the gym technology, because there's only one Gundam, but they're mass producing these gyms, and the thought is that if they can steal one, then they can kind of, you know, build their own, but also understand it, study it, find its weaknesses, hopefully find the weakness of the Gundam and take them all down. And
they try to do that. It fails. As part of doing that, they infiltrate the enemy base and there's a kid hanging out with the enemy soldiers and that kid has a moment with Solari where he basically finds a watch that she has that's marked with the symbols of the rebellion, the the uh what's the name of them, the xeons as they're called, who again have been presented to us as the protagonist, but at least design assured that the show's doing a very interesting thing of kind
of making you doubt their own things they believe and the uh and kind of related to this, there've been uh so back up and so they have this kind of moment of connection where he maybe figures out that she's a spy but but kind of doesn't turn them in, or maybe he just like suspects it, but they have a moment of real human connection. She has a son back home that she's incredibly worried about and sees the
Sun in him. Get to the last episode where everyone's trying to scramble to Odessa because basically they're deciding that this invasion of Earth has not worked at least here in this sector the Europe and Asia, and they're all retreating back into space through the Port of Odessa, and we get one more big battle where she realizes that it's that kid who's piloting the Gundam, which for me was another like oh, like that's where I started to get a clue of like what the largest story might be.
But I'll get into that. I want to just talk about this story itself. She starts to really have empathy for him and have a conversation with him well, because she has decided that she is going to sacrifice herself basically go on a kind of suicide mission so that
she can let everyone else escape. And she like, she maybe can escape, but probably she's just going to die with honor because in her words, everyone else has died for her, and in some cases quite literally, like Lashawan he and his Mecca leap in front of her for a death blow that would have destroyed her. That's weighing on her mind. She has these dreams where she sees
all the people who died under her command. But then during the fight with a Gundam, she starts talking to the kid who's the pilot and trying to get the kid to realize that this fight is pointless, as she's saying, like, we just want to go back home, and he's saying, you all are terrorists. You invited us. If we don't kill you, how do we know you're not gonna do it again? And and she kind of just doesn't even get into that. She's saying, no, just let us go, let us go. He has a chance to deliver a
death blow. He doesn't. He kind of saves her life, and then she's kind of like getting up to thank him and keep talking. Another one of the Xeon meccas find finds them in this position where that Gundam is now kind of defenseless and destroys it, killing the kid,
and she's kind of horrified and outraged about it. And then we get to his epilogue, which from what I've read, is very controversial and I have some thoughts on it, where she basically says that the Xeons have all left Europe and Asia, that the only real fighting left is in Africa, where it's basically kind of the remnants of
all these other groups that are left there. They're called the remnants, and that mostly they're just out for vengeance and mostly they're just fighting to avenge those who have died. And she had been right up to the killing of that kid, very much like maybe we shouldn't fight, maybe we shouldn't fight to protect the kids, and she gives this speech which is fundamentally contradictory because she said part
of what she realizes. She's horrified that the war has gotten to the point that kids are being forced to fight, and that the child soldiers, but she can't make the leap of realizing that it's kind of like that her side continuing the war is part of what's forcing that to happen. She is like, no, this side is using child soldiers. That has to stop, so we need to destroy all of them, which means continuing to fight against the child soldiers. And that's where it ends. And m hm.
It was one of those things where I was like, either the writers are utterly brilliant and are really asking the audience to do their own work in recognizing that protagonist is not the good guy here and that's much more complicated than the protagonist thinks, or it's incredibly bad writing that doesn't realize all the way self contradictory. I chose to believe it's more of the first, but yeah, just to disagree, Yeah.
And I just want to know that was a good That was a good summary. I want to add part of her Solari's motivation and all this and her mentality is because kind of eye rolly, she's a mother and
she left a kid back home in space in Xeon. Yeah, and the pocket watch she's carrying is like her her item of memory right of him, and I think before the final battle, she gives the watch to the mechanic who she was friends with prior to joining up and says, give this to my son, Yeah, when you get back to space.
And I would also say so she has that mother part, which I agree with you is a little cliche, and I rollie or a lot of cliche. She also has a dead husband who died in other fighting quite recently, and I think that's for me. I saw that as kind of the two sides that were pulling on her was the do you seek vengeance for the dead or do you seek to protect the ones who are still alive?
Yeah? Yeah, okay, where do you?
Where do you want to start? Because I'm ready.
It seems like you had a different take and perhaps don't give the writers quite as much credit as I do.
So here's my problem, Gunda. Like I said, especially Universal Century has a vast history, like there's a lot of material and similar to like a Star Wars or a mar thing, like there's cannon and you if you choose to play in this sandbox you have to acknowledge and appreciate the cannon, right. I think with something like Marvel, it's more complicated because you know, they reset timelines and different writers and they change stuff.
You see stuff as much tighter.
In my opinion, I think it's more similar to Star Wars than especially like Disney Star Wars, where they kind of reset and say now, like we've created our sandbox, like we got to stick.
To it, right, yah. So tell us more about the larger context that the story takes place in.
Well, I mean, the the one minute history of the One Year War is that, yes, there are space colonies and then there's Earth, and it's all humans, there's no aliens. The space colonies feel pressed by the Earth Federation government basically like they were forced to move off of Earth.
Like there's this whole ecological aspect of it, where like you know, like we are now, it's like Earth is suffering because of humanity, So we're just going to offload a bunch of humans to space colonies and let the Earth heal, right, But the living conditions on the space colonies are not great because they're space colonies and so like there's an oppression and a kind of forced relocation
aspect to all of it. One of the colonies side three rebels against the Federation and they declare themselves the Principality of Xeon Ok and they begin this war that's historically called the One Year War. And they have a technological advantage in that they were the first to develop mobile suits, specifically the Zaku, and then they mass produce them and kind of overwhelm the Federation with this technology.
And where the original series starts is that the Federation has finally developed their own mobile suits, the Gundam, and it has taken like all of their study of the Zaku and created like this even better model. So like the gun Dam is like vastly superior, and specifically that we see in this one is that it uses beam
weapon technology. Like all of the Zaku fight with conventional like machine guns and grenades and stuff, whereas the Gundam has like such a powerful engine, I guess that it is able to use that to charge a beam cannon, right, and that's just like overwhelmingly powerful as we see in this in this show. So the Gundam like turns the tide of the war, and of course the Federation starts developing the gyms as well that also can use beam weapons,
and they defeat Xeon. And in the original series, the Gundam is the protagonist, right, it's piloted by the kid. You know, we'll get into the kid aspect. Who is the protagonist of the show, Amrode. He's the hero, and so it's all told from like his perspective and his struggles, and so first off, like this show just flips that right right where the Xeon group. Solari is unquestionably the protagonist.
I'm never gonna.
Call her the hero because because of Gundam history, which we'll get more into. But I did think it was interesting, especially in the first episode, the way that they say the film, the way that they film the Gundam had such a terrifying, like horror movie vibe, the way that it stocked them through the forest and was like even though it's paint scheme is white, yeah, it was like in darkness and like barely like backlit by the moonlight, and had had such a menace. So I liked that
aspect of it. Like, yeah, because even in the original series, they the Xeon enemies would call the Gundam the White Devil, and they were afraid of it because it was like just so powerful. They're like, how do we defeat this thing?
So in the original because for the story you just told, it sounds like like, you know, oppressed colonies fighting against the empire. I'm gonna be on the side of the oppressed colonies.
Mm hm.
But it sounds like in Gundam the original, we are on the side of the Federation. How do they justify that? Is it about the fact that Xeon is no longer just fighting for its own freedom, that now it's invading Earth and kind of.
Well here, here's where we get into some war criming.
Okay, In in.
The prehistory, like before the Gundam series started, the Xeon Forces used poison gas to wipe out the population of another space colony. So I think it was basically like a space colony that was like, no, we don't want to be a part of your rebellion because it wasn't like a unified space colony thing like. It started with Side three. South Side is just like the names of
the colonies that they get with numbers. Started with Side three, and I believe Side four said that they were going to be neutral, and so the Xeon Forces attack side for gas the entire population of the colony, and then used the husk of the colony because these are like multiple mile long things right where people live. They are cylindrical and they and they rotate to provide the illusion of day night like they rotate and have like open and closed panels that let sunlight in.
Oh, so they're just floating. This isn't like a colony on a moon of Jupi.
No, okay, yeah, sorry, yeah you wouldn't.
You would know that, I apologize.
Yeah, they are space stations. Yeah, but they're huge, and so uh they gas side for I think it's for you know, right in and correct me if I'm wrong on this. And then they use the husk of this multi mile long space colony and they drop it on Earth. They do a colony drop. It is a horrific, you know, terrorist action right that they were They were aiming for Jabbureau, which is in South America. It was the Federation's like
primary military base on Earth. And because physics is complicated and and and stuff, they miss and it hits Australia and so in Gundam in the Gundam World, south East Australia. You know, like Canberra, Sydney, et cetera. Right, there's a massive crater. There's just like a like a like one. I'd say one tenth of Australia is like carved out.
There's just a crater. And of course, like millions of.
People died in that colony drop in addition to potentially millions in the gassing. So that's what Xeon did, right, And I'm just like, there's no you can't again, like if you were going to play in the Universal century,
you can't get around that. And then later in the war, the Xeon forces use a colony laser, which again, like I think they killed all of the inhabitants of this colony and then modified the cylinder to be a massive laser barrel and fired it on the Federation fleet, which that is a little more like okay, like it's a military action. You're not firing on civilians, but it's like another uh you know, mass weapon of mass destruction that
they're using. So that that's like a aspect of Xeon is that they don't they don't care, like they they will use whatever means necessary, and I will I guess, I guess I'll mention this.
Now there is a.
There's a whole race aspect to all of this in Gundam. It's very complicated, but like traditionally, it's not something we think of as race in terms of you know, black, white, Asian, et cetera. It is space no They call them space nooid. I think they actually use this term in this show space nooid versus earthnoid, and specifically space nooids because they
live in space. Some of them have started to evolve and gain like these weird psychic powers, and they're called new types, which I also believe they mentioned in the show Like Arenas, They're like, she might be a new type because she's got this weird like sixth sense.
Right yeah, and she she senses that a Gundam is coming to attack them.
Because undoubtedly the pilot of the Gundam is also a new type. And on these shows, new types often have like this connection where they can sense you know, like the force, like a presence I haven't sensed in years, so they can they can sense each other. And the thing with new types is like, it is it is
a It is a different race. It is a they call it an evolution, right, but it's similar to I would call it similar to mutants in X Men, where humanity is taking the step and evolving, and now there's this conflict between mutants, you know, Homo superior and Homo sapien. In Gundam, the conflict is between space nooids and earth nooids.
And many of the space noids are evolving into new types, right, and some of them, just like in you know, Magneto, consider themselves superior, right, and that we have to wipe out the earth noids.
Right there and so, and we're better than the many ways, so we need to.
And help humanity to evolve to its next stage. So I a lot of a lot of people in the Gundam fandom complain that like, oh, like this, like it's not racist. It absolutely is, Like it's just not race in the traditional sense that you think of it, but you can call it an allegory, but I think it is, Like if this were real, it absolutely would be a racist thing to say, like spacemoid slash and you types are superior to earthenoids and hence like we're gonna wipe them out, Like that's that's genocide.
Yeah. Well, and I thought that that I was curious about the role race played in this because I did know going into this that you had said one of the things to kind of be on the lookout for is the Germanic aspect on how that kind of factors in. And to me, the uh so Lari and her team and the other xeons we meet are fairly racially diverse in terms of like their names and their appearances and how that references to Earth races that we know about,
you know, the modern day understanding of Earth and race. Yeah, you know, obviously this is set far in the future, but you have Alfie is very clearly black and and and uh Eerie feels like European of some kind to me. And and then the only really kind of explicitly uh Asian or Japanese character is, uh, let me make sure I get the name right, uh, doctor doctor Oni Kasuka. Uh get doctor Oniksuga and then uh and and there's one character who is very much kind of like the
enemy within. He's the major of commands the base that they go to, or repairs and safety, and he's very much like, all I care about is protecting my own and he has he wants to like have them leave. He doesn't want them to build the Gundams because he doesn't want to be attacked. He's like very much like kind of portrayed as a coward and a like strict by the rules, hooray for me and mine and to hell with everyone else. And he seems to me at
least very Germanic. He has a kind of fairly German name as Major Rone, and I think the first name is also fairly Germanic, but I forget what it is. His uniform looks kind of like grayish in it, kind of like very much the World War two German way. But then when we meet the people from the Federation and Creator, we only meet three of them. Two of them are adults, and one of them is this kid. They all look basically racially homogenous, which it first got
me wondering, like, wait are they so? Are they supposed to be the German stand in in this? And then later as I went on and realized more and more the xeons are actually probably the Nazi stand in in this was like, oh, okay, I see what we're doing here. But I just thought all that was pretty interesting, the way they were playing with that.
Mm hmm. Yeah. I have not thought deeply about like modern race in Gundom because the original like nineteen seventy nine.
I imagine it was very like homogeneously generically Japanese looking, right people, right, So yes, Like I think it's good what they did here to have you know, like have black people in Gundam like in general, like there need to be needs to be more modern racial representation like this in anime, right, you know, as long as it's this is a fictional world, like if it takes place in Japan, I understand, like why you would make it
more homogeneous, but this is a completely fictional world. And yeah, like it's still Earth, so black people exist.
Right.
Where am I going with this? I don't know? Could talk about the Germanic.
Undertones?
I guess, yeah, why don't we do that a bit? And then I want to get back to like the story of this and how it does or doesn't fit into the cannon that we're talking about. So let me just kind of lay out what I know here. In Neon Genesis Evangelian the which we did a whole episode on it, but I'll give the very brief summary that like is it is set specifically in Japan. There's mecha pilots. They're fighting these big bad angels, it's a whole thing.
But most of the characters we have are Japanese until this girl is introduced, who's kind of an antagonist, kind of a love interest, is very strict about the rules and it's very much bullying our hero Shinji, and she is specifically said to be from Germany and has a kind of more German sounding name and is explicitly said
to be half German half Japanese. Also in Foamntal Alchemist, which you haven't seen yet, I believe, and we'll talk about another point the debt, they're very much clearer allusions to Germany and that the big sort of enemy of the Empire. Uh like he wants to call himself. I think it's like they're meant to be kind of very Germanic.
There's a lot of German imagery, and he calls himself the word is translated as furor, and the justification for that is that he's German, and he's using the word feurer, which is literally just a German word for leader, but of course has all the Hitler connotations that and German people. You know, if you had better underting this right in my erhanding, is it for a while at least that word wasn't used as much for leader because of those connotations.
Ye would you?
Yeah, it's kind of like Adolf used to just be a popular name, and like most German children are not named that anymore to why you know, think of like someone like Dolph Lungren. A lot of people who'd been born Adolf changed their names to Oh it's not about that, or just like people who are like you know, like if your great great grandfather was named Adolf and you wanted to keep that family tradition, Yeah, you didn't want
to name they called them Dolf. Okay, but yeah, so talk to me, and again this will probably its own episode, but give me the like five minute spiel on Germans and German imagery in anime.
In general.
Well, what what you're seeing, how like what we see in this particular show Gundam, and how you think it played the larger narrative that you've you've mentioned once or twice before that it plays into I.
Mean, there's a lot of it. It's uncomfortable.
I you know, it's hard because you don't know what each individual creator of anime like why they are making decisions right right, unless you can find interviews and stuff.
But my impression overall, like in general on anime is that like German and like specifically, Nazi imagery is used because they're they're the historical villain right for the twentieth century, and it's very iconic imagery, like they had such distinct uniforms and the use of flags and their propaganda and their rallies, and that's very powerful, like it was powerful in the thirties and forties, and that's that's why things happen.
And you can use that imagery to portray this kind of power and in this case like evil coded power, like these are the bad guys. Like that's what you
say when you use Nazi Germany imagery in something. And I also believe that it happens a lot in anime because you can't use imperial Japanese imagery, right, And I say can't, like you could like there's no law against it, like there I think I believe there are laws against it in Germany on displaying Nazi imagery specifically, but it it would raise more it would raise too many questions, right if you did that in Japan, it's like, oh,
like why are you doing this? Even though like the politics of it is very complicated, and there are even like modern politicians who try to whitewash history and the crimes that Japan committed during the World War Two and preceding and long for you know, as many now reactionary governments are doing long for the glory days of their power.
Right, But it's I think nine of our listeners already know this and understand it. But just to draw the explicit line, the Imperial Japan you're talking about was not the Nazis by any means, but were the allies of the Nazis in World War Two, And so that kind of I can see the desire of kind of wanting to separate those two by those who kind of want to look back fondly at Imperial Japan.
Yeah, so there is like anime and manga in Japan that that does use that energy, but it's it's usually like explicitly historical, and sometimes it's like historical revision, like what if we had won the war, Like what if you know, Admiral Yamamoto. I think Yoku died like early in the war, but but there's one very popular anime that's like if he had survived, he would have won because he was such a brilliant military genius.
Type of thing.
Yeah, he was the one who planned for Harbor and yeah, the other really successful Japanese attacks at the beginning of the American entry into the war.
Yeah, so that that exists, Like there is actually a whole genre of of this, I forget what it's called, but like a revisionist fiction in Japan that that longs for for victory. If you don't want to be that explicit, I think that people just use Nazis, right, like, yeah, see that, and even even in Western media, right, like it's historical. But Indiana Jones fights as Nazis because it's like an easy villain, like easy.
Villain to code.
And so in Gundom, I think the uniforms very like Nazi. The use of the flags like in this series, I think in episode two, after they win the battle, the leader of the forces, the Xeon forces, has like a speech in a kind of I think like a school yard or something like that in the in the city that they've just taken, right, and they unfurl the Xeon flags behind him over this like two or three story
tall building. Yeah, like two big flags, and that is like hugely Nazi coded to have like flags unfurled like on both sides like that, like long long flags like drapery type.
Flag kind of you think of like the sound of music, you know, those long Nazi things that would hang down in buildings.
And he gives and he gives a speech that like a victory speech that is like like very you know my in fear speech.
Hm hm, So yeah.
I like, again, like I am biased because I have experienced Gundam and it's like everywhere. Yeah, But I'm curious then for your perspective on some of those things, Like did you notice them?
Did you say?
Huh? I think I definitely did, because, like I said, I was watching the whole thing wondering, like it felt to me like they weren't reliable narrators. And I don't think I noticed specifically that imagery during the speech felt off. I don't think I remember the flags, but you say it, I'm kind of seeing it again in my head. But the fact of like they didn't talk about liberating Earth. They talk about how they had to fight Earth in order to liberate you know, to like win the freedom
for their homelands or whatever. But then I kept thinking, but then why are you fighting on earth? Like it sounds like you've already won. What's happening here? Yeah, I for me the larger story you told me. And again, maybe I'm giving the authors too much credit here, but it fits perfectly with what I thought the show was saying, because to me, this is a show that says, let's tell you a story from the perspective of the people
who up till now have been the bad guys. And on the one hand, we're showing you that for those individuals, they're humans too, they're people like you. They get upset, they fear, they have loved, they have husbands and wives and children and all that. But also look at how unreliable narrators they are, look at how brainwashed they are. For me, this felt like an epic tragedy because the way that Solari is At the end, she says, I recognize that the war is wrong. I recognize that the
war's forcing children to be soldiers. So I have to stop it. And you're like, yes, yes, yes, And then she says like, and so to do that, I have to fight with the most venue fulfilled soldiers to like kill all the Federation people, including all the Federation children. So they stop using children. It feels to me a lot like kylo Ren's turn, where he is like defeated Snoke and him and Ray have fought together and you're like, yes,
do the right thing. And now he's like, Ray, you and I can rule as the leaders, and you're like, no, you were so close, but then you went totally the wrong way. That's how I saw it, and so like for me, this feels like a brilliant way to introduce me to that larger story because now I'm like, Okay, now I want to see it from the kid and the Gundam's perspective, because yes, I understand that like Solari
aren't nameless uh that Xeon aren't nameless faceless thugs. They're real people, but they're horribly wrong and they're doing horrible things. And and to me that's a that that is really complexifying the story in a way that now makes me really excited to see some of the earlier stuff.
Yeah, I want to specifically address the invasion of Earth aspect of it, because you ask like, well, if they just want independence while they're invading Earth, the and and this is where you know some people who try to defend Gundam or Xeon as like, no, it's not Nazis, Like here are aspects that are pulled from other things, right, and and yes, like this is a this is fiction and it's not gonna be one Nazi Germany because if you're gonna do that, why not just make like a
historical dram, right, So you were you are creating something new, but you are borrowing aspects from history, and that that's where like the uniforms and the flags. In terms of this operation on Earth, I feel like the analogy fits much more with what Imperial Japan did. So like the colony drop was meant as like intimidation and to put the Federation on the back foot because they targeted the military base.
Right.
That's that's a Pearl.
Harbor analogy right there, in my opinion, of like we strike first, take out their their nerve center, and then after that, what Japan did was just conquer a bunch of Southeast Asian nations very quickly and tried to like gather steal as many resources as they could and bring them back home to kind of hunker down for the
next phase. And that's what's going on here, is that Xeon attacked the Federation and wiped out a bunch of their forces early on with the superior advantage of the mobile suits, which is also similar to the way again like Imperial Japan used fighter jets when prior to that
naval battles were very much like battleship centric. So it's like we have this new fast hitting, like small mobile weapon that can hit, hit hard and like can be you know, deployed quickly, and we'll take theory advantage, will invade Earth in this case and steal and gather up as many resources as possible and then take them back to our space colonies and then like re you know, deploy these resources and tool up for the next phase
of the war. Well, so the so the sorry, I just want to finish up the The evacuation in Odessa at the end of this series is interesting because it had like from this show's perspective, it has like Dunkirk Fields, right,
like we got to get out of here. But again, like they are the invaders, so you're retreating, you're you're not like and and the other part is like a large portion of the Odessa evacuation was the resources that they gathered up and stole because this is this is like close to the Middle East and like all the
oil fields, right. So the commander in Odessa I believe was named Makuve and he is like super German coded in terms of like his like plundering aspect, like I've plundered Earth, including I believe, like art as well, and in the resource like he's very much like a neo aristocratic character where he like is like very like ah, like I am so like high minded and now now I have all these resources, right and and so that aspect is missing from this, like the you know, commander
of Macobay and like the stealing of resources, the plundering of Earth's resources, which I mean, that's that's it's hard to tell all these stories because.
They get Gunda is huge and there's been so much.
But I just want to add that for for your context.
No, I think it's super helpful. And there's two things I'd add. One is, particularly the connection to Imperial Japan really helps to make sense because it it felt like what they're kind of talked like they were liberating Earth, but also like they had no interest in Earthlings or
anything like that. And part of what I'm remind you of is that during that whole periody talking about about Imperio Japan conquering all of these other nations and taking their resources, which, to be clear, like what they were doing wasn't like some new thing. They were just like you know, like think about like you know, the kid looking at the parents, and like I learned it from you.
You know, it's exactly what Great Britain in Germany and America and all the other nations had been doing to the Southeast Asia and other places like that for generations.
But there's an irony because you know, the way Imperio Japan couched it was that they were like, you know, the Philippines was a protectorate of the American government, and Americans had been slaughtering Filipinos, particularly in the South and Mindo now, and so Japan was liberating the Philippines and then slaughtered by the tens of thousands Filipinos who didn't
want to be liberated. They were liberating the Chinese from the British, you know, liberating Hong Kong, liberating Singapore, and then you know, practically enslaving people and killing them by the you know, and and so the idea of Xeon kind of seeing themselves in that light makes a lot of sense to me, and I get why, especially if you know all that you'd want to see it in here.
I think for me the counterpoint is a that like, I'm really excited learning about that now because it's like, oh, okay, this makes sense because I don't believe the individual soldiers think that that's what they're doing, like, and so the fact because this feels like like the highest rank we ever see is well, for the most part, we only see captains and majors and lieutenants. At one point, Wolverine shows up and he's a major general. I didn't really
and I do mean that. He's got like the Wolverine like kind of triangle hair, and I.
Think a character in one of the I think he was.
Yeah, I wrote down his name. Where was it? Major? Okay? I just run down to Major General Wolverine and sorry, I didn't actually write down his name. He's got a ridiculous figure, but he like gives them the mission. But for the most part, we're not dealing with the commander of Odessa. We're dealing with the grunts on the ground.
And so to me, I think there's something really powerful about seeing their perspective and seeing like, no, they don't think of themselves as invaders, they don't think of themselves as plunderers. And it's not to say that they're right, they are very much wrong, but that I kind of love that, I kind of love getting to understand their perspective.
And again this tragic turn of like where they come from, you know where they wind up going and in terms of Salari deciding like, no, I need to keep the fight going in Africa.
Yeah, okay, so let me seg that into explaining the Africa thing. Yeah, because that I think that is where a lot of Gundam fans really got upset.
Mm hmmm, because of the.
History of the Universal Century and like we know what happens to those people.
Yeah.
So this this story takes place in zero zero seventy nine to eighty, like that's the One Year War seventy nine to eighty and then in eighty three a Xeon remnant like starts a new conflict, and part of that conflict involves these Africa troops right that they are involved, and they they steal a nuclear a nuclear weapon equipped Gundam from the Federation and then use this Africa base to launch it into space and then the space Xeon Remnant forces use the nuke to attack a Federation fleet
and then when they are distracted by that, they drop another colony on.
Operations start ust.
Yeah, so yeah, like it if if we are to understand the ending of this show, Captain Solari was holed up in Africa, and then if she's still alive, she participated in this action that involves stealing a nuke and then dropping another colony on Earth, Like she wouldn't have participated in like the planning of the colony drop, but she contributed.
To the effort.
And that's why it's like what do you what are you doing? Like why is it? Like You're like we have to stop the fighting, like for the children, and then yeah, three years later you're gonna participate in this and she like what upsets me is her son is still alive. Yeah in space just like surrender and go be with your son.
Is how I felt.
This is where I think this is really different. And again it may just be that I'm magrant. I don't know the larger contacts, and if I had seen all that, I would feel differently. But to me, I wore one hundred percent believe that the story knows that that that's the whole point, is that because in the story, clearly there were people who did exactly that, and it's easy to think they're just all mindless barbarians and they're all just like I just did an episode on Star Wars
and Rebellion. I don't know why I'm thinking about rebellion a couple days after the election, but here we are. And one thing we talked about was how like when you know the Nazi storm troops, the stormtroopers of the Empire very much supposed to be kind of Nazis stormtroopers, and you never see their faces. They're not people, they're just automatons, like not literally, but that's how they're portrayed. And I want one hundred percent thinks so Lari is wrong.
I want one hundred percent agree with you. She should just go back into space and be with her son. But I want one hundred percent believe that she would go to Africa and she would participate in these horrible atrocities because her mind, that's what she has to do to protect kids like her son. And you're right, it is completely contradictory everything that the Nazis did was completely contradictory,
and yet it did happen. Everything that all these empires do is completely contradictory to the values that they claim to espouse, yet it does happen. And so for me, I guess that's my take on it. And again I'm not saying you're wrong. You know much more about this than I do. And again I might the writers might have just been really bad and I'm just inventing and kind of headcanning at all. But to me, you're saying it, say again, I.
Just don't buy it because because it's like an information difference. I think what this show, the ending, to me, was trying to portray is that Solari becomes like after World War Two, there were Japanese soldiers famously like stranded on islands in the Pacific.
Yeah, the last one surround the late seventies.
Who some of them legitimately did not know that the war had ended, right. Some of them maybe they knew and just chose to keep fighting. But some of them, I believe, like legitimately did not know the war ended, kept kept like shooting at people thinking that they were fighting you know, Americans. And it felt like that's what this show was trying to show, is that she's going to Africa and then like it's going to keep fighting without really knowing.
What's going on.
But it's it's like a modern ish information age and like based on Double eighty three, start us memory, Like the Xeon forces knew they knew they lost, that the principality of Xeon had surrendered, and I believe it became a republic again or something, and those forces in Africa were like, Nah, we're going to keep fighting and we're going to wait. And that's what eighty three is is like now's our moment. Like the forces in space have
this plan, like we're going to help them. We're gonna do this like for whatever, like remnants of pride we have in Xeon even though like the nation had lost and had surrendered, but they just like couldn't give it up. So I get I get that, I get why those soldiers.
Are doing it.
I don't see how Solari becomes one of them or like the show just didn't to me portrayed in a way that was believable that she becomes one of those soldiers because she's got a son. If if she found out that her son had died at some point like that, hey, like Solari, like there was an attack on a colony and your son is dead. Then I get it, like, yeah, vengeance, you had nothing to live for, you have everything to live for at the end of this. I'm just I
don't know it. I'm getting very animated because I'm upset by no.
I think. I think it's totally legitimate and I.
And if you're like, oh, like, well then the writer succeeded, and I'm like, well, then I don't want to watch this.
That's fair, That is totally fair.
That's what you consider success.
I guess for me, the only counterpoint I would say is that I felt like they established a maternal relationship between her and Lashan and that oh and that she definitely not in a like actually his mother, but like she's his commanding officer. He kind of like turns to her when he's not sure what to do, and like, I feel like she takes his death, especially the fact that he sacrifices himself for her, incredibly hard.
And I thought you were going to say the Gundum pilots.
Oh, I mean, I think I think there's some element of that too. I guess my only point is yes, I find it incredibly hard to believe that she would do that. But we see evidence of do people doing things all the time when we think they have all the information they should to make the right decision, when we think that they have other things to live for,
and yet they don't make that decision. So I guess that's just to why For me, it broke my heart when she made that decision, but it felt utterly believable that she would do that.
Mhm, Okay, No, I mean I think that's something where we disagree on and yeah, I don't know. I My thing is that again, like I don't understand why they would make that direct connection to Africa in like the Universal Century canon timeline. Yeah, because again, fans know what happens. Fans know what those people do, Yeah, and what happens with her presumably, and so like if it was just like she stays on Earth and I don't know it becomes a farmer or something like, I would still be like,
why don't you just go back to your to your son? Yeah, yeah, like stays on Earth and does something other than fight, h like, actually do something to help kids, which is presumed like what she's telling us, right, right, But but her her motivations to me do not line up with her actions in any kind of consistent, believable way. Like you can say like she's kind of lost in grief,
lost in revenge, right, like requiem for vengeance. But I just don't understand what she's being so vengeful over again, like if her son had died, like yes, like emotions would overwhelm her like and and I don't. I did not see the same thing you did with Lashan maybe with the gun dump pilot because it's like he's the same age as my son is type of thing, but they didn't really draw it out out enough.
In my opinion, Yeah, I think that I think it was rushed to be sure. Let me ask you this. Let's say there wasn't a dendum in which we saw her going to Africa for that reason. But then when it gets to the point that like she like maybe she's asked to be part of this mission to go steal the nuclear bomb and she knows what's gonna happen with it, operations Stardust, and that's her breaking point, and that's where she's like, no, we've gone too far. We've become the thing we hate I'm not going to be
a part of this. Would that change it for you?
I don't. I don't know because like already what this show is doing I disagree with on like such.
A broad level.
Right, So so like I'm gonna I'm gonna get into this part where Gundam having the Gunda as the enemy in this show I thought visually worked really well.
I liked that.
I don't like it as an introduction for people who are unfamiliar with Gundam. You know, as you were going into this, right and you had questions of like who
are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? To do that as an introduction in a franchise where it is like ninety five percent clear that Xion are the bad guys, and the Federation or at least gun Dams other good guys, like we can get into governments and stuff, but gun Dams are like always the protagonist right of these shows, And so like it's an interesting thing to do. Like the subversion, I do not like subversion as introduction because now you are introducing people to.
A world where you.
Your first impression is Zion are the good guys, and then if you go in with that mindset and learn more like, yeah, maybe you shift a little, but you always have that start where you're like, but but Xeon like man Xeon.
Oh, and I guess maybe that I think that's maybe what I haven't fully explained. I never I thought the show was very clear that Xeon are not the good guys that are wrong. That that yeah, that if I haven't made that clear, let me really re emphasize that. That's that's what I think that the show is showing. It's a villain origin story. It's one d P of villain origin story.
Uh.
And so maybe it's kind of like you know, the people who grow up loving Anakin and and maybe you're right that a lot of in the same way that some people are like, no, Anakin was right, it wasn't his fault. And I'm like, wow, you missed the point. It's possible. I'd be curious for other people to write in and tell me, like, did you think Xeon was the good guys? Because like, one of the first things I noticed is that the Gundams, the face of the robot is fairly human. It has two as, it has
what looks kind of like the impression of like a face. Yeah, the the the Zechas the Zaku thank you are just kind of like this head with like a light going back and forth where it's eye would be. That looks very robotic and looks, frankly, a lot like the the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica. I think, timing wise, this may have come first. I'm not sure the original series Abottle
been real close. Yeah, yeah, but certainly by I think episode three or four, I think I think if you're watching the show and are thinking that Xeon are good guys, you've completely missed the point, because I thought the show was really hammering home these people think they're the good guys, but they're wrong, and that's the whole point.
But I will point out, and I'm not meaning like this is a gotcha, but even in this episode, in this discussion earlier, you referred to the Xeon group as the heroes, and that could just be habit and but but like it, it's important to be clear, like they're the protagonists of the show. We had this discussion with Watchmen, right, like they're the protagonists of the show, but they're not heroes, or like they're the main characters, but they're not protagonists.
I don't know like where we want to draw these distinctions, but.
Yeah, go ahead, sorry you continue.
But again, like, I have this problem when it's the introduction, because I'm also familiar with Gundam fandom, and there's lots of people who, even with like knowing all of all of the history, are like, yeah, Xeon, like they're cool, and okay, I have to say this. In addition to all of the uniform and flag imagery, the Xeon Forces have a salute that in Japanese is jikujeon, which translates
to seek Xeon. Like it is literally a translation of German, and it's like it's doesn't get more clear than that. And the fact that they don't use this salute in this show, I think like is deliberate and a very good thing, but it's it's part of the military, you know, tradition of.
This army, and.
It's deeply problematic, like to have that in this media and fandom that people jokingly use that salute.
Yeah, and just to further again, it's not even that to the German words. It's that the sieghaile was the sort of what you see, you know, it's kind of like the hoorah or whatever. Uh, for American military, that's what you said, and it would often be immediately followed with Hayle Hitler. Yeah, so it's very that is yeah,
that and that's important. And I like if you'd ended with her joining the Africa group and one of the you know, her meeting the rest of them and they say seek Xeon like that, I think would have hit people a lot harder and and any know, it's interesting because what I'm thinking about as we discussed this is how recent Star Wars properties, particularly and Or have created have given us the stories of people in the Empire who they've humanized, and a lot of people hated that
and said, no, don't do this. The Empire is supposed to just be awful, particularly because there are people out there who's like, maybe the Empire had a point. Vater was cool. So I think he's right. And maybe I love it because of the way I loved those characters, because I loved learning. I just I don't believe that, with the exception of a very small minority, that most of the enemies that we fight against, most of the people who want to do terrible things are rubbing their
hands and saying mooha HAA ultimate power. You know, I believe most of them think that they are right, and I think there's a real danger in telling a story from the perspective of the villain and the story in which the story is saying that the villain is a
hero because the hero they think they're the hero. And like I'll give an example, I think there's an argument he made that the Joker movie was trying to do something similar to what like I think this show was doing of like showing you the perspective of the Joker as though he thinks he's the hero, but you're supposed to realize by the end or if the whole thing,
he's wrong. But millions of fans didn't get that, and there was a lot of really problematic parts of fandom that were really all about, No, the Joker is right. That's the whole point of this movie. And so I totally get that. And I'm curious to hear from other
people who watch the show. Where do you come out on it, because I definitely, as you're saying, more, I don't have the reaction you do, but I can very much understand why you have that, particularly given like the larger context of there are lots of people who want to see Zion as the good guy because a lot of people like authoritarianism these days, and that's a growing trend around the world as we're seeing in all sorts
of ways. So so yeah, that does help me to really contextualize, like where you're coming from with this and why we see it so differently.
Yeah, And for me, like I grew up with Gundam, I and I love I love the mobile suit designs of the Xeon By and large, I think Gundam is kind of tacky. Like Gundam, the mobile suit is kind of tacky, And I love the design of Xeon mobile suits. I love some of the characters, but they are evil fascist terrorists right, like and it's similar to like Darth Vader. I can love his character design. You know, James ol Jones's voice rest in peace, and you know, all of
these aspects in the watching a fiction. But it it it gets complicated when you as a fan reached the point of doing a doing a military salute that has like such direct echoes to historical evil.
Yeah, no, and and you.
And and like the uniforms as well, Like I read a story about there was like some anime convention and a bunch of fans dressed in like authentic Xeon uniforms, but they look they look Nazi. These fans went to like a Holocaust remembrance museum or something like that and then stood in front of it and then did did seek Xeon in front of it? That's disgusting, Yeah, absolutely disgusting. Like so you have to draw the lines and fandom
right that. That's that, And that's the p I have with the show is that, like it's trying to be really complex. I agree, and I think there are good aspects to that, not as an introduction, because I think as an introduction to Gundam you just got to have like a basic Gundom like is the hero mobile suit story like this is cool? Yeah, story, Like there are complex Gundumb stories.
I love.
There's a story called War in the Pocket where one of the main characters is a Xeon pilot and he berefents, befriends a young kid in a colony, and they like it is a heartwarming tale. It's like okay, oh, Ricky, like how do you.
Like reckon that with this?
Right? Like, but but they tell it in a way where he's like a young pilot he's like fairly new, like they show that, and he is not. He's just a soldier. He's not part of the Bearer context. And I'm not saying that it's an excuse, but as a storytelling device here you're like Solari, she's a captain, she's a veteran. They mentioned a battle, the Battle of Loom, and so like there's kind of an implied history to her. And it's like it's like, well, like did she participate
in the gas thing? Like she she probably knows about the colony drop, and like what does she think about it? And then to have her at the end like go to Africa and participate in what we know, it's like, eh no, not like this gun dumb, like don't do sympathetic you know Xeon like this please?
That is my opinion.
I mean, I guess what I think about when you say that she knows about the colony drop where my mind originally?
I mean everyone should know about it?
Well right, yeah, I don't think you can hide that is to.
The book that I think. I think you've talked about Loving as well Lost Stars, which is all about you know, these young imperial pilots and.
In Star Wars.
Yeah, right, and in the Death Star, and there are some of them who find a way that they're clearly upset about the destruction of all Doron, but they're fed propaganda and they're able to justify it to themselves. And I think that's how That's what I think is how a Solari could justify to herself. I think he's wrong and very clear.
I think if you want, if you want this character.
To be that, you have to acknowledge it. I think mm hmm, like the colony.
Drop, like it happens throughout Gundam, but this specific colony drop is like so central to the story of the One Year War, like yeah, thank you. If you want to have this character Solari, you have to mention it, like maybe maybe have the doctor who's he's he's like you m r C. Which I think is supposed to
invoke Red Cross. They never say Red Cross, but Theles have him at you know, he travels, he's like a neutral doctor like red Cross, but he travels with the Zones and I think he does have an interesting like moral discussion with one of them about like you shouldn't have killed them and the soldiers like it's user them and type of thing. But I haven't say, like, you know, at the campfire, be like what how can you guys
fight for Xeon? Like when they drop this colony blah blah blah, like something, you know, conversation like that which would introduce, you know, more people to the to the history of Gundam and to the interesting ambiguities of morality here, like of fighting, like who you're fighting for and what they're doing. See.
I think a lot of this comes down to whether my reaction is typical or not, because.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And that's why I didn't want to tell you too much before we started recording and like introduced to you and say like, well you don't know about this, which is not like a criticism of you, like of course, say like this is the context of where this show exists in Gundam.
And I guess that's what I want to convey, is what from what you are saying for me? And it may well be that I'm the outlaw and I'm be very curious how other fans who have just seen the show feel about all this. For me, this is the perfect introduction to everything you're talking about, because I am like, when you tell me that the Xeon I saw in this also did these like horrific acts. It doesn't surprise
me at all. It just like I have a feeling of like, oh, now I'm seeing more of the context and I love that and not love it, like oh it's so cool, but in the like, yeah, okay, I was right that Xeon's were wrong, and like it, and I think you're right. Like I think if the show had started in the seventies with this and then you'd pull back, people would be like, whoa, why'd you start with the bad guys? That doesn't make any sense for me.
I think this is part of how things have changed somewhat since the seventies, and certainly not everyone agrees with me. But if you tell me that an oppressed colony does terrible things to the oppressor colonizer, I'm immediately going to jump to I don't care how bad they were. If you don't want them doing bad things, don't oppress them. And that's very much to say I don't care is false. I do care, and I don't want them to do that,
and that is very true of the situations today. But also sort of like it's gonna be hard to get me to say that the colony fighting oppression is the bad guy, because I'm gonna be like, yeah, Sagerera did terrible things, loosened to terrible things. It didn't make the fight against the empire wrong. But if you instead show me the fight and show me that actually, no matter how bad the oppression was in the beginning, they're so
focused on vengeance now that they're the real enemy. I'm like, Okay, now I get this in a way that so I don't know, maybe it's just kind of like you got introduced to it at a very different time and for me getting introduced to it this time, this is the
introduction I need. But I want to look more at fandom because you're right, if a whole bunch of people are watching the show and in finding the proseon people, I mean like, yeah, you're right, so Lauri was great, then I'm completely wrong and you're completely right.
Yeah. I think the problem is that, again, we have like such an extensive history. To me, like is clear, Like the way that Gundam has been written is clear, and there are interesting moral ambiguities and sympathetic elements and sympathetic like individual characters that you can create on the
side of Xeon and write interesting stories. But when you get down to it, like the the government or the military committed war crimes right like, and there's there's probably things that the Federation did that are bad like because that's war, like we talk about war in that context. But like the colony drop is like such a red line for me. It is one of the most horrific things you can do, right like. And there's like a
nuclear analogy as well to that. So yeah, I don't know, I think, I think if you're interested in follow up, I don't know where you can watch it currently, but double eighty War in the Pocket is like, to me one of the best gun of stories and an interesting Xeon sympathetic Xeon soldier story.
Okay, yeah, I'll check it out, but I'd like to just start with some of the more original stuff, you know, and may it might be watching reading Wikipedia or watching the Delaname and see where it goes. And I'll just add one last thing and then we can wrap up. We'll do a quick bonus action on child Soldiers. We're gonna keep it pretty shtuse it's already been a long episode.
And Riki, I thank you so much because as you say more, I can very much understand why my perspective is incredibly upsetting because there's all the stuff that I no, and so I really appreciate you being able to stick with it and help educate me and help me better understand all of this.
No, And I want to say, like, I appreciate your perspective on this, because that's why that's what I wanted. I wanted to hear from someone who doesn't, you know, know the first thing about Gundam really and how this what impression is left on you? And that's that's important. Yeah, And I just I want I want people to be careful because we talk a lot about impressions of media and in this day and age, like you can get lost in rabbit holes and pipelines.
And I do think like, and we'll have more.
Like follow up episodes on this, right, like with a full mental alchemist yep, that I do believe that there are probably dangerous pipelines that go from I'm willing to say seek xeon and do this, do this anime salute to hey, like, if you're interested in that, right, let me tell you about other things that are cool cool on the same vein.
You don't go to a Holocaust memorial and do that unless you've been sucked into some very anti Semitic wormholes. And I can very much see that as being a being a problem. There the last just one line I want to quote because I think, like, for me, this was one of the things that like from the very beginning, had me questioning Xeon. You know, I don't think. I don't think a moral war is really a possibility. I'm
very much against like just war theory. I'm I'm I understand the need to fight against depression, but I think beyond that, like wars generally, there's an awful thing, and even in a fight against oppression, I think it's never going to be good and pure and right. And again that's exactly what we talked about in the Star Wars
episode we just had. But you know, I like one of the definitions of war crime that I've always understood is that a soldier is not supposed to lose their individual conscience, and that when you know, even when given an order to you know, massacre civilians, if you follow that order, you're committing a war crime. And like, yes, the higher punishment is going to be for the person who ordered you to, but you're supposed to know better to to not obey that order. And again I haven't
been in the military. I'm saying that kind of blithely though it's an easy thing to do. It's obviously incredibly complicated, but I feel like that is kind of a benchmark of morality. And so early in the show, I think I'm pretty sure in the first episode, maybe the second, and they're talking to the doctor about and he's saying at one point, one of them is saying, like, you know, so, how do you guys decide who the enemy is? And one of the members of Solaris squad says, look, my
higher ups tell me who the enemy is. And the exact quote is they point I shoot m Yeah, And that was so chilling to me. That was such a clear, hit me over the head with these are not good guys. Maybe they're fighting in a war that one point had some good motivation or even still does, but to use the Star Wars analogies that I love so much, this is the dark side. These are people who are on the dark side now, who have forgotten the idea that
they're fighting, that they've they've lost their humanity. So yeah, that and Again, maybe a lot of other people are like, oh, that's a cool line. I like that. If so, then yeah, the show was nowhere. You're as good as Giket's message across. But to me that was such a hit you over the head with these are And again, I think you're right. I did use the word heroes, meaning that What I meant was that the show introduces them as though they're the heroes. Yeah, and it's pulling the rug out from
under us. And I think that line was the first real tug at that rug.
No, that's fair, all.
Right, Well, listeners, please let us know what you think. Would love to hear from you, especially either if you've watched all the other shows, or if you haven't watched the show, or if you've no idea what any of this is. You're just listening to us. Let us know what you think. Yeah, listening to one.
I would really love.
To hear from listeners on, especially if you, like Matthew, are not very versed in Gundam or at all, and you watch this and and you listen to this and did it did you have the same impressions as as Matthew or myself, Like, did this discussion change your mind, Like, how do you feel about this? Because I think this is again I didn't like it. I'm gonna say that, like I didn't like this show, like from aesthetic point of view.
I didn't like it from a.
As a gun dam fan because of what it was doing with the with the time where it was in the timeline and all that. But I just I was like, I think we have to talk about this because of this, And I really enjoyed this discussion, and I want to thank you for for like giving me your perspective on this, and I think it helps me a lot.
Well, I'm glad and I I appreciate because it's funny. This episode wound up being about things totally different than I thought it was gonna be about. I think that's
because you didn't pre warn me. And I really appreciate that because I feel like the discussion we wound up having is a larger discussion that I think movies like Joker and other things like it Fight Club raise for us, which is that if you're making media where with the idea is that the protagonist is not the hero and you want the audience to figure that out, how direct you need to be Because I think I believe that the people who made Joker weren't attending to valorize him.
But I think the fact that so many people walked away thinking it is a failure of the writers and the movie. And like you said, if people watch this and walk away thinking Zion is pretty cool, then to quote you, I think you're right. The show has failed.
And we got into that. But I think there's an interesting larger discussion about what's your responsibility as a filmmaker, as a writer, as a creator, if you're trying to do something that where the protagonist is actually not the hero they think they are, what's your responsibility to really make that clear.
Yeah, it's a hard one because like the Joker, even like no, no one is confused about the Joker, Like we all know who the Joker is as a character, right from all the dumb movies like comic books, even if you don't watch them, like you know, just from existing in this media environment, right who the Joker is, Like, Oh, he's a batman villain and he's kind of crazy, crazy
clown if that's all you know. Yeah, even still that that movie can do that like that, And that's why I was like, I don't like this as an introduction, right, The Joker movie is not an introduction to the Joker for anyone, I believe, but this like very much is in my opinion, and that's why I was like very uncomfortable.
Yeah, no that I think it's really fair. And I think that's because just like there are lots of people, as you said, walking around going even before this, saying yet we love Xeon, you know, seek Xeon. There are lots of people who watch that movie. It's like, oh, the Joker was right all along, and I think that's dangerous and bad.
So oh yeah, I'm sorry.
I have to add one more thing, Like I kept thinking about this throughout the episode, and so like the word zion, I think like for English speakers, you may wonder like does this have any connection to zion like Zionism, And.
In my research it it just does not at all. Yeah, it is.
It is an unfortunate coincidence because in Japanese it's geon and what I have what I have ascertained, is that Zionism is actually in Japanese pronounced chion, so it's like a very different opening sound. So I don't I don't think it's meant to echo that and then like early translations of gun dam you know, spelled it with a with a J, you know, or an X in some cases like it because translations like until you reach a certain point in history like aren't consistent for these types
of things. And at some point they landed on z z io ze o n right, which which much closely echo more closely echoed Zionism.
But I just I don't think it was there initially.
I think that's really helpful, and and and me I'll add the reverse context of and again I'm not a Hebrew scholar by any means, but like Zion is a translation of a Hebrew word that has at times been pronounced closer to it starting with an S more like oh czio, and and that the actual translation is probably like if you hear someone speak it who understands Hebrew, the word they're gonna use is kind of between a Z and s. It's not Zion, it's most zion, Like I'm not properly so.
The Japanese pronunciation of a Chian may be a more closely direct to that then yeah.
Or at least you know, because what I imagine is like the Japanese probably got it from Portuguese or English or another. We're also doing their version of the Hebrew translation. It makes total sense. Yeah, yeah, it's funny.
It's funny, like small tangent.
But Japanese like when they take foreign words and use them like that, because like Germany, in Japanese the deuts which is Deutsche, right right, So so I find that interesting anyway, that's cool.
No, no, I mean I'll just add the reverse also happening of how like we could call the city of Beijing Peking. You know, it comes through all these things, all right. Anyway, this has been fantastic. Thank you all to our members. Stick around. You have bonus content if you're not a member, five dollars a month, fifty five dollars a year. Also, another great way to support us is that if you we've talked about a number of things, I'm gonna put up links for where you can watch
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