# 11.24: Around the World in Four Hours

An episode of [Mobile Suit Breakdown: the Gundam Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1434773197), 26 Sep 2026, 52 min.

Audio: https://pinecast.com/listen/f4cb978f-79f1-4d0f-967d-2d52874c0e86.mp3?source=rss&ext=asset.mp3

Show Notes This week on MSB, the final battle between Domon and Master Asia begins at last! Plus: What's love got to do with it? Will Domon make it to the finals on time? Why does the tiara need a V-fin? Was that a horse? Did anyone realize what a good pun they were making? And how do you make a God? Answers to all these questions and many more await you. Ready? Go! Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced within Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Lenape, or Delaware, people. Before European settlers forced them to move west, the Lenape lived in New York City, New Jersey, and portions of New York State, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Lenapehoking is still the homeland of the Lenape diaspora, which includes communities living in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. You can learn more about Lenapehoking, the Lenape people, and ongoing efforts to honor the relationship between the land and indigenous peoples by visiting the websites of the Delaware Tribe and the Manhattan-based Lenape Center. Listeners in the Americas and Oceania can learn more about the indigenous people of your area at https://native-land.ca/. We would like to thank The Lenape Center for guiding us in creating this living land acknowledgment. You can subscribe to Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, visit our website GundamPodcast.com, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, or email your questions, comments, and complaints to gundampodcast@gmail.com. Mobile Suit Breakdown wouldn't exist without the support of our fans and Patrons! You can join our Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, extra out-takes, behind-the-scenes photos and video, MSB gear, and much more! The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, the recap music Window by 1000 Handz, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, all licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licenses. All music used in the podcast has been edited to fit the text. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, Sotsu Agency, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise, Bandai, Sotsu, or any of their 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 gundampodcast@gmail.com Read transcript

## Transcript

[0:08] You're listening to season 11 of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly podcast covering the entirety of sci-fi mega-franchise Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979 to today.
[0:19] This is episode 11.24, Around the World in 4 Hours, and we are your hosts. I'm Tom, a longtime Gundam fan, and this is embarrassing to admit, but I was actually supposed to take part in the Gundam Fight Finals piloting Neo Ohio's Buckeye Gundam, but I got the dates mixed up in my calendar and I totally missed the opening ceremony.
[0:50] And I'm Nina, new to G Gundam and ready to add the silly little diadem to my list of someday maybe possible cosplay projects. As an ad-free independent podcast, Mobozu Breakdown relies on our magnetic and munificent paying subscribers. Thank you all, and special thanks to our newest patrons, The Queen of Time and Dwepp, and to Nikhil for supporting us on Ko-fi. You keep us genki.
[1:18] This week we are covering G Gundam episode 24, Aratanaru Kageyaki: Godo Gundam Tanjo. Or Bright New Star: The Birth of the God Gundam, originally broadcast on September 30th, 1994. No new names to note in the credits this week, so let's go right to the play-by-play.
[1:38] Hey there, dudes, dudettes, and dandies! This is Fashionista in G, and thanks to my sponsors As the world fights and Shefflex, I am coming at you live from the Gundam Fight Finals opening ceremonies. The crowds are buzzing and there are bare minutes left until the finals officially commence. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon here in Neo Hong Kong as the Gundam Fight competitors made their grand entrances in Kowloon Bay. The uniform dressing trend of the 21st century CE may be alive and well, But there's still plenty to dish about, from the street clothes of the fighters and their support staff to the fightsuits and the Gundams themselves. Keep those questions and comments rolling and I'll catch you up on the day so far. I haven't yet seen Neo Holland's Gundam Fighter, but their Gundam flew in this morning, proving that its sails aren't just for show. Dressed in that beefy, old-fashioned windmill shape, this Gundam looks more like a fortress than a fighter. Neo Norway's Gundam went classic, accessorizing with horned helm and round shield, arriving on a dragon-proud boat. But if they were going to lean into the Viking aesthetic, I'd like to have seen them reach beyond the stereotypical. Neo Spain's Gundam burst from under the water. Who knew bulls could swim? There's no denying a bull's head is a powerful symbol, and as much as I hate to admit it, the golden horns arcing from the Gundam's shoulders are ferocious. But seriously, It's just a bull's head atop another bull's head. Talk about out of ideas. Like Neo-Norway, Neo-Greece leaned hard into tradition with their chariot-driving warrior, but I love the maximalism on this one. Striped skirting, golden wings, the perfectly sculpted bright red beard, emerald green embellishments, winged diadem. Serious contender in the best hat category. Neo America's Chibiti Crocket surfs into Kowloon. The combi of American football and boxing in the Gundam's design was a big risk and feels like it shouldn't work, but somehow it…
[4:01] Breathtaking.
[4:05] XXDragonFeverForeverXX wants to know if I consider the Dragon Gundam's ponytail a hat for the purposes of ranking the great Gundam hats, and yes I do. Maybe I should call them headpieces instead. George Dusande arrives radiating dignity aboard Neo France's airship. I hear it takes a staff of half a dozen to keep his uniforms in perfect condition for every public appearance. The Militaria look is surprisingly rare in this year's Gundam Fight. Like the designers want us to see the fighters as avatars of national culture, not But in his uniform, Dusan could have stepped out of one of those old period dramas, and his serviceable plain gray cape reminds us he is no mere symbol. He is a warrior. I understand fans of Neo-Russia's Argo Galsky have been dressing prisoner chic— pseudo-prison uniforms, artfully distressed, of course, accessorized with bracelets that look like the restraints on Argo's wrists. But one enthusiastic but idiotic fashionista caused quite the kerfuffle when they wore a harness that was an exact replica of the one used to keep a bomb strapped to Argo's chest. Are you so committed to authenticity you'll risk arrest? Leave the fake explosives at home. This year's hottest trend: hand tattoos, inspired by the couple of pictures that have surfaced of the mysterious Shuffle Alliance. If you're on a budget, body paint and temporary tattoos are widely available, but real sickos are getting high-tech nano implants that enable you to reveal or hide the tattoo at will and can be programmed to glow in a variety of colors to suit your mood and your ensemble. Neo Japan's support team arrived late in the day. Not much to say about military uniforms and lab coats, but I appreciate Major Urube spicing things up with his long slicked-back hair and silver mask. Plus, I spotted Rain Mikamura, and how can I not go feral over a woman so committed to fashion she wears a mini dress and white-heeled boots as she follows her Gundam fighter to the ends of the Earth? This icon…
[6:33] 5 someones!
[6:35] All I can see is sparkle, but there's one yellowish light and 4 pink ones with tails like comets. They're coming in low and fast, churning up the water beneath them, but is it enough? Wow! He made it! The pink lights peeled off at the last second, but Domon Kashuu made it in time! Wait, hang on. That's not the Shining Gundam.
[6:56] Are you prepared to believe that this is the final battle between Domon and Master Asia?
[7:15] No!
[7:16] Even though he got vaporized at the end?
[7:20] I'm not entirely certain that the Devil Gundam is gone, and it also got vaporized.
[7:25] Even though Master Asia went to the beach that makes you old and became super old?
[7:31] The beach that makes you old is simply being superseded by the next generation. Boom! You're old now.
[7:37] What do you think actually went on there? Because he is distinctly old now in a way he wasn't 2 episodes ago. Is it merely the trauma of defeat?
[7:49] Oh no, I was being literal. I think it's not the entirety of why he insists on continuing to fight Domon, But a big part of it is that he can't stand being surpassed by his former apprentice.
[8:03] So it's all psychological.
[8:05] Oh yeah.
[8:06] When he loses his equilibrium, he becomes old. He loses his, like, untouchable diamond body and suddenly all the years catch up to him.
[8:16] It could be that. It could be something to do with the DG cells. Like, we've seen They are psychoactive in a way. Like, you can control them with your mind, your energy, your will. Perhaps when he feels powerful and like he's on top of the world and he's untouchable, then the DG cells like keep him young.
[8:40] Alternatively, maybe the battle has so exhausted him, exhausted his resources, used up all the DG cells he has in his body in order to keep repairing his mobile fighter over and over again. He's run out of whatever resource he uses to keep regenerating his body, and it's not that he's been aged prematurely by his experiences, it's that he was keeping himself young through sinister dark martial arts magic.
[9:05] This is more of a yes, and than an argument, but we cannot set aside the metaphorical aspects of it.
[9:14] Mm-hmm.
[9:14] What we are seeing is not literally him, but is You know, a reflection of his interiority, of how he's feeling. I imagine many of you, if you are old enough, have had those moments where you find out that such-and-such star athlete or famous performer or whoever is, like, a lot younger than you, but also a full adult with a career.
[9:40] And then you shrivel into dust like the Cryptkeeper.
[9:43] Exactly. In our society, being 35, 40, 50, you're not old really. However, I think it can often make us feel old to see the next generation of adults step into adulthood. Mm-hmm.
[10:02] And I think that is a more powerful feeling for people of our generation, which is to say millennials, because for a whole host of reasons, A lot of us struggled to make the transition to adulthood or feel like we never quite entirely made it, never entirely settled into adult lives, adult careers. And having not actually attained the benefits of adulthood, to now be very, like, obviously robbed of our youth as well feels especially painful.
[10:34] And in the case of Master Asia, a good and generous teacher wants their students to supersede them, wants their students to do even better than they did. But there absolutely are teachers who are jealous and power-hungry and resent their students if their students start to become better than they are. More skilled, more powerful.
[10:58] Consider also the possibility that there has not actually been any change in his physical body. We know from previous episodes that Master Asia has certain illusionary powers.
[11:10] Mm-hmm.
[11:11] Powers of deception. He has the ability to project an image of the Master Gundam to lure Domon away from Shinjuku. And you've theorized that the Kyoji who sits on the Devil Gundam's shoulder and laughs— the devil on the shoulder of the devil— is not actually Kyoji, but some sort of illusion.
[11:29] Mm-hmm.
[11:29] So maybe it's simply that whatever Master Asia was doing to make himself look younger and kinder and Hmm. Good. That spell has been broken. Domon has seen through it and seen the real Master Asia.
[11:45] The other thing that really struck me about Master Asia in this episode is that we have someone obsessed with gaining power, but who never articulates in any way why they want it or what they want to use it for. And you can tell Domon wants to know that. He wants his— former master to tell him. And the master makes all these excuses like, what purpose would it serve for me to tell you? Why should I have to tell you? But given the fact that, uh, villains usually aren't terribly reticent about, you know, long monologues on villainous philosophy—
[12:24] Especially a villain who has repeatedly tried to convert the hero to his cause.
[12:29] He may well not have, like, an articulated reason.
[12:35] Well, his self-identity is so tied up with being undefeated. It's his name.
[12:40] And he says explicitly, I was so close to having the whole world in my grasp. And even though for episodes now, Domon has refused to call Master Asia his master— he's calling him Undefeated of the East instead—
[12:53] Though he does in this episode.
[12:54] Well, in this episode there is a brief return to that relationship between the two of them. Master Asia refers to Domon as Deshi, which means apprentice. Like, like the kind of apprentice who would live in your house and do housework and other tasks for you in exchange for teaching. And when he starts slapping Domon back and forth, it doesn't feel as if Domon can't defend himself. It feels as if Domon is letting his teacher hit him out of, like, respect and deference.
[13:29] More than the fighting between the two of them, it brings to mind Bright slapping Amuro. It brings to mind that classic Gundam idea of the father figure, the patriarch.
[13:41] Except that I don't think that Amuro would have let Bright hit him. He was surprised by it. It just, like, came out of nowhere.
[13:50] Right, but it's not— it's not an attack. It's a correction. I'm talking about the attitude of the action rather than the attitude of the recipient.
[13:59] Okay. Because the attitude on Domon's part almost seems to be, like, because of their longstanding relationship, Master Asia is allowed to do this to a degree. And then after a certain point, it's like, okay, enough.
[14:12] Like, they're very tired. The emotions are all mixed up. Domon had sort of, like, naturally fallen back into the role of the student. And then as he's getting slapped, he's like, hang on a second! I have severed myself from your school. I have told you I'm not your student anymore. You can't do this to me! And then he smacks Master Asia in return. It's sort of an evening of the scales.
[14:36] Mm-hmm.
[14:37] You don't have the right to give me those slaps, so I'll give them right back to you.
[14:41] I'm not a child anymore. I'm not your student anymore.
[14:44] I'm not fresh clay for you to mold. I'm not your plaything, your toy.
[14:49] I'm a peer.
[14:51] There's this great tragedy when a person achieves something at a young age and then is unable gracefully to move on from it, to move on to a next stage, to let go of the achievements of their youth. And that may be what's going on with Master Asia, that he won the Gundam fight. He had the whole world in his hand. And he's unable to accept that time has moved on and it's someone else's turn to go and win the Gundam fight. And this episode gives me a lot of reasons to sort of look back into Master Asia's past. The accelerated aging, looking at a kind of future for him, I think naturally causes an elastic rubber band reaction and makes me think about his past, the way he used to look. But also When Reine is doing her, like, psychic connection—
[15:43] The session.
[15:43] Viewing Domon's memories, going through the 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque, like, mind tunnel, the last— second-to-last image she sees is Master Asia, but Master Asia looking even younger and kinder than we've ever seen him in the show. This is the Master Asia that Domon clings to in his memories. This is the Master Asia Domon knew when they were training together. In the Highlands all those years ago.
[16:09] I was going to say, this is the Master Asia that raised Domon. We could certainly make arguments about what constitutes reality when we remember the past. Are we meant to see Domon sort of simultaneously holding these 2 images of Master Asia in his mind, in his heart? The image of the kindly mentor who raised him and took care of him for 10 years, and also this, like, power-hungry old man? Or are we meant to see the more critical view of the parental figure as the, the child figure gets older?
[16:47] But how appropriate for Domon to confront this contradiction in the same place where he came to know Master Asia so well originally, here in the Highlands, which they have now destroyed.
[16:58] I was thinking a lot about the Highlands this week, sort of in relation to last week's research, because there was a lot about it that makes me think of Buddhist depictions of paradise and hell.
[17:12] Huh. Okay.
[17:14] This beautiful, Edenic jungle wilderness of pure waterfalls contrasted with barren earth and fire and lightning and storms.
[17:26] And never mind the Buddha descending—
[17:29] Right.
[17:30] —a closed lotus flower into hell to save those trapped there.
[17:34] Well, and then the, the transfer of the flight data being like death and rebirth. Like the essence of the Shining Gundam is being reborn in the God Gundam.
[17:45] Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[17:47] Most of what I noted about this episode was visual. Uh, I'm starting to feel like I'm, I'm seeing certain trends in how they animate things, certain visuals that they use repeatedly. We had a return of one of your favorites, mech gore.
[18:03] There's some grotesque moments, sure. The hand of the Master Gundam protruding from the chest and through the back of the Shining Gundam.
[18:11] Dripping oil like blood. Although my favorite personally is the Devil Gundam at the very beginning of the episode, sort of falling into a pit or something in the earth, clearly heavily damaged as it falls. The 2 other things that I saw repeated, they use a lot of really tight close-ups on faces for the most emotional lines or emotional moments.
[18:38] Mm-hmm.
[18:39] And by really tight close-up, I mean you can't actually see the whole head, which is part of what makes it so striking when Master Asia suddenly looks super old, or when he's got blood trickling out of his mouth, or sweat flying off his face as he desperately tries to fight Domon. Uh, but also, you know, similar close-ups on Rain, on Domon, on the members of the Shuffle Alliance at the very end when Domon is just about gonna make it. And the other was just in this episode, uh, but seemed significant, which is there were multiple, uh, scenes where they swapped the face of the Gundam for the face of the pilot inside it.
[19:21] Mm-hmm.
[19:21] So making very explicit the mech as extension of the body of the pilot, the mech as a vessel for the pilot.
[19:29] That the head becomes a helmet. I think there's some commentary in the interviews with Imagawa about this, that this was a somewhat controversial move. It's a little silly.
[19:39] Well, and it's— we know that it's metaphorical and not literal. Like, they're not projecting their faces.
[19:45] Right. In the same way that When the two of them are grappling in their mobile fighters, sometimes the art will simply elide the mobile fighters and we'll just see the two of them in their regular human bodies grappling hand-to-hand. It wouldn't work in practically any other Gundam show. It would be ridiculous. It would be too heavy-handed. But here it's just— that's the style. That's the level of camp we're operating on.
[20:11] The— Saikomu-type device feels so silly. Frankly, I am with— God, I always forget his name. The general. The fed-up general.
[20:23] The chairman?
[20:24] Yeah.
[20:25] Karato.
[20:25] Karato. I'm with Karato on this one. Looking at this Saikomu headband, like, really? This is what we're depending on? This is all we've got?
[20:37] This cheap gimmicky-looking gadget Not out of place in like a live-action magical girl show.
[20:44] Why does it have a V-fin?
[20:46] Uh, it needs an antenna to broadcast the brainwaves. It's the Ansible. The V-fin of the Tiara is entangled with the V-fin of the Shining Gundam. Or maybe it's just sympathetic magic, like because the one looks very much like the other one, they have a magical relationship.
[21:05] And Raine can only make it work by clasping her hands in prayer.
[21:09] Everybody has a different way of concentrating their energies.
[21:14] It is sort of sweet that this moment, this experience she has sort of inside Nomon's head, seems to be the moment when she's like, oh, he really does care about me. Look, there I am among all the other important people in his heart.
[21:32] The most important of all. The way he sees me is so beautiful. A few episodes back, we discussed how the Shining Gundam could be a metaphor for their relationship, or it could be like a child that they have together.
[21:45] Mm-hmm.
[21:46] And now with the Shining Gundam destroyed and discarded, what does that mean for that metaphor? And this is a big transitional moment for them. Like, Domon has defeated, put to rest his rivalry with his master. And he has, in the process, attained a new and more powerful form. Reine has come to see Domon in a new and much more positive light. This is a moment when their relationship fundamentally changes.
[22:14] This doesn't entirely fit with the previous metaphors that we were noodling with, but I don't expect consistency from Imagawa on that front. In a way, the passing of the Shining Gundam and the rise of the God Gundam is corresponding with this moment where, like, yes, Domon and Reine are still partners in the Gundam fight, but before they were emphasizing that because neither one of them could really admit their own feelings.
[22:44] Uh-huh.
[22:45] And now they have both admitted their feelings and they can just be honest about the fact that they're in love with each other. And so they don't need to be like, we're coworkers.
[22:56] I don't know. We've got another 24 episodes. I feel like they're going to stretch out that will they, won't they for a little while longer.
[23:01] How many more? Domon!
[23:03] Reine!
[23:05] Domon!
[23:05] Reine!
[23:06] God, that got silly. That went on way too long.
[23:08] It went on a little too long. Striking here, though, is the necessity of passing on the combat data from the Shining Gundam to the God, and that Reine is able to do this by passing through Domon's memories. Despite the transition, despite the, the fresh start represented by the God Gundam and by the dispatch of Master Asia and the arrival of the finals and all of that, they are very carefully affirming the importance of these memories. That Domon's memories of his master are still important to him, even though the present reality of his master is completely different, and even though integrating the two of them has been such a challenge for him. And while she's appealing to him, while she's reaching out, Rain talks about how one of the reasons— the main reason why he needs to get to Hong Kong is to justify the 11 months of struggle that the two of them have been through. It's all been leading to this moment.
[24:07] He, uh, does not give any indication of having really wanted to be the Gundam fighter for Neo Japan. It was a thing he did. To try and help his father. And if he, he doesn't give it his all, if he doesn't make it to the finals— Speaking of the finals, extremely funny to me to— for them to have begun a series with a bunch of people living on Earth hating the Gundam fight because it shows up every 4 years and destroys their city and causes a ton of collateral damage. Also a bunch of Like, neo-governments in space can decide who will run things. But here in Neo-Hong Kong, everyone seems real excited to be hosting the finals of the Gundam fight.
[24:51] I don't know, it's a little bit like the Olympics, isn't it? The Olympics shows up, ruins a city for an indeterminate period of time, costs an enormous amount, leaves a bunch of infrastructure that nobody wants or needs, and yet there are still cheering crowds for the opening ceremony.
[25:10] This is also, to the extent that it is inspired by our own real-life Hong Kong, pre-reversion Hong Kong. Hong Kong when it was still under British control.
[25:20] Though pretty close to the changeover, right? Just a couple of years off.
[25:23] Yeah, I want to say the handover was in '96.
[25:27] I don't anticipate we're going to see much in the way of, um, political commentary about the status of Hong Kong in this show.
[25:37] But even treating it as its own independent political entity, not as part of Neo-England or Britain, not as part of Neo-China, but as its own Neo-Hong Kong. Sure, that's significant.
[25:52] Sure.
[25:53] Uh, I rather enjoyed the contrast switching back and forth between this intense emotional fighting in the Guiana Highlands to this celebratory atmosphere in Neo-Hong Kong and, and all the people waiting for Domon, waiting for Domon to come. We do get to see 2 new Gundams. They're sort of at the edges of the frame and only appear very briefly, but there's one that looks kind of snake-like, which if I had to guess was meant to be for India and is a Cobra. Is it? Am I right?
[26:23] No spoilers.
[26:24] What? Seriously? They already showed it to me.
[26:26] Don't worry, you'll see it in good time.
[26:29] Okay. Uh, and then one that I assume is meant to be for an African country because there's a spear and the guy is wearing a vaguely zebra stripe inspired Same answer.
[26:43] Promise we'll have plenty of time to talk about both of those.
[26:45] There is a special promotional Gundam that's hanging out for the countdown that— did you notice it has an analog clock on its forehead but then a digital clock on its chest?
[26:56] Well, and it's just— it looks like kind of a weirdly proportioned Grandpa Gundam. It's the old RX-78 clock edition. I wonder if you could buy that. Like, was there a time when they actually made a Gundam clock like that?
[27:10] Oh, a clock, a Gundam clock. I bet you could make one.
[27:12] Oh yeah.
[27:13] Like with a digital watch and a Gunpla. That would be kind of cool. That would be a neat thing to do.
[27:19] There's a bunch of other references to prior Gundam shows in Neo Hong Kong besides the grandpa clock.
[27:25] Oh?
[27:26] The grandfather clock. I wonder when people started calling it grandpa. I don't think that's common in the Japanese side of the fandom, so it's probably not actually meant to be a grandfather clock joke, but it is a grandfather clock anyway.
[27:41] So other references to older Gundam shows?
[27:45] A bunch of the transport vehicles that bring all of the various Gundams to the competition. Um, there's a GAW— there's a couple of GAWs, there's a Gunperry, there's a ship that in the harbor that looks vaguely like a Salamis class. There's a bunch of Medeas with different proportions. There's at least one Garuda transport plane.
[28:04] That's pretty cool.
[28:05] Yeah.
[28:05] Uh, not one of those, but I continue to love Neo-France's airship.
[28:10] The blimp that looks like a butterfly.
[28:12] It's so good.
[28:12] It's probably called Papillon or something. I thought this episode did a really good job of maintaining the tension and the sense of the ticking clock. The feeling of being on the precipice. The God Gundam's capsule sliding down the slope towards oblivion. The ticking timer. Domon needing to make it to the finals on time. And the sense of exhaustion. Domon and Master Asia both being completely wiped out at this point. Even when they use their respective fingers on each other's heads, they can't destroy them. They just don't have the juice anymore.
[28:49] The classic wrestling move of bouncing off the ropes! For extra momentum and speed!
[28:56] That was really fun.
[28:57] Uh, that was cool.
[28:57] What did you think about the 4 lights?
[29:00] 2 of which we saw, uh, a horse or horse-like one and a bird or bird-like one, which means—
[29:07] We sort of get glimpses of the other 2, but it's hard to see what they are.
[29:10] I, I couldn't make out anything definitive. The inclusion of a horse means they are not the heavenly vehicles related to, uh, my research last week. There's no horse in there, at least not that I recall.
[29:22] But there is a horse, um, there's a horse in one of the sets of 4 animals, right?
[29:27] Mm, maybe. Or like a unicorn or a kirin? Or a kirin, which is often shown like a horse.
[29:33] Like horse-like? A dragon horse?
[29:34] Um, possibly. I would need to look it up again.
[29:37] I feel an itch in my brain going back to a research piece that you did. Must have been years ago at this point, probably for one of the SD seasons.
[29:48] I did some translation checking at the very end because the announcer describes those 4 lights as having attacked Dolmuwan, and I thought that the word he used was the word for chase rather than attack, but I was wrong. It is to attack. Because it didn't, um, it didn't feel that aggressive to me. It felt more, like, playful or even accidental.
[30:11] Mm-hmm.
[30:11] Like, we're all running up together and you're getting jostled, rather than, we're trying to stop you.
[30:16] Well, I expect we will get to know them better in the future. Now that Master Asia has been finally defeated in this final battle and the Devil Gundam with him, we need new enemies.
[30:28] I don't know. I think they had those 4 just show up to escort Domon into Neo Hong Kong and we'll never see them again.
[30:34] Domon actually paid them to make his entrance more dramatic.
[30:37] I mean, having them all fly up trailing magenta at the end, it did look pretty cool.
[30:43] Yeah.
[30:45] I really enjoyed the visuals at the end of the episode. The juxtaposition of Domon being sort of joshed and teased by the other members of the Shuffle Alliance on one hand, and then Rain being comforted in amongst all of the support teams of the Shuffle Alliance Gundam fighters.
[31:03] Mm-hmm.
[31:04] And then the city lit up at night with the fireworks. It's lovely.
[31:19] As the great neo-French philosopher Voltaire once wrote, if God Gundam did not exist, it would be necessary to manufacture it. It's been a while since we've checked in on the circumstances behind the scenes of G Gundam's production, so I'd like to take a moment this week to look at the genesis of God. Last week I mentioned that it was the G in G Gundam that inspired the name of the God Gundam rather than the other way around, and that the letter was picked mostly for its aesthetic appeal. With the studio's own Pulcherino Gundam proposal rejected out of hand, and a laundry list of non-negotiable sponsor demands handed down from on high, Imagawa and his team approached the project with a make-do attitude. Like theater students handed a box of assorted props, and told to put on a play using everything inside. Now that information about the name comes from a 2024 MOOC— a publication that occupies the midpoint between a magazine and a book, if you're not familiar with the term— called Great Mechanics G by the publisher Futabasha. In celebration of the 30-year anniversary of G's original broadcast run, they interviewed Sunrise Planning Department staffer Nakayama Kotaro, Nakayama worked on G from the original Polkarino Gundam pitch up through the end of the show. He remembers Gundam purists angry at the franchise's new direction mailing razor blades to the studio, and he's the one I quoted before who thinks that the Domon-Master Asia relationship mirrors Imagawa and Tomino. Going back to reread the interview for this week, I realized that I misquoted Nakayama slightly. I had said it was the sponsor, Bandai, who preferred strong voiced consonants like Z or V or, in this case, G in the names of their shows. Actually though, Nakayama attributes this preference to Sunrise leadership. Which makes sense. There is a high prevalence of strong consonants in Sunrise titles regardless of who sponsored them. Think Combattler V, Giant Gorg, Panzerworld Galliant, Round Vernier…
[40:47] Hmph.
[40:47] To confuse matters further, Neo Turkey's Minaret Gundam was called the Scythe Gundam in the show, but merchandise was sold under the name Scimitar Gundam. The reason for all of these changes is not immediately apparent. The story you hear sometimes in the fandom is that during the Toonami Cartoon Network run of Gundam Wing in 2000, employees at a major American toy retailer— which one it was changes depending on who's telling the story— refused to stock merchandise of a certain mobile suit with a name that included the word hell. Bandai then got spooked and rushed to remove any terminology that might be construed as sacrilegious by an English-speaking market that they didn't understand but desperately wanted to exploit. Unfortunately, I can't find any evidence that this actually happened. I've been hearing versions of the story for years, but I can't find anyone talking about it online during the period when it was alleged to have happened. And moreover, The timeline doesn't work. The dub of Wing removed a reference to God from a character's nickname long before the supposedly offending mobile suit would have started appearing on store shelves. What I suspect happened was that the folks in charge of G Gundam, having flown high on the massive but unexpected commercial success of Gundam Wing in 2000, followed immediately by the ignominious failure of First Gundam in 2001, the show being pulled from the air due to the September 11th terror attacks, needed G to succeed, and they changed names right and left wherever they thought it would either remove a source of controversy or just appeal more to an audience of American children. American kids don't know about Scud missiles or who John Bull is. God or Devil could be offensive on religious grounds. Maybe Pharaoh too? Minaret would never fly in the intensely Islamophobic climate prevailing at the time. Nether might be mistaken for netherworld, while tequila is clearly a reference to alcohol, a no-go in children's…
[43:43] Starts with a hard consonant.
[43:45] Kowloon Gundam. Anyway, the arrival of the Burning God means saying goodbye to the old and busted Shining Gundam, our faithful companion these many weeks. The show itself displays a certain solemnity with the passing of this particular torch. First, there's a beautifully painted still of the God Gundam holding the stricken Shining Gundam in its arms. It must have made quite an impression at the time, because Imagawa was asked in the G-Files whether he had modeled that pose on a similar scene from the Mazinger franchise. For my part, I was reminded of nothing so much as the death of Supergirl from DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover back in 1986. Imagawa, however, disclaims any conscious inspiration, Saying he doesn't himself know whether the image was his own original or a copy of something else, but that he wasn't working from any kind of intentional model. He said, I thought I could create a picture of the dream that everybody knows, a conceptual image of a man holding a woman. The Shining Gundam at the time was actually Rain. People might think it's funny to hear this, but I'm not good at depicting female characters. Rather, I rarely think of depicting a woman when I do directing. So I haven't done a romantic story until now, have I? The programs that I work on are always filled with old guys, and consequently they turned to worlds of men. The only type of female characters that I can like are widow characters. I get so excited when a widow or someone like that appears in an episode. I've never written a normal relationship of man and woman in my life. To be honest with you, G Gundam is a love story. Of all the episodes, I thought that episode 24 was where this concept came across the best. I was unable to write the tale of a man and a woman throughout the series, so I wanted to use the robots. I believe that when we talk about a love story, it doesn't necessarily have to be one where a man and woman kiss. I wanted people to be able to sense the mental…
[46:42] Next time on MSB, Tom is back with another History of Yugoslavia interlude, and the week after that we will return to G Gundam episode 25 with MSB episode 11.25. Until then, stay genki. Ready? Go!
[47:15] Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced by us, Tom and Nina, in scenic New York City, within the ancestral and unceded land of the Lenape people, and made possible by listeners like you. The opening track is Wasp by Misha Dioksen. The closing music is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, and the recap music is Window by 1000 Hands. You can find links to the sources for our research, the music used in the episode, additional information about the Lenape people, and more in the show notes on our website, Gundampodcast.com. You can get in touch with us by email at hosts@gundampodcast.com. If you'd like to support the show, please tell your friends about us, leave us a nice review wherever you listen to podcasts, or if you'd like to support us financially, you can do so at Gundampodcast.com/Patreon. Or look for other ways to support the show at Gundampodcast.com/support. Most of all, thank you for listening. Are you ready to come down to Neo New York and throw hands over your Gundam opinions? No? That's probably because you lack conviction. Or maybe you just haven't heard an opinion worth fighting over yet. So how about this one, from longtime friend of the show and perennial wrong opinion haver Church, who says that Burning is a better name for a Gundam than God, though he will concede that Devil is better than Dark. A person had better be ready to fight carrying opinions like that around.
[48:40] I never cease to be frustrated that all of these skincare products only work if you use them every day. Some of them you have to use twice a day!
[49:00] Ugh. Gross.
[49:02] And then if you don't, all of those lovely benefits you saw from using them, just poof, gone.
[49:07] Hmm.
[49:08] Yeah. What a racket. I am now imagining an AMV using a bunch of, uh, Raine and Dolmon moments, especially Her like weird new typey Saikomu thing, but set to like a prayer.
[49:33] I have a way to open it if you would like that.
[49:36] You made your voice unnecessarily sexy just there.
[49:39] No, no, this is just how I sound all the time.
[49:42] Yeah. Well, we should probably get on with it.
[49:50] Rain has come to see him in an entirely new light, to— I wonder how many recording sessions in the entire time we've been making this podcast have been completely free of sirens.
[50:33] Probably almost none.
[50:41] That's not a bad place to end, but if you have more stuff you want to talk about, you can keep going.
[50:44] Just one other thing. Just one more thing. Just one more thing.
[50:53] In the Vajracchedika— That's hard to say. In the Vajracchedika— In the Vajracchedika— I think I did the best one the first time I said it, and every time after that it's been more garbled.
[51:08] Yeah.

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