Season 11, Episode 1: Combat, Neo-Italian Style!

This week we're lacing our podcasting gloves up and jumping back into the arena for a brutal and bruising battle, with the fate of the Earth and the colonies hanging in the balance. Rather than our usual pre-season prologue we've decided to get into the action right away with Mobile Fighter G Gundam Episode 1: Gファイト開始! 地球に落ちたガンダム aka Gundam Fight Begins! The Gundam That Fell to Earth.

We've got high kicks, mysterious wanderers, spectacle, speculation, behind the scenes anecdotes, a report on the phantom Gundam project known to the west as "Polca Gundam," and lots more!

11th Gundam Podcast Season... Ready? GO!

Show Notes

• The frozen noodles commercial Thom mentioned during the talkback can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/mi3lK6m7tP8 starting at the 1:00 mark.

• The original DVD release of G Gundam included a series of interviews with Imagawa Yasuhiro (今川泰宏) called "G-FILES," numbered 01 through 12 to correspond to the DVD volume containing the interview. These were translated from a seven part interview that accompanied the seven G-Gundam laser dics released in Japanese in 1995, then rearranged and relabeled to fit the 12 disc DVD release.

  • The English text of the G-Files has been archived by Zeonic|Scans: Files 01-04, Files 05-08, and Files 09-12.

  • The text of the original Japanese version has been preserved here: Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3, Disc 4, Disc 5, Disc 6, Disc 7.

• Interviews and Articles:

  • Interview with Yamane Kimitoshi, mecha designer for G Gundam, featured on Sunrise-World.net, 10 May 2023. Available at https://www.sunrise-world.net/feature/feature.php?id=9412

  • Interview with Kotaya Nakayama, planning director at Sunrise, published in Great Mechanics G Magazine, Winter 2024 Edition, pg. 30-33. English translation by Zeonic|Scans available at https://zeonic-republic.net/?page_id=12014.

  • Interview with Imagawa Yasuhiro, Chief Director for G Gundam, originally published in Animage Magazine, November 2016. English translation by Mark Simmons available at https://gundamunofficial.com/production/ggundam_animage.html

  •  Kawguchi Katsumi, ガンダム　無限のリアル　進化重ねてプラモデル発売30年, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, September 15, 2010. Available at https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGKDZO14656720U0A910C1BC8000/(Paywalled, but the contents are summarized on the Japanese Wikipedia page for G Gundam.

  • Interview with Minami Masahiko, producer for G Gundam, originally included in Animage Magazine, November 1998, and republished in この人に話を聞きたい 第一回 南雅彦 pt. 1 by Ogura Yuichiro. Not available online, but comments related to G Gundam are summarized on the Japanese Wikipedia page for G Gundam.

• Other Online Sources:

  • Report on a guest lecture by director Imagawa Yasuhiro at Georgia State University in 2002, by Ridwan Khan for Animefringe Online Magazine. https://web.archive.org/web/20120207203125/http://www.animefringe.com/magazine/02.09/feature/9/index.php3

  • At some point after 2016, a Japanese Gundam fan collected the then-available information about Polcarino Gundam, together with some of their own speculation about the production circumstances, here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220614062435/http://www.i-m.mx/TAZ/Platina/polkagundam.html

  • Japanese Wikipedia pages for key figures: Imagawa Yasuhiro (今川泰宏), G Gundam Chief Director, Murakami Katsushi (村上克司), Bandai executive responsible for overseeing G Gundam (and possible original designer of many of the Mobile Fighters), and Minami Masahiko (南雅彦), Producer for G Gundam.

• Books: 

  • Tomino Yoshiyuki, ∀（ターンエー）の癒し (Kadokawa, 2000).

  • Information about the connection between Minami, Imagawa, and Escafowne is from the Vision of Escaflowne Roman Album published in 1997 by Tokuma Shoten.

  
  This season's recap music is Window by 1000 Handz.

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.

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The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 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.

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