February 2021 Bonus Episode: Palace Athene (Patreon)

It's time to rectify one of the lapses in our coverage of Zeta Gundam. That's right, the Palace Athena is finally getting the dedicated research piece it deserves!

Here are shots from Half Moon Love and the statue(s) that may depict Artemis. It's possible that they were intended to be the same statue but realized by two different background artists. If so then we can be sure that the statue was not included on a whim but must have been part of the instructions given to the artist.

This is probably pure coincidence, but here the visor of the Palace Athene and the cockpit of the Elmeth look oddly similar:

Here's a photo (by Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY) of the Owl of Athena that I reference toward the end:

Special shout out this month to Zeonic Scanlations for translating the original 1984 proposal for the series that eventually became Zeta Gundam. You can find that translation here: http://www.zeonic-republic.net/?page_id=8174. You should be warned however that the section on Melanie Hugh Carbine includes references to some truly despicable antisemitic conspiracy theories. Antisemitism of this kind was rampant and mainstream in 1980s Japan, and although we don't discuss it on this episode you can read more about the context in the following articles:

THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION, AUM, AND ANTISEMITISM IN JAPAN by DAVID G. GOODMAN, https://sicsa.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/sicsa/files/goodman2.pdf.

JAPANESE ATTITUDES TOWARD JEWS by JENNIFER GOLUB: http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/889.PDF 

ANTI-SEMITISM IN JAPAN by WILLIAM WETHERALL: http://www.yoshabunko.com/minorities/Anti-semitism_in_Japan.html 

THE ELDERS OF ZION IN TOKYO by MICHAEL SHAPIRO: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/05/books/the-elders-of-zion-in-tokyo.html