Season 5, Episode 4: Child & Soldier (Patreon)

It's parallels all the way down as our coverage of War in the Pocket continues! This week we're talking about episode 3: And at the end of the rainbow...?

Al shows his potential, Bernie shows how he really feels, the commandos show us a new mobile suit, and Chris shows off her batting average. They're all one big happy(?) family(??) on this week's episode of MSB! Plus for research Thom digs into the references hiding in plain view in the title sequence, how they might connect to other contemporary works, and what it all might mean for the show...

You'll find it all in Mobile Suit Breakdown 5.4: Child & Soldier.

The 0080 Title Sequence Visuals

The Aerial Steam Carriage

• Article about the aerial steam carriage design.
• Article about other early experiments in powered flight.
• Wikipedia article for the aerial steam carriage.
• Wikipedia pages for William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow.

The Carrack

• "Carrack" on Wikipedia.
• An early Japanese depiction of a Portuguese carrack.
• Artist's rendering of Christopher Columbus' ships,  Niña (on the left, a caravel), and the carracks Santa Maria and Pinta. In truth, the Santa Maria was the only carrack. The Pinta was a second caravel.

Guernica

• Ishaan Tharoor for The Independent, "Eighty Years Later, the Nazi war crime in Guernica still matters." 
• Toby Saul for National Geographic, "The horrible inspiration behind one of Picasso's great works." 
• Guernica (the painting) and Guernica (the bombing of) on Wikipedia. 
• BBC article on the legacy of Guernica, which notes how Franco and the nationalists tried to blame the bombing on Communists, and the ongoing struggle to define the history of the Spanish Civil War.
• Le Drapeau noir (The Black Flag) by René Magritte, which may also be a response to the bombing of Guernica.

Lilliput

• Alt, Matt. Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World. Crown, 2021.
• A tweet from the author Pure Invention specifically about Lilliput and its origins. 
• An original Lilliput sold for a little over $3,000 at auction back in 2016.
• Images of an original Lilliput can also be seen on the Japanese auction site Mandarake.
• Manchukuo on Wikipedia (note that at the time Lilliput was manufactured, Manchukuo's economy was still under the authority of Kishi Nobusuke. He featured in a research piece on episode 5.2).

Atomic Robot Man

• Japanese blog with photos of Atomic Robot Man, including the box.
• The Museum of Radiation and Radioactivity collection includes a 1990s reproduction of Atomic Robot Man. 
• A great article about Atomic Robot Man's history in the United States, including pictures of two original models.
• Article from 1997 about people who collected 'Made in Occupied Japan' products.
• Article with contemporary advertisements for Atomic Robot Man.
• Article about how to tell an original A.R.M. from a reproduction. 

Music

• The recap music is "pieces of life" by Analog by Nature, licensed under a CC BY attribution license.

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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