Season 10, Episode 3: Unfriendly Fire (Patreon)

This week on MSB: blood in the streets of Uwig as B.E.S.P.A.'s cruelest soldiers descend upon the city. Uso (and your hosts) struggle to cope with the horror of it all, Katejina is lucky to be alive, and Shakti is not very good at hiding for someone who's been hiding for most of her life. 

Please listen to it!

Show Notes

• Tomino's infamous quote about Victory Gundam being 'unwatchable' comes from a booklet included in the 10th Anniversary Memorial DVD Box Set, translated by Mark Simmons here.

• The Animerica feature story about Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory that I referenced is:
  
  Karahashi Yoshiyuki, "Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: 'Zeon's Fading Light'", Animerica, vol. 1, no. 1, March 1993.
  
  This issue also features an interview with Tomino, commentary by translator Fred Schodt on some of his translation decisions for the Gundam novels, and a (now woefully out of date) timeline of the universal century that shows the Earth Federation forming in 1999 and colony construction beginning in 2045.

• The pre-broadcast preview of Victory Gundam that describes Shakti [sic] as "a girl with a strange empathy toward Earth" and the Gundam as a legendary symbol of resistance for the "Riga Militia" is:
  
  "It's Victory for Gundam Fans," Animerica, vol. 1, no. 2, April 1993. 

• The ratings, reader surveys, and video sales information that I referenced starts from Animerica, vol. 1, no. 5, July 1993 (with data going back to March of that year) and continues in each issue until vol. 3, no. 1 [undated but probably January 1995].

  • The July 1993 edition of Animerica also includes a 'From the Forest' article by Oshiguchi Takashi in which he talks about the significant influence that Dungeons and Dragons-style roleplaying games were having on anime at the time, pointing at examples like Silent Mobius and Record of Lodoss War but also noting other more general concepts like 'chanting to cast a spell' or the link between pentagrams and magic.

  • The 'From the Forest' article in which Oshiguchi Takashi describes Victory Gundam as "perhaps the most hardcore fan-oriented TV show of the year" is in Animerica, vol. 1, no. 7, September 1993. 

  • Animerica, vol. 2, no. 1, January 1994 includes an article announcing the upcoming release of Zeta Gundam on laser disc for the first time.

  • The characteristics and circulation of the various major anime magazines of the time are described in a 'From the Forest' article by Oshiguchi Takashi in Animerica, vol. 2, no. 2.

  • Spoiler warning! The April 1994 issue includes a preview of the next Gundam show: "Street fighting, Gundam-style (or, You Call That Gundam!?)", Animerica, vol. 2, no. 4, April 1994.

  • Animerica, vol. 2, no. 12 contains a 'From the Forest' article about the history and success of 'SD' and a rave review of the Victory Gundam soundtrack (part III) newly released on CD. 

• More information about anime home video sales has been collected and published by various companies over the years. Nowadays it's principally Oricon.

  • Some fans have compiled their own lists using the Oricon reports and other data: 

    • This blog has charts of sales numbers of home video releases broken out by decade: 2000-2009, 2010-2019,

    • 2020s so far: https://www.onajiananomujina.com/entry/anime-sales-ranking-2020

  • Unfortunately many of the fans and fan groups who used to track these numbers have stopped doing so and no one else has taken up the task. 

  • Pre-2000s information is harder to come by and was tracked by different companies using different methodology, so it's not really comparable.

• A translation of the Anno Hideaki x Ikuhara Kunihiko discussion in which they briefly discuss Victory Gundam can be found on the Tominostuff blog.

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.

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