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stillness-in-green · 7 years

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Gundam IBO Odds-n-Ends (1/2)

Being the first part of an essay commemorating all the interesting, odd, and just plain funny screenshots I saved on my rewatch of Gundam IBO. I offer it in the spirit of shared fandom, as interesting information for the consideration of fellow fanfic writers, or simply meta for those who enjoy reading such things.

I have split these photos into three major categories: Worldbuilding, Characterization, and Hilarity. The first category is the largest, and makes up this first post. It consists of pictures that illustrate aspects of the show’s setting, and is further subdivided into Locations, Society, and Language & Arts. If any of those sound interesting to you, hit the jump!

Worldbuilding:

Locations: Screenshots of the various locales of the series, both to point out interesting things about them, and, about as often, to highlight hilarious signs. We begin, as the show does, on Mars.

I think it’s very easy to think of Chryse as kind of a dirthole in the show. We so often see it from the perspective of people like Tekkadan—whose base is located outside the city—or Atra, who grew up in a very poor area. Obviously there are some nice places, like Kudelia’s home, and there is a kind of dusty, sunny appeal to even some of the poorer areas, with their colorful signs and graffiti, but by and large, up until we start seeing locations like Admoss Company, it doesn’t seem much like a major planetary hub.

I think that’s because we don’t get a lot of high-angle views.

Here is Chryse as established in the very last episode, free from Earth meddling and finally self-governing. We’re clearly in its more affluent downtown area, given the government building (bearing the flag of The Martian Union) in the middle of the picture. It’s possible that it looks worse up close, of course, but notice the broad walkways, and the light-to-the-point-of-being-nonexistent traffic. Notice the splashes of blue, green and red in the architecture. Notice all the trees, both lining the streets and blanketing the city in broad swathes that would seem to indicate an unusually large concentration of lush parks. In the far, far distance, you can just see the mountains that surround the city on all but its north side.

All the evidence we have suggests a pretty awful class divide on Mars, but man, Chryse’s downtown area is still really nice. Kudelia probably spends large amounts of her professional time in areas like this.

Here, you can see that we’re far closer to the outskirts—note the slopes climbing rapidly into mountains—and are definitely back in a poorer area of town. The ground is bare, and there are no trees. At least the streetlights all work! Kassapa Factory is located in an area much closer to this than the gorgeous downtown, to judge from the proximity of the mountains in that final shot of Yamagi in the epilogue.

Moving on out of the city entirely—I’m thinking to the north, assuming the geography of Chryse is roughly analgous to that of Chryse Planitia, the Martian plain it takes its name from—one would find the Sakura Farm and associated holdings. We’ll stop in there later, but in the meantime, I did want to include this picture.

Though it’s never referred to by name in-series, this is the actual orphanage Kudelia founded at Sakura Farm. The photo is one of several in Kudelia’s Admoss office showing her company holdings—there’s also a picture of the mines—and was presumably taken not long after the building was built, judging by the lack of the art that would eventually come to decorate all its exterior walls. Derma and Dante work here in the epilogue, but Atra lives on the farm as well, so one can assume Akatsuki is never lacking for other kids to play with.

We move now to Jupiter—or at least, one of the colonies orbiting Jupiter. Saisei, where McMurdo Barriston lives and reigns, is home to an extremely healthy little shopping district, and it is just full to the brim with interesting or hilarious storefronts. Lets look at some of them!

First off, Saisei is loaded with bars. Seriously, the one the boys stop in on their first visit, Pub Someday, is one in a string of at least three—it’s sandwiched between Public House (‘public house’ being the term that the word ‘pub’ actually derives from) and Pub Always. I think Naze probably recommended Pub Someday to them, and I think that largely because, left to their own devices, I’m sure they would have gone into Pub Always instead. Why?

Note the neon red and white fleur-de-lis hanging on the side of the establishment (which they’re standing around in front of the entrance to because they’re a bunch of ill-mannered yokels). My god, how did they not go into this place? It has their logo just right there on it.

There are marginally less alcoholic portions of Saisei, however, like the one Lafter and Azee go do a touch of retail therapy in after Naze’s memorial service. They pass a store just called Delicious, but I think my favorite was HOUSE STORE, seen below.

What does one buy at this store, I wonder? Furniture? Furnishings? Knick-knacks? Oh, perhaps it’s actually an office front, and this is where one comes to rent/purchase an apartment or other living quarters at Saisei?

Down the way from HOUSE STORE, of course, is the ill-fated Bear Factory. I want to look at the place next to it, though, because it has caused me some serious confusion.

So, the imagery here—the slightly frosted glass, the gold lettering, the delicate wrought-metal window decorations—suggests something like a high-end coffee shop, or perhaps some manner of light, ritzy soup-and-salad-type lunch café. If you run a Google search for “cocotaso,” however, the primary thing you’re going to get is something that does not at all match this building’s elegant exterior.

At least so far as the English-speaking world is concerned, “cocotaso” is a Hispanic-by-way-of-the-Caribbean slang term for when someone (often a parent) strikes you on the head with their knuckles; it’s usually in the context of a disciplinary hit, like a kid in the US might describe getting a ruler rapped on their knuckles, or “dekopin,” the forehead flicks you see in anime sometimes (in IBO itself, even—Naze drops one on Orga early on).

Now, I did manage to dig up another possibility, one that’s definitely the more likely reference, if by far the less popular Google result. “Coco” by itself is the Spanish word for “coconut,” and it’s possible to find some bottles labeled “cocotaso”/”cocotazo” advertising coconut water or coconut-infused brandy and the like—mostly by running the term through Image Search instead of a straight Web Search. I have no idea what the taso/tazo is indicating there, unless it’s just colloquial—particularly in the case of the booze, it’s no different than calling a drink a Screwdriver.

So, if I had to guess, I’d assume this lovely storefront is yet another bar, one of a vastly different cultural influence than we see in literally any other place in the show. I find it alternately hilarious and rather confounding.

Anyway, Saisei is really great to me, you guys. It’s like the space Mall of America except there are 1000% more bars and it’s run by the mob.

How about anything else around Jupiter, though? Saisei is literally all we ever see of the Jupiter Sphere, which is a bit disappointing when you’re wanting more worldbuilding. Well, I did spot one image that might be giving us a look at something else in that area. Specifically, in Naze and Amida’s flashback, we see them in a nice hotel room following a successful delivery, with Naze asking her to stay on with him more long-term. There’s a brief moment where the camera looks out the window, and gives us this vista:

You can compare this to the scenes that take place outdoors on the Dort Colonies; the structures running down the center right of the picture are clearly of the same general design. A close analysis, though, suggests that it’s definitely not one of the Dorts we’re looking at here. For starters, they’re huge. Compare the 4-to-5-storey buildings on Dort to the huge office buildings here; they come up to about the same height relative to their respective pillars. There are also the lights up the center of the structures, suggesting some absurdly expensive offices or apartments available to rent—the pillars in Dort don’t have anything like that. Consider too the fact that in outdoors shots in the Dort Colonies, you could always see either the central pillar or the curve overhead of another part of the colony, often both. While it’s nighttime here, the way the whole town is lit up suggests that, if this colony were the same size as Dort, its sky should be full of “stars”—the lights from the buildings on the other side of the ring. But the sky is black and empty, without even a suggestion of the central pillar, much less the other side of the colony.

No, I’m inclined to think that this our only look at an actual colony in orbit around Jupiter—not an enormous ship like Saisei, which is technically classified as a “large planetary cruiser,” but an actual permanent colony. It’s one of the most metropolitan-looking places we ever see in the show, and certainly offers a fascinating glimpse of a place in the Jupiter Sphere unattached to Saisei.

One last look at a planetary location, in one of my favorite bits of accurate but poorly deployed English in the show. This shot is from Edmonton, during the Season One finale.

I direct your attention, not to the perfectly acceptable roadblock signs, but rather, the large bank on the left side of the road. You can tell it’s a bank because it’s been helpfully labeled as such. Twice, even, in case you missed it the first time. I mean, I guess you could say that this reflects the fact that Earth is divided up primarily by business interests. After all, normal banks are named after people, or regions, or types of trees, or major industries in the area—something sort of pleasantly descriptive of their history or business aims. But as Earth is run by divisions literally called ‘economic blocs’, you certainly can’t get much more descriptive than BankBank.

Meanwhile, out in the vast reaches of space…

Possibly this was obvious to everyone but me, but in the interest of sharing the information with people who share my lack of experience with a) sci-fi and b) mechanical thinking, I offer a pair of pictures of the bridge of Rustal’s ship, Arianrhod’s flagship vessel.

Like, compare those working areas, that raised, rear bridge area to the same layout on the Isaribi. I’m pretty sure just half of that back area would fit Tekkadan’s whole bridge. Tekkadan’s bridge has five positions counting the captain’s seat—the halfbeak here seats—what, like thirteen? Cripes.

Speaking of things that are way bigger than I had initially assumed, my last photo for this section is of one of the Ariadne beacons.

That tiny little lifted bit crowning the Isaribi is, of course, its bridge, where Orga and company hang out all day on their space travels. Compare it to the beacon in the background. I had no idea the Ariadne beacons were so huge until I went looking for a picture of one. I’m pretty sure just the lighting array on that thing is taller than a grown man, and that’s with the beacon still fairly well in the background of the shot. I have no idea why anyone might need this knowledge to write fic with, but I did think it was interesting, so there you have it.

Society: Pictures of stuff in the world, things that illustrate local color, shadows of unnamed organizations, bits of home furnishings, and other such things that influence what you might loosely call the setting’s ‘lifestyle’. As before, lets start on Mars.

One of the things we see, if I recall, fairly early on with Atra is that she knows how to drive. This crops up periodically throughout the series, with probably its best showing in the season one finale, but my favorite scene of Atra driving is probably in the first episode of season two. Why? Well, because in season two she has her own car—and you can tell its hers by the vanity plate.

“ATR” for Atra, “16” for the year (most of) the show aired in, see? I’d also peg the 016 as indicating Atra’s age at the time she did the paperwork for the vehicle registration. Kudelia is sixteen when we first meet her (per Gjallarhorn’s info), and Atra being two years younger than her feels about right. This would also make Atra sixteen or seventeen when she and Mikazuki make a baby together, which is in line with Japan’s prefectural laws regarding the age of consent.

The vanity plate lettering aside, this does also tell us that cars need to be registered with someone in this world, which further implies the existence of a Martian DMV, which is just delightfully terrible.

It’s probably so terrible that when people get done, they really feel they need a drink. Well, luckily the setting has loads to offer on that front. Consider the following:

(What do you suppose happened to all the booze in Maruba’s office? I’m inclined to think Orga didn’t have time to do much with it just after the coup, and by the time he got back, he’d had the experience of getting trashed at Pub Someday and decided to cultivate less vomit-inducing vices.)

So, one thing to note is that, at the official bars in the setting, you tend to see a pretty high amount of repeat bottles, especially at that Earth-side bar Galan and Radice are meeting at. I’m altogether certain that the meta reason for this is just duplicated resources—setting designers have only got so much time to slap together alcohol label designs—but it is a little interesting to contemplate in-universe reasons. If so much of Earth was destroyed, how much is really suitable for cultivating the sorts of plants you need for alcohol? Is vineyard destruction why so few of these bottles look like wine instead of amber liquors like bourbon, brandy, and rum?

Moreover, is Pub Someday considered to be a “fancy” place (per Lafter) because it has Earth booze? Note that you can see some label overlap between the first and third pictures if you look closely, whereas the stuff in Maruba’s office doesn’t match anything else. Do they manufacture alcohol on Mars? Are there any local specialties? Is import and export very restricted?

The “Gift of Nature” there is, if I’m reading the label right, a brandy—though a cheap one, according to Amida. It’s Naze’s favorite, the one he and Amida drank at their first meeting (though the label on that bottle looked different—perhaps a redesign has happened in the, what, 10+ years it’s probably been since then?). From an American perspective, this is pretty amusing to me—brandy is one of those drinks with a very posh, moneyed kind of image about it. That Naze buys Amida cheap brandy—a poor man’s rich man’s drink—really just says everything about where he was in his life at the time.

But talking of money: I mentioned this some time ago in one my Human Debris Masterpost installments, and at least one fic I wrote for Yuletide last year, but: we do actually have a canonical shot of what denomination this setting’s money comes in.

Two possibilities here. The obvious one, phonetically, is that the money in this setting is literally named after its biggest police force, Gjallarhorn. This is both funny and deeply depressing, but either way, illustrates Gjallarhorn’s power in the setting. It even makes a certain amount of sense, if Gjallarhorn is nominally there to arbitrate between the economic blocs—you would want a common currency, and wouldn’t want it to be too tied to any one bloc.

There’s also a Norse myth that’s relevant, though, and given how accurately the Vidar reference was deployed, it’s worth looking at what ‘galar’ could indicate in that context.

Fjalar and Galar were dwarf brothers, distinctly murderous ones, and their main claim to fame is the murder of a supernaturally wise man, Kvasir, and use of his blood to create the mead of poetry, which grants wisdom, knowledge and creative inspiration. Using Galar as a name for money is an ugly little metaphor, I think, and one I could certainly see some very smug—or deeply jaded—scholar coming up with. Money buys all manner of things, of course; artists can have patrons, put money in, get art out. But because the denomination isn’t named for the source of the inspiration, the murdered man, but rather one of his murderers, there’s an undercurrent of violence, a suggestion of blood money. No matter what you want, throw enough money (violence) at it, and results will blossom beautifully. Guys, I’m pretty sure whoever named this setting’s money lost his entire family in the Calamity War, or something equally morbid.

As to its value, I think one galar is probably far closer to one yen than one dollar. Why? Well, while I can’t remember where I pulled this shot from (Atra’s flashback to meeting Mikazuki, maybe?) we do see bills in this exact same denomination in one other place in the series—the cairn for Tekkadan’s dead after the fight with the Brewers. So, yes, I think the bits of money that a bunch of underpaid orphans were able to scrounge up out of their pockets to literally shoot into space are likely to be very low value indeed. I imagine most major transactions are just handled electronically.

One other thing: I think this is the back of the bill. If you compare it to the reverse-side of the same denomination, the other side has the more elaborate design, the more visible numeral, and higher general visual clarity. It also has a big old picture of the African continent on it—perhaps other denominations also feature geographic regions? On the reverse side, meanwhile, are an indiscriminate blur of what I think are meant to be people, presumably some manner of historic group or another.

While we’re talking about emblems and the setting’s peace-keepers, I want to point out something I noticed in the epilogue—I think Rustal’s done away with the Seven Stars logo? Like, it’s still on all the flags at Vingolf, but there’s a new one on the Reginlaze standing behind him when we first see him in the epilogue and find out he’s become the new head of Gjallarhorn.

On the old emblem, six stars surround the central star; on this new one, the top and bottom stars have been removed. I wouldn’t think it was to honor the fallen members—the Seven Stars as a governing body were retired, first of all, so they shouldn’t be on the logo at all anymore. More to the point, though, the group lost three families, not two—Issue, Kujan, and Fareed. Perhaps the new arrangement is a reference to the four economic blocs, with the cental star now representing Gjallarhorn itself?

Still talking about emblems, here’s a screenshot from way early in the show:

So, as far as I can tell, this is the emblem of Gjallarhorn’s medical branch—you can see the same uniform on the doctor getting yelled at by Gaelio about Ein’s prognosis, later on. And that’s all well enough as it is—I wonder what the logo is meant to represent, in an organization so built around Norse mythos?—but we do see it in one other, somewhat more interesting place as well.

First-aid kits! So I guess we can assume the logo fills in the place of our world’s red cross. Of course, in our world the red cross is a legally-recognized emblem that can be misused or misapplied, in use the world over (with different variations in use in other countries, most prominently the red crescent), not bound to any particular government. Unsurprisingly for the Iron-Blooded Orphans world, their red cross is affiliated primarily with Gjallarhorn—no different than their money, I suppose. I wonder, very much, if the economic blocs have tried to keep their own currencies and the like that struggle to remain valid under the supremacy of Gjallarhorn?

But, enough about institutions! Who wants to look at home furnishings??

Specifically, the furnishings in what I’m assuming is the Fareed apartment on Vingolf, as we see McGillis and Almiria here repeatedly in season two, and it’s the place where Almiria stands her ground as McGillis’s wife against Gallus coming to take her back home. It’s an interesting mix of fairly standard looking furnishings—nothing too futuristic or archaic, just a modern-looking space, airy and warm, if perhaps with one too many chairs in it. There are only two things in it that stand out to me on a technological level.

While I’m pretty curious about where those stairs hiding behind the potted tree go, given the stretch of building visible outside the sliding doors, what really caught my eye here was the speaker system tucked against the bricks, above McGillis’s head. It looks like such a perfectly real-world device, so much so that I wonder if it’s some kind of antique, or built to resemble one. I’m pretty certain we never see anything else like it in the show, and it makes me wonder about the role music has in this setting, especially recorded music.

Is it a thing for the very rich only? Are there Martian radio stations? Are there subtle variations between the genres of music popular around Jupiter’s moons? What about live music? Does anyone busk on the streets with hand-me-down musical instruments? How much would the Seven Stars pay for live entertainment at one of their important parties? Are there still famous musicians that hold blow-out concerts on Earth? How much cultural exchange is there between the planets and colonies in the system where their music is concerned?

Moreover, what kind of do you suppose McGillis likes? Myself, I’d guess big Wagnerian operas with convoluted plots and a lot of tragic-yet-noble bloodshed. I feel like it’d appeal to the same moral binary in him that the Gundams do.

The other thing in this space that caught my eye is the fireplace. What’s that? You don’t remember there being a fireplace? Well, that’s because…

This—this can’t be very safe, can it? I mean, it’s basically one enormous heating coil, like someone super-sized an electric stove and plopped one of the heating elements down in their living room. But, again, it’s huge. I have no doubt it can heat that whole room; what I question is the idea that any of that furniture wouldn’t be much too close for comfort. To say nothing of the carpet!

Also, if you’re not going to have actual open, dancing flames (or at least an image thereof), why bother with the huge recessed space for it? And does that space lead to a chimney? Is this just the world’s most bizarre space heater design? I am just—so totally baffled by this thing.

Lets look at someone else’s living space.

I saved this first with the thought, “Man alive those are some huge bricks; where did he even get them?” I have since realized that, duh, they’re certainly stone tiles, not huge bricks, but still, they are pretty ginormous, and lend a chilly, austere severity to Jasley’s room. Most of the wealthy seem to prefer warmer spaces; McMurdo Barriston and Nobliss Gordon’s offices are all wood and warm brown shades (even though Gordon likes to sit around in the dark), maybe accented with cool furnishings here and there. Likewise McGillis’s apartment, above; the enormous purple rug in the middle of it is the one cool touch in a mostly neutral-warm palate.

This certainly contrasts Jasley, who is, I’m pretty sure, one of the financial moguls of Jupiter—he heads J.P. Trust, which sounds very much like a bank name to me, and we know finance is one of Teiwaz’s corporate activities. Does he just has unusually spare tastes for a rich man in the setting? That seems unlikely, given his loud coat and paisley-decorated battleship. Or is the loud stuff for a public face, while privately he prefers the more stark sensibility? (Of course, it’s also possible that it’s mostly a meta choice, to remove any warmth from around the character, as he’s not a man the audience is meant to feel warmly towards. But I always want to look for the in-universe reason first, for a project like this.)

Also, Jasley, you’re so rich. Get some more comfortable furniture for you and your goons to sit on, jeez.

Lastly, to stay with Jupiter for a moment longer, I offer some flowers.

This is the arrangement Jasley sent to Naze’s memorial service. I wondered for a bit where these come from—imported, for maximum braying display of wealth and power? Local, because trying to transport fresh flowers across the expanse of space sounds like an enormous pain in the ass when you could just build a greenhouse locally? It seems to me that these are probably local—local to Saisei, even. All the other flower arrangements in this scene look like they contain mostly the same sorts of flowers, just in far more modest numbers. That suggests to me that there’s probably a florist in Saisei’s shopping district who occasionally gets ludicrous amounts of money from some mafioso or another who wants to swagger a bit at a rival’s memorial. What a life, eh?

Lets look at a little more ‘in-the-life’ stuff for the setting.

Language & Arts: A short section on, as it says, language and arts.

So, while of course the series is voiced all in Japanese, overwhelmingly, the written language of the setting is English. The signs, text from Gjallarhorn/Ariadne databases, newsfeed scrolls—all of it is in English. Given the cultural mishmash the Earth and its outer orbit colonies have become—look no further than Mikazuki Augus sitting alongside Biscuit Griffon!—I’m inclined to think English is just the language that survived as the dominant written text, and is probably the language everyone is “actually” speaking (see Translation Convention). There are a few places where others crop up, though! They are in exactly the places you’d expect.

I can’t make out the full title on the book kidlet!Gaelio has here, but I do see “Im” and “Wald,” so it’s “In the ____ Forest” in German. I can’t imagine the organizations’ members on the whole speak the language—we see English on all their screens—but it’s not at all surprising that the leaders of the organization would have some exposure to it, though German is not, itself, a linguistic descendant of Old Norse. (Of course, if associating Norse myth with the German language is as close as IBO ever gets to the UC’s fascination with Nazi stand-ins, we should all count our blessings.)

The other language in the show is the more obvious one—Teiwaz is the place in the show where the yakuza/mafia trappings dwell most openly. The first time we see Japanese in the show is in their brotherhood ceremony, and they are where it crops up most regularly. There are a few places I’d like to mention specifically, though.

So, that thing I mentioned earlier, where I said the language on screens was always English? This is the only exception, and it’s really cleverly deployed. Teiwaz may or may not conduct all their internal business in Japanese—their ceremonies use it, but English is still the dominant written language in Saisei—but Radice uses the language for all his accounting. We know that, not only did Radice betray Tekkadan to Galan Mossa, he had also been engaged in the more mundane crime of embezzlement, and who would ever have caught him at it? No one in Tekkadan reads the language, even if they did understand accounting well enough to follow his tracks—Merribit was, I suspect, the only person in the organization who had even a chance of figuring it out, and she was on Mars. Radice is a rat bastard, but not an un-clever one.

The other places we see the language in the show are unconnected to Teiwaz, save perhaps through discreet family alliances. We see Iok practicing some calligraphy during his mid-season “exile,” and we know he has a longstanding family connection with Teiwaz, so him playing around with the language is eyebrow-raising, but not all that shocking.

The other place is a little weirder, though.

Okay, so, Makanai Togonosuke—that is a seriously Japanese name. I think he’s actually the only example in the show of someone who has a Japanese family and personal name. He was the Prime Minister of the economic bloc that had its capital in Edmonton, Canada, but that’s not so strange—the economic blocs encompass huge, improbably strata of geography, after all. The weird thing is that Arbrau isn’t the economic bloc that actually includes Japan—Japan is in the Oceanian Federation. Arbrau has all of Russia, which certainly gets it very close to Japan, but it does make me very curious about Makanai’s early history.

Did his parents emigrate? They must have stayed fairly connected to their Japanese heritage—despite being a leader of Arbrau, Makanai never lost his grip on Japanese culture. It’s not just his name, but his clothes and his housing, too. Of course, his island exile might have been around Japan; if he maintained strong ties to the country, and remained fond of it, why not live there while in exile? This would certainly match with having to travel over water to land in Anchorage. Perhaps this strong connection factors into whatever scandal it was that got him ousted in the first place?

In any case, it seems Japanese culture certainly survived the Calamity War and on into the future, where we can still find calligraphy practiced as an art, and bonsai trees tended as a hobby.

What about more traditional art? Well, certainly you can find examples of paintings all over the show, in offices and halls and homes. I wanted to turn my eyes to two specific examples of things we see framed in the show. The first is not a painting, but actually a photograph.

Specifically, it’s a black and white photo (maybe two of them) hanging up in the store where Atra worked at the beginning of the season. Now, a black and white photo hanging in a store wouldn’t seem so strange in a modern setting—it’s the town founding! Or the store opening! Or just some generic decoration!—but it does seem pretty weird in a futuristic setting long, long after the development of color photography! We know color photography still exists—the show’s last ending sequence is a slow pan-out from an in-universe photo, after all—so what possible reason could there be for the set of black and white photos here? People work in monochrome for artistic reasons sometimes, but this photo is just a bunch of buildings—it really does look like a “founding of the town” kind of photo, save that, again, this is a far-future sci-fi setting that has no reason to have been limited to black and white photography any time within the last, what, four to five hundred years?

Suffice to say, I find it pretty bizarre.

On the topic of pictures of places from long ago, though, what does everyone make of the painting on the left here?

Specifically, what are those spires on the left side? They don’t look like any kind of object I can make out, nor any sort of architecture with which I’m familiar. They’re not ship masts, nor do they match up with Gjallarhorn’s HQ ship-island, Vingolf. I sort of like the idea that we’re looking at some kind of very early spaceport facility, though the geography on the right side is a little prominent to be landing a big shuttle on. It almost has to be some kind of old Earth structure, though, given the painting’s location in the private home of a member of the Seven Stars.

Lastly, I wanted to showcase something that I wish I saw paid a bit more attention to in all the post-series Ride drama—the young man’s artistic streak. I can’t prove he’s responsible for every one of the works below, but it does seem in line with what we know he did—the Tekkadan logo, which Orga asked him for, and no small portion of the Isaribi’s interior graffiti, which we can see him working on in the second closer. He has an eye for fun shapes and mural work, and if he’s responsible for all or even most of the paintings we see around Tekkadan and Tekkadan-adjacent properties, art clearly consumed a huge portion of his time. Of course, for all the hugely colorful work on e.g. the orphanage, we don’t see Ride doing anything artistic in the second season. In retrospect, I wonder if this is some early foreshadowing of the darker path he’s headed down—that he puts down the paintbrush to focus on mobile suit training instead.

In any case, here are a few screenshots of, presumably, his stuff that caught my eye.

It’s a little thing, but the sunburst here is pretty, its curves and use of color somewhat more delicate than a lot of Ride’s stuff. A lot of his stuff is big and bold, using large amounts of red, orange and gold—this is softer than that, though it still speaks to a certain brightness of image and hope. It even kind of matches the bridge’s color palate!

This, on the other hand, is much more in keeping with his usual stuff. It also confounds me, in that it certainly looks like calligraphy, but I can’t make heads or tails of any Japanese characters that might be hiding in there, and it certainly isn’t using the English alphabet. I’d dearly love to know what, if anything, it’s saying, though. If it isn’t a rendition of any particular writing system, I wonder if it was inspired by Teiwaz’s big brotherhood ceremony banners? Ride wasn’t at that particular ceremony, but enough people were whom Ride might have pestered for details about what it was like that I could see him hearing about it—and that’s assuming he didn’t just see some around Saisei or the Turbines ship at some point between Tekkadan’s first joining up with Teiwaz and McGillis and Orga standing around having this conversation. If that is the source of the inspiration, I wonder what Ride was trying to communicate with this? What words he thought he was writing?

Lastly, I turn an eye to this fountain of feathers. This is the least likely to be Ride’s work of the three, especially if it’s chalk instead of paint, but if it is his, I wonder where his mind was at when he drew it? Wings, for freedom? Feathers, for angels, for death and/or the afterlife? It’s a piece that looks perpetually unfinished, or perhaps restless—I like to imagine it is his work, but it’s from after Orga and Mikazuki’s deaths, but before Ride has cut ties with his old gang, when he’s still wrestling with what to do and, perhaps, still waiting on the older boys to come up with a plan he can stomach the idea of.

And with that bit of shameless speculation, I draw this portion of the essay to a close.

The second half of this essay will contain the other two categories mentioned at the start: Characterization and HIlarity. The second category will consists of pictures that illuminate or provoke questions about the show’s characters. The final category contains pictures I just thought were funny and wanted to highlight. If you got through this whole post and still want more, keep an eye out!

#mobile suit gundam: iron-blooded orphans #gundam ibo #g tekketsu #atra mixtra #ride mass #togonosuke makanai #teiwaz #gjallarhorn #worldbuilding #my writing #ibo meta

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chilly-territory · 8 years

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Do you mean kudelia could be in love with Orga? I really thought they had good chemistry at first, but then the anime seemed to keep pushing her toward mika

That’s what I call part of Okada’s style, for better or for worse, in particular it’s the part that you have to get used to and develop a taste for because frankly, at first it just feels like jagged writing and things coming out of nowhere, but upon a second watch and keeping your eyes out for easy to miss details, it stops looking as incoherent and actually starts making sense and even follows certain logic.

The thing is, thinking that romance is set in stone is a no-no. Characters develop and change as the plot progresses, especially a plot of IBO’s complexity. Take Lafter, for an example within IBO-verse. When she was first introduced, no small number of people added her to Mika’s harem because she seemed interested in him. The reality was she was Naze’s “wife” though and, from her lines, even slept with him, yet in the end she ended up developing feelings for Akihiro. An intricate route, isn’t it.

So, in my understanding, Kudelia underwent a similar process. Until Dorts, as she was gradually accumulating various knowledge and experience, she still preserved the naive teen - “otome” if you want - side about her not unlike your typical harem heroines. I even arguedthat her romance with Mika made sense up until that point (and I still think so, but only until that point). But in Dorts everything changed for her character. I doubt anyone would deny that the romantic plotline with Mika just… flatlined after that. Not only because they all got too busy, but because of how rapidly she was forced to grow up and mature in the light of her being used as a pawn to further Nobliss Gordon’s warmongering interests and the resultingdeath of Fumitan and massacre of the colony workers. She simply lost that naive side, to never reunite with it again.

It’s at that time that the nature of her crush on Mika that was always more a hero crush than it was romantic to begin with (even her attempt to console him like Fumitan did a child testifies to it) had started to change for good. At the same time, that huge forced leap in development upon Fumitan’s death equipped her with the necessary maturity to start fully appreciating the person Orga is and to see their similarities, as well as develop an understanding as fellow leaders shouldering responsibility for others and the pain of difficult choices the other was facing. That was when she started looking Orga’s way (quite literally, btw, in episode 23 and 24, for example) and when the two of them became truly equal.

There was a lot of important firsts for Kudelia with Orga. He was the first person to try to understand her in episode 3, as well as letting her hear the name he chose for his group first, he was the first to explicitly include her into Tekkadan’s family in episode 9 during their talk with McMurdo Barriston (remember her little overwhelmed “Orga…”, the only time she called him by the name?), and he was the first to acknowledge her equal standing in episode 21 with a little smile despite their dire straits. His attempt to understand her at the beginning of season 1 was nicely mirrored at the beginning of season 2 when she took her turn to make effort to understand him, too.

As sad as it is, Mika, unlike Orga, can never share or understand the ideals she fights for, her worries and burdens related to them. She grew to be too big and too mature for the Mika and Atra level anymore which invalidated the triangle to me well before Atra made an awkward move on Mika about babies and he accepted in his usual blunt and direct manner. This difference in the maturity level was especially striking with Atra since it’s Atra Kudelia spends a lot of time communicating with, with how Kudelia handled Atra’s outburst like a mature adult (despite having zero experience in romance and baby-making herself) with a well settled set of priorities and values. It just doesn’t look plausible to me at this stage that an accomplished mature person like Kudelia can be interested in Mika romantically anymore (and btw, it never once looked to me like Merribit could be interested in Orga romantically, because to my eyes her attitude was always more motherly than anything else and his of a child before an adult, and hey look, the show confirmed I wasn’t wrong in that interpretation).

Now, make no mistake: Kudelia is worried sick about Mika. But not because she’s in love with him. She cares about him greatly as family, and she’s smart enough to see that the path he’s taking leads straight to his own demise. She also understands that it’s his own will, his own choice and that there’s nothing she, or anyone (even Orga…), can do about it. Of course it would leave her feeling sad and powerless.

And so, keeping all of the above in mind, we’re back to this scene.

I was asked in the comments, “Other possibilities? …How so?” Here’s how:

The one calling the shots in Tekkadan is obviously Orga and Orga alone, not Mika, so the one to order the break-off with her, without telling her in person at that, was also Orga.

I interpret Kudelia’s frustration here as a mixture of two:- her being hurt because Orga left her completely out of the loop even though he himself had acknowledged her all the way back in season 1 as a part of his family;- her anger at herself for failing to notice what was going on with him and where Tekkadan was headed even though she was supposed to be Tekkadan’s - and his - family and should’ve seen the signs.

Now, by way of conclusion let me say the following: this take is my own, and by no means am I forcing it on anyone. Feel free to disagree, but keep something in mind (not to sound preachy though): no matter who you ship, details, even if they’re inconvenient for your ship, should never be ignored, because you would rob yourself of the chance to fully understand the story. In this case, what constitutes obvious food for thought that shouldn’t be ignored is things like Kudelia never agreeing to Atra’s idea of farming together with Mika once her job is done, her encouraging Atra to go for Mika if she wanted, her constant WTF reactions to Atra suggesting she should pursue Mika too, and her applying the word “suki” to both Mika and Atra equally (ever since season 1 we, as the audience, are often presented these types of events from Atra’s perspective, but it doesn’t at all mean that we should take Atra’s perspective for our own as she’s a clearly biased observer/participant, that is, Atra interpreting Kudelia’s “suki” as romantic doesn’t at all mean Kudelia meant it as romantic). That’s how I myself always try to approach works that have many complex layers like Gundam IBO does.

#gundam ibo #g tekketsu

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stillness-in-green · 7 years

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Human Debris Masterpost (11/?)

After somewhat longer than I’d been intending, I’m back with the next post, after which I will likely go watch another episode or two in hopes of having a follow-up soon! In the meantime, though, I misstated last time that the Earth arc was over; turns out we have one last wind-down there before we move into the Hashmal arc...

EPISODE THIRTY-THREE — Sovereign of Mars

In the continuing saga of my being delighted by Makanai and Chad, Chad is literally the first person Makanai asks about when Kudelia, visiting him in an unreasonably gorgeous hospital room, tells him that Tekkadan will be withdrawing from Earth. He even says that he’s heard Chad’s already out of the hospital, suggesting Kudelia is not the first person he’s asked for information about the young man—he quips that it’d be bad for his conscience if such a young man died protecting someone of his age. We will continue to see this gratitude play out over the course of the season, both in some small nods and some very big ones indeed. Keep an eye out!

On that note, though, we cut over to the young man himself, sitting by himself and looking over a data slate.

Immediately, Akihiro and Lafter arrive, and Akihiro guesses in one try that Chad is looking over a list of the fallen. As Chad blames his shortcomings for the (not inconsiderable) length of the list, Akihiro tries to tell him that it isn’t his fault, to which Chad breathes out an uneven breath and shakes his head, but doesn’t argue the point, instead commenting that this must be how Orga feels all the time.

The sharp-eyed may notice something on the data slate that the show has avoided telling us up to this point—that Aston has taken Akihiro’s last name, Altland. Hold that thought for just a sec.

Chad folds in on himself, saying that he hates every second of still being alive, that it would be much better to step forward and take the hit himself. What they tell him after this—and what is there to tell him, really?—we don’t see, as Akihiro and Lafter take their leave.

Lafter comments in this scene that she didn’t know Aston had shared Akihiro’s last name, to which Akihiro replies that a lot of the Brewers’ kids didn’t have last names when they came into Tekkadan’s care, but that “they” had taken good care of Masahiro. He doesn’t mention Derma here, but we will, much later, find out that he has the last name as well; Akihiro gave it to the last two surviving members of Masahiro’s unit.

This is extremely touching, but also makes me wonder about our own Tekkadan trio’s last names. Were they captured at an old enough age that they remembered their surnames, or is it just a difference between CGS and the Brewers? Perhaps the bosses still used full names at CGS for, oh, scheduling rotations or rollcalls, whereas the Brewers just threw children into combat as necessary with no more attention paid to it than that? Or perhaps Maruba Arkay was more careful with his record-keeping than Brooke Kabayan?

In any case, Akihiro says that he wishes he’d talked to Aston more when he had the chance; that it’s too late after someone’s died. Remember this line for later, because it’ll come up again, and it’ll be a heartbreaker.

After some politicking elsewhere, we return to Takaki and Fuuka’s apartment, where Fuuka is staring sadly at the photo of the two of them with Aston. She asks if he remembers when they took it.

It was, we find, the day they’d randomly decided on for Aston’s birthday. Fuuka made “a great feast”—for context, I invite you to look at the cake and two modest side dishes on display in the photo—and Aston talked more than usual. I like to think they had to rope a neighbor into taking this picture, explaining Aston’s deeply discomfited expression and unwillingness to look at the camera.

Otherwise, this scene largely exists to shed some more light on Takaki’s conflict about what to do next with his life, so we’ll move on.

We find Chad and Akihiro in a group chat about Tekkadan’s next move, as Orga relays the terms of the deal McGillis is offering them—that whole “King of Mars” business that will prove to be so very costly for everyone involved. As Eugene asks what that’s even supposed to mean, Chad fills in that king ‘means someone important, right,’ illustrating very succinctly for us how woefully little these young man know about history. A shame, really, as some time spent with a history book might have provided enough examples of downfalls-brought-on-by-hubris that some of what’s to follow could have been avoided.

Like Mikazuki and Eugene, Chad and Akihiro are both cool to go with whatever Orga decides. Chad, at this point, is likely just so ready to be out of a leadership position, and Akihiro has never really second-guessed Orga ever since watching him get the Third Division out of that elephant vs. ant situation with Gjallarhorn back in the CGS days. No surprises here.

Takaki, on the other hand, is getting out while he can. He cites Fuuka’s happiness, and the happiness they have now, as things they’d be throwing away chasing an even bigger reward; he knows more people will die in pursuit of that golden ending, and he just can’t take risks like that, that gamble with his kid sister’s happiness. Akihiro, who, you’ll recall, has talked with Takaki before about younger siblings and how important they are, looks like he knows exactly how Takaki’s feeling here. He probably would have even if Takaki hadn’t spelled everything out, of course, but Takaki’s honest and earnest that way.

Chad, curiously, seems more reluctant to let Takaki go, protesting when Orga accepts Takaki’s resignation. I can’t imagine he begrudges Takaki his decision, but I wonder if he worries? We were told, way back when, that people like the orphans of Tekkadan can’t get good, safe, reliable jobs, which is the whole reason they work as child soldiers to begin with. Perhaps he’s concerned that, in choosing the happiness Takaki has now, Takaki is losing the very means he has to maintain that happiness?

As if to confirm this, we find them afterwards walking down the hallway, with Chad reassuring Takaki that Orga will try to find Takaki a good job on Earth. (And man, I don’t know if it’s Orga or Kudelia or what, but given that we find Takaki later working for Makanai, someone sure came through on this.)

Takaki apologizes about leaving, but Chad tells him not to, that the Earth Branch was saved thanks to him (a very generous assessment) and that they’ll always be family, even apart. This is a very sweet thing to say, but a dangerous one as well, if you look at this series through the lens of the many, many yakuza/mafia story tropes it’s been playing with since Day One. Mikazuki, perhaps a bit more aware of this, coldly rejects this, and tells them that Takaki’s only family is Fuuka now, so he doesn’t have to worry about Tekkadan anymore.

Akihiro tells them not to mind Mika’s brusqueness, that he’s doing it to be kind, and reiterates the message—that Takaki shouldn’t worry about Tekkadan’s fate from here on out, and should instead concentrate on living his life with his sister. He also thanks him for being friends with Aston, because Akihiro is resolved to remind us at every turn that his life is an unending parade of tragic loss, which has in turn made him extraordinarily sensitive to the value of camaraderie.

After ducking back in on Makanai and Kudelia, we have one last scene that is just determined to completely break my heart: Akihiro and Chad surveying the paltry few crates containing the personal effects of the dead Earth Branch members, and talking about places to belong.

Specifically, Chad says that Earth was like a second home for them. A strange thing, he thinks, since when he was Human Debris, he didn’t think there was a place for him anywhere—much less two places.

Indeed, if you consider a stray comment from one of the Earth Branch kids some time ago, that people in Edmonton were happy to see them, it’s very possible that Arbrau might have been a more welcoming home than Chryse. I remember reading a staff interview once, about how the person in question thought of Tekkadan as people who spent their lives at work. You can see the truth of that observation in this: while it may or may not be the case that some members of Tekkadan have apartments or houses to go back to, the only ones who we ever explicitly see go home are Biscuit and Takaki—the only two members who are willing to leave Tekkadan to protect the happiness they already have.

Even if it was just for a short while, I’m so glad the Earth Branch kids, and Chad in particular, had a shot at knowing there was someplace else that would welcome them home.

As if to accentuate that his time in the spotlight is done, Chad gets the preview text this episode. He notes that to protect the place he belongs, he’ll have to start training again when he gets back to Mars, and calls to Akihiro let him do sit-ups with him. (Truly, Akihiro’s exercise regimen is a black hole from which no character even tangentially related to him can escape.)

EPISODE THIRTY-FOUR — Vidar Rising

After several episodes away from home, we finally return to Mars, and with it, Derma is onscreen again, standing with Yukinojo watching a Landman Rodi get lowered into the hangar.

He asks if there’s been a pilot decided yet, to which the old man replies that of the three Rodis that made it back, Chad will have one, but the others haven’t been assigned yet. Derma asks, politely but very directly, to be able to use it, and Yukinojo, a bit surprised, notes that it’s a machine salvaged from the Brewers, and probably tied to bad memories.

Derma acknowledges that to Human Debris like him, the Rodis were basically coffins. However, if Aston piloted one on Earth (died in one on Earth), then he’ll do the same. Derma, just to be clear, is now the only surviving member of what was originally a tight-knit group of five. I’m altogether certain the kid is dragging around a death wish the size of Jupiter by this point, and just… Thank god he managed to connect with Dante, because I think he would otherwise be far too depressing a character to even think about.

Speaking of the devil, Dante appears to point out that Akihiro figured Derma would say something like that, and already arranged it (Mikazuki is not the only person who can cut seniority lines for personal protégés, it seems). He says that he’ll pilot the third, and exhorts Derma that they’ll show the world what former Human Debris can do—Derma, of course, had not used any such past-tense phrasing about himself a moment ago. He agrees, though, soft and emphatic.

Meanwhile…

Keeping true to his words in last episode’s trailer, Chad is out training (read: keeping just ahead of Hush, despite being in a much lower end machine). This is the very first time the audience has seen him in a mobile suit, and he’s looking happier than we’ve seen him in ages, rowdy and competitive, like he’s had a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. Lafter and Azee observe as much themselves; that Chad is unusually “amped up” after the bad time he had on Earth.

He’s still in good spirits a few scenes later, when he runs into Yukinojo back in the base. The old man compliments him for getting stronger on Earth, which, as he generally does, Chad downplays, saying it’s thanks to Yukinojo’s good maintenance. Yukinojo gives him a good friendly slap on the arm for this show of modesty, and says they’ll be counting on him, presumably a fairly standard, “Welcome to your mecha piloting gig,” phrase.

He notices something weird, though, sniffing at the air. Shortly afterwards, he interrupts a cute OT3 sequence between Mikazuki, Kudelia, and Atra to worriedly insist that something is going on with the old man, because he doesn’t smell anymore.

This leads to the revelation that Merribit and Yukinojo are dating, hence the old man keeping more on top of his hygiene. Chad—had not yet heard the news.

(I’m so sad we don’t get a real reaction image out of this, by the way, just a camera-pan-up-while-yelling-happens gag.)

Outside, Akihiro is critiquing Ride’s exercise regimen, in that it doesn’t have enough food in it, and Ride tries to be mature (he has to lead the young kids now, with Takaki gone) in the same sentence as he says something childish (he skipped dinner because he doesn’t like the bean stew they were serving). Akihiro jokingly chides him (a true rarity) that wanting to be strong is all the more reason not to be a picky eater, and I sit here wondering if he remembers that fish he turned his nose up at back in the first season.

Chad comes running up to ask if Akihiro had heard about the whole Old Man/Merribit dating thing, only to get a nonplussed, “Uh, yeah, duh?” reaction from Ride, and the observation that it happened when he was away on Earth from Akihiro.

Chad demands to know why no one told him, prompting Akihiro to ask, in confusion, why anyone would, leading to the above delightful teary-eyed face, and the helpless, muted question of, “Hey, we’re on the same team, right?”

Pretty much everyone at the time this episode aired took this display to mean that Chad had been harboring a crush on Merribit, and I’m inclined to agree. Firstly, because it’s the reading that makes the most sense of behavior that would seem really out of type otherwise. Secondly, because it means that if you believe, as I do, that Chad and Yamagi have got something going on in the epilogue, his earlier crush on Merribit suggests that Chad has a type: Yamagi and Merribit share a lot of traits, though Merribit has definitely grown more into them. Both blonde, both dedicated and soft-spoken, both coolly professional, and both with a not-very-deeply-buried sarcastic streak that gets more biting the more worried they get. It’s a really great bit of continuity, I think.

And that is the last of the red stripes we get this episode—finally, a short write-up!—so lets move on to the next one.

EPISODE THIRTY-FIVE — Awakening Calamity

After some unusually ominous opening narration and a duck-in to Saisei, we return to Eugene giving the sub-leader types some progress reports and instructions. Looking at who’s in the room suggests that Chad has landed himself something of a leader position since he got back—we have the head mechanic, the Teiwaz liason, the captain of the Muscle Squad, the captain of the Shooting Star Squad, and Chad. I don’t remember him having a particular group under him, but if he gets a squad name, I look forward to hearing it!

(He is still a bit hung-up on the news about the adults dating.)

Later on in the cafeteria, we find some discussion of pay raises. Shino, as was ever his wont, wants to go celebrate with girls, inviting Eugene and Chad along with him. Eugene, having had some time to think on it since that first night out at Saisei way back in season one, refuses, citing some very smooth-sounding talk of not being able to buy love with money. Chad immediately asks Merribit if this is true, and when she confirms, says he’ll pass as well. I cannot quite decide if I think it’s cute that he wants a real relationship or depressing that he had to double-check on the possibility of buying it. Either way, I hope Merribit is being paid extra for the amount of babysitting she does with these boys. (Akihiro is in this scene, but does not deign to participate in the nonsense.)

The next sequence, taking place in Kudelia’s office, starts out with some delightful OT3-building (Kudelia is handling Atra and Mikazuki’s money!), but derails somewhat when we find out that she is doing this for Ride and Akihiro as well, and is open to doing so for Hush if he’d like her to. The scene focuses more on the general inability of Mars’ disadvantaged children to handle money, but it’s interesting to note that Akihiro specifically has left his funds in Kudelia’s hands. Chalk it up to one of many, many conversations I wish we could have seen.

Returning to Tekkadan, we have a brief comic interlude of Chad puzzling over a shift in relationship dynamics between Shino and Zack, but don’t get to find out what went on with The Girls last night, as Eugene comes in with some assignments.

The main pilot trio (Mika, Akihiro, and Shino), as well as Chad, Hush and Zack, will be guarding Orga and his guest (McGillis, not in his Montag persona for once) during the latter’s visit. By this point, we can see that Chad is well nestled back in with the main fighting force, rather than stuck on a ship’s helm or on a different planet entirely, and it’s nice to think he’s getting some legit camaraderie back in his life.

McGillis takes a second to greet the other members of Tekkadan after shaking hands with Orga. Shino is the only one to verbally respond, while Akihiro makes a sound of acknowledgement and bows his head; Chad notices the latter, and hurriedly echos it. I wonder if the etiquette levels with Gjallarhorn are very different compared to what Chad dealt with on Earth? Or perhaps he just trusts Akihiro’s cues more than his own experience?

Akihiro drives the car on the way out to the mine as McGillis and Isurugi explain a bit about what they’re expecting to find there. This prompts Chad to ask if they shouldn’t be bringing some mobile suits as well, if the thing at the excavation site is so dangerous. McGillis drops the information that no, mobile suits might awaken the mobile armor, as they’re archenemies. As he’s been eyeballing Mikazuki all episode, he adds that Mikazuki’s Gundam must have fought mobile armors as well, three hundred years ago.

This attracts a bit of Akihiro’s attention, as the other Gundam pilot in the car, and he wonders what sort of monsters these mobile armors are, that mobile suits were made just to fight them. (And he has plenty of reason to wonder, seeing as his own Gusion is strong enough to crush lesser suits with ease and totally shrug off point-blank self-destruct explosions.)

McGillis doesn’t use the words Artificial Intelligence here, but says the mobile armor thinks by itself and fights automatically. Probably drawing on both his experience as a ship pilot and his close friendship with a hacker, Chad asks how that’s possible. McGillis mostly dodges the question, just explaining that the capacity to fight on its own is why it could be so destructive, back in its heyday.

(Akihiro and Chad, left with the car.)

As Iok shows up, here to ruin everything (as was ever his wont), Orga runs up, yelling at Chad to call Eugene and get him to send mobile suits out—Chad has in fact already got headphones on before Orga’s even started talking, because Chad knows a bomb about to go off when he damn well sees one.

It is too late to prevent the doom, though, as, with a fluid rippling of lights that looks it belongs to a different show entirely, a back-up chorus the likes of which we won’t hear again until Bael, and a sound effect like absolutely nothing else in the series, the mobile armor awakens.

And we will come back to this before too long, hopefully, with what I anticipate to be somewhat shorter posts, as the series is now well and truly past focusing on the Human Debris cast as Human Debris. I don’t doubt I’ll still find some stuff to ramble about, but things should speed up from here on out. Thanks for reading!

#mobile suit gundam: iron-blooded orphans #gundam ibo #g tekketsu #human debris #akihiro altland #chad chadan #dante mogro #derma altland #human debris project #my writing #ibo meta

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stillness-in-green · 7 years

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Human Debris Masterpost (9/?)

This is the second of two consecutive posts in the series, which I had to break up for length (whoops). The first one, dealing with the conclusion of the Dawn Horizon arc, can be found here. Don’t miss the moment I fell in love with Derma!

At this point, we begin the Silent War arc, with an episode I’ve been wanting to talk about for months now. I will attempt to manage my post length better in the future, but for now...

EPISODE THIRTY — Inauguration of the Arbrau Defense Forces

After some unsubtle foreshadowing courtesy of Makanai about what befalls those who try to take the quick way to their goals, we join the Earth Branch kids, as Takaki fields some conversation about what they’re going to do once the Arbrau Defense Force is all officially trained and on-duty and stuff.

Takaki hasn’t heard anything in particular yet, but Aston puts in that he likes the Earth. He doesn’t show much particular emotion in the statement, or immediately elaborate on why, but one of the unnamed characters (who, at the very least, have slightly more distinct designs than HQ-Tekkadan’s Random Brunettes) puts in that the food’s good, and Tekkadan members are welcome in the city.

This is pleasant to hear, if a bit surprising, given what we’ve been lead to believe about prejudice towards those in the Outer Spheres. Is this soley due to Tekkadan’s good rep? It’d make sense that Arbrau, who just found out Gjallarhorn was trying to interfere in their democratic process, is feeling particularly welcoming to the organization that exposed it. It may also be the case that the average person on the street is way less xenophobic than the average Gjallarhorn soldier.

In any case, Takaki tries to mollify the other boys about Radice, who they don’t much like, and don’t feel is a real Tekkadan member.

Aston and Takaki do an awful lot of silent watching of each other, at least in these first few episodes focusing on the Earth Branch. They clearly have a lot of thoughts about each other, but are both slow to comment, Takaki probably a little reluctant to possibly hit a sore spot or say something insensitive, and Aston perhaps not feeling it’s really his place. Will this cause them problems later? I guess we’ll find out!

But in the meantime, back to Chad! And also my screaming about Chad. I’ll ask my readers to cast their thoughts back to something I mentioned some time ago, waaay back in my third post. Specifically, Chad’s preview text for episode eleven, where he talks about only having been given torn, used clothes prior to joining CGS/Tekkadan (it’s unclear which he meant, but even CGS had uniforms), and how he’s more comfortable in dirty clothes.

We find him working on a tie and wearing some very nice clothes indeed, for what is apparently the very first time. Since this is not the actual day of the ceremony, I’m thinking he probably just got these delivered, and is trying them on to make sure everything fits correctly. I’m impressed he knows his way around a tie, honestly. Takaki compliments him, which he gets a bit abashed about, asking if it shouldn’t be Radice instead, whereupon we find out two things: firstly that Chad is indeed the one officially in charge of the Earth branch, and secondly that Makanai askied for Chad specifically. More on that in a little bit.

Aston is a little wide-eyed throughout this scene, for reasons he will talk about later.

Chad catches Aston staring and gets even more embarrassed, saying that he knew he looked weird after all. He’s clearly not feeling at all comfortable in the clothes, even as the smile on his face says that he’s still just a bit pleased. My guess is that even if he feels like a street-rat playing dress up, something everyone is going to know as he shows his face in front of a crowd, he’s still proud to be representing Tekkadan. And I love that the character writing is consistent enough to tie this back in to literally the only thing season one told about him personally, his comfort in used, dirty clothes.

Aston tries to explain his staring, but they’re interrupted by Radice, here to deliver the last batch of guidelines for the event, which Takaki jumps in to grab, saying Tekkadan will take care of guarding the venue while Chad attends the ceremony.

It’s indicative of Aston’s history, I think, that he’s apparently lippy around outsider adults, but shuts right down in the face of adults in his chain of command. He doesn’t even look at anyone during this exchange, just stares at the floor as Radice rebukes them all not to cause any more friction with the Arbrau Defense Force. He did the same around Kudal (although often he looked more terse about it, as Kudal was abusing the Brewers Debris quartet every time he was in the same room), which gives this reaction an air of ‘keep quiet, keep your head down, avoid trouble.’

Chad and Takaki are more openly bemused by the man’s attitude.

Ah, there’s the old terse Aston! As soon as the authoritative adult leaves the room, he more openly glares and grumbles around it.

Chad (because Chad has the patience of a saint and the self-esteem of a child abuse victim), says that Radice probably just has a lot on his mind, while Takaki (ever the optimist) points out that Radice has gotten more willing to listen to them over time, compared to how he was when he first joined, and jeezus, I dread to think how intolerable the man must have been at the start.

We close the scene with Radice briefly eavesdropping from outside the door, as Chad jokes that maybe Radice’s just given up on them because they’re so dumb (see again: self-esteem issues), and Chad plz stop hurting me this way you are wonderful and smart and deserve much better than what’s about to happen to you.

Takaki and Aston head on out, with Takaki chattering about how cool Mr. Chad looked. This leads Aston to ask about Chad’s history—that he used to be Human Debris like Aston himself, right? Takaki confirms, but does not follow up on the question at all, instead changing the subject to whether Aston will be coming home with him that night, as Fuuka likes having him over.

This is, perhaps, a good point to remind the reader that Takaki was nearly killed by Masahiro back during the Brewers Arc, something that I don’t doubt he is keenly aware of, though I don’t know how much of that Aston ever found out about. His unwillingness to press Aston about Aston’s own issues stemming from that history are likely rooted in that awareness—that he would prefer not to dwell on that old division, telling himself that Aston is a member of Tekkadan now, and thus that Human Debris stuff doesn’t matter anymore! (Spoilers: It still matters.)

In any case, Aston turns down the invite, noting that Fuuka has a test she’s been studying for, and he doesn’t want to distract her with fussing over him. As was the case back with the Brewers, Aston shows himself to be observant and thoughtful, and with a tendency towards mediation that he only ever shows to his peers. Takaki looks a little startled, and the next scene gives us the general impression that Aston has, perhaps, noticed more about Fuuka’s habits than her own brother has.

After the credits, we return to Mars, and I get to roll around some more in my Human Debris feelings.

Shino is chitchatting about how Chad will be pleased with the delivery of Shidens Tekkadan is getting ready to ship, though if they’d gotten them to him earlier, it would have made him look better. Akihiro agrees, in an unusually upbeat mood. When Lafter comments on it, Akihiro observes that they were both Human Debris.

Dante joins in to confirm, saying that Chad will get the job done, in a ‘Chad is awesome and we are proud of him’ moment that gives me more warm fuzzies about the Human Debris trio than my body has room for. Ride breaks it up with some ribbing about how Akihiro would get nervous if it was him.

Akihiro scowls theatrically at the teasing, and I am reminded of Biscuit commenting that he was surprised Akihiro came to the Tekkadan+Turbines oath-swearing ceremony, as it didn’t seem like the kind of thing he liked. At that time, Akihiro said it was an important moment for the family. This, though, is an important moment for our ex-red-stripes, one they’re clearly all feeling the resonance of, and it is great great great.

After a check-in with Arianrhod, we return to Earth for the day of the ceremony, where Chad is giving some last-minute instructions. They’re at the parliament building, actually! It’s the same place where Kudelia gave her speech during the season one finale, and which will eventually be renamed in honor of Makanai.

As the rest of the group disperses, Chad calls back Takaki just long enough to place him in charge. Their trust in each other shines here, but knowing what’s coming, we also know that that trust can, itself, be a weakness—because Tekkadan focuses so strongly on obeying their appointed leaders, to the point that they don’t really think for themselves, there’s no protocol for what happens when a leader goes down, no way to put on the brakes even as things start to feel really wrong. This will prove disastrous over the entire rest of the series, but particularly in this arc.

As the ceremony gets underway, Takaki finally asks Aston why he’s been so out of it lately. Aston responds with self-deprecation, saying that he isn’t very smart, and doesn’t know how to describe what he’s feeling.

He was surprised when he saw Chad dressed up; it made him want everyone to see him. He continues to puzzle over further explanation, until Takaki finally fills in the word—pride. He was proud of Chad. Aston confirms, and Takaki continues—he was also happy.

Aston looks briefly, openly shocked by this assessment, turning his gaze away awkwardly, but confirming that as well. He was happy.

You guys, I’m starting to feel pretty confident in my assessment about Aston’s stunted emotional self-awareness.

As we approach the beginning of the end, we find Chad in Makanai’s office, where they have apparently not headed to the ceremony just yet. Makanai is complimenting Tekkadan’s work as a military advisor, and thanking Chad for it, which Chad is a bit startled by, brushing it off.

Makanai presses, though, stating that he’s counting on Chad as a person in charge of Tekkadan—and then he namedrops Chad specifically, leaving the young man completely stunned at the recognition. The way he breathes, “My name…” here just guts me. AUGH MY RED STRIPE FEELS.

Before this gets any more personal, though, Makanai’s assistant (who I will have some words about, in a post I intend to make someday about various odds-and-ends I’ve noticed going through the show again; suffice to say the guy is a CHAMP) comes in and, showing his own observational skills, comments on the flower arrangement sitting on the table, asking when it was delivered, because it wasn’t in the room earlier.

Before he’s even all the way through the question, Chad is leaping to a terrible (and sadly accurate) conclusion. As Makanai reaches out and touches the flowers, Chad yells his name (calling him ‘sensei’, fascinatingly enough), the vase emits a beeping sound, and we go to slo-mo.

Chad body-tackles Makanai to the floor just before the explosive goes off, removing him, alas, from these recaps for an agonizingly long time. He’ll be back, though!

Outside, as soon as the sound of an explosion hits the street, Aston is making to bolt inside. He has to be physically stopped by Takaki, reminding him that a) Arbrau is in charge of security inside the building, and b) Mr. Chad is in there, and he’ll take care of whatever happened!

When they overhear that Makanai’s been injured, Aston wastes no time in grabbing an Arbrau security dude by the lapels and demanding to know about Chad. Alas, the rest of the world is not so attentive to the names of random teenaged security personnel, and the guy has no idea who he’s talking about.

After a brief timeskip of three days, we return to a bunch of angry kids (and they are kids; not one of them looks even as old as Chad and the other core members back on Mars, seeming closer to Takaki in age) already showing the first signs of frustration that Takaki doesn’t have any orders direct from Orga, but is just relaying them via Radice. As has been and will continue to be the case, Aston keeps his own council, just keeping an eye on Takaki during the argument. He is less of a mediator through here, for reasons that we’ll touch on shortly.

Here we find him lurking in the hallway while Takaki tries to talk Radice into letting him contact Tekkadan directly—Radice says that’s his job while Chad is still unavailable, and Takaki lacks the wherewithal to just up and pull rank on him.

In the hallway outside, Aston reveals that he, like the other Tekkadan members, wants to go and avenge Chad, but feels supporting Takaki is more important. I think, though, that the fact that he never jumps in to try and smooth things over between Takaki and the others does speak to just how much he wants that revenge. He wants to support Takaki, but probably doesn’t have any words to soothe the other members, because frankly, he agrees with them—so he just says nothing.

Back on Mars, Orga has smelled a rat in all of this, and decides to rush the Shiden delivery, opting to send Akihiro and some others along. Akhiro, who is without a doubt more pissed about this than he is immediately showing through his immediate worry and confusion, wastes no time in agreeing.

He comments here that he wants to hurry, as he has a bad feeling. It’s probably just his experience talking, as well as his trust in Orga’s bad feeling, but it does please me a bit to think that he’s having that shoujo manga “react as though I’ve sensed my loved ones’ mortal injury despite being miles apart and having exactly zero psychic ability” feeling that the show will traffic in more and more heavily in its wind-down episodes.

We return to find Takaki and Aston talking about the possibility of a war breaking out, and what they should do without explicit orders from Orga. Takaki, who made it through an entire season’s worth of Orga’s rhetoric about Tekkadan being family, wants to trust Radice, as well as hold out on Earth because Fuuka likes it so much. Aston is entirely ambivalent about Radice, but wants to protect Takaki and Fuuka’s happiness however he can.

However he can, though for him that really only means killing or dying.

Whoops. The Human Debris stuff still matters.

Takaki protests this talk angrily, which seems to honestly bemuse Aston, in a strong echo of Akihiro’s early confusion about Orga offering him freedom, and the rest of Tekkadan welcoming him as family. It just isn’t their first instinct, these red-stripes of ours, to understand the value the people around them place on their lives. Aston is even more clueless about it than most, as Takaki is more reluctant to talk frankly about it than, say, Orga or Shino, Eugene or Mikazuki were with Akihiro.

Yes, as Sudden Narrator Takaki tells us, this is all going to end in pain.

Oh god, these are so long. Thank you all for reading all this, and apologies again for any confusion with the back-to-back posts. Comments and discussion are totally welcome, by the way! Anyone who wants to talk Human Debris, or IBO generally, is wholly welcome to do so via reblogs or direct messages.

#mobile suit gundam: iron-blooded orphans #gundam ibo #g tekketsu #human debris #chad chadan #aston altland #akihiro altland #dante mogro #human debris project #my writing #ibo meta

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stillness-in-green · 8 years

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Human Debris Masterpost (5/10)

Welcome back to my erratically-scheduled post pointing at all the pictures of the Human Debris in the show and yelling about how great they are. So glad I can post this week in celebration of my second- and third-string favorites all still being alive so far! It is not where I expected to be a few weeks ago, let me tell you. Here’s hoping it sticks for another month or so!

So, moving right on in, we have:

EPISODE SEVENTEEN — Kudelia’s Decision

So, after a large chunk of episode, the group on the ground finally gets through to the Isaribi with new orders from Orga. We see Chad here briefly with Merribit—and I wonder if this sequence of episodes is around about when Chad first started developing his thing for her that season two will be alluding to? If it’s mostly just been the two of them sitting around the bridge for hours waiting anxiously for contact, they’d have had some time to talk.

Meanwhile, down in the hangar, Yukinojo is yelling orders about finalizing prep work on the mobile suits, and we get this expression from Dante, as he suits up for what he’s clearly expecting to be his first time in an actual mobile suit. We’ll see how well that works out for him shortly.

Akihiro, meanwhile, has gone to the bridge of the Hammerhead, presumably to hear Orga’s update, and we get what is, I think, the only exchange of words between him and Naze, as Naze asks him what he’ll do.

He smiles, and we cut to the Hammerhead’s hangar, where he’s about to head out. He cuts on through a shaping-up debate between Lafter and Azee about the former wanting to accompany him, an exchange he’s got no time to wait on because he is chomping at the bit to get out there and show off the newly-remodeled Gusion. It’s pretty adorable, actually, this level of enthusiasm. He’s smiling and fired up and everything.

Back in the hangar, Dante is just shimmying right on into Barbatos over Yukinojo’s belated protests.

Ride is also concerned, but Dante says he’s done the simulations, and if it’s just a delivery it’ll be totally fine!

Spoilers: It is not.

Dante gets a brain overload full of Barbatos data since the Gundam hasn’t been tuned up for anyone other than Mikazuki. Yukinojo says the limiters are off, though season two will prove that there are, in fact, some limiters yet to remove. In the end, Yukinojo flies a shuttle out to meet Mikazuki part way.

Shortly after, Mikazuki runs interference for the new crews’ shuttle as it’s headed for the Isaribi. Ein picks up on the true target and goes for it, but gets forced off course by the ship itself swooping in to the rescue, not unlike it did back at the beginning of episode 5. Chad is, as he likely was then, the one who performed this maneuver, we see when Orga compliments his timing as he and the others come into the bridge.

Loving this smug look here. You rock, Chad.

Everyone settles in, and Atra welcomes the news crew in as well—Orga has clearly not been completely clear about what’s going down (probably because he isn’t sure of exactly what Kudelia’s intentions are), as Chad asks who the new people are.

Outside, the battle continues, with Shino and Akihiro—the latter still not quite accustomed to the Gusion’s information overload—joining the fray.

There’s a bit of combatant exchange, and Ein swerves very near to the Isaribi, though Shino diverts him at the last minute. As the Arianrhod fleet closes in, the three pilots regroup to the top of the Isaribi. Akihiro is still looking game, but the nerves are definitely creeping in. As Kudelia’s begins her speech, the episode draws to a close, leading us to…

EPISODE 18 — Voice

As Kudelia challenges Gjallarhorn head-on—interrupt my speech if you dare—the pilots are all kind of freaked out by the direct challenge. Even Akihiro’s stoicism falters!

Mikazuki seems ready to use the distraction as an opportunity to charge, but Chad (offscreen again, but I’m pretty sure it’s him this time—his voice is a bit higher than Eugene’s, but lower than Biscuit’s) tells him to freeze. And lo, the gambit works, and the ship drifts on through a tableau of unmoving mobile suits and ships. It’s a hell of a moment.

The news crew stops rolling, and we finally get a shot of the ship from the front again, getting us this shot with Chad.

After the credits, the group is hailed by Montag-gillis—somewhat amusingly, Chad is the one who responds most noticeably, sitting up straighter with a surprised noise when the image shows up on the display screens. He’s definitely opened up a little from his tendency towards introversion early on! I wonder what it was about the mask that prompted such a strong reaction from just him, though? No one but Kudelia has seen this strange masked man yet, after all. (Mikazuki, or course, pegs him immediately, before even hearing him speak. Mikazuki is an A+ wrench in McGillis’s maneuverings.)

Our next red-stripe rendezvous is Akihiro training against Shino in the simulator back on the Hammerhead—rather the first time we’ve seen Shino engaged in active training, amusingly enough. Lafter notes Akihiro’s care for others, and is a little gloomy about it, for reasons she can’t quite pin down.

As she observed, Akihiro asks after Shino when they wrap up, commenting that he’s surprised to see Shino showing such a dutiful streak—because of course, as I’ve discussed before, Akihiro’s gung-ho attitude about fights is partly a sense of protectiveness for his makeshift family, and part self-confidence issues about the necessity of earning his keep. Shino, meanwhile, is clearly still carrying some weight from his foray onto the Brewers’ ship and the lives it cost—he says that for him, getting into a mobile suit and receiving orders is far less responsibility than having to lead others and give orders himself, and he far prefers his new role to the older one. You can see the moment Akihiro realizes what he’s getting at, too.

The talk of responsibility carries over into the next scene, where Mikazuki brings up Fumitan’s concern with it back on Dort, leading Kudelia to the breakdown she’s been holding off on. And with that reminder, the credits begin, but just as they do we get a great little shot of Chad and Dante paying respects at the little mini-memorial that’s been set up at the communications seat where Fumitan did her work prior.

Interesting to see Dante here, as he never had much (any?) interaction with her—I wonder if he’d come up to talk to Chad, and we’ve just caught them reflecting on it? Or are they the ones that put the bowl there? It’s mostly full of sweets, which to me suggests the more likely source is all Tekkadan’s kids that were just introduced to funeral rites within the last few weeks, and still remember what to do about such partings—supported by the cut to the kitchen, where we find the kids back at work learning to read and write, and Ride has been writing out Fumitan’s name.

With that, resolve is made, and the group readies for the last approach to Earth. Before we move on, though, Dante’s got the preview this week! His dialogue runs as follows:

“When I’m frustrated, I silently look at an electrical diagram. When I stare at the refined, organized information, feeling down for being told I have no presence and my name’s unknown seems to be a waste. For the end here, my name is Dante Mogro. Remember that.”

And man, this is just totally delightful. It’s a bit self-serious towards the end, but it’s very illuminating of Dante’s pleasure in being thanked, and his eagerness to get a mobile suit of his own in season two. He seems to take the ephemeral existence of Human Debris with a measure more defiance than Akihiro (who began the series resolved to make himself useful above and beyond what was expected of him) or Chad (who seemed to throw himself into the work he was presented with without ever bothering to think about other things he might have wanted to do). He certainly has more fire than the Brewers’ kids, determined to make his mark if only in bursts here and there that he personally finds satisfying.

It’s nice to see the insight on his interest in computers as well. Perhaps he finds some comfort in seeing information just laid out plainly, much like his name and existence, just sitting, concretely present in the world regardless of anyone’s attention or lack thereof.

That’ll be the last of the Human Debris-narrated previews, at least until next season. Look forward to them! In the meantime, we come to…

EPISODE NINETEEN — The Gravity of Wishes

Everyone’s readying themselves for the approach to Earth, and the bridge crew is carrying out one last conversation with Montag. I sort of wonder how intentional all this red is? Chad’s the only red-stripe, of course, but Eugene’s got his tie, and Orga his scarf thing. It lends an awful lot of red lines to this shot, in any case.

Shortly after, Kudelia comes to the bridge, to personally thank Orga/Tekkadan for their taking her as far as they have, and to entrust them with getting her the rest of the way. Eugene and Chad don’t comment, but watch the conversation closely.

After a bit of Gjallarhorn chitchat, we return to the bridge, where Dante has come to visit for some reason. I have no idea why, but my guess would be that they’re watching the Ariadne networks for a sign that they’ve been flagged, and Dante probably picked up how to watch/hack the Ariadne network faster than Chad did?

We also get this delightful shot:

Eugene is super fired up about getting to captain the ship for real this time, you guys. They speak with him very casually, which could point back towards the idea of Eugene as the leader of the group pre-Orga, or could just demonstrate that everyone’s had time to bond over the lengthy course of this trip, but is pretty great all the same.

Dante will remain on the bridge for the rest of the descent, as we see set up here, in a quick shot during McGillis’s sequence-closing monologue.

Finally, the approach begins in earnest! The boys fly the Brewers’ ship in, with the Isaribi on a line behind it. They seem to be flying it remotely somehow? Maybe this is what Dante’s here for, to help Chad with double-ship-flying? The shield doesn’t stop them from taking some fire, though, as Chad and Dante are very ready to let Eugene know.

They’re concerned he’s trying to be too “cool” here and will get them in over their heads by, showcasing a) their familiarity with his personality, and b) their willingness to argue with him about it. (Would that anyone was this willing to backtalk Orga, on into the second season…)

In any case, Eugene asks Chad to give him control of the Brewers’ ship, suggesting Chad’s at the very least in control of who that ship’s controls are routing to. Chad thinks that’s dumb and Eugene’s dumb for asking.

This leads into the first of several times in the series where Eugene pulls the two-ship-one-pilot stunt. A curious thing to specialize in, but he sure makes it work! Despite metaphorically throwing his hands up over it, because he’s not the type to debate orders for long in the middle of a crisis, Chad does still call out to Eugene when the latter immediately starts nosebleeding everywhere.

And when the maneuver is successful(ly hugely distracting), both the boys turn to congratulate him (and, presumably, leap to his aid when he passes right the hell out from the strain).

Out in space, the fight continues apace, as Ein, proving quite canny in the ways of Maritan spacerats, tracks down the shuttle quite quickly, and he and Gaelio attack, drawing Mika, Shino and Akihiro into the fray.

Things almost get quite hairy, as Gaelio and Ein are not hardly alone, but the Turbines girls show up in their version of Legitimate Business Inc. vans, some dark blue mobile suits, and save the shuttle where Akihiro alone would not have been enough. For neither the first nor the last time, Akihiro looks shocked by this, and man, I gotta say, it is super nice how reliable the lady pilots are in this show. I know these things are basically grim toy commercials for boys, so you seldom get female pilots worth a damn, but the Turbines are just aces, you guys.

A bit more dueling later, Akihiro is trying to wait for the last second for Mikazuki to rejoin the shuttle before he locks in position, transparent in his concern for his exercise buddy from way back.

Mika is Mika, though, pulling through at the expense of some other more hapless guy, and we move on to…

EPISODE TWENTY — Partner (Look, they can translate “Aibou” as “Brother” all they want, but that doesn’t make it accurate.)

We return to our red-stripes (the only of them we’ll be seeing for a while now, if I recall correctly) as Akihiro and Shino push around supplies, Akihiro wearing the look of the long-suffering as Shino once again regales a captive audience with how much he’s looking forward to chicks and stardom.

Chicks—one chick, anyway—pelts him with cans and yells at him to get back to work. Lafter and company go off to do work of their own, with Echo talking about a set-up for Barbatos she wants to try—she thought of it while working on Gusion, but it wouldn’t work so well for “muscle boy.”

Lightheartedness continues as a bunch of landlocked Martians are exposed to live fish for the first time, and this whole sequence is gold. Consider:

Akihiro is totally ready to throw down with this thing if need requires.

And now back to normal, and definitely no one saw him getting ready to throw a punch at dinner, which he doesn’t actually think is dinner anyway.

Still not convinced this is dinner. Kind of still want to punch it, too. Maybe if I take a closer sniff?

Oh my god his hair does the cartoon-reactive-shiver thing. GOD BLESS THIS SEQUENCE.

Afterwards, and after Makanai makes a rather forceful power play, because Makanai is terrible and also really great, Eugene and co. do briefly get in contact, willingly posing like this because everyone here is a Cool Dude:

Chad looks like he really isn’t quite sure why he let Eugene sell him on posing like this. Do your best, Chad.

Interestingly, when he’s rebuked by a relieved Orga about not calling earlier, Eugene grins ruefully and notes that Orga doesn’t know what they’ve been through, and MAN I WANT SOME INFO ON THIS. Chad having to fly the Isaribi out of a zone occupied by like eight Half-Beak class warships while Dante stops Eugene from hemorrhaging his Cool Dude self to death, and then getting in touch with reps from an economic bloc while Eugene is probably still sticking tissues up his nose, and getting to look around a nice clean Earth-based, official non-mafioso-controlled docking base. Communicating with Naze for the boss, being all cool about their near scrape. Damn you and your interesting side characters, IBO!

And that’s all she wrote on this one. Only five more to go in the first season! I’ll be covering them all in one post, which I will try to get out in a reasonable-ish time frame. I will be doing the second season as well (how could I not, with all that good stuff with the Brewers kids ahead yet?), and will keep going until it’s done. Join me in praying for the survival of one or more red-stripes as we head into the finale, everyone!

#mobile suit gundam: iron-blooded orphans #g tekketsu #gundam ibo #human debris #akihiro altland #chad chadan #dante mogro #human debris project #my writing #ibo meta

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stillness-in-green · 8 years

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Human Debris Masterpost (3/?)

Someday I will learn to stop making promises about update schedules that I cannot hope to keep. Sorry for the wait, everyone, and and fair warning: as the Brewers’ arc is the most red-stripe intensive story in the whole show, there will be LOTS of pictures below the cut. Lets get right to it, shall we?

EPISODE NINE – Sakazuki

We go another half episode or so with nothing, as apparently rather few of the group actually enter Saisei at first. After Orga and company get back to the ship, though, with a bunch of desserts in tow for the young ones, we get this delightfulness, with Shino ringleading in the red-stripes to ask if Orga bought them back anything.

Orga says he does in fact have stuff for them too, and we immediately cut to some manner of dining district, where the older boys are living it up at a pub—hilariously, it might in fact be one of three pubs all lined up next to each other, which is kind of amazing. I wonder what the legal drinking age is?

This seating arrangement is extremely interesting to me, as this is pretty much the only time we see the whole group out and socializing like this, and also the only time we see Chad apart from either the bridge or the rest of his trio. What did the three of them actually talk about, I wonder?

Akihiro with a bunch of people he otherwise never talks to. Seriously, how did this seating arrangement happen? Is it just to try to keep a lid on Shino, who is going on, as is his wont, about how great the ladies are? It’s a bit hilarious to me how absolutely unengaged by the topic everyone else at the table is.

We don’t see Dante in this scene, though there’s one more brief shot of a table behind Mikazuki with some Random Brunettes at it that he might be sitting with. After a truly endearing scene of Orga not being able to hold his liquor and Mikazuki fretting over him, we cut back to our main guys leaving the bar.

Shino’s dragging Eugene off to get laid, and the others seem to be returning to the Isaribi. Chad, Dante and the others have apparently left already, to go back to the ship or possibly to explore a bit, but Akihiro has dutifully remained behind to schlep Orga back to the ship.

Orga’s muttering to himself about family and places to return to, which has Akihiro’s thoughts turning to something that we won’t be let in on quite yet, but a second viewing makes quite easy to identify. Things like this are probably what he’s thinking back to when he laments later on about letting his guard down and starting to think of Tekkadan as a fun place to be, people he thinks of with affection rather than guarded distance. (He also looks kind of exasperated here, but, you know, drunk boss and all.)

A little bit later, we’re in the next day, and Yamagi is having a sharp, shuttered reaction to Shino being Shino about how very laid he got last night, suggesting that Yamagi, at least, was also at the party, though I think Takaki, also in this scene, is typically considered to be in charge of the young ones in the first season, so he was probably not. They talk about the ceremony going on—Takaki would have liked to go; Shino overslept. Our trio are all there, though, as we’ll see. All of Tekkadan but Orga, amusingly enough, are still just wearing their normal clothes under the haori coats they’ve got on for the event.

Chad’s on the left there, with Akihiro standing outside on the balcony. This is probably the first time they’ve been without a red stripe in years, which I imagine must feel pretty weighty for them. Added to that, since Takaki complains about not getting to go to the ceremony, but there are a pile of Random Brunettes in the group later, it suggests the ceremony has something of an age restriction to it. But I wonder if the red-stripes were surprised to be invited?

Biscuit expresses surprise that Akihiro would come, to which Akihiro replies that it’s a great moment for the family. It really suggests the degree to which Akihiro has begun to accept the rest of Tekkadan outside of just his circle of Human Debris.

And here are the lot of our named characters here, and we see something extremely interesting, which is that Akihiro’s tank top also has the red stripe on it. I’d forgotten this early on, since he usually does his giant robot fighting in a space suit or wholly shirtless. So, to correct my earlier statement, Akihiro is not, in fact, going without the stripe here. Curiously, the stripe isn’t visible on Dante or Chad, which you’d think would be the case if it were a uniform placement.

I can’t say for sure, since I don’t think we ever see either of them without a jacket/coat without just being straight-up shirtless, but I wonder why this is? Did the CGS guys just notice how often Akihiro strips out of his shirt for exercise routines? Is it because Akihiro is representing the group, and the CGS guys wanted to make extra sure he’d always have that mark? Is it to do with Akihiro’s prominence as a pilot compared to the other two? Or do Dante and Chad have it too, just further up the shoulder?

After the ceremony, Dante has immediately bailed again, but the other two remain. We also have a small change in my write-ups this time, as we get into some episode preview text!

Akihiro gets the episode preview this week, and given all the grunting and panting that, hilariously, accompanies his lines, we’ve clearly caught him in the middle of more pull-ups. Here’s the dialogue:

“Ah? Why am I training so hard? Dumb question. If I can’t protect what’s important to me… Uh, no, when I’m absorbed in working out, I don’t have to think about anything.”

Yeah, Akihiro. You get right on with that, then. (Haha, you care about them.) And we will likewise get on with things, with…

EPISODE TEN – A Letter from Tomorrow

A rather threadbare episode for people other than Akihiro, who wanders into a conversation about siblings between Biscuit and Takaki early on, and then makes this face when Lafter comments that his fighting style in the simulator is less suicidal than usual:

He has not the slightest clue what she’s talking about. He likewise has not the slightest clue how to react to Takaki being suddenly very enthusiastic at him:

He rolls with the punches well, though, taking it in stride when Takaki brings up his sister before stumbling over the realization of who he’s talking to. It’s a rarely contemplative expression he’s wearing in this exchange, about the only time we see this level of tenderness.

Also the only time we see bitty!Akihiro, so have this too, before the pain starts.

He admits in this scene what Lafter was picking up on earlier, that he’s come to the realization that he has comrades like family with Tekkadan, and it’s got him reflecting on his actual family history for the first time in years. He’d previously let himself forget about it, having been so wrapped up in just getting through each day.

He also notes in this scene that all the adults on the merchant fleet he was with were killed, so I assume that Human Debris are (at least initially) taken specifically as children, with more capable and driven adults and parents killed. As to what happens to adult Human Debris, or if there are laws in place governing e.g. someone’s aunt showing up demanding the return of her brother’s kid, these questions remain unanswered.

It’s also just now striking me that Takaki is the first one to hear about a kid who will turn out to be one of the Brewers, and while it’s not the same kid he develops such a close friendship with in season two, it’s an interesting parallel. There’s a level of inversion at play in this episode as well—whereas Kudelia realizes that a fraught family situation is no comparison to the hardships Atra has endured, Takaki gets some perspective on how relatively lucky he is to still have an intact family bond compared to the forced separation of Akihiro and Masahiro. He tries to be optimistic about the odds of the brothers meeting again, though, which Akihiro accepts with a pained but graceful ambivalence.

And then the Brewers attack, and everything goes straight to hell.

Chad gets the preview dialogue this episode, and listen sharp, because this is the first and only time that he’s named onscreen in the first season! It also tells us more about him personally than anything we’ll be seeing until season two, and what it tells us makes episode five of that season especially touching/upsetting for me! See if you can guess why:

“Oh, you’re right; the sleeve is frayed. No, it’s fine like this. I’d only been given torn, used clothes before I came here. It feels better when they’re dirty. Eh? M-Me? I’m Chad. Chad Chadan. I’m always on the bridge.”

So, excuse me while I go cry for days about Chad putting on a suit and tie and being really awkward and insecure about it. I’ll talk some more about this when we eventually get there, though, as I want to just roll around for days in the first half of that episode and its Human Debris content.

EPISODE ELEVEN – Human Debris

The opening of the episode returns us to the Isaribi, where Chad is looking quite tense about Akihiro being out there in a three-on-one fight.

In short order, Mikazuki murders the bejeezus out of Pedro, who we in the audience never actually see, if I’m not mistaken. This guy is really pissed about it, though:

His name is Vito, though we won’t hear it until the next big fight. Meanwhile, Kid 2 here (Aston, whose distinctive facial scar isn’t on display in his very first appearance, but whose cautious, methodical demeanor most certainly is) pulls Vito back from doing something stupid and urges a regroup.

Aston cites careful teamwork in the name of revenge, which will be interesting when measured against some of his season two dialogue, where he talks about—well, go watch episode thirty-one. I suspect, in any case, that he’s never been quite as closed off as he thinks he was; he and the other Brewers kids obviously care for each other fiercely. This echoes what we see all through the series, small groups forming to help each other shoulder the unfair burdens their setting has laid on them, and clinging to those groups with devotion that can, in the most dire circumstances, tread into the fanatical.

Somewhat amusingly, Akihiro is the one to ask after Yukinojo’s safety, which Mikazuki has already forgotten about, and largely handwaves when it’s brought to his attention. He then sends Akihiro and Takaki off, and exchanges some blows with Vito—who instantly notices his Alaya-Vijnana reflexes, suggesting that he’s been in enough combat to recognize the difference pretty much as soon as they get into a melee with each other.

First look at Aston’s scar, as Vito warns him that they’re fighting other AV implanted combatants.

Then Kudal shows up in Gusion, as obvious a villain as any we’ve seen since Todo was last onscreen, and sends the other two minions with him—we know Masahiro is one, and I’m betting Derma is the other, as he’s the last of the named Brewers kids—after Akihiro. Akihiro’s extremely concerned for Takaki throughout this combat, illustrating the truth of his words about considering Tekkadan to be like family.

Despite Takaki trying to be self-sacrificial, Akihiro leaps back into combat to rescue him, just in time for the audience to get Masahiro name-dropped onscreen as Derma and he coordinate much as Aston and Vito were.

And then, as Masahiro recognizes Akihiro’s name and voice, the real suffering begins.

Rescues and retreat signals go up all around as the Turbines girls show up, with Masahiro getting pulled out by Derma and Akihiro retreating with a badly wounded Takaki. The aborted nature of the brothers’ first encounter in years is likely a disaster to both of them, as Akihiro has a crewmate to worry about before he can race off and Masahiro’s last sight of his brother in that moment is Akihiro prying some not me combatant away and turning back towards his ship.

Back on the Isaribi, we get a rare shot of Dante, helping Shino pry open the crushed pilot compartment Akihiro’s brought back. Whether he’s lending muscle, mechanical knowledge, or helping bypass whatever digital defenses there are against hatches being forced open from the outside, it’s nice to see him here.

He’s the deeper voice in the brief offscreen exchange about getting Takaki down as Orga’s coming in, saying to take it slowly while Shino is yelling at a distraught Ride. He’s also the one to open up the flight suit, letting a bunch of blood out into the very low gravity of the hangar.

Shino says to close it back up (hey, it’s almost sort of the interaction between the two I wished for!) and we get a brief shot of one of our other nameless red-stripes, though not, I think, one of the ones from that establishing shot back in episode four.

A few Gjallarhorn interludes and some sledgehammer-subtle demonstrations of interplanetary racism later, we return to the Brewers ship, and a brief interesting note here…

Unlike CGS or Tekkadan, the Brewers’ bay is full of red-stripes doing maintenance work. The mechanics are wearing the same red-striped pants as the kids currently getting berated and smacked around by Kudal are. It really makes me wonder what the actual paid pirate to slave labor ratio is on this boat.

Some varying responses here to the abuse—Aston ferociously stoic, Vito actively angry, Derma downcast (Masahiro with a boot in his face).

Somewhat interestingly, the beating here is not, I think, significantly worse than what, say, Takaki and Orga were putting up with in the first few episodes. The kick to the implant guard is certainly vicious, though, and the reminder that the kids are cheaper than mobile suits is a good deal more pointed and specific than anything said to Orga and his gang.

Once they’re alone, the three crowd around Masahiro to ask after him, through Aston’s the only one to actually get down on his level. Derma asks after Masahiro’s talking to the enemy pilot during the combat, but before Masahiro can explain, Vito’s ferocious temper kicks in and he starts swearing vengeance again for poor unseen Pedro. I really do get the feeling Vito’s temper is abnormally short, a reaction to his wretchedly abusive situation, given that he really did look like he was about ready to bite Kudal in the throat just now. And with the violent threats hanging in the air, Masahiro clams right up.

We return to the Isaribi’s medical bay, where Akihiro is taking things predictably poorly. He muses aloud that he is perhaps being punished, to which Orga says he shouldn’t blame himself and Mikazuki, who’s probably spent more time around him than anyone outside the other Human Debris boys, says this isn’t like him. Akihiro elaborates for the two of them much the same as what he said to Takaki last episode, with the added fatalistic note that he was getting above himself as Human Debris, letting himself have fun that Human Debris are not allowed to have.

Indeed, looking back, we can see that as early as his flippancy in episode four, just after being freed. Akihiro’s been opening up very steadily throughout the show to this point, and in this arc, the ugly inadequacy and learned inferiority of child slavery rear their heads as explicitly as they will any time this season.

Mikazuki and, following his cue, Orga immediately turn this around, of course, noting that if Human Debris aren’t allowed to have fun, and Tekkadan is being too fun, then that’s on Tekkadan, not Akihiro. Akihiro stumbles on this, but Orga talks over him, saying that his brother is de facto a brother of Tekkadan as well, and Tekkadan will therefore take responsibility for him. It’s a touching scene, but one that doesn’t even begin to consider that Masahiro might have made bonds of his own that are important to him, or that someone whose position Tekkadan ought to be intimately familiar with might react with violent distrust towards outsiders. This will also go predictably poorly for them next episode.

But in the meantime, hey, the rest of the support team is here! Including Dante making a rare but gratifying appearance mixed in with more major characters than him. He’s almost certainly here more for Akihiro than Takaki, as you can tell by the way he vanishes from the scene immediately afterwards.

I’ll close this episode with the 100% amazing oh-shit-I-didn’t-study-for-this-pop-quiz-on-familial-affection face Akihiro makes in response to all this.

EPISODE TWELVE – The Shoals

As Tekkadan prepares to engage the Brewers, we get a rare shot of Chad involved in planning and away from his usual bridge position, presumably because there will be some tricky flying involved in their ploy. All that unstable gravity etc. Eugene wants to charge out and meet the enemy head-on; Chad counters that such direct tactics are what the Brewers want.

When Orga notes that normal ships wouldn’t be able to fly in there in any case, and Eugene deducts that they’ll be able to do it because they’re space rats, Chad concurs with a rather charming look of pride in their capability. He smiles so seldom in the first season; it’s really a pleasure to see it here.

Akihiro, meanwhile, is wrestling up the nerve to ask Mikazuki for a very awkward favor—to not kill Masahiro if he gets into a fight with him.

Given Akihiro’s issues about making sure he’s earning his keep, I’m sure this is a horribly difficult thing for him to do. He can probably only do it because it’s Mikazuki, with whom he has a genuine rapport, and who is a skilled enough pilot that he’s capable of holding back—and even so, he stumbles over the request. Mika picks up on his meaning, though, and says he’ll do what he can up to the point that his life is endangered, after which he makes no promises.

On a side note, Lafter comments that she has no objections getting pulled into the whole mess, because they’re rescuing Akihiro’s little brother, and she couldn’t leave that alone anyway. It’s easy to assume that she has a soft spot for kids, the Turbines’ living situation being what it is, but it’s also laying some more early groundwork for the feelings she’s gradually developing for Akihiro, which won’t crop up until the second season. As with Takaki’s involvement last episode, it demonstrates admirably forethinking character work.

Interestingly, the Brewers ship is a bit of a red-stripe itself. This is not the same design of stripes that the Human Debris on board wear, but it might be why the red stripes are so much more present on their uniforms—it isn’t just denoting their status, but also their affiliation. Kudal has that big red spiked collar; the captain has two red stripes on his coat cuffs—it’s really all over them.

In any case, we return to the ship, and find the Brewers’ kids—the main four we’ll be following, though I don’t doubt there are more—eating some very basic looking nutrition bars, contrasting to the handmade lunch Atra and Kudelia just brought Mikazuki.

They have an extra food bar, which Vito notes the staff left on accident for Pedro—these kids so ill-cared for that whoever’s responsible for throwing their granola rations at them hasn’t even noted a death in their group.

Derma begins a conversation about reincarnation—which is really fascinating, actually. I mean, it pretty much had to be Derma—Vito’s too angry, Aston’s too taciturn, and Masahiro’s far too nihilistic—but keeping it in mind as something Derma has been exposed to in his history raises some interesting questions about his childhood. I’ll come back to this in the next post, when we get a bit more context. In any case, it instantly paints him as the most hopeful one in this quartet, which makes him being the sole survivor by season two’s midpoint deeply distressing.

Also distressing: the speed with which Masahiro shuts the conversation down by pointing out that reincarnation is for humans, which they, as Debris, are not. Dang, kid.

Protesting that they don’t know one way or the other, Aston scrambles to save the conversation—another interesting choice, given how reserved we’ll eventually find him to be. Is he trying to lift their spirits? Stop an argument? Just sort of maintain group unity? I’m inclined to think the last, given the role he plays going between Takaki and the other Earth-branch kids later on. We don’t find out one way or the other, though, as Kudal comes in and smacks Aston around a bit for daring to think about anything other than his current lot in life.

Masahiro gets held back a bit as the other three leave with pooly-concealed dislike. Kudal tells him not to mess up this time, or he’ll jettison the whole lot of them into space, and it’s the threat to the others that garners any response other than apathy, though even still, it’s pretty muted. It is a measurable response, though, and one that bodes ill for Tekkadan’s intentions to save him and only him.

Back on the Isaribi, there’s a brief interaction between Shino and Akihiro—they have vanishingly few of them—wherein Shino notes, in an audibly gentler tone than normal, that Akihiro’s early today, and asks him if he wants to rest a bit. Akihiro predictably declines, but it’s a sweet little scene, followed by another where Orga entrusts the helm to Eugene, who looks startled, then pleased, with Biscuit and Chad sharing a glance then smiling at Eugene’s cocky response. It’s easy to complain that the characters are shallow because we spend precious little intimate time with them, but if you’re paying attention to the little exchanges like this, it does wonders to make those side characters feel like they have their own relationships going on in the background. Like the unsubtitled conversations frequently happening just offscreen, these moments really deepen the setting in ways all the info-dumps about technical minutiae or big flashy mecha battles ever could.

We get, in the next sequence, a brief look at the inside of the Brewers’ bridge, where (other than the captain) we once more find a whole pile of red-stripes, mixed in with adults in what must be the non-slave-labor version of the Brewers’ uniform. Note that the two at the helm (Chad’s normal position) are both adults, while the Debris are limited to the more peripheral positions.

The battle follows, with Mika, Lafter and Azee keeping the other Brewers away from Masahiro and Akihiro’s reunion. Almost as soon as it starts, Mika swoops in and kills Vito (finally getting his name dropped on camera in the moment of his death).

We also get just a fleeting glimpse, in this sequence, of someone who I’m relatively certain is Dante (he has a distinctive chin), on another infiltration team, this time under Shino’s command.

Meanwhile, Masahiro is so deeply sunken in despair that he doesn’t think going with Akihiro will change anything—they’ll still die in space, somewhere far distant from any planet’s surface. I suspect that, at this point, he probably still thinks Akihiro is Human Debris like he is—and indeed, if Akihiro were out here under CGS’s auspices, it’d be difficult to argue Masahiro’s point.

Akihiro argues, though, telling Masahiro with devastating honesty that he had given up on him, but that he’s found people who treat him like a human—people who call him family, even. As one could reasonably suspect he would, Masahiro takes this—poorly.

Whoops.

Next time, we’ll finish out the Brewers stuff, then move into the Dort arc, where I suspect the red-stripe sightings will be much more swiftly chronicled than this. Also, the new intro! Thank you all for bearing with me over the holiday break. I will refrain from making specific predictions, but the next post should be up in a far more timely manner.

And man, how ‘bout those mobile armors, huh?

#mobile suit gundam: iron-blooded orphans #g tekketsu #gundam ibo #human debris #akihiro altland #chad chadan #dante mogro #masahiro altland #aston altland #derma altland #human debris project #my writing #ibo meta

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