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stillness-in-green · 8 years ago

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Human Debris Masterpost (4/?)

Holy crap, you guys, I have got a lot to say about Episode 13. The other episodes, somewhat less so. Shall we?

EPISODE THIRTEEN — Funeral Rites

We pick up where we left off last episode, wherein Masahiro, despite his brief turn to the terrifyingly prophetic, finds himself stricken with a memory of his and his Akihiro’s younger, happier days, and is unwilling to help Kudal with murdering him. He pushes his brother away from Kudal’s blow at the last moment, and Gusion’s hammer has way too much momentum going to turn away, if indeed Kudal would bother to try (unlikely).

Mikazuki is still hot on Kudal’s trail, however, and the brothers are left alone again. Akihiro doesn’t have a tremendous amount of real mobile suit experience at this point, but with his history piloting mobile workers (coffins on wheels in a fight with a mobile suit) and the simulations run against Lafter, and from the wordless scream he makes as he returns to Masahiro’s side, I suspect he already knows his brother is done for.

We return briefly to the ship infiltration Shino is leading, which does indeed include Dante. I include this screenshot for two reasons. Firstly to note how much better armored they are this time around—I imagine that since they were specifically trying to keep their clash with the Turbines as bloodless as possible, as they’d been planning to ask for Teiwaz’s help, they geared up as lightly as they could to keep themselves light and mobile. Here, on the other hand, there’s no such need to hold back, so they’re wearing the bulky armor. Secondly, and completely unrelated to the scope of this project, to note that yes, just like his mobile worker and every mobile suit he gets his grubby hands on, Shino has painted his helmet visor pink. Ryuusei-go Mk. 1.5, perhaps? (This does mean that the shot from the last post that I thought was Dante was indeed Shino; the visor was pink there, too.)

The two of them and the rest of the team find a group of red-stripes cowering in a dark room, glowering and braced to get shot to pieces. And here I’ll point out something that I somehow missed in the previous episode—all of the Brewers’ Human Debris are still wearing a manacle on their left wrists. These kids, Masahiro’s group, even the ones on the bridge—every one of them whose left wrist is visible (it doesn’t show under the long sleeves and gloves of their flight suits, for example) has a huge chunk of metal fastened around their wrist. I wish we had just a little more context for this so we could guess at whether the Brewers or CGS are a bit more “typical” of red-stripe existence, because holy hell, CGS was bad, but at least Akihiro and the others there weren’t actively shackled. Something to keep an eye out for when we get to the Dawn Horizon Corps stuff in the second season.

In any case, Shino gives them a few pacifying lines and heads on his way, waving his group after him. If the subtitles are to be believed—“It’s all kids here, too,”—it would seen that this is not the first group they’ve found, which might explain why neither Dante nor the other two in Shino’s team show any hesitation at leaving the kids be. In this case, though, this leniency gets one member of the team immediately killed, when the kids prove to be hiding some fairly heavy duty firearms and very panicky trigger fingers.

Shino freezes, but Dante, in what’s probably one of his more revealing moments, doesn’t even hesitate in swinging back in and unloading the contents of a high-powered magazine into a room full of children in exactly the same child slavery position he himself was once in.

It does make me wonder how much resistance he was expecting the Brewers’ Human Debris to be putting up, though—was he relieved that Shino decided to leave that unseen first group alone, or was he reluctant? Did he say anything at any point, or keep his opinions to himself mid-mission? Whatever the case was, this is a shockingly dark thirty seconds of screentime, though as ever, the show doesn’t linger on it.

We return instead to space, where Akihiro has left his mobile suit and is trying to reach Masahiro in the latter’s crushed cockpit.

Masahiro, despite having saved Akihiro’s life in an almost involuntary spasm of remembered love, remains fatalistic, bringing up Derma’s reincarnation story, and his certainty that Debris like him die in space, asking if Akihiro understands now. Akihiro, of course, protests, yelling that Masahiro will be reborn and will come back to their home. I have difficulty believing Akihiro’s even thought much about such things before now; this sounds very much like he’s just desperate to give his brother even a scrap of hope in his dying moments, and will seize on anything presented to him to do so.

Masahiro, though I don’t think he believes it, smiles ruefully and says he’ll go first and see, and finally reaches out to take Akihiro’s grasping hand. In that last moment, too, he switches from “aniki” to “nii-chan” in addressing Akihiro. He’s been using the former since their reunion, but rewatching Akihiro’s flashbacks, he used the latter when they were children. “Aniki” is not exactly formal itself—it’s the same word Orga uses to address Naze; it’s kind of boyish and slangy, and frequently heard in the context of gang hierarchy (like, again, Orga and Naze)—but “nii-chan” is far more childish and intimate. In its usage here, we can see Masahiro allowing Akihiro back into his heart, and perhaps forgiving him, as he passes away.

The world is full of less-accepting red-stripe children, though, we find as we return to the ship, heralded by the shot of a drifting child’s body and blood in the air, and Shino cursing on the vocal track, wondering why these kids won’t just give up and surrender. It all seems to go back to a recurring theme in the show’s more frontier organizations—that there is strength in the group you’re with, and even if life with that group can be cruel and unforgiving, it is still life, and therefore more to be trusted and believed in than the uncertainty of trusting outsiders.

In that regard, if there is one thing I appreciate about Kudan and Brooke Kabayan, the Brewers’ horrible orcish captain, it’s the way their design reflects how completely they’ve thrown off the social mores of the setting. You see this a bit with the Turbines, with their skimpy clothes and Amida’s loud makeup, and a little bit with Tekkadan, who have hygiene priorities somewhere on the level of Lord of the Flies, but it’s most obvious with the Brewers. They’ve completely forsaken any chance of being accepted by society, and therefore have rejected any morals society might have about (most obviously) child abuse, and damn if you can’t see that in their design: the extremely dyed hair, the piercings, and some fairly extreme body modification in Kudal’s Joker-esque slash of a mouth and Kabayan’s bizarre nose. CGS had some transparent villain designs, but Todo and the other First Division guys had nothing on these two.

Getting back on track, though, we hit the opening—the last episode to feature Raise Your Flag—and we return to a glance at what high society looks like via a fancy party thrown by some combination of the Bauduin and Fareed families. By the time we get back to the main characters, combat has finally been quelled, absent a few pockets of activity, and we get our last major red-stripe-centric scene of the season.

Someone—I’d bet on Orga, Biscuit or Chad—has had the good sense to post red-stripe guards around the rounded-up batch of Brewers’ kids. Aston’s in this group, as is Derma, which kind of begs the question of how they were made to stand down from mobile suit combat, particularly given the pure venom in Aston’s eyes here.

Dante gets about half of a warning out to Orga about them, having just had some up-close-and-personal experience with their willingness to keep fighting even in battles deeply stacked against them. He’s clearly had a bit of time to reflect on it, given his expression here.

Orga claps a hand on his shoulder reassuringly, though, and gets down on the kids’ level to talk to them, very pragmatically opening up with talk about basics of life like better food than the Brewers are (plainly) providing to these malnourished children. He’s talked to Naze already, and says that Tekkadan will be taking care of the surviving children.

Derma has the swiftest reaction, looking around while Orga’s still talking, but Aston is the one to openly ask—why? When we were just now trying to kill you? Orga reassures them that he knows it was just their jobs, and that it isn’t as if they particularly wanted to do it, right? Aston flares up with a response affirming that he didn’t, that he’d just never thought about it before, for himself.

We get a few very understanding looks from Chad and Dante as he’s talking—

—up until Orga cuts him off with by far the nicest spin on Human Debris anyone in the show will ever put forth.

“Born in space, and not scared to die in space. You’re the proud, chosen ones.”

And my god, the look Dante is giving him here just kills me. He’s clearly never heard anything this life-affirming about his existence before, and while the other two Tekkadan red-stripes here (Chad and one of the unnamed ones) take it pretty straight-faced, the kids break down immediately when Orga finishes by saying that Tekkadan welcomes them all.

Derma actually had tears in his eyes by halfway through this speech, and is the first one to begin audibly weeping, and man, I didn’t realize until this rewatch what a total sweetheart this kid is. Ugh, I love Derma; I love Derma so much.

Dante speaks, probably, for the group, thanking Orga for the olive branch, which draws the scene to a close. (I’d been thinking, incidentally, that the one red-stripe with glasses was the third Tekkadan Human Debris here, but we never get a clear look at the unnamed red-stripe’s face here, so I guess I was mistaken. Ah, well.)

A bit of bargaining with the defeated Kabayan later, we return to the Hammerhead to discuss what to do with the spoils of victory, after which the conversation turns to the titular funeral rites, and we get a particularly interesting look at the more spiritual side of the setting. I could talk about it pretty extensively (I, er, kind of have 500 words written up about it that I had to cut out of this post), but it would take us way, way off-topic, so I’ll save it for another time.

Shino opines that he’d like to hold one of these funeral things, and is seconded by Akihiro. Both of them are clearly distraught at the idea of the spirits of the dead lingering or suffering, so grab at the idea of a funeral to ease both the dead and, subconsciously, their own consciences. Orga, a bit put-out by it all, nonetheless agrees. He stays on the ship for the event itself, as does Chad, back in his normal place at the helm.

Akihiro can be seen outside, as well as some kids who might be the Brewers kids or might be Yukinojo’s hangar helper lot—their features in the helmets are too indistinct to say for sure, and they’re shown from an angle that would hide Aston’s scar. Given their enthusiasm about Yamagi’s flower fireworks, I’m inclined to think they’re the Tekkadan kids, though.

Much as Shino did before the combat, Eugene goes specifically to Akihiro’s side to offer him a bit of commiseration about the brevity of death compared to the long racket of life, in what’s probably his most openly sensitive gesture in the whole show, and it’s really sweet. It speaks, I think, to some of the extra-canonical information about Eugene being the leader of the Third Division kids before Orga and Mikazuki started working there—though they interact far less, he clearly has a much less confrontational relationship with Akihiro than he does with Orga. He keeps his arm around Akihiro’s shoulders for the rest of the sequence. You can catch a brief look of Dante out on the hull as well, just before the scene ends.

We close out the red-stripe stuff this episode with Akihiro requesting that Orga let him keep Gusion. He says that he thought about the departed at the funeral, that even those with Tekkadan that he rarely talked to, he has bits and pieces of memories of. For Masahiro, though, he has only his childhood memories, with the strongest and most recent one now being his brother’s death. At least, then, he wants to stay together with Masahiro’s memory from now on.

I’m inclined to call this a pretty strained bit of writing—the advertisers needed another Gundam for the home team, and obviously no one but the Brewers’ ace was going to be piloting any Gundams the Brewers had, so the writers had to come up with some kind of reason for Akihiro to want to keep the specific machine that slew his brother. What they come up with is—well, it’s pretty morbid, but it’s certainly an interesting bit of characterization!

I’d love to see more ghost-in-the-machine type fanart for it, though.

And thus, we reach the end of the Brewers arc. Thankfully, the next batch of episodes will require far less writing on my part, so lets get right to it, starting with the new opening!

OP 2 — Survivor

So Dante and Chad are much more prominent in this intro, and it makes me happy. Where in the first intro, you have to be keeping a pretty close eye out for them, here, they’re much closer to the screen.

In the opening shot, Akihiro is in a separate shot from the other two (reflecting something that will not really be true of the show until the second season), but they’re in the shot immediately following, very clearly displayed. (I mention this mostly to complain some more about no one seeming to remember who they are, because come on, they’re right there.)

There’s also this rather nice shot of the three of them in some dimmer area indoors. More than the more “posed” shots, this one looks very much like something that could have happened, a shot out of some serious conversation they were having among the three of them. I freely admit, though, that my opinion there is probably colored by how much I wanted to ever see the three of them actually talk amongst themselves about their situation.

If you’re extremely quick with the pause button, you can catch this shot of the bridge during a fast zoom-out from Orga’s face to show the exterior of the Isaribi:

I left out the mecha shots, as I did last time, but here is Akihiro getting shouty, sandwiched between similar shots of Orga, Biscuit, Eugene, Shino, and Atra:

This opening closes on Kudelia, rather than a group shot, so that’ll be it until the closing.

EPISODE FOURTEEN — Vessel of Hope

We have a brief shot of the bridge crew+Atra looking at the approaching Earth, which it’s very possible none of them but Biscuit have ever seen in person before—even Kudelia, in that conversation with Mikazuki about the moon way back in episode four, only talks about it in secondhand terms, as something she’s heard/read about.

Akihiro, meanwhile, is hanging out in the Hammerhead bay, watching the Gusion get stripped down and getting lightly poked-at by Lafter who, like the rest of us, is having some trouble processing Akihiro’s decision. He seems at peace with it, though.

After dropping off the shopping group, the Isaribi is hailed by a guide ship sent to escort them, the speaker on which calls them young heroes. Eugene and Chad are puzzled by this designation.

So, this takes us into the beginning of the Dort Colony material, and one thing I’ll note now is that Dort has no red-stripes on it anywhere. I suppose it’s possible that the signature red stripe is just much more subtly displayed in the Inner Sphere, but we never see any indication of Human Debris on Earth, either, and this suggests that the practice is largely kept to the Outer Sphere. I suspect the slave trade is quasi-legal at best, and I’m certain wealthy people from Earth would consider it unsightly. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there’s a certain amount of illicit slave-trade going on in the Inner Sphere—the sort of thing that we see today in first-world nations, of people being brought to e.g. the United States on false pretenses and then getting locked into menial, ill-paying jobs as personal servants or worse in the homes of the wealthy, threatened with deportation if they try to speak out.

On a total side note, we do at last begin to see a bit less gender segregation, which is a nice change of pace—Gjallarhorn is 100% dudes with the sole exception of Carta Issue, a special case, and likewise CGS was all-male. The upper leadership of Teiwaz is entirely male, with certain members actively scorning Naze for “using” women to rise up; the long-distance freight shipping business is, according to Amida and Naze’s flashback, almost entirely done by women. Dort and Earth are the only places we see a bit more mix—the uprising has the intermittent female face, and the politicians on Earth have, likewise, a few women mixed in. I think there might be a little mix at the agricultural plant Hashmal destroyed, but on the whole, this setting is pretty badly gender-segregated, though comments on it are rare and oblique.

In any case, once the uprising breaks out, Orga contacts Merribit on the ship, where she’s going over the shipment manifesto on the bridge, with Chad hanging out on the helm as usual.

It strikes me that this is probably the first time Chad’s been alone with Merribit (or, like, any woman ever) in the show, and I wonder if this is where he started developing his (implied in season two) crush on her? I’ll be keeping an eye out for other openings for this going forward.

Orga tells them to get the blazes out of there, presumably concerned about the whole ship getting compounded, and the two of them comply. This brings us to the end of the episode, and with it, the new closer.

ED 2 — STEEL ~Iron-Blooded Bonds~

The second intro has a bit more going on in it than the pan-arounds of a single image in the first one, though not more of our red-stripes than one would reasonably expect. Starting off, we have Chad and Dante examining the murals that crop up all over the Isaribi with increasing frequency as the show goes on. Chad has no particular expression, though it’s a little telling, perhaps, that he’s crouched down to look so closely. Dante, meanwhile, looks pleased enough, smiling slightly as he walks along the hall.

On an unrelated note, it’s a nice detail that you can see Ride with a paintbrush in the background here. He’s the one who designed the Tekkadan logo to begin with, and is apparently behind a lot of the onboard graffiti, too; I kind of wish the show allowed him a bit more attention for his artistic streak.

Again with the kids (just the normal kids we tend to see hanging around Yukinojo or Kudelia’s reading classes, not the Brewers kids, who’ll have to wait for next season), we get our trio and a Random Brunette red-stripe. It looks like the kids have finished their own food and came over to chat? I wonder what the topic is?

You can spot the group in this picture in the wide shot that Orga and Mikazuki begin to walk towards at the end, but they’re pretty tiny, and not differently posed than they are here, so lets move on, to…

EPISODE FIFTEEN — Trail of Footprints

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! As mentioned before, there aren’t any red-stripes (at least not openly marked ones) on Dort, not in the crowd scenes nor in the slums. Likewise, we didn’t see any of the Isaribi in this episode. In lieu of the usual red-stripe stuff, then, have one small observation about the unusually clever use of non-Japanese language in this show. If you want to read about world-building minutiae, read on. If not, feel free to skip ahead.

So, this is a bag from a rather upscale-looking clothing and accessory store Kudelia was shopping in while Fumitan and Mikazuki were having their conversation about responsibility. The Dort colonies are a project of the African Union, which like all the show’s economic blocs encompasses a great many places, but the pertinent one to this aside is modern-day France. Lefebvre is a French name—a fairly common surname in the north of the country.

I did a touch of digging, and turned up a few persons of interest.

This is a French model and actress, one Germaine Hélène Irène Lefebvre. She’s more commonly known by her stage name Capucine, pictured here in The Pink Panther (1963). She modeled for Givenchy and Christian Dior, and was close friends with Audrey Hepburn. I’d consider her to be the most likely in-world reference, though I doubt very much that records of old Hollywood comedies made it out of the Calamity War in anything even vaguely resembling wide circulation.

Interestingly, though, there is one other Lefebvre who’s significant to the themes and events on Dort—Henri Lefebvre, a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, active in the mid-1900s. He had a great deal to say about the problems of capitalism, and how the intersection of autonomy, helplessless, natural bodily rhythms and social routines he called “everyday life” had to be revolutionized, lest rampant consumerism lead to consumptionism, a diminishing quality of life, and a decline in self-expression.

More pertinently, he was a respected professor who both influenced and analyzed an upswelling of civil unrest in 1968, starting with student protests and sit-ins, leading to widespread strikes, and culminating in violent clashes with the police, with suspected undercover police slipped in to provoke protesters. In the end, the political party in power at the time strengthened their hold on the country, but it did herald a new push for social progressivism. Sounds a bit like the Dort Uprising and subsequent fallout, no?

As ever, I remain thoroughly impressed with IBO’s canny use of language in the setting. The grammar, the spelling, even things like general readability of large blocks of text feel very naturalistic, and the deployment of terminology—like the stuff above, but also all of Gjallarhorn’s Norse references, the Gundam naming scheme, and even the consistency of the fishing and nautical names you tend to find associated with the non-Gjallarhorn spaceships. It’s all exceptionally strong worldbuilding.

In any case, lets move on. We’ve got exactly one relevant scene in the next episode!

EPISODE SIXTEEN — Fumitan Admoss

Our only bit of red-stripe activity here is Akihiro in the Turbines’ bay, bleeding from the nose and straining against his Alaya-Vijnana hookup.

Based on what we’ve seen from him to date, I expect Akihiro was planning on spending the Dort visit learning how to handle Gusion by sparring with Lafter in the Turbines’ simulator. The schedule for being able to do so on demand just got pushed ahead somewhat, so he’s straining under all that Gundam information overload in the same way we usually see pilots reacting the first time they get in a Gundam, especially one that hasn’t been tuned up for their own tolerance levels. We saw it with Mikazuki early on, with Akihiro here, and there’s another instance I’m looking forward to that we'll be seeing in the next episode. Look forward to it next time!

#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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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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A Colombian Street Art Duo Is Transforming Phoenix with a Nomadic Art Space | #50StatesofArt

Origin stories don't get much more American than that of the Fortoul Brothers, whose nomadic art gallery is the spice of Phoenix's art scene.

Isaac and Gabriel Fortoul immigrated to the US from Colombia as children, and grew up in Union City, New Jersey, nurturing dreams of becoming artists. After Isaac graduated from art school and Gabriel cut his teeth in the financial industry on Wall Street, the two went into business together. Isaac is the artistic force, while business-minded Gabriel handles the performance of the work. Their partnership is so symbiotic, they bill all of their work as belonging to The Fortoul Brothers. Their traveling pop-up space is called 40Owls, a gag on the phonetics of their shared last name.

The Fortoul Brothers' paintings, murals, sculptures, and installations are indebted to cubism, with their bold lines, blocks of color, and flattened perspectives. They also read like vibrant, wordless comics about relationships, emotions, spirituality, and culture. "We create a multidimensional range of expression, emphasizing spontaneity and the exercise of freedom of technique and execution," the brothers tell Creators. "We have abandoned conventional structure and prefer to bring forward the monumentality and power of life."

They hop between gallery shows, walls, and parties in New York, LA, Colombia, and Phoenix, but have been focusing on building community in the latter, which they think of as "the Wild West" for art. Aside from throwing parties and establishing a clothing line in the city, the Fortouls have become a regular presence at central Arizona's yearly music and art festival, FORM Arcosanti. "Phoenix artists have been taken for granted," Isaac once told a reporter for 944 Magazine. "We want to show that the Valley has something to offer."

We spoke to the Fortoul Brothers to see how they're using their experience in New York and LA to make Phoenix's art scene, already known for their First Friday gallery walks, a force to be reckoned with.

Creators: What is the mission of 40Owls?

Fortoul Brothers: 40Owls is a venue, a window created to physically and virtually display our art in various forms. This window is open to other artists to promote their artistic work, be it performance, film, sculpture, painting, etc. We like to call it a nomadic gallery, as we bring art across fictional or political borders that tend to separate rather than unite people.

What are your goals for the time you spend in Phoenix?

We have been creating a large percentage of our work in Phoenix, a land that bears fruit to the most adaptable and the most resourceful. The desert is full of life and has the potential to be a paradise, depending upon the human impact of those who inhabit it. Many visionaries have elected this area to settle after recognizing an occult dimension within the everyday world of appearances so present on this beautiful landscape.

Native Americans have long appreciated the dramatic displays of nature which has molded their sensitivity and promotes their connection to the sacred. They have been allowed to witness the power of the unseen forces that help shape events in the world.

While working here, we have come to understand the artistic process as the re-discovery of the spiritual or mystical dimension of imagery.

Walk me through an average 40Owls day in Phoenix. Who do you deal with and what are you trying to accomplish?

Presently we are totally dedicated to creating art in its different forms. Our style has matured to the point where we can transfer pure emotion onto the canvas. Our work has developed to a point where the message is clear, direct and universal, addressing all ethnic, philosophical and cultural groups with no distinction. The images represent physical and ideological realms of human experience. These images are ideas or iconic symbols having their origin in inner experiences of intuition, feeling and contemplation.

Where does 40Owls fit in the Phoenix art ecosystem?

Phoenix is a young blossoming city in the process of establishing its powerful roots. The opportunity remains for the cultural community to steer it in a positive direction and thus inspire other major movements. It remains the wild west and thus allows for independence as well as unique artistic spaces.

As a natural evolution of our work, today we are very interested in making our art available to a greater number of people. This year we will elaborate a few large murals in Phoenix and Colombia. We are also working on a number of paintings that will be exhibited in Europe, Los Angeles and Arizona.

The murals in Phoenix will serve as a backdrop for a couple of community gardens being created to involve people in a young movement to grow organic food, acclimate tropical fruit trees to this area and to reforest the desert in order to bring it back to the fertile land that it once was. We not only identify with this movement, but try to contribute hands on for a more sustainable world.

What's next for 40Owls?

Art is a very powerful tool to convey a feeling of balance and harmony to the world. Such should be its purpose. We find a great deal of joy for the opportunity to create art in its three major dimensions; aesthetics, significance and purpose.

Screenshot via @FortoulBrothers

Follow the Fortoul Brothers on their website and Instagram.

15 Years of APACHE Skateboards Links Tribal and Skate Cultures in AZ | #50StatesofArt

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A Skatepark Provides a Creative Haven for Nebraska Teens | #50StatesofArt

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