Hello friendlies! Here we have the recap of Radio Meteor Episode Three - Five Gundams Confirmed.
Below you'll find the transcript for the episode, compiled by the superlative Noirangetrois. My additional comments are punctuated throughout in bold and in brackets (EDIT: Like this!)
Listen to the podcast here.
And without further ado, here are: The Footnotes
EPISODE THREE
Hey there, and welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it, because escaping the pressures of adulthood with childhood nostalgia is going to be 2019’s biggest mood. And, you know, I like to set trends. Also, launch of the new drinking game, take a shot every time I say, “I think it’s really interesting that…” Because I noticed that I say that a lot. Let’s get on with it!
[musical interlude]
So, episode 3, Five Gundams Confirmed, or "Gandamu Go Ki Kakunin" (ガンダム5機確認) as they say in Japan. This is a kind of difficult one because it jumps all over the place. You have a sub-plot with Treize and Zechs, a bit of development on what the antagonists are up to, who they are. We find out a little bit more. You’ve got Duo, Heero and Relena doing their thing, and finally you’ve got Quatre and Trowa showing up at the end. So it’s a trio; episode 3 is a trio of subplots.
Let’s kick off with some of the language things, since I always start off with these. Right off the bat, Sally and Duo are really fricking difficult to listen to. They both speak really fast. Duo is not too bad, he’s a little slangy for me. He certainly does that Japanese thing where he kind of shortens words and strings them together, which I appreciate that we do in English as well. But then I’m sitting there wondering, “was that an “i” or a “wa” or quite what the hell were you saying there, dude?”
Following along with our theme of who’s a child and who’s not, the first thing I noticed that Sally said is when she meets Relena, she refers to Heero as a “suteki na kare,” (素敵な彼・すてきなかれ・ステキな彼） which they translate into English as “a cute man.” She’s like, “hey Relena, who is this cute man you’ve brought to the hospital?” And in English it sounds a little bit weird. I always found that a little bit, well, Sally, what are you doing? He’s 15, I don’t think we should be referring to him as a “cute man.” Certainly Relena seems to be suspect of this as well. I always translated her expression in the English version as being essentially, “what the heck, lady?”
But the word she actually uses is “suteki na,” which is an adjective and cute is a bit of a weird translation for that one. I’m sure many people are aware that “kawaii” is “cute” in Japanese, and that’s like the kind of “fluffy” cute. Babies are “kawaii,” anime is “kawaii,” well, some anime is, some anime is not. But puppies are “kawaii.” It’s not the kind of cute 100% in the English way that cutesy stuff is cute, but you know where I’m going with this. “Suteki na” is also not “cute” as in “that guy’s cute, he’s hot.” Not hot hot, but hot diluted. It doesn’t quite mean that either, at least not in the way I’ve come across it being used. Maybe I’m totally wrong, but it’s not the go to English translation that I would use.
“Suteki na” has this quality of something wonderful or something excellent. You could translate it as “perfect.” If you’re talking about a “suteki na” dress, for example or a “suteki na” car, then it’s essentially a kind of object I look at and it makes me want to do the chef kiss, you know when you kiss your fingers and go “Mmm, [kiss sound]. Nice.” It’s that kind of feeling. It’s essentially a feeling of quality, that it’s something that’s well put together. That translates when you’re talked to about people, such as if you talk about “suteki na shoujo,” as in an “amazing woman” or “she’s a woman of excellence.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s especially competent, but there’s just something je ne sais quoi about that person that makes you think, “whatever IT is, she got it.”
I feel like that’s much of what Sally is saying in this situation. It’s a little bit Frankenstein, talking about his monster on the slab, I have to say, because even the hostile situation that he’s come out of, she’s like “what is this perfect specimen you’ve presented to me? I’m thrilled!” Relena quite rightly looks at her like, “what the heck, lady?” First, I don’t think Relena believes that Heero is a totally perfect specimen and also, it’s kind of weird to hear from a lady in uniform.
Carrying on from that, when they’re talking in the lift, Sally refers to Heero as a “shounen,”(少年・しょうねん） as a “young man,” so there’s a sort of disparity as well. We’ve had Relena refer to him as a child and then Sally refers to him as a young man. You never know, by the end of episode 4, maybe he’ll have progressed to actually a man. Godspeed, Heero.
Carrying on as well, talking about how Relena speaks. This conversation she has with Sally is perhaps weirdly the most equal conversation she’s had so far. I talked about how when she talks to her peers, they’re very honorific, they’re very remote. She’s very polite, very stilted. She’s kind of polite to her parents in a sort of, honoring sort of way, but it’s still friendly. Then when she was talking to Heero at the end of episode 2, she was very much little miss bossy boots. Talking to Sally, she’s still pretty bossy, but Sally pretty much gives as good as she takes. She essentially does that Zechs thing where she classes it up a little bit, so that much more mature, better response. She and Relena talk a little bit like sisters. They have that sort of very quick connection where they drop some of the formalized grammar. Relena doesn’t have all the power in that situation. I really like that dynamic, that they really get in there right off the bat.
Finally, in terms of language, the beach scene is quite interesting, because we get some insights into both Duo and Heero’s character. Again I feel like the translations here are perhaps a little bit misleading. In this case, both Duo and Heero use “ore” in this particular scene, and we didn’t hear that when Duo introduced himself, he didn’t use “ore,” and now he is. I guess because they were doing that five-in-a-row (Edit: four.) introductions, they didn’t want to have Wufei say, “ore wa Wufei” and then Duo use basically the same sentence.
One really glaring difference in the translation of the subtitles I was looking at is that after Heero lands on the beach, after he’s done his magnificent fall on his face, it’s translated on my copy as, “why did I open my parachute?” But listening to the Japanese, he says “ore wa itai nani o yateiru,” (俺は一体何をやっている？・おれはいったいなにをやっている）like “what the heck am I doing?” or “what the fuck am I doing?” He’s pretty pissed off with himself. He’s not a happy camper that he has failed to kill himself again, and primarily because Relena yelled out basically, “Heero, dame!” again, like “Heero, no!” She said “jump” and he said “how high?” (Edit: In fact he didn’t even ask ‘how high’- he just jumped.) That’s what’s happened there, and he’s kind of annoyed at himself.
Then Duo has his line where he says, “I kind of understand that you want to die, but if you can’t freaking manage it by throwing yourself out from that height, you need to think of a better strategy, dude.” (死にたい気持わかるが、あのたかから死ねないじゃん、も少し死に方考え法が良いぜ）Then he carries on to say something which is translated in the English as, “I’m not saying you have to trust me, but I’m the only friend you’ve got right now.” The word “friend” here kind of makes Duo a lot softer. I think it makes him a little bit more friendly, and it makes him seem like, “we’re on a level here,” as in, “I don’t know you, you don’t really know me, I kind of let you get scooped out of the ocean by the military, sorry for bailing, but I’ve come back to get you out. Trust me here, I’m trying to be your bud, even if you don’t want to trust me.” But what he says in the Japanese is, instead of “I’m the only friend you’ve got,” he says, “ima wa hoka suru dekinai darou.” （今は他するできないだろう・いまはほかするできないだろう） This means, “right now” (“ima wa・今は・いまは”), “hoka suru,”(他する・ほかする） “another thing you could do. “Hoka” is like another alternative option, “suru” is the verb for “to do,” then “dekinai”（出来ない・できない） as in “you can’t,” and “darou・だろう” as in “right” or “probably.” So essentially what he’s saying here isn’t really “I’m the only friend you’ve got,” it’s more like, “you don’t really have a choice,” so “I’m not asking you to trust me, but I don’t see what else you can do.” I like that it’s a little bit more cynical. It’s not quite a team up, I think is where I’m trying to go with this.
That’s pretty much it on the language front. Not as much as the last one, but again I think there’s some relevant things that show some stuff about the personalities and particularly their relationships between the characters, as well.
[musical interlude]
Evidently, right after the end of the last episode, Duo bailed. Like, flat out he probably just got out of there, and it was Relena who took Heero to the hospital, or basically dragged him back to that ambulance he left in the corner of the base they were on, and then flagged down some actual ambulance people. We learn a little bit about the technology that’s going on in the present. They talk about having chemical weapons, or truth serum, although Sally obviously has some serious cautions about using that. She is not keen, and I suppose if you relate that back to Episode Zero, as well, she also refused (in that version of this universe), to use biological weapons on Wufei’s colony. She ain’t down with that.
We learn that Wufei is off to attack various supply bases- he’s seriously still a man on a mission. He’s left his truck of explosives somewhere, he’s saving that for the next episode. We do learn that the Shenlong Gundam is slow. I thought that was unexpected, and very interesting. I hadn’t twigged that in my head. Zechs specifically says, “it’s probably not very good at flying.” Here I am going to say that that is interesting, because Wufei is supposed to be the dragon. The one thing I know about dragons is they’re supposed to be able to fly, surely. That’s the two dragon-like things - they breathe fire, they fly, they sit on shit. They’re kinda grumpy, and they eat people. So Wufei is getting only one out of five so far. (Edit:Noir correctly pointed out he gets two dragon points. He’s grumpy.) He’s stomped on some stuff, I don’t think he’s sat on anything. So Wufei is really only getting one out of the five dragon attributes there.
We learn about who the specials are. We start to learn a little bit more about the hierarchy of this opposing force. We know we’ve got the Alliance, who are the overarching antagonists and oppressors, or that’s who was introduced as the overarching antagonists and oppressors. Now, more and more we start to see that there are subdivisions within that. You’ve got the old boys, you’ve got essentially Bonaparte who are incredibly archaic, the man flies a freaking blimp, a zeppelin, which is a damn stupid idea. They’re incredibly arrogant as well.
We see for the second time someone disparaging Zechs pretty much to his face. He’s not popular with the old cohort. He’s certainly of the new breed along with Treize. We learn that within the Alliance, they form part of the group called the Specials, who supply the majority of mobile suits to the Alliance. That is their particular role. They are the hotshot fighters and mobile suit specialists, and they are funded by a third organization, which is Romefeller, which is, well, we’re not quite sure at the moment. They evidently are pretty freaking rich.
Treize is one of them. He’s essentially this nobleman fly guy. He’s got a lot of cash. He said essentially, “I’m going to build these incredible high tech weapons. You’ll buy them from me or else I’ll supply them but I want carte blanche to have my little A-team and do what I want to do. I want to be able to drop in on any battle I want and do whatever I want, and if you just trust me then I’ll get you results.” So far he’s done it, and that’s why they tolerate it, but they don’t like him. We’re kind of getting this slice and dice of who the antagonists are, and I guess that keeps you guessing a bit, doesn’t it? If you’re watching this the first time through.
Lastly we got some insight into Trowa as well. I like that so far every single instance of Trowa on screen is him being kinda snarky and sarcastic. I think his tone here is really good fun. In his introduction in Episode 1, he’s like, “well yeah, I guess you can just call me Trowa, that’ll do.” Then in this episode he turns up and he has been super judgey. He essentially says, “well technically, you’ve done it by the textbook and you’ve made the right choice but you’ve seriously got it wrong because I’m here and you’ve underestimated me.” He’s just incredibly judgey, and incredibly analytical as well. He’s not, well, I think everyone likes to think of Heero and Wufei in particular as being these very robotic, analytical sort of computer-y guys, much more machine-like. But if anything, Trowa’s in there as well so far. If we’re doing the cold and the fuzzy, Heero, Trowa and Wufei are definitely on the cold side. Quatre and Duo get in more on the fuzzy side, although that’s still open for debate as well.
My other favorite thing that Trowa does that shows his personality is that he tests if his mobile suit has run out of bullets or not. He opens up the little chest flaps and spins the dials and nothing happens. Then he tries his gun and nothing happens, and I’m just thinking, surely somewhere in that machine in there you have a little bean counter that tells you if you’ve got any bullets left or not. Maybe not, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe it’s very basic, still running on Windows 95, but I like that little touch. I know it’s primarily just to visually show that he’s run out of bullets, but I still really like it. I like the idea that he’s the kind of person that’s like, “hmm, out of bullets, hmm, well, better just check. No? Oh, no, out of bullets. Darn.”
And certainly that little bit there between Quatre showing up and him running out of bullets, it does kind of show that, again, Trowa doesn’t really have any plan. Again, referring back to Episode Zero, which may or may not have any bearing on this actual series, he just nicked that and ran. The original Trowa Barton gets killed, he picks up the guy’s dead name, picks up the mobile suit, says, “I don’t really agree with your Operation Meteor idea, pal,” and takes himself off to Earth to fight. He’s really gone in to a very hopeless kind of rebellion. He’s just killing time, really, until he loses.
I don’t think Trowa does have a long term strategy, other than to go down, make as much noise as possible, and go out kicking. That’s it, that’s all he’s got. Ditto, Duo perhaps, and ditto, Heero, perhaps. I think the only person who, again, seems to be aggressively strategizing is Wufei. Again, Quatre has got his Maguanacs, and is turning up where he needs to be turning up, but it’s debatable whether or not he’s got any kind of forward plan or long term plan. It could be just that he’s being more cautious. He’s sort of sounding out what’s going on out there, pulling his resources together before he decides on something.
Here’s also where my opinion may differ from some of you guys, and that’s fine. I’m not here to say that this is the correct answer or anything. I’m literally just sitting in my pajamas in a cupboard, so you don’t have to listen to my opinions if you don’t like them. But I think it’s quite popular to have this assumption that Quatre has this sense straightaway that Trowa is his friend and they should be friends and it’s that whole Newtype thing. But I wonder if perhaps that is true. It must be kind of subtle if it is. But on the other level, it is just logic.
(EDIT: I’m jumping in here to add a little note on what ‘Newtype’ refers to. This is an idea that comes right from the start of Gundam canons in Mobile Suit Gundam. It’s a conceit in the show that living in space will open humanity up to a new level of evolution, physically and mentally. MS Gundam uses it in the novel for easy escape from plot holes. This is not to say it’s a bad concept, but it is a little overplayed in that particular story. Newtypes have a variety of abilities depending on the person and the canon. Generally it falls into the category of heightened perception, extending into an idea of individuals being able to tap into a collective consciousness and become capable of telepathic communication. It has been tentatively ‘confirmed’ by the creators in interviews (albeit feel free to take this with as big a pinch of salt as you so wish) that Quatre, Heero and Wufei have newtype abilities. Quatre, in fanon parlance, is empathic. He’s got this collective consciousness sense of other people’s minds and feelings; Heero is a battle adept, able to read a fight and react faster, and better than others; and in one throwaway comment, Wufei has the skill to instinctively tell good from evil in others. Gundam Wing never outright uses the word ‘newtype’ in as much as I am aware, and it’s not a part of the story the way that it is in other Gundam canons. Still, it’s worth being aware of, as the show does play homage to earlier serieses, and there is this funny little undercurrent of Newtype behaviours, which we’ll pick up as the show progresses. Anyway, back to whether or not Quatre and Trowa are instinctively friends in this episode…)
Trowa is still fighting, by the time the fight’s over, if that makes sense, and Zechs has played them all. He’s held back and held back with the carrier with the Tallgeese in it. He waits for it all to go quiet, and then he jets off, at which point Quatre goes, “Crap, there was another one?!” He’s distracted, and then Trowa goes, “Ok, I can’t shoot down the vessel. I’ll take my chances and attack the leader.” That’s my take on the thought process, anyway.
Quatre defends himself, attacks back. Then I think it’s just logical for him to have realized that, “hold on, this guy came here to attack the same guys that I came here to attack. This is ridiculous. We clearly have a common enemy. We’ve clearly just ballsed up, because if he hadn’t attacked me then maybe we could have gone after the carrier or something.” At which point I think I personally, if I’d been in that situation I would have said, “Woah, woah, time out. Let’s talk; this is dumb. We shouldn’t be fighting.” I think it’s just more on a strategy level than even on a sentimental level. Yes, that’s probably playing into it too. What do you make of that scene? Dial in, tell me what you think, because I don’t know. I know nothing. I am Jon Snow here.
Final point for the day, it does feel like this is an episode that’s about working together. Heero is begrudgingly working with Duo. Not that he wants to be, but he is, and it’s putting him back on course. Trowa surrenders and goes, “Oh, whatever. Kill me, whatever. I’ve run out of bullets. Whatever, time to die.” And suddenly he’s met somebody else, who essentially says, “No, maybe there’s another option.” We have Zechs and Treize working together to undermine something, effectively. Also that kind of sweet scene (is it sweet? I dunno), that scene where Otto is about to take himself off to go into battle where he is supposed to be, and Treize quite quickly says “no, I need you to be here. I need you to come and help me.”
Again, we’re getting these little clumps forming of characters working together to do stuff, which is nice. I think we all need someone to go out there and do stuff with, even if it is overthrowing the dominant forces in your life, whatever though may be. Tonight for me it will be, how the hell I get out of my blanket fort, and also not freezing to death because it’s really cold tonight. So that’s it. [sound of sirens in the background] Sorry, Heero just drove past, fucker. Interrupting my podcasting.
That’s it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you found it interesting, and I hope it gave you some food for thought. If you have had any food for thought, please have a chit chat with me. You can always find me at lemontrash.tumblr.com. Drop me a message there. I will see you in orbit next time, which I’m looking forward to. I really like episode 4 for a whole host of reasons.
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