Hello Friendlies! This week, we look back on Episode 5 - Relena's Secret. Listen to the podcast here.
Below is a copy of the transcript of this episode, created by the highly deductive Noirangetrois, and punctuated throughout with additional commentary by me in bold and in brackets (Edit: Like this!), plus a few corrections and additions where applicable. As always, if you have something to add, just get in touch! Hit 'Pineapple' on this website in the top bar, or contact me at lemontrash.tumblr.com :)
Episode 5
Hey there and welcome to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because overthinking hastily-slapped-together children’s television is my jam. This week, Episode 5, Relena’s Secret, "Rirīna no Himitsu" (リリーナの秘密). Welcome to orbit.
[musical interlude]
Hey, you made it! Episode 5. It’s going well, I feel. As best as it could be. Let’s start off with an overview of this episode, because this one has a lot in it. The episode opens with Relena and her dad going back into space (I assume they’re heading to L1; it’s not necessarily specified) following, obviously, the news that there are Gundams who are rumored to have been sent by the colonies. Whether or not Vice Foreign Minister Darlian is fully aware of the truth is still open for debate. They are accompanied by Lady Une, who is obviously an OZ agent. He goes to his meeting. Lady Une has at the end of the last episode received what she believes to be orders direct for Treize in his popcorn bath to do something about the problem, and boy, she does.
We hop around a bit in this episode. Vice Foreign Minister Darlian cops it, we find out Relena’s secret, cue title. We get that continuation of what the others are doing as well. We check in with Quatre and Trowa, who had in the last episode met up and were staying at one of Quatre’s bases. We check in with Wufei, who’s still doing his own thing, very much following his mission. We check in with Heero, who has taken off in Wing Zero (EDIT: Noir just informed me that it’s not ‘Wing Zero’ yet. Actually, I’m not sure that ANY of the Gundams have been named yet on screen? Have they? D: I’m honestly thrown for a loop! It’s just ‘Gundam Zero’ at this point, right?) having stolen parts from Duo and kind of given him a bad day. We obviously check in with Duo as well, who has now got a defunct Gundam. He’s busy trying to repair it before he gets his next mission.
At the end of the episode, Relena meets Dr. J. That’s one of the big scenes of this episode. They have a discussion about Heero, about what’s going on, and then at the end, Relena returns to Earth. So that’s what’s happening in this episode. The plot in terms of the grander scheme of things doesn’t go very far, but we do get some backstory, and we can see that everyone is busy regrouping, reorganizing, starting to put the pedal to the metal.
This is probably one that you might want to rewatch before following on too much more with this episode of the podcast, just to remind yourself if you’ve forgotten (which I do not blame you, because I remembered hardly any of this) exactly what goes on in this episode. If you’re going to do that, do it now.
[musical interlude]
Alright, you back? We good? A few things on language. We have the recap at the beginning with Relena’s “Heero, come and kill me.” I didn’t talk about this in the last episode. I glossed over it because there was enough to talk about on other things, but I did notice, the word she used, she said, “hayaku, watakushi wo koroshi ni irrashai.” (早く私に殺しにいっらしゃい・はやくわたくしにころしにいっらしゃい） We’ve discussed before how, every other time she’s spoken to Heero, she’s very direct, very bossy. Here we get this switch back to a not-super-formal level of politeness that she has used with other things, but an almost ironic level of politeness. She defaults back to “watakushi,” that more polite form of “watashi” or “I,” and then we have this verb at the end, “irashai.” This is the casual form of a very formal verb that is used frequently in generally informal contexts. I know, language is a mess.
“Irashai” is from the verb, “irrashaimasu,”(いっらしゃいます） which is an honorific for “to come” or “to go.” You also hear this every time you walk into a convenience store. Some poor teen wedged behind the counter will say, “irrashaimase,” because its 3 am and you’ve turned up to buy a roll of toilet paper and some wasabi, because that is the whole point of a convenience store, it allows you to do that and to make those life choices. (I absolutely did that once to confuse a convenience store clerk.) (EDIT: we had an ongoing rivalry where he would constantly give me either cutlery I did not need, or the wrong cutlery. He did not know what to do with that particular combination of purchases, let me tell you.)
So she dropped the “masu” ending from the verb, which makes it standardly polite, I guess. Anyway, this is a very long-winded way to say that this is the first time she’s used any kind of her standard polite phrasing directed to Heero, and he’s not even there to enjoy it. I’m going to come back to talk about Relena quite a bit in this episode because, first, the episode is quite a bit about her, but we also get some really interesting insights into her character.
Again, talking about language, we talked about Relena and how she talks to her peers. She’s very detached, very formal. We actually get to hear them talk to each other without her present, and they’re much, much less formal. They’re still polite in that “all girls school” formal “gokigenyou” kind of way, but they’re using a much more standard form of politeness rather than this almost archaic politeness, this overblown politeness as you might say. (EDIT: I goofed. Sometimes talking about Japanese I forget to translate shit. ごきげんよう gokigenyou is analogous with ‘good day’ in English, and acts as both a greeting and a farewell. It’s old-fashioned and the stereotype is that it’s used by Posh Girls at Expensive Girl’s Private Schools, including the prestigious St. Joseph’s Girls School.) There’s one more language point regarding Relena, which I will come back to when we discuss her character, because I think it’s such a good illustration of who she is at this stage of the game.
The last thing about language that I’m going to talk about is how Relena and Dr. J respectively talk about Heero. Up till now, we’ve had Relena describe Heero as a child; that “kodomo” word. Then he’s been described respectively as a “shounen” by Sally, and I can’t really remember how Duo addresses him. I think he just kind of skips that and, well, whatever. But here, Relena refers to him as “Heero-kun.” “Kun” (くん） is that suffix/ending that is exclusively used for young boys, and perhaps boys of your own age in your class. You might use it to talk about adult men, if you know them well. I might talk about a guy I went to school with as “Heero-kun.” It expresses a sense of familiarity, so in front of Dr. J, she’s sort of claiming a little bit of ownership.
She’s using his first name right off the bat, which isn’t typical in Japanese. Usually, there’s a bit of a big deal about being invited to do that. Although having said that, in a modern context, a lot of people do just skip to that. It might be that they’ve done this, the way that she’s referred to as Relena pretty much exclusively, to demonstrate a more global attitude within the canon. But she only calls him “Heero-kun” once. She very quickly drops it and goes back to calling him Heero with no honorific whatsoever.
Dr. J doesn’t even bother to use his name. He refers to Heero as “yatsu,” (やつ） which I mentioned before. It’s that slangy kind of way to say “guy.” He also uses “aistu,”（あいつ） which is another way to talk about a person but also a thing, and again it’s relatively casual. This dude’s language is really interesting. He does not talk like you would expect a scientist to talk. He’s kind of “cowabunga,” if you know what I’m saying. He also refers to Heero, when Relena asks Dr. J, “what are you doing? What’s your connection to Heero? Who is he to you?” kind of thing, he says “aitsu wa,” that this guy, this person is our agent. That’s how it’s translated in the English subtitles.
The word he uses is really curious to me because he says “dairisha.” （代理者・だいりしゃ） I had real trouble with this one because I’ve come across the word “dairi” （代理・だいり）before, but not in a context even remotely resembling this. I’ve come across it in terms of an agent, specifically, a travel agent. So you have the “Ryoukou Dairiten” （旅行代理店・りょこうだいりてん） is the travel agency building. Then it’s typically “dairinin” （代理人・だいりにん） not “dairisha.” It’s a different character (kanji). It still kind of denotes the same thing, but it’s just a weird ending. It’s not a typical conjunction of characters (kanji) here. And crucially, it also doesn’t mean secret agent. Throw that idea out.
(Edit: In fact, I want to go so far as to throw in the dictionary listing for this word and the contexts that it IS used in, because it’s so different to how an English speaker would approach the word ‘agent’ used in the scenario of a soldier or a rebellion as is the case with Heero:
So in fact it feel to me like J is putting a gloss of legitimacy over his (unnamed) organisation and his use of Heero.)
That’s (secret agent) not what it means whatsoever, because there’s very different words for a spy or a secret agent, which I did have to look up because I’d forgotten what they were. You’ve got “kancho,” (間諜・かんちょう）(Edit: Fun fact, this word is also a homonym for the word 浣腸 which means ‘enema’.) you have “kensha,” (間者・けんしゃ） and you have “ｍawashimono.” （回し者・まわしもの）（Edit: I think I said ‘warashimono’ on the recording which is (a) nonsense or (b) ‘straw thing’. Neither is what I wanted to say.) So I’m not quite sure what they were aiming for with this, whether it’s just a rare word that my experience hasn’t really come up with much. Or they invented this to show a kind of uniqueness to the situation. It remains to be seen. Not sure. I will keep my ears peeled, so to speak, to see if it’s ever used again.
There is one last thing. J reveals the presence of OZ to Relena, so she’s heard about it once from her dad. Then J reiterates that OZ exists, they’re a real thing, a real deal, and that’s who they’re opposing. She asks who OZ are, what’s the deal there, and J refers to them as “akumayatsu.” (悪魔やつ・あくまやつ）Now “akuma” （悪魔・あくま） is best or most easily translated as “devil” or “demon,” as a thing from hell, so I think that’s another reflection on this fairytale type overview that’s been going on. We heard “kaibutsu,” Zechs talking about monsters, we’ve had princes, and now we’ve got devils. So, themes carry on.
[musical interlude]
Let’s talk now a little bit about the world that we’re exploring. For the first part of this episode, we get to travel with Relena and her dad into the colonies, and we get to see the colonies through their eyes. What is this place? We know that it’s rare for people from Earth to travel to the colonies. We know that travel from the colonies to Earth and between the colonies is rare. (Edite: so rare and expensive, in fact that the representative of the colony Mr. Darlien meets comments about how they’ve been flying back and forth with relative frequency. He’s pretty snide about it too. We also have (do we have it or have I just picked this up from Frozen Teardrop?) communications are pretty slim as well.
One thing I really noticed (and this is a complete aside) in the introduction is that we have these donut-shaped colonies out there. So when it’s doing it’s “The year is After Colony 195…” bit, we get a nice image of a ring-shaped colony. That put a little ding in my head of, “oh! The international space station!” When did that happen? Where does this image come from? I talked about the curving inside of a colony before in episode 1. So, the International Space Station launched in 1998, a couple years after Gundam Wing was finished. Prior to that, we’d have a couple of Russian space stations. You’ll have to forgive me if you already know all of this, I am super ignorant about astronomy and space travel. It’s something I’m exploring as I go along, I’m learning as well. But none of them were circular or ring-shaped. They were all tube shaped, for the most part. All of our actual space station are tube shaped.
This concept came out of a mathematical theory in the 1950s by a man named von Braun, and it’s based on artificial gravity. If you have a ring that spins, you can create gravity. I assume it’s something very complicated to do with physics and centrifugal forces. We do see this in other media of the time. It pops up in 1968’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which obviously predates Gundam, pretty much in its entirety I think. So yes, Gundam Wing is fairly anachronistic, for example, pay phones. It still has the little nod to what could be done. The whole reason apparently that the International Space Station isn’t donut shaped and has artificial gravity is because apparently the scientific worth of testing stuff in microgravity or zero gravity is quite a bit better, and also the cost of creating one of these things is just astronomical (excuse the pun) and nobody can really afford it at the moment.
Although, that might change. NASA has been talking about doing a little module that spins. It’s not donut shaped, I don’t think, but they might be trying to do that to see then how that works. Also, if you’ve been reading your science things, you also know about how reproduction in space is difficult because of the lack of gravity. They’re talking about doing this with sleeping quarters or living quarters, so I wonder what experiments they’re going to do up there. Hmm? (Edit: If you’d like to know more about space stations in real life and the design/set up of space habitations in the show, be sure to check out Amyoles excellent write up on this blog here.)
Other things. Just the fact that Relena is going back into space again, it’s the second time in as many weeks, and we already know it’s incredibly rare for this travel to happen at all. I think it’s very telling that her father has this little snit with Lady Une on the shuttle, and immediately turns to Relena and directs her out the window and says, “Make sure you remember this. Look at the Earth and remember how beautiful it is.” It just made me think of something I read regarding experiences of astronauts who had been out of the atmosphere and seeing the Earth in its entirety for the first time.
I can’t remember the specific name of the phenomenon. I’m just going to call it “Earth humbling.” It’s this change of perspective, once you get out of orbit and look back at the Earth and realize that that is it, that is the entirety of humanity. That’s where we came from, that’s everything we have. It makes you feel incredibly small, but also it gives this new sense of value to life. I can’t remember the exact quote again, but one of them, I think it was Tim Peake, said he wished everybody could have that experience because it just made you realize that we are one species rather than, you know, we shouldn’t be having wars, we shouldn’t be fighting. That really pinged into my head.
It just made me think as well, that you have these colonists who have been living in space for such a long, long time that they have very likely lost that sense, that perspective. The Earth is no longer a thing of value – it’s become “the other,” it is the “them” in the phrase “them and us.” You get this conflict. And likewise, the people of Earth don’t have this perspective that life is so fragile, so important. That we only really have this one ball of dirt, and that’s phenomenal. The chances of life existing. They don’t have that “Earth humbling” anymore. So we get this sense that there’s this dissonance between people who live on Earth and people who live in space. That’s what sprang into my head.
We get, as I said before, that there’s a couple of contradictory perceptions of the colonies. Relena describes them with this awe. People on Earth are like, “Ahh, space sounds amazing.” She talks about the colonies being kind and courteous and safe. She specifically says, “Oh it’s much safer here than on Earth.” I always get the impression that what she’s jaded with is life on Earth. She’s put life in space up on a pedestal, and of course she’s very, very quickly proved wrong. Space is as dangerous, because people are people wherever they are.
We also get this impression that communication is bad between Earth and the colonies. As soon as the Minister arrives, he has a conversation with a couple of people of the colonies. They’re talking about Earth’s chronic financial crisis. It’s purely an irony, it must be, because everyone we’ve seen on Earth so far has been stinking rich. They’ve got Relena’s whole private school. We haven’t seen any suffering, exactly. At least not yet. That’s all to come. And I think this is really curious as well, because again, if I refer back to Frozen Teardrop (I think), it talks about how the colonies are very deeply misled economically by Earth. So the whole reason L2 goes to shit is that they’ve been forced to pay for the creation of [Space Fortress] Barge? Some massive spaceship. They basically got bankrolled, then promptly went bankrupt. So we have this impression that the colonies are more economically fragile. They have wealth, but they can’t really apply it efficiently, and they’re being told that “oh, Earth needs your money.” But as we’ve seen, there are a lot of people on Earth who aren’t particularly hurting for cash. We’ve got the whole of Romefeller, for example. (Edit: Who I THINK have been name dropped earlier in the show when Treize was introduced.)
This is followed through as well, I think, in how we get a real chance to see the colony as well. There’s definitely a difference in how it’s portrayed. It’s big, for starters. These are not small settlements in space. They talked about colonies, and we tend to get this little ping in our heads (Edit: honestly, new drinking game. Take a shot every time I imply my head makes a noise like a microwave oven) that a colony is a little pioneer thing. It’s a wee thing going off into the wilds. You know, those little frontier town sort of images pop up. But these are big cities, effectively. We get a real impact of the sheer mass and the sheer size of everything in the colonies. There’re skyscrapers in there. They’re got highways and big parks and such. It’s no small potatoes.
The other thing that pinged up on my radar is that the architecture is strikingly different. It’s very utilitarian, it’s quite sparse. It’s not as modern looking. The skyscrapers of the colonies kind of look like 1960s concrete crap. There’s none of this old world heritage. There’s not much beauty, it has to be said, in colony architecture.
We also get this, as we had the signs that there was fractures amongst the antagonists, amongst the Alliance, we also get these signs that there are fractures amongst the factions of the colonies. This isn’t discussed in as much detail, but we this one guy turn to Vice Minister Darlian, and he’s like, “Why does the Alliance find it so hard to trust us?” And he kind of eyeballs him. I can’t decide whether or not he was judging. I feel like he was.
We do get the guys turn up to fetch the bodies, effectively, after the explosion. Again, it’s not clear who they are. They might have been ex-Sanc citizens, secret service, they might just be the kind of rebels who are working with Dr. J, or maybe he fell in with the Sanc Secret Service, or whatever. (Edit: Noir presents an interesting alternative as she thought they were with Une. Has to also be mentioned that I don’t think Sanc has been named so far. Also we’re going to use the spelling ‘Sanc’ because we have to pick one and might as well, eh?) They’re not part of the main colony hierarchy, I suppose we could say. They’re not part of the people having the main discussions with the Alliance. We’ve got already these sub-branches. We have the Alliance who talk to the colonies, except there’s these secondary groups swimming under the surface, muddying the waters.
That’s some of the things I’ve observed about the world and the world building. We have a little bit more insight. We’ve expanded our horizons. With that, we get a few insights about the characters as well.
[musical interlude]
Starting off with the quick bits, we have a nice little check in with Trowa and Quatre. I think an award needs to be given to Trowa for being the most realistic teenager in this. Oh my god, he is such a moody shit. He did the duet last episode. He was mad about that. He’s still mad. He’s just sulking off into the distance. I assume he got orders to go and do some stuff as a Gundam pilot. (Edit: Noir also raised an excellent point in that we have NO IDEA who the orders are coming from. I assumed the scientists, but it’s not explicitly stated in the show.) Meanwhile, Rashid talks to Quatre. He essentially says, “Maybe we shouldn’t let him go, he might come back and attack.” Quatre’s just like, “Oh I wish he would, and I can see him again.” Say what you like, you can try and convince me that this boy is cotton candy, and I will just, no. I just can’t buy it. Look at his face as he says, “then I could see him again.” He’s a little shit. He knows what he said. He’s devious. (Edit: or if you so headcanon, thirsty for tall boys). Trowa’s probably out of there like, “this boy’s trouble.” Make of that what you will.
Another observation. I think Duo’s got cash. We see Howard chilling out on his entire floating dock. It’s got at least 2 superyacht cranes on it. I don’t know if he owns that or he’s just borrowing it, but that is not an insignificant piece of kit. Howard’s like, “Yeah, cool dude, you can be here and I’ll repair your Gundam as much as you’d like, as long as you pay me.” He could just be ribbing Duo, but it does throw up the option there that Duo’s waving around mad cash. And he could be. He could be.
We get a little check in with Noin and Zechs as well, so we know they’re still alive. They’re still doing stuff with the Tallgeese. And we have this little bit where Zechs is watching the news, and he’s watching Lady Une basically lie her face off in front of all these press cameras and threaten the colonies. There’s this sort of “I know that you know that I know” kind of situation going on. Noin knows that Zechs is worried and he won’t acknowledge it, no more than he’ll acknowledge that she knows who he really is. She knows Relena is his sister. (Edit: Noir is on FIRE today. Another excellent shout out that first time viewers don’t know this at this point. There’s maybe been a mention of a connection between Relena and Zechs but nothing concrete. However, as a second time through viewer, I think Noin definitely knows.)There’s this question mark over Zechs. What the hell is he doing? Why is he hanging out with these guys? What’s his game? Is he really evil or not?
I talked about how other Gundam series pay homage the original Mobile Suit Gundam series and I feel like that is where Zechs comes in. I think he is a redux of the character Char Aznable. “Shar” I think is how it’s pronounced. Char Aznable is in the original series. Again, I’ve only read the novel, which I appreciate is different from the anime. He is a nobleman who the enemy, originally to get revenge, and then gets sucked in for quite a long time. He is the antagonist, and then he kind of loses sight of his mission, and then stuff happens. Huge similarities. (Edit: Keep your eyes peeled for another guest blog to come discussing this very topic, which I am hugely excited for.)
Coming back to the main characters, Relena gets pretty complicated this episode. Previously we’ve had her set of as this symbol of what life on Earth is like. It’s relatively wealthy. She’s in a cushy position, but she’s not content. She doesn’t connect well with the world that she lives in. This episode is very much about her conflict with two very different parts of herself. She starts off the episode jabbering on about how the colonies are so great because they’re so peaceful. Peace is great, safety’s great, yadda yadda yadda. But then as soon as violence actually happens to Relena, she gets violent.
Her first instinct after her father is killed is that she jumps straight to revenge. She says, “OZ did this didn’t they. I’ll kill them.” She steals the gun and starts waving that around. And then she has a flashback to Heero threatening to kill her, and talking to her father. I think it’s very key that she jumps to the phrase where she says, “I’m not a child.” From my perspective, I feel like what’s happening here is that she is jumping to Heero’s decisiveness more than anything. He acts. He kills to defeat his enemies. And she realizes that when she called him a child, I think she’s realizing the depths of how much she doesn’t know, how much she condescended to him, and that he really has experience and capabilities that, at the moment, she sorely lacks.
She’s wavering between being quite childlike. She sits very passively as the just inject her with some stuff. When they pounce on her to get the gun off of her, she says, “hanashite kudasai!” (離して下さい・はなしてください！）“Hanashite”（離して・はなして） is ”let go of me”, and then “kudasai” is please, so it’s the one thing that really sums her up at the moment. She’s fighting, but she can’t quite break out of the mold that she’s been put into throughout her childhood. She’s very contrary. She’s pulled in two different directions. She goes straight to, “I’m going to kill them all! I’m going to get my revenge!” to “Killing can’t possibly end in peace” when she’s talking to Dr. J. She has these little moments where she acts quite childlike and quite naive, and then equally quite jaded.
By the end of the episode, Relena hasn’t fully resolved this. She’s come to the conclusion that she doesn’t like exactly what Dr. J is doing, perhaps because she has empathized with Heero to such and extent that she feels that what Dr. J is doing is wrong. But she hasn’t really settled within herself quite what’s going on. Other than that, at the end of the day, she did love her adopted father and whatever her biological truth is, because she’s found out that she is the heir to this peace philosophy, but she’s not ready to apply that to herself just yet. She does say at the end of it, “I will always be your daughter.” She is taking on the Darlian identity. She goes back to that, probably as a bit of a safe space after what has to have been a pretty shit day. Let’s give her some credit. The girl’s been through the ringer here.
Really the last thing that this episode gives us is some insight into Heero. We know that he’s effectively a tool. Dr. J certainly talks about him like he’s something owned. He’s not referred to by name. There’s a sort of deep familiarity but not necessarily a niceness there, I suppose we could say. And there’s this thing that Heero’s kind hearted but he’s dedicated to the mission. He will do whatever needs to be done - and this is foreshadowing of what we know is going to come up in a few episodes’ time. We learn that he doesn’t even have his own name. Heero Yuy is a codename. We see him as well fighting and enjoying it. He has a bit of a chuckle as he’s blowing shit up.
Finally we get this little showdown between Heero and Duo. Again, it’s often underappreciated how funny Heero is. He and Duo turn up at the same base. Duo starts giving him shit for stealing his Gundam parts - which didn’t really appear to give Heero much of an advantage. They both turn up at the same mission on the same day, so either Howard really pulled all the stops out or Heero just is that inefficient. (EDIT: OK so Heero COULD have gone on some other mission in the interim but honestly, this version of events is funnier so this the headcanon I’m adopting.) They start squaring up to have a barney (Edit: ‘a fight’ for those not familiar with British slang.). We see Heero target an enemy that we assume is Duo, and Duo is basically, “Oh, you wanna go? Let’s go!” Then [Heero] blows the head off a Leo who’s sneaking up on him and then says basically, “You’re welcome,” and then flies off. I dunno, I really enjoyed that. He is funny. He’s a funny character.
There we go, that’s Episode 5. As I said, a lot going on in there. It’s really opening things up to carry on. This is where you start thinking, “Ooo, ok, now I can maybe start predicting what’s going to happen next, except I can’t.” You know? But you will find out what happens in the next one. I think my closing thought is going to be that, I do remember watching this the first time round and thinking, “My god there’s so much story!” compared to other animations. It is fairly relentless. You have to pay attention, otherwise you miss stuff and then you’re like, “oh wait, that one throwaway line about the economy was actually vital to understanding who’s who and what’s what and why they’re doing what they’re doing.” That’s pretty demanding for a kid’s show, despite the fact that it’s one of those shows that does sort of take itself seriously, but at the end of the day, it’s kind of unintentionally cracky.
I’m going to leave it there. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you found it interesting. As ever, you can get ahold of me at lemontrash.tumblr.com, or through Radio Meteor the website. You can always ping me an email from there, just hit the pineapple button. I will see you in orbit next time. Bye!
[music]