Hello friendlies! Here we are again with a look back on Radio Meteor Episode Two - The Gundam Called Shinigami.
Below you'll find the transcript for the episode, compiled by the very generous 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
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Welcome back to Radio Meteor, the podcast where I watch an episode of 90s anime Gundam Wing and ramble about it because, frankly, who doesn’t look at the news these days and doesn’t want to fling themselves into the cold fatality of space. I’m Odamaki, welcome to orbit.
[musical interlude]
Episode 2 - The Gundam Known as Shinigami. “Shinigami to Yobareru Gandamu.”(死神と呼ばれるグンダム・しにがみとよばれるグンダム） Lots to achieve in a second episode, because you have to continue the plot of the first episode. You have to reestablish your characters - because just because you’ve introduced them doesn’t mean people really know them or necessarily like them yet. So you’ve gotta build on that, and in this case you’re also introducing more stuff, more plot, more world. The second episode is always kind of an expansion package, if you like, on the first one. This is always challenging, and it’s why sequels always are kind of the hit and miss bit of any trilogy.
So, I’m gonna assume that you’ve watched it. Last time I said that I was using the high definition kind of remix of the show on YouTube. In the natural course of things, between me recording that episode and going to record this episode, those videos have been taken down. Not to worry, where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ve sourced another version, I think this is now the original 1995 version with Japanese audio and English subtitles. I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you on your own to rummage up where you're going to be able to watch it. Crunchyroll I believe also has it, so have a look there.
So, quick recap of the episode. It’s Relena’s birthday. Hurray! Heero has enrolled at her school, and his Gundam is at the bottom of the ocean. Various factions are vying to pull the damn thing up and we get a little bit of insight as well as to what these others are up to out there in the big wide world. So that’s one thing I’ll talk about a little bit during this episode.
[musical interlude]
First off let’s kick off with some of the language things that I noticed in this episode. There were quite a number actually. First of all, they have this unnamed character, I don’t know if he has a name. I think he might be called Chris or something horrendous in the English dub (Edit: Lbro009 found his name for me; it’s ‘Kai’). He is the foil to Heero in this kind of Relena… romance? I don’t know if we can really call it a romance. I guess it is. If Heero is like the Edward Cullen as I described him last time; he’s the mysterious thing that happens to Relena, then this guy is, I dunno... I can’t even call him a hot guy. He’s like the standard alternative option at her school. And actually on the surface, this blonde dude is pretty alright as a person. He’s not a bad person. He’s certainly a lot more considerate than Heero is, but I think as I said with Relena before, he represents a lot of the sort of things that are wrong with this universe, in terms of power and privilege and all of that good stuff.
Heero does not mess around with him when they are fencing. Blonde guy comes in, and he’s like, “I heard you ripped up Relena’s invitation, that’s not cool, aren’t you ashamed of yourself as a gentleman,” and Heero is having none of it. He’s not having any of it. He goes right in, basically nearly stabs the guy in the face. And he comes out with this really quite great sentence, which just really summarizes how sassy Heero is, but also how funny and quick he is. We always think of Duo as the one with being the quick mouth, but Heero really has some good zingers. .
He comes out with this thing that in English is translated as “Oh, you should have told me sooner, I would have given it to you.” And it’s very vague what it is supposed to mean, if it’s the invitation, or I suppose it’s a play on words, like “Yeah, I would give you it, dude” (I’m thumping my fist here). I dunno, Heero’s not that jocky *laughing*. (I’m really revealing more about myself here than this character.)
The key verb that gets used in this exchange in Japanese is “yaburu,” (破る・やぶる）which is “to rip” or “to tear” or “to break.” It is also used in the sense of “to defeat” or “to beat” or “to break through” as in an opponent’s defense. It’s a really good play on words here. What he actually says is, “yaburazu omae ni ageru.”(破らずお前に上げる・やぶらすおまえにあげる） “Yaburazu” (破らず・やぶらず） is “yaburu,” that verb that means “to tear” or “to break” and then that “zu”（ず） ending is a negative, so it’s actually “without verbing,” without doing that action.
“Omae”(お前） is another pronoun, and it is technically incredibly formal, so it’s actually polite. It’s like saying “honorable thing that is before me,” but like with so much of Japanese, it has been distorted over time. 99% of the time that it’s used, it’s rude. It’s so polite, and it’s so used out of context of that politeness. If I just yelled “omae,” it’d be like “hey, you asshole!” But again it really depends on your tone. A lot of Japanese swearing and slang depends on your tone.
(EDIT: Ok, so caveat and an addition: お前 isn’t always rude, and with the right tone in the right context with the right person, can be friendly with people you know very well. If you’re one of the lads. Your brother, maybe. Or it’s even used as a means of being roughty-toughty and romantic at the same time. At any rate, Heero’s not chatting this fella up, so we can discount these uses of the word here.)
And then he says “ni ageru”（にあげる・に上げる） which means, “to give to you.”
That whole phrase together, “Oh if you’d told me sooner I would have given it to you without tearing it,” but it also has that play on words that would mean, “Oh, if you’d told me that you had this sooner, I wouldn’t have kicked your ass.” It’s that kind of really slick kind of thing. He has just beaten thought this guy’s defences, he’s just defeated him at fencing, so I think that really shows some of Heero’s character. He’s witty, and when he wants to be, although he doesn’t say a lot, he’s surprisingly erudite. I think that gets really missed in the general understanding of who Heero is and how he functions. I think that’s a really nice little illustration that there is a lot more to him than meets the eye. Still waters run deep, right?
Another thing that comes up is, when the ship’s captain (I don’t know if he has a name) is talking to Zechs, that’s a really interesting conversation as well in terms of politeness and how polite people are. Zechs tends to use quite polite speech in terms of his grammar and vocabulary choice. He’s not using swear words (or rough langauge) but he’s very dry, he’s very sardonic. He’s rude in the politest, most passive aggressive way that you could possibly imagine. I really quite enjoy hearing Zechs. Zechs is quite classy with how he’s rude, whereas the ship’s captain is just full on.
There’s one translation which is a little bit misleading, perhaps? The ship’s captain refers to Zechs as Treize’s pawn, but the word that he uses for that is “kogai,” (こがい・子飼い） and that doesn’t actually mean pawn. There is a different word that is used for pawn, as in the chess piece, and there’s also another word that’s used to denote a tool that somebody uses for their own purpose, that kind of connotation. “Kogai” actually a little bit more positive than the word “pawn.” You could translate it as “protege,” and there’s also this aspect of raising somebody or something. You might use it in the context of a merchant house - that's how it was traditionally used, or maybe temples, but it doesn’t have a religious connotation. Or if you had a servant or a member of your household who was not part of you family, from the time that they were a child, and you brought them into adulthood or into the role that they were going to play. That’s what that kind of “protege” overlap comes in. It’s got this real connotation as starting from the ground up. You can adopt a pawn who’s anybody, but this “kogai” concept is that you take someone from their first baby step and you really mold them all the way into being their final form, or that’s the idea. I’m not sure Zechs is in his final form, but whatever he is now, there is this consideration amongst his peers that Treize has made him who he is. I think that gives it an interesting layer of meaning, which is missed by just saying, “oh yeah, he’s Treize’s pawn.
I think it’s also really interesting how Relena speaks. I previously mentioned that she’s quite formal, that she uses “watakushi” (わたくし・私） and she calls her dad “otousama” （お父様・おとうさま）which is a very reverential way to address your father. She’s also incredibly formal with her peers, so with the girls who are presented as her friends, she is very detached from them in the way that she speaks. She tends to speak to them very formally. They speak to her very deferentially, they use honorifics to her, and they use humble language about themselves. They really push her up on a pedestal. You get this impression in the Japanese that she is actually quite distanced from these people. She’s feted, she’s privileged, but she’s not buddy-buddy with them.
One good example of this is when she’s at the party, and she’s about to leave and run off after Heero down to the space port, she says to them something like, “I’m terribly afraid I have to go, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like if everybody just stayed here and continued the party without me.” It’s really hard to translate how polite and formal she is into English very well because we don’t have specific verb forms for this. We just tend to get more long-winded and use more words when we want to be more polite. And then she suddenly turns around when they’re all like, “Oh, if you’re going to the port, let us come too, we could drive you there.” She just turned round and said, “Dame! Konaide chodai!” (だめ！こないでちょだい！・だめ！来ないで頂戴！）This is a REALLY abrupt turn of pace. She really does a flip 180, so you can understand why they’re surprised.
“Dame” （だめ）is literally “no,” but it’s a very particular kind of no. It’s the sort of “no” that I used to use as a teacher a lot with the kids when they were trying to climb on chairs and such. It’s like the “dame” I use to the dog when he’s trying to eat something that he shouldn’t be eating. It obviously covers a lot more situations than that, but that’s how abrupt it is. And that “konaide chodai” (こないでちょうだい） is just super direct. “Konaide chodai” is “don’t come near me!” or “don’t come!” Again, it’s got that real imperative to it. “Chodai”（ちょうだい） is like “for my sake,” like “to give me.” If I say, “coffee chodai,” it’s like “give me coffee!” or “give me some of that!” So that’s a real turnabout with Relena.
Another super interesting thing that she says, because I referred to this also when I talked about Episode 1, is that when she pulls Heero’s helmet off, she says “mada kodomo nano ni,”(まだ子供なのに・まだこどもなのに） which is like, “oh, he’s still just a child.” I picked up on the fact that she uses specifically the word “child.” She doesn’t use “oh, even though he’s young” or he’s “shounen”（少年・しょうねん） as in “he’s a boy” or “teen” as opposed to “he’s an adult.” She specifically calls him a child. Then when she’s having a conversation with her father, he’s about to jolly off for work, and he’s apologizing he’s missing her party. She says, “It’s okay, I know how important your work is,” then “kodomo dewa arimasen,” （子供ではありません・こどもではありません）“I am not a child.” “Kodomo,” （こども・子供） child, “dewa arimasen,（ではありません）” I am not. I think that is quite interesting, that she considers herself not a child but Heero is a child in her eyes.
Wufei is also referred to as a child, and so is Trowa, but less directly. He says, “fushugi no ko.” （不思議の子・ふしぎのこ）They don’t use the word “kodomo,” they just use the suffix “ko. （こ・子）” The other option would have been “yatsu,”（やつ） “fushigi na yatsu.” （不思議なやつ・ふしぎなやつ）“Yatsu” just kind of means “guy,” and that has more of an adult connotation, as opposed to “ko,” which links it more to “child.” It’s not directly saying, “he is a child” in the way that Relena and the truck guy refer to Heero and Wufei, respectively.
Relena has this kind of opinion of herself that maybe she’s a little bit more worldly than some of the people around her. I get the impression that she’s actually a little bit jaded. Also I know this episode is called “The Gundam Called Shinigami,” but it’s still quite a lot about Relena and her character arc. She’s starting to question things about her place in this society, who her friends are, what it all means, who Heero is, what’s going on in the wide world. We get at the party these little moments where the scales are starting to drop from her eyes. They’ve probably been dangling on their way out for a while, but she’s starting to really see that shit’s about to go down.
That translates over into her final conversation with Heero on the boat where he’s loading up the torpedoes. She carries on using this real imperative language. She gets bossy, she gets real Lucy Van Pelt with him. She says, “dame yo!” (だめよ！） as in “don’t do that, Heero!” Again, almost like you’re talking to a child. It could be like that kind of downtalk almost. She also says “hanashi nasai.” （はなしなさい！・はなしなさい） That “nasai” （なさい） is absolutely a direct order. It’s not just like saying, “oh, talk with me,” it’s “you need to talk!” Again, nuance. Nuance is everything with Japanese. It’s so, so nuanced, and it doesn’t always translate directly very well. Even just trying to describe what that feels like in a conversation - it would be the kind of thing that my teacher would say to me. She would actually use the opposite, she would say, “Stop talking.”（EDIT: which is ‘hanashi shinasai’ if you’re curious. 話ししなさい・はなししなさい） I think it’s really interesting that Relena weighs in that strong. She’s definitely not the shrinking violet she tries to come across as.
The last bit of language chitchat I’ve got is how Zechs describes the Gundams. He uses the word “kaibutsu,” （怪物・かいぶつ） which is described as beasts. We found the “beast” at the bottom of the ocean, referring to Wing Gundam. Then he says, “When we get this machine, we’ll become terrible beasts ourselves.” However, “kaibutsu” isn’t “beasts” as in lions, tigers and bears, oh my. It’s more like monsters, like sphinxes and gorgons. It’s very much more that mythological, dragons and unicorns and beasts of that nature. I think that’s interesting because we start to get these layers of these fairy tale overtones. Relena’s very much like a little miss princess, she refers to Heero as, is he the “Hoshi No Ojisama,” is he the Star Prince. (Footnote from Noir: Also as in ‘The Little Prince’ by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) Zechs is talking about beasts in the ocean.
I even think Duo really plays into that. He comes in as this sort of highwayman, rogue type figure. He’s there to save the damsel in distress, but she doesn’t actually need a knight. The one she wants is the guy who’s obviously the bad guy. I’ll talk about that a little bit more later as well.
[musical interlude]
Let’s talk about Duo! There’s really not a huge amount to say. Even though this is nominally his episode, or it’s an episode named for his gundam, he doesn’t really get a lot of air time and he doesn’t really do a lot when he does, other than that final scene right at the end. We do get some insight into his character. We know that his tech is pretty damn good; he’s got a thermal blade that works underwater. That shocks the pants off of them. We also find out that he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing.
It might be worth talking about what some of the others are up to as well, because we get some insight into their actions. We see these snippets right after the Big Giant Head Relena moment, where Trowa is getting himself undercover in the circus. We’re not really sure what his plan is there, but he’s doing something, setting himself up for something. Quatre is having tea and looking at flamingos, so he’s being completely bloody useless in as much as we can understand his mission. Wufei is probably the most organized. He’s just bought a truckload of explosives, which seems to be far more on course for what they’re supposed to be doing than what the others are up to. Heero has well failed here, he’s lost his Gundam and gone back to school.
Then we’ve got Duo, who has apparently just been following random OZ ships around, just to see what they’re up to. He’s kind of like a gremlin at this moment. He just hangs around in the background and just causes them trouble without any particular plan. In this case, he’s followed this ship, he’s noticed that they’re up to something around this military base and around the ocean. They’re clearly doing some kind of operation. But he has no idea what they’re looking for, and he has no idea what he’s going to do. He just hangs around. He certainly had no idea about Heero, either. Then when he does find the Gundam, he’s like, “Oh, cool! Spare parts. I’ll just take that.” He’s like Burglar Bill, he’s like “Oh, a Gundam, I’ll ‘ave that,” and he just carries on doing his own thing. Which, you know, respect.
Again, in terms of how these characters are presented, we’re given the impression that they’re trained and designed to do this, but they’re really fucking it up already. By Episode 2, they haven’t really managed an awful lot. They’ve done some initial, stomping and blowing stuff up, they’ve put the cat among the pigeons. Now they’ve lost that element of surprise a little bit. So keep trucking, boys!
I do think it’s really interesting that Duo bursts into the scene as the good guy. He definitely sees himself as the protagonist. He is the hero. He’s going to come in - there’s clearly this tool with his silly little shorts pointing a gun at a girl, and Duo is like, “You know what, I’m gonna step in. This guy is evidently a prime bad guy. I’m the good guy.” And then he gets the pants shocked off of him when it turns out that he’s not wanted in that capacity. I think then he starts doing a little bit like, “Wait, hold the phone. If I’m not the good guy, then am I the bad guy?” I don’t think he goes terribly deep at this point, but certainly I think it comes back into his overarching theme and his overarching character arc with how Duo sees himself and whether or not he’s a hero for the colonies. Whether he’s wanted or not. Whether or not he’s doing the right thing. That certainly is a question that they come back to over and over again throughout later episodes in the series. Which we’ll discuss in due course.
That’s really about it for this episode. The one thing that’s not answered, and I would really, really love to know is what happened immediately after that final scene where Heero is just bobbing in the water like a cork and Duo and Relena are just stood there like, “Are you gonna get that?” I just would love that, that’s the missing scene that I want to read if you want to write that. I would love to read it. Just the comedy value. Also the fact that Heero only has the ambulance. He stole it in Episode 1 and then he’s still driving it Episode 2. It’s the most subtle vehicle he could find, or the only vehicle he could find for breaking into a port. Also, let’s just not mention the fucking marshmallow horses with their turkey-drumstick legs.
That’s it for Episode 2. I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you found it interesting. If you’ve got any comments, suggestions, or just want to tell me I got something wrong, please do drop me a line. I’m always available on lemontrash.tumblr.com. Tag me, send me a message, and I’ll see you in orbit next time. Bye!
[music]
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