The Patreon Letter - 18th August, 2018

Fellow spacenoids, on Monday it will be one year to the day that we launched The Great Gundam Project, our nearly decade long quest to become Gundam experts by watching all of the Gundam. It's been, in the words of another gritty examination of war, a long road, gettin' from there to here. And yet, we still have so much more to go.

I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year of Gundam, and just how much this adventure has meant to both of us. Jackson might have other thoughts on this, but they're doing school work today so it's just me giving my all, so take every 'our' and 'we' with a grain of salt. These are all my opinions about this adventure.

Gundam has been such a wild ride! When we started I thought this would mostly just motivate me to get through an anime I had tried to watch but struggled to keep up with. I remember slogging through Zeta when I could pull together the motivation, confused as to why there were so many characters I never took the time to tell apart. Zeta's a bad show to half watch casually. Maybe one of the worst. 

I figured if me and Jackson did it more officially, I'd pay more attention, and actually understand the damn show. The monkeys paw curls.

Well the one year war is at an end, and humanity remains in crisis. Watching Gundam has been a strangely transformative experience, coinciding with a very rocky year for me in my personal life, and being the thing I reflect upon day to day in spare moments to ponder this strange universe and it's insistence on special boys and death machines. It's the kind of show that rewards close reads as often as it frustrates them, a true test of your ability to sift the intentional political and philosophical statements from the bullshit sexism of old anime. 

Gundam has made me a better leftist in trying times, driving home the reality of the need of violence and revolt against oppressive institutions. It's made me read more philosophy and politics. The idea of Newtypes and the expansion of the consciousness of humanity is, for me, an echo of religious experience. It's made me want to consider spirituality in new contexts and as part of a vision of the future. It's really brought a lot to my day to day world. 

At the same time, for the year of our efforts, there's so much we're still in the dark about. We joke often about how Char must counter-attack, but what that means is only a foggy guess at a looming nightmare. We know many of our friends like Char. We like Char! But I'm sure that movie casts him as the villain and I don't understand how that can be and I'm so curious whether we'll agree with those reads or not. Don't tell us. There's only a few months to go! 

I suspect that the story of Gundam will be a tragic one, given that UC continues on for another year or so, but I really want our friends to be okay. I want to see a vision of this new future, where people and born and live in space, and if they die, it's only through the natural order of things. It's hard to imagine Gundam will go this way, but I think it would be the courageous thing to do. To depict the world after the war is such a harder, bolder thing to aim to do. I desperately want that, even if I don't like whatever the answer will be. I know there's UC after CCA, and perhaps I'll find an answer there. I can't wait. 

I want the other worlds, the non-UC shows ahead, to be visions of conflicts that remind us of our own world in new ways. I definitely don't expect I'll get that one. G Gundam is coming. I'm looking forward to it, but it's in a much different way. Because I also wish for visions of Gundam that are fun and light, in ways that 0079 and Zeta have not been, in ways that ZZ has failed to be. I think visions of space and giant robots and even Newtypes can be joyful and silly. I think they should be those things. 

I'd really like a woman in a Gundam show to be treated with respect and given all the opportunities and abilities of these special boys. I want this knowing I won't get it. I'll want this forever. Gundam's problems with women bother me more than anything else about the franchise, and I don't suspect that's going to change. 

I want our podcast to grow and keep going. I want to get better at the context of these shows as I watch more anime and learn more about where they sit in the grand scheme of the culture. Maybe I'll even brush up on my Japanese! 

Gundam inspires such whimsical dreams. Things I want to do but wonder if I'll ever find time for. Because Gundam itself is one of those things I wanted to understand but wasn't sure I'd ever find time for. 

These are my hopes for Gundam on the anniversary of our podcast. Consider this a dream for what's to come, a vision for our future and a fond wish that we will all experience such worlds together, two episodes at a time. I've made so many friends and learned so much in one year doing this, I can't imagine what another seven will offer for me. 

Thank you, everyone. I think of all of you when we watch this show, when I write about this show, when we argue about this show. We are all here together, looking to the stars, hoping for the next evolution of humanity free from Earth's gravity.

Until next time,

Em