This week, we discuss the Mobile Suit Gundam series as a whole: what do we think of the ending? Do we think the story as a whole is well done? Did the shortened series hurt them? Who were our favorite characters? We bring in special guest Sean Michael Chin to break down the trajectory of the Amuro/Char rivalry, viewed through their fights. And we talk about "Yakeato Sedai" or "The Generation of Ashes," and how their artistic output and political activism likely influenced Gundam and its creators.

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- Book of Academic Essays on Yakeato:

Rosenbaum, Roman, and Yasuko Claremont. Legacies of the Asia-Pacific War: the Yakeato Generation. Routledge, 2015.

- Wikipedia pages on the three Yakeato I talk about in this episode: Akiyuki Nosaka (野坂 昭如), Kenzaburo Oe (大江 健三郎), and Makoto Oda (小田 実).

- Wiki page on Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓 Hotaru no Haka) (the short story, not the film).

- Nosaka’s obituary in the Independent (he passed away in 2016).

- Kenzaburo Oe’s biography from when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.

- Paris Review biography and interview with Kenzaburo Oe.

- Wikipedia page for composer Hikari Oe.

- Article from Time Asia about Makoto Oda.

- Makoto Oda’s obituary in The Sunday Times (he died in 2007).

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The intro music is WASP by Misha Dioxin, and the outro is Long Way Home by Spinning Ratio, both licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. Both have been edited for length.

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