This week, we lay the groundwork for our upcoming review and analysis of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam! We also recap the first series, Mobile Suit Gundam, for any new listeners who need a refresher.

We research the first half of the 1980s in Japan and the world - from politics and economics to technology and fashion, and look into why, several years after the success of the Mobile Suit Gundam compilation movies, the stars aligned to get Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam into production.

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- 1980s timeline from National Geographic.

- Wikipedia pages for the 1980s and the 1980s in Japan.

- Wikipedia page on the Cold War

- Photos and descriptions of trends in Japanese Fashion in the 1980s.

- Description of photographs of "Yokohama Traditional" or "Ivy League" style.

- A history of Daicon Films, including their ambition to make a series of MS-V OVAs.

- A brief history of the Transformers toy brand and how it came to dominate the toy industry in the mid 80s.

- A history of Takatoku toys and their incredible transforming Macross figures.

- Timeline of gunpla in the early 80s, including MS-V.

- Yasuhiko talks about how he didn't want to make Zeta Gundam.

- Nagano Mamoru (Zeta mecha designer) talks about how frustrated Okawara and Yasuhiko were to be working on Zeta Gundam.

- Tomino talks about his struggles in the years after First Gundam.

- Tomino talks with Nagano about how his psychosomatic disorder caused difficulties for him while working on Zeta Gundam.

- 2002-era Tomino talks about how he didn't want to make Zeta and still thinks he shouldn't have.

- When Gundam Came to Hollywood.

- The actual draft script for the could-have-been Hollywood Gundam movie.

- Now-former Bandai president Yamashina Makoto's Japanese wikipedia page.

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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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