About this episode
Show Notes This week, Nina and Thom are joined by new guest Tatiana - a filmmaker, professional editor, and sometime animator to discuss technical aspects of filmmaking in Char's Counterattack, how the movie holds up today, what the movie tells us about it's intended audience (and how audiences unfamiliar with Gundam might react to it) and what Tomino and company might have done differently. Plus Thom's research reveals one way in which Char's Counterattack turned out to be unrealistically optimistic, and Nina digs into the real science and technology that might have inspired the movie's psycoframe. The Bamiyan Statues: A survey of giant Buddha statues with brief descriptions and photos - the Leshan Buddha is number 11 and the Buddhas of Bamiyan are number 4. "Bamiyan Buddhas" by Dr. Melody Rod-ari for Khan Academy, covering the history and design of the sculptures. "Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley" by UNESCO. "Destroyed Buddhas Reveal Their True Colors" by Andrew Lawler for Science.org , an article about archeological reconstruction of the Buddha's pre-modern appearance. "Bamiyan: Ten Years On," a brief video by UNESCO about the Bamiyan Buddha ruins. "Commemorating 20 years since the destruction of two Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan" by Ernesto Ottone R., UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture. Available at https://whc.unesco.org/en/news/2253 . "Why the Buddhas of Bamian were destroyed" by Michael Semple , who was personally involved in negotiations to try to save the Buddhas. An 1833 sketch of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by Alexander Burnes . "From Ruins of Afghan Buddhas, a History Grows" by Carlotta Gall for the New York Times, Dec. 6, 2006. NYT article from 2006 about international archeologists examining the ruins of the Buddhas and speculating about possible reconstruction plans. A collection of other drawings and photos showing the Buddhas. A timeline of the US invasion, occupation, and departure from Afghanistan including mentions of fighting in and around Bamiyan. An article from late July 2021 about fighting between Taliban and government forces in and near Bamiyan . Miniaturization of Technology: Chemistry-specific definition of "particle." Wikipedia pages for miniaturization , transistor counts (great chart), integrated circuits , surface-mount technology , and Moore's Law . How Stuff Works page for the transistor . Wikipedia page for the transistor radio . For more on Sony, transistor radios, the Walkman, and the sales of small, Japanese, consumer electronics in the US, check out this book chapter: Alt, Matt. “5 - Plugging In and Dropping Out.” Pure Invention: How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World, Penguin Random House, New York, NY, 2020, pp. 131–160. US Government report about the contemporary state of miniaturization technologies: U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Miniaturization Technologies, OTA-TCT-514 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 1991). Accessible at: https://ota.fas.org/reports/9129.pdf Semiconductor History Museum of Japan website . Very detailed and often very technical, with different topics broken down into timelines. Of particular interest, Japanese improvements to photolithography in the early 1980s (the Wikipedia page on photolithography has some helpful and easy to follow diagrams of the simplified process). "Molecular computers - tomorrow's technology?" by Leroy Cronin, and Hamera Abbas , 31 December 2006, for the Royal Society of Chemistry - Education in Chemistry website. Pages from IBM , Wikipedia , and the University of Waterloo, Canada , about quantum computing. "What Makes Quantum Computing So Hard to Explain?" by Scott Aaronson , June 8, 2021, for Quanta Magazine. Article about the latest, record-breakingly tiny chip from IBM: Brown, Dalvin. “IBM Says New Ultradense Microchip Might One Day Quadruple Your Cellphone’s Battery Life.” The Washington Post, 12 May 2021. Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced within Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Lenape, or Delaware, people. Before European settlers forced them to move west, the Lenape lived in New York City, New Jersey, and portions of New York State, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Lenapehoking is still the homeland of the Lenape diaspora, which includes communities living in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario. You can learn more about Lenapehoking, the Lenape people, and ongoing efforts to honor the relationship between the land and indigenous peoples by visiting the websites of the Delaware Tribe and the Manhattan-based Lenape Center . Listeners in the Americas and Oceania can learn more about the indigenous people of your area at https://native-land.ca/ . We would like to thank The Lenape Center for guiding us in creating this living land acknowledgment. You can subscribe to Mobile Suit Breakdown for free! on fine Podcast services everywhere and on YouTube, visit our website GundamPodcast.com , follow us on Twitter , Instagram , and Facebook , or email your questions, comments, and complaints to gundampodcast@gmail.com. Mobile Suit Breakdown wouldn't exist without the support of our fans and Patrons! You can join our Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus episodes, extra out-takes, behind-the-scenes photos and video, MSB gear, and much more! 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 licenses . The recap music for Season 3 is New York City (instrumental) by spinningmerkaba, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. . All music used in the podcast has been edited to fit the text. Mobile Suit Breakdown provides critical commentary and is protected by the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Gundam content is copyright and/or trademark of Sunrise Inc., Bandai, Sotsu Agency, or its original creator. Mobile Suit Breakdown is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Sunrise, Bandai, Sotsu, or any of their subsidiaries, employees, or associates and makes no claim to own Gundam or any of the copyrights or trademarks related to it. Copyrighted content used in Mobile Suit Breakdown is used in accordance with the Fair Use clause of the United States Copyright law. Any queries should be directed to gundampodcast@gmail.com