A Geek History of Time - Episode 15- Battletech and Yellow Peril (Part 3)

Episode Date: June 15, 2019

Ed and Damian discuss the weird fear and fascination that American pop culture (and particularly American science fiction) had for Japanese culture in the 1980s. “Blade Runner” and “Shogun” both get mentions, and Ed explains why the Chuck Norris meme should be changed to focus on Toshiro Mifune, instead.

You know, Stalin and the Nazis were these welfare state types. One of us is a stand-up comic. Can you tell what it is? Ladies and gentlemen, everyone, brick. Um. But the problem. Oh my god. That's like, I could use that to teach the whole world. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha This is a geek history of time.

Where we connect, nerdery, to the real world. I'm Ed Blalock. I'm a new father with a 10-month-old son. I'm a world history teacher at the seventh grade level. And I have been a geek at least since the sixth grade when I got a hold of a copy of Have Space Suit Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein. And that has informed not only me being a geek but the flavor of my geekery ever since. I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a 40-year-old Latin teacher. Used to be a social science teacher. A father of two, one who's nine,

one who's six, we're currently playing Dungeons & Dragons together. I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was at least six all the way back in the days where I didn't even understand what was going on. Let's see, I don't know the the best example of uh... that i can think of what a geek i was uh... growing up at a young age would be um... that i really started punning in first grade there was uh... thing where you could uh... you had to fill in the the talking bubbles mhm of the different characters talking to each other and there's a war there was a

a bird talking to a whole in the ground and then a bird talking to a hole in the ground. And then a bird talking to the hole in the ground. And then the bird talking to the hole in the ground. And the final panel, the worm came up, but it was wearing a mites helmet. And so it was a, hey, worm, come out and play. No, hey, worm, your friends are all dying out here. I was in first grade. I don't believe you it's like worm war one out here And he pops up where are they I will kill those Nazis

Yes, I was that's indicative of a number of things Your life was gonna take from there boy So what we're saying here is that your pension for punnery Has has been a chronic condition that you were unfortunately infected with at a very young age It's as old as my hatred of fascism apparently like you cannot separate them They're intertwined and you're your puns kill Nazis. Mm-hmm isn't surprising these puns kill Nazis lots of other people Oh my god, I'm the Arlo Guthrie of punning. I Feel or the woodie was through a punning but I feel like I somehow ought to speak up and Woody Guthrie's defense after that kind of concurrency, but yes, so

What what would you say was your? What would you say was your first exposure that you can remember to Japanese culture? Oh. In and of itself, like, as a thing that I as a child was able to distinguish from Chinese culture. I grew up in San Francisco. At that time in my life so I was at a school, it was almost all Asian. And then there was me. I was literally one of five kids who were white in the school. Yeah. So like I mean I'd run around town and like a Chinatown all the time down in Clement Street. Yeah. There'd be a place where you could buy like sticky rice.

Japanese culture. Yes, sticky rice. Uh-huh. Japanese culture. I don't remember interacting with Japanese culture except for when I went to Japan town in San Francisco on a field trip. We were such a Chinese heavy school that yeah, that was about it,

but in terms of like pop culture-y type stuff. Okay. Throwing stars. Which, it would have to be throwing stars. Entirely too much sense. I know. In text of what we were talking about in the last episode. I know.

I'm kind of ashamed of that, but it's true. You are, if you're ashamed of that, then an awful lot of white boys from America of our age ought to be ashamed of that. I think I'm okay saying that. Yeah. But in fairness, like that's what I was exposed to. Yeah, well that was, yeah. And again, a throw-in star. Because to recap, the reason I bring that up is because talking about battle-tack in its relationship to, and its lore and its relationship

to our national perception of Japanese culture, I think that's a starting point That's that's something we can talk about and that was the time period when we had God damn you for bringing it up And a whole host of just Shloky bad white guy as ninja ninja movies. Well, it was canon and so sure he can Can and studios by the way. Yeah, oh yeah. That was why.

It was those two brothers. They're the ones that came up with breaking. And then they're like, oh my God, this made money. And it's actually good. And then they did Breaking Two Electric, Bougaloo. Nice. Yeah. They were just flooding the market with shit moving.

It was cool. Everyone's a while something would actually hit. Yeah, well, you know, you may, you, what was it, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. Right. And so they were just like, you know what, throw everything at the wall. Nice. I like the Lihar Vios quad, Kool.

That's good. Oh, oh, hey, too soon. Too soon, dude. Too soon. So, um, but, you know, we ended last time talking specifically about anime, which I actually have to say, I think my first exposure to Japanese culture struck like a ninja in the night,

in that I did not realize if it was Japanese culture when I was exposed to it. Okay. Uh, in that, uh, do you remember the rank and bass animated version of the Hobbit or the Return of the King? Is that the one that's rotoscoped? No, that's where else back she... Oh no, no, I do remember this. It was the anime style. Yes, yes, yes. That was creepy. If you, it was, anime always creeps me out. It always has. It is. Yeah. Am I watching lemurs? What's going on? Like, yeah, the stylistic conventions are off-putting to those of us who are more versed

in other style. That's very generous to say. Well, yeah, I think it's a fair way to say it. But yeah, I do remember that. I haven't too much cultural showism involved, but the thing is, if you look at the credits, and this is struck me when I was you know Seven or old I was when I saw it. Uh-huh If you look at the credits all the names at the end of it or Japanese names all all the animators all right

Right artists all you know, and it's because rank and bass go hold of the rights to the show Mm-hmm, and they said okay, what are we gonna do? We're gonna make we're gonna make a cartoon Okay, how can we how can? We're gonna make a cartoon. How can we farm this out? Because we're a production company. We're actually an animation company. What are we gonna do?

And they farmed it out to a Japanese animation studio. And they sent them the script. And the animators did what they did. And they sent it back. And they got John Houston to the South of Gandalf. Which by the way, if anybody could voice act that character, I don't think you could do better than John Houston. As somebody embodying the voice

without being the actual physical presence I can, I really don't think you could outdo him ever. And so, you know, anime was something that I got exposed to through this kind of sub-rosa I wasn't really aware of. I just knew it looked really different from the other cartoons. It was like an animated judo. Yeah, you know, yeah, nice.

It took my own preconceptions and flow away with them. Right. And so, and then when I got a little older, I saw the Transformers. And I saw, well, Trans-Wersey, but that wasn't one that really struck me. But Voltron. Voltron, yeah. Which was itself a redub. It was, we're the actual all the animation all the scripts all that stuff We're gonna take it over here. We're gonna cut a few things out Sure cuz there are places where the princess gets naked in the original series and we can't show that to kids in the United States

Sure, sure and you know, we're gonna we're gonna downplay some of the blood and violence Because we can't show that to kids in the United States Even though we're more okay showing that to kids in the United States, you know, bare boobs, but you know, and so we're gonna tone it down a little bit, you know, kidify it somewhat, but then we're gonna take it and throw it out there and kids are gonna lap it up and I did. And then RoboTec, which never got on board for.

Really. I really didn't, yeah, again, animate on board for. I really did. Yeah, again, anime like the style pulled me out. It really was the style as the hair. Yeah, among other things. This was the big thing. It was for me. Rick Hunter's hair was like, how do you do that?

Like you're wearing helmet. Because my dad was a pilot. That was a naval aviator. He came home having worn a helmet for eight hours or four. And his hair never stood up like that. He'd been wearing a helmet for that long. How do you do that? I think what got me about it, to be honest, the lack of nose. Yeah, depending on the angle.

Yeah, and it was the facial features. The visual conventions of the form with the nose being just so round. Everything's so round on the face and because I remember thinking, watching G.I. Joe, well, these eyes make a lot more sense to me. And they're more rectangular. Yeah.

Yeah. I know. But it was, that's it. You used to go to school a lot of Chinese kids. I Chinese kids I did I did yeah throw that out there Interesting, but yeah, I really that's the rack. Yeah, I didn't even think of that But by the way, I wound up going to school with a bunch of Chinese kids and a bunch of Japanese kids. Oh, you're in Hawaii? Korean kids. Yeah, I'm gonna get into that in a second. And talk about exposure to Japanese culture. The biggest exposure I had to Japanese culture

was if you call the Japanese kid Chinese, you were gonna get your ass kick. So you learn quick. And vice versa. Yeah. So anyway, but moving on. So you mentioned me spending time in Hawaii. Yes.

So from 1983 to 1986, my dad's last tour of duty in the Navy. He signed it with Squadron VC1. Okay. Which I could talk about more, but it's ancillary to what we're talking about. And so I had the opportunity as between the ages of 8 and 11 to live in a place where there was a really significant still is of course it really significant Japanese community. Yeah, and not only that but it's literally you know halfway between the United States and Japan and so there's a lot more influx of stuff directly from Japan and so it was during this time period When this was when Japanese stuff was was becoming mainstream anyway Even in you know the middle America and so being in Hawaii I was kind of on on bleeding edge of that whole thing See stuff months before anybody back in the States was going to

You were the test market. I we in, in many ways, we kind of were. And so RoboTech was, you know, which didn't catch on for you. All my friends loved it. Oh yeah, yeah, because, and the big deal, you know, for me and my friends was Roy Foker got killed. Now Roy Foker is an important character in the series. He's the mentor figure to our hero, Rick Hunter, and he winds up, he gets, he gets killed.

I remember my friends talking about that. I also remember the original guy for the blue lion dying as well. And I remember yeah It was the blue line the black line actually oh it was okay. Well, I thought it's the guy for the blue line because in the princess took over his blue line Yeah, but either way yeah What struck me about that was even then I knew I'm like whoa shit nobody dies in GI Joe Yeah, like that killed characters yeah and so my friends talked about row attack so I was so it was it was heightened level of drama because oh my god you actually have death is a thing yeah and in the case of Roy Foker it was a huge big deal at the time okay media that when Roy Foker died, the story line was, you know, he goes out and he gets into a dog fight with an alien invasion ace when he's our human

ace. They get into this fight and his valkyrie gets shot up, but he manages to limp at home and land and he defeats the other pilot and he gets out of it and he's you know breathing kind of heavily and whatever and You know, everybody's you know Roy are you all right? Yeah, I know and fine. I just I got to go see Claudia Claudia's love interest his girlfriend also notable in that this was a Japanese series. Uh-huh Roy Foker of course is German blonde hair blue eyes, you know Aryan ideal His girlfriend Claudia is African American. Oh, which was the first time like that was portrayed

Right, it's a relationship thing and of course it was like well. No, that's his girlfriend That's like whatever and it wasn't even I mean, you know It was it was remarkably progressive for the time, but it wasn't even anything. It was just like Yeah, they weren't pointing it out. Yeah, well we are right Well because they really weren't Because in the original yeah, the original series is full of all kinds of negative racial stereotypes Because the Japanese are just as racist as anybody else. And in some cases more so.

Being on a nightly. But yeah. So, but anyway, Foker leaves and, and you know, goes to Claudia's apartment and sees her, gets through the front door. She says, hey, wait a minute, I gotta go into the other room. She leaves and hears a thud and she comes running into the room to find him lying on the floor with the back of his uniform soaked in blood. Oh.

And he had been hit by, you know, cannon rounds, whatever. And you know, they then cut back to the technicians working on his Valkyrie, his giant space ship, and they see that there were places where his armored cockpit seat had been punctured, right? And they immediately go, oh my God, we got it, you know, we got to find him. And he's already dead. And it was, and it was this like, it was hugely shocking moment. It was this gigantic, you know for an eight-year-old nine-year-old time, you know who who you know was used to American cartoon fair that was huge. Yeah, in fact, they actually showed

The back of his uniform because he changed out of his flight suit. It was his uniform jacket. See the neck Oh, wow, but it was soaked in blood because he changed out of his flight suit. It was his uniform jacket, so even the actual holes in it, but it was soaked in blood, was you didn't see blood in the cartoons. Like nobody, nobody bled. Like like, oh my God, you know, that just didn't happen. And that's, you know, carryover from anime, which was never saddled with the idea

that comic books are for kids and cartoons are for children. And so that was to a Japanese audience that was like, well no, he died the way the samurai hero does. You know, when it's the mentor figure, that's the trope. But it was revolutionary being brought over into an example of the kind of eye opening experience I had as a kid seeing all this stuff for the first time. And, you know, we talked about crummy ninja movies, and we're being made by Canon Studios here in the States. Yep. And also Jim Cotta. Yeah. The skill of gymnastics. The kill of karate. Oh, ow. That just hurts. Just hearing that. Just hurts. So, it's such a crappy movie. My God. Anyway, so we talk about, you know, the schlock that was being put out,

you know, in terms of this a ninja movie movie, we're gonna make money on this. Here in the States, the thing is, I was at that time seeing not just Americanized Japanese media, but if you clicked the dial on the turn crank cable box on our TV set, I remember what channel number it was, but we were getting stuff that was coming directly out of NHK studios in Japan. So I was not only seeing anime

that had been redubbed and repackaged for an American audience, I had the mind-warping experience as a nine-year-old of actually seeing Japanese-made samurai movies, Japanese-made ninja movies, and there was a series that sticks with me through this day while I was researching for these episodes. I wanted to try to find it because while we had the master made here in the United States, which just complete schlock,

they had to have a comedy sidekick and all this stuff. There was a ninja series that was more of a murderous soap opera that I wound up, because my dad was probably less vigilant about what it was I was being allowed to see in which nine or 10, then maybe you should have been because he wanted to watch it. And what I remember about it was there was a male protagonist, the female protagonist. They were both Ninja. And you know every and it wasn't it was it was a real it was a real it's episode was relatively long compared to the American TV drama. And they weren't always working

together. Okay. But they weren't always working against each other. It was, it was, I mean, this is my recollection. Sure. 35 years later. But, but I remember vividly that the female protagonist's signature move was when she had gotten her victim into a position of helplessness one way or the other. She had a cord that she wore around her neck, that she would take off and she'd wrap around her victim's neck and then she'd take one of her hair needles out of her hairdo and thrust that through the neck. And that was her signature move and there was more nudity than I probably should have been seeing as nine-year-olds. That was probably part of the

reason I did like that as much as I did. And so this level of fascination that our culture had as a whole. I really was the microcosm of, you know, I really, you know, early adopter. I really was. And in another timeline, I turned into one of those guys who gets denigrated as being a wee a boo online, because I really, I mean,

really I was looking at this stuff and it was eye-opening, it was amazing and it was shocking and it was, you know, all this, all this stuff. And I have carried with me ever since the Nefascination with Japanese history. And I have carried with me ever since then an interest in Japanese cinema and, you know, trying to find the title of the Ninja drama. I just referenced I wound up wasting another hour and a half fell down an internet rabbit hole. And what I came up with was actually a couple of really good Japanese film and Ninja fandom blogs I'm gonna have to use for future reasons. But what's interesting, getting all of this back to what we're here to talk about, Battle Tech itself is an Americanization of the Japanese developed giant robot genre.

Okay. Transformers is an Americanization of the giant robot genre, right? Obviously Voltron which started out as a Japanese series is right Anization of this this whole and so battle tech actually took the design elements and in at least one case the names of the robots in the game directly out of Japanese series. The Shadowhawk Battlemeck, which was iconic in the first edition, showed up on the back cover, one of the books on one of the box covers somewhere, was this fairly kind of square looking body, had kind of swoopy looking shoulders. Okay.

Had a very box like looking cockpit. Clearly the head was a cockpit kind of head. And it had like a tank cannon on one shoulder. That's a Thor. Well, the Thor is a later development. Oh, that. But the shadowhawk, not being an omnimek, looked more human.

Okay. Had its body had a more human set of machines and had you know a laser on one arm. Okay. It's on its will be you know Japanese animation kind of detailed. Right. And so that for example was taken straight out of, like lifted, completely whole cloth from a Japanese series called Fang of the Sondogrum, which doing a little research about that series, it's a remarkably gritty, you know, semi-post-apocalyptic, you know, all the themes that we've talked about as far as what's in battle tech, Fang in the sun, dogram does that and it talks about war in a way that American cartoons never would. Right. You know, it's part of the subgenre called real robot. Okay.

The Valkyrie from Robotech, the transforming, you know, looks like kind of an F 14 Tom cat. Right. And then it gets laid on it. And it turns into a humanoid-looking robot. Right. The Valkyrie was used as the basis of several different mechs, the Stinger the Wasp, the Valkyrie and the Crusader. Oh, that. So four different mechs in Battle Tech

were the Valkyrie in different forms from the Macross film then taken and and applied into the context of the tabletop working. The Shadowhawk was one out of Fang of the Sun Dough Dough Grum. They also took several others out of that series most notably two of my favorites, the Battlemaster and the Griffin, were also mechs that were taken directly out of that series and used in the game. This becomes important later on in the game's history, then of all people, Harmony Gold, the Assholes responsible for producing Romotech.

I say assholes because I love Romotech when I hate the company that was responsible for producing it because they were more than anything else patent trolls. And they sued FASSA, the game company who produced out of tech, saying we own the rights to distribution of these images outside of Japan. And they pointed to a contract they had. And FASSA said, well, yeah, we own the rights to distribution of these images outside of Japan. Right.

And they pointed to a contract they had. And Fasa said, well, yeah, we got the rights to these images from these guys. Mm-hmm. And then they had to go to a Japanese court. And the Japanese court determined, no, Fasa, sorry, the guys, you got the rights to, didn't actually have them to give to you. And so we have a whole category of Macs that were part of the very first edition of the game

that were turned into what we fans refer to as the unseen. Because all of the imagery had to be scrubbed from publications going forward and we had to find artists to create new stuff that matched the stats but wasn't the original artwork and had to be substantially different from the original artwork. Right. And it sucked. I mean by comparison because the original designs were just so powerful and iconic and looked so cool and the new stuff was a clue and just wasn't right

didn't work and on that level it's really awesome to note that there have been new agreements reached between the people who now on the rights to Battle Tech and people and the original people who on the rights to Macross and the other series, and they are now creating new images that are closer to the originals that the rights holders are saying, yeah, you've changed it enough that we'll let it go. So I'm really excited that, you know, in the box set that I'm still waiting for, box sets. I'm still waiting for, there are new models

with the very much like the original designs of the Becca and it's a big deal to me. Cool. So that's just that encapsulates how much it is that BattenTech itself is, it was part of this development in the Zid case. We're definitely afraid of these people and we're intimidated by them and we don't like them

because they're an economic threat and we're convinced they're gonna rise up and rule the world and they're doing it through economic means because we kick their asses in a fair fight. You know, I mean all that stuff that we heard growing up as kids. Sure, sure. And yet at the same time, we're obsessed with it

and like, oh my god, they have all the stuff that's so cool. You know, the media that they were generating and the stories that they were telling were compelling because in a lot of ways there were things they were able to say that our media didn't let people who were making media for kids. Right. You know, do. And so it was sexy. Right.

And it was, it had no more. Yeah. And it had an allure. And so, um, so, so, so, battle tag winds up being a yankification itself of the giant robot genre. And so you take these robots, you put them in this setting and you know, we have noble houses and we have this inner-stellar mobile stuff.

And this is at the same time that, you know, at this point, it had been almost 40 years since the end of World War II. Mm-hmm. And this is the same point at which you mentioned in the very first episode, we were talking about this, about your teacher, Right.

Having you guys read all the articles about, you know, Japanese are eating our lunch and they're this terrifying threat and all this stuff. So we have that going on at the same time that enough time has passed since the war that we're not viewing them the same way we did at the end of the war. They're no longer necessarily that kind of enemy. There's also in 1988, reparations start getting paid to Japanese Americans. paid to Japanese Americans. Oh, sign by Reagan, by the way.

Yeah, sign by Reagan. And the author of Farewell Demands in Our came to my middle school and actually gave a talk to us about that. Cool. And my mom, who lived in in Michigan did not hear about Japanese internment until she moved to California in 1976. Yeah. Well of course she didn't. Right. Because it was it was a very big deal here. Right. But in Michigan, how many Japanese people were living there? Yeah. And, you know, I mean, we could have a whole episode about internment and its relationship to one

or another aspect of popular culture. Sure. And, you know, now I've got to find some to tie it to because I'm sure there's something somewhere because that's a story that needs to be related. But when she spoke to us, I brought up reparations, I said. So what do you think about President Reagan signing this thing saying there's going to be money paying out? We're sorry, and here's $20,000. And here's $20,000. And I mean, she handled my very smug child of Reagan Republican's question with, I think, more wisdom,

understanding, and patience than I deserved. And so that was part of what was going on there. Sure. You know, was our recognition that, hey, wait a minute, we've got these people living in our country too. Yeah. You know, and so there's really almost no way when you take all of that into account. And you take into account what Battle Tech was

and where Battle Tech came from. It's almost impossible to imagine that there would be any, any main antagonist other than House Curita, who represented pre-World War II. Japan. It's interesting to note that for me looking at the battle tech materials when I was in middle school, I was 12, 13, looking at them going, have I got 20 bucks to spend on these

source books and this stuff and whatever, and spend it on, which the answer always was D&D at that phase. But, you know, I read through all of them in the game store obsessively. But, you know, you think about it, the parallel that I always dream of as a 12-year-old well that I always dream as a 12 year old wasn't to anything in current culture. I looked at it and I saw it looking back on what I knew about World War II. Makes sense. And it didn't occur to me at the time that Steiner wasn't a totalitarian state and it didn't occur to me at the time that Lao was clearly a synosoviet thing. You know, I saw the British Empire,

you know, and I saw Germans. I didn't really know enough to know the nuances of what that was historically, as far as what they were emulating there. And then I saw pre-World War II, Japan, which I knew something about, because by the time I saw that, I was 12, I had spent time earlier in my childhood,

right. You know, seeing stuff coming out of Japan, which never talked really bluntly about the pre-war period, to talk about a period long before it. Right. The samurai movie is the Japanese version of the Western. Right. And so, I mean, I knew some things about the Black Dragon society and all that stuff.

And so, there's really no other way that with something that was itself borne out of this fascination with Japanese culture that was mingled with our fear of they're gonna eat our lunch right what the hell are we gonna do how about we build a better car no no we can't. You know, that's not that's not a problem We who are in charge of the economy got here on these rules, so we're going to make sure these rules are the only rules that ever matter Yeah, yeah, and so for the first half decade of the Baton Tech properties existence the truly heavy Pardon me, the truly threatening heavy was Takashi Kareta, the coordinator of the Draconis Combine, and not Maximilian and then Romano Lau, who were the heads of House Lau,

obviously, and they played the part of the scheming, but always inevitably beaten villains, who would make a temporary gain sure would twirl their mustaches You know threatened to torture and kill you know beloved characters and the novels and whatever and then in the next game Supplement you'd find out that Merrick is now territory between Merrick and Davian okay and So you'd find out that they got stomped by

Merrick or by Davian. And in one of the first major rollouts of the game, one of the first major plot advancements that happened in the game. There was actually an alliance formed between House Davian and House Steiner who did not share a border. If you look at the map of the galaxy, they were on opposite sides of Earth, Earth, and the center. They were on opposite sides of the inner sphere. They formed an alliance, the ruler of Davian,, the daughter of the ruler of Steiner. And it did all of the heads of the great houses were invited to the wedding. And because you know diplomacy being diplomacy, you have people fighting each other at the top level, you know, you have to get along. We're all

from the same class after. Right. And it was a moment that when my friends and I read the novels, my buddies were like, oh my God, such a burn. Was Hans Davian, Hans the Fox Davian, said to his new bride, my love, as you are wedding present, I give you the capellan confederation. And that was the line that then got sent out through hyperpulse generator cross space to the Davian military, who had secretly been massing along the border and launched the biggest invasion in a hundred years. And within a month by the time the next game supplement came out of that novel,

half to two thirds of Wow had been overrun by Davian. Because, you know, by this time we were used to the Cold War and, you know, we'd figured it out. We'd figured it out. We'd figured it out. And meanwhile, the fighting on the border with Curita, which was the other power that Davian actually had border with, and which Davian and Steiner both had borders with.

Okay. Because Curita was a big territory, the fighting was much more intense and much more difficult, and it didn't make as much progress, because all of the Curita warriors were motivated by Bushido. They died before they had to give an inch of ground, narrowing and surrender. All of those troops, and so for the first five years or more, of about five years, that's just what it was. And so, you know, it was, it was only in a conversation

with a friend of mine earlier this year, and Taylor and last year, that I finally really made the connection that led to me thinking of this being something to talk about. Because again, something to talk about. Sure. Because, again, in my childhood, all of this was the water that I was swimming in. And so now, I mean, it's kind of obvious. Yeah. To look back on, it becomes obvious. It's like the pattern suddenly resolving itself on the wallpaper to bring up an analogy

that I've used before. Yeah. So, I mean, that's pretty much kind of what I've got left. This is probably going to this is going to wind up being a bit short. That's okay. But what do you think? What do you take away from this? Well I'm curious as to honestly I'm curious as to what the newer editions do because there's a desire to keep the old structures, to keep the old fanbase. But, you know, like, I don't know,

the Japanese of the 80s were the Arabs of the 90s. In movies, you know. And the, you know, so just like, you always have a shift, you know, the, so just like you always have a shift, you know, so I'm curious as to how it grows this time. It makes perfect sense that, yeah, they, again, you know, any, any game system is in some ways a snapshot in time. Yeah. Any movie, any book, any TV show, they're snapshots in time. They

are of the time they're made invariably. Like they just are. They're either a reaction to it or a reflection of it. And so you have that happening. And at that point, the Soviet Union was on its way down. We didn't see that. No, we didn't. The fall of the Soviet Union was a shock to the CIA. It was a huge surprise to everybody. But at the same time, their threat... They set the suffix.

Yeah. Only people who weren't surprised were the Soviets themselves. But their threat profile profile if you will Was certainly on the way down because of the Helsinki Accords because of the Yeah, yeah, the the actual moves and China as a threat was less of an issue because They were starting to realize you well, I mean, you know, Mao had died in 75, I want to say. And they were wanting to be economic players in the world. They're going to take it over.

They wanted to be economic players. It is glorious also to get rich. Yeah. So it makes sense that the Japanese on the other hand, because the one way that America, because nobody could challenge America's Military might no Economically, we're still vulnerable and that had been shown as early as

73 yeah, which interestingly also is after where we've been in Vietnam for Eight years. Yeah turns out that's very costly. Markable, I would expect, form more of a tradition against a Fabian opponent being very well put. And I can kind of tell you, well, not kind of, I can't tell you where they went. And it's interesting because it also ties into

our perceptions of the Soviet Union. Okay. So here's the thing, we have House LOW, right? House LOW, as I've said, I've set this whole thing up this whole time. And here's where I flip you. They are the sign of Soviet alliance. And they're the also random punching bag. Right. So in 1989, a new trilogy of novels gets released called the Blood of Karinsky. Okay. Now you remember we mentioned the name Karinsky.

He went off. He disappeared. Took all the armies. He was to the depths of space outside of the inner sphere. Right. Well, he came back. Well, actually he didn't come back because it had been several hundred years. He was long dead.

Uh-huh. But while he had been gone, he had established an entirely new society with the warriors in that society at the top of the pecking order and everybody else in a very centrally controlled, very socialist kind of social order and in which individuals in order to build their population after a couple of generations of living in difficult conditions on barely habitable planets, they started actually combining genetic material from people and having babies born in iron wounds. Because this is science fiction and we can do this. Right.

And so the members of the elite warrior cast of the society look down on anybody who is a freeborn whose parents just did it and did have any planning behind because those who were born out of an iron wound, they were planned. Right. And then they were raised in a sibko Sibling cohort, okay with a number of other, you know, Yeah, a pod and they live their entire youth constantly being trained and tested and if you don't pass the tests you fall out of the warrior cast into another cast

You get directed into another part of society where we determine what your strengths are and we push you in that direction to forward the interests of the plan. So there is real. And these plans, well, sort of, except think about what our perceptions were and what we got taught about what it was like to grow up in the Soviet Union. Yeah, that's a good point. And then all of a sudden they showed up in the inner sphere with tech

That was you know 500 years 300 years ago was the most advanced thing anybody had ever had Uh-huh, and then instead of falling into a dark age They had been building on it and developing it ever since. And so they showed up with OmniMex, your Thor, the Vulture, the Loki, oh wow. Okay. Those are the madcat, those and the Sunder and the Avatar. Those are the product of clan Technology and so they show up and they beat the crap out of everybody they run into Uh-huh, and it turns out after initial contact What everybody figures out is their goal is they're gonna reconquer earth and they're going to bring everybody into a new star league following the

Socialist collectivist heavily controlled from the top down authoritarian model of the clans society so that was an 89 that was an 89 and and here's the thing the parallel I want to make here is they show up they have the society where you know The individual gets directed all their lives into the direction they want to go. Uh-huh They are able to if if they excel enough if they are you know in you know If if they are excellent enough They can you know if you're born not into the warrior cast you can test

into the warrior cast you know if you're if you're if you're good enough and determined enough you train hard enough you can do it but if you're a warrior the biggest thing you can do is earn yourself a blood name okay you have to be genetically descended from somebody and you have to then... There's only a certain number of people who are allowed to carry the honorific of a given last name. Is there a book titled Blood Names? Yes. I remember selling that.

Yes. And so as a clan warrior, the most prized blood name, which belonged to clan Wolf, was Karenski. Okay. And thus blood of Karenski being the title of the first trilogy of the novels. Now, of course, Karensky was a Russian general at the dawn of the Soviet Union. And so the House Lau, the compelling confederation consideration was a cartoonified, we kind of knew that the Soviet Union was on the way down. Subconsciously, we kind of knew, even though it shocked us when the system fell apart.

Sure, sure. But we had started to not see them as that much of a threat, but at the same time, we still had this underlying fear of what the hell are they gonna do? They might be back, oh god. And so then the clans, right, were the Soviet Union we feared. And what's interesting that I kind of want to point out is under Reagan, the defense intelligence agency, DIA, published a series of books for several years running

that was Soviet military power. You familiar with this? Mm-hmm. Keep going. It was a brilliant work of something between defense intelligence analysis and propaganda. Okay. Where they would take actual numbers of, okay, the Soviets have, this is, they'd have a section of the book. Oh yeah, they cooked the books on like... Tank power.

Right. Here's the deal. It's more subtle than cooking the books. They didn't actually lie about the numbers. What they did was they massaged the context. Yes. So here's the deal. Our military doctrine,

air land battle, which I studied in ROTC my first two years of college. Air land battle basically says, these are the conditions under which we wanna get into a fight. Uh-huh. And the thing is, we didn't wanna get into a fight with the Soviets because one of the biggest things is, we don't to get into a fight unless we have a numerical superiority.

Right. We were never going to have a numerical superiority over Soviet ground forces. No. So we spent skillions, I mean, like imaginary numbers, of course, to develop things that would give us force magnification that would help us make up for that. Go as the sling shot against Goliath. Yeah, the M1 Abrams tank is a perfect example of that. It was designed to be a fire on the move with a gun that would fire around that could punch through and the Russians were able to make armor-wise.

It was given armor that was built with armor that was built out of material that were so high-tech that code named it kryptonite. Like Seriously, it was a battle mech. I mean, it was this and when I was in ROTC, that's what I wanted to do was be the driver Well, the commander and a platoon of the tanks that was like it because there was no way I was gonna walk into combat like But anyway, I wanted air conditioning. And so we spent all this time and all this effort trying to get this technological edge. Well the thing was the DIA put out these books that said, okay said okay look the Russians have these Horns right of all these missile launchers and they have these hordes of T60s These hordes of T72s and here are the stats on the T72 and holy shit. It's got all these guns right

Well, here's the thing. Oh and and the example that I love being the child of a Navy man And the example that I love being the child of a Navy man, they would look at Soviet naval power and they'd say, Soviet cruisers have five missile systems. And this Soviet cruiser carries 102 missiles. I'm making up a number. Yeah, yeah. This gigantic number. At ours, carry 64.

Right. Our Aegis cruisers carry you know 64 you know missiles sure well here's the deal the Russians carry 102 missiles because when they pull the trigger two out of three aren't going to fire because they can't reliably build the electronics to make it work right so they look like they're hideously over gun right but in point of practical fact in the hopes that one of their guns will work we have near parenting yes You know and they have more ships than we do but more of our ships are running at any given time because there's our hangar queens If you go based on tonnage they got us be they have us Wave you go based on functional tonnage, we're winning hands down.

And another classic example is the MIG Foxbat was a terrifying interceptor. Remember Cold War strategic bombing was part of our overall plan. If the balloon went up, we had strategic bombers constantly circling for five minutes of warning, they could go into Soviet territory. So interceptors as a defense were a big deal. And the Russians showed off the Foxbat. And it was this big, long, looking, huge engines on it, swept a variable wing, geometry.

And it looked like everything we were able to build. Right. And it could hit, we knew it could hit like, not four, not five. Superfast. Yeah, amazingly fast. And so, for the first couple of years it existed, for the first five or six years it existed, we were terrified of it. Sure.

Until a Soviet pilot defected with one. He landed it in Japan. Uh-oh. And our technicians took it apart. And they found out that all of its electronics, this is in the 1970s, were still using vacuum tubes. So not transistors? Not transistors.

Right. And by that time, the very first microchips were thing. Right. And we were using it like everywhere first microchips were thing. Right. And we were using it like everywhere because, oh my God, miniaturization, cutting down weight, all that stuff, especially the aviation. But no, they didn't even have transistors yet.

Their radar systems weighed eight times. Wow. What ours did. Okay. And their resolution was not anywhere near what ours was. Sure sure they never managed to figure out how to build a jet engine that didn't smoke Enough that a blind man could see But we we got we got sold this line Okay, and we believed this line right the whole reason to bring this up is is our perception was

You know, they they you, think about Rocky for right Ivan Drego. Yeah. Right. Genetically engineered super boxer. If he dies, he dies. That that was part of our perception of the Soviet Union, of Soviet communism, right. Communism, which wasn't really, but, you know, and so that's what they did, was in the end, it's still wound up becoming the Soviets, but it wasn't the real Soviets, it was what we, the Soviets were afraid of. Right, the Soviets of our nightmares.

Of our nightmares. So, here we are. It's almost 2019. Yeah. By the time this launches, it's going to be 2020. 2020. The speed with which we're putting it back in time. But either way, who's the bad guy now?

Is it some sort of zealous religious order? Yes, actually, yes, it's the word of lake. Okay. The pseudo religious tech priests who maintain the interstellar communications network wound up instigating within their own ranks there was a coup by a group of like real religious zealots who wound up plunging the whole galaxy into darkness by shutting down all the HPG generators, which is how messages get sent between planets at faster in the speed of light. And so that led to widespread anarchy bloodshed and the sword of Blake, Blake being a prophet of Comestar Having having then seized power. So yes as a matter of fact. Okay for a moment

I was gonna say well no, it's a little bit more and then no, you're pretty much spot on. Okay, so My prediction is that we're going to see the Davian House crumble from within having listened too much to a horrible populist leader that excites the worst instincts in all clandavian people. We can hope. Yeah. That's not clandavian or house davian rather. It has not yet gotten taken over by a populist. They're still pretty royalist. OK. But we'll see.

Yeah. Anything is possible. OK. Or someone from the royal family who claims to be just like the rest of us. But yeah. And then all the colors will change to orange. And then.

So that that would be my prediction. You're rotten. Comquot. Got it. Orange. You're smart. Smell like a jackfruit. So well, cool. OK.

I guess my last question would be this. How the hell did any of that jib with what I sold people at virtual world? And what I mean by that is, was what I was doing at virtual world. And you played there? Yeah as well was what we had at virtual world in any way Supposed to be connected to the fiction of the thing or is it just We can market it. We can play have people play this way. It's an early land party kind of thing and You know that and that that's. That's it. Pretty much. Oh, okay.

It's the second one. More than anything. Okay. The brilliance of going to play at virtual world was you had all of that stuff like you knew all of that stuff in the background. You knew about the clan invasion. You knew that the mech you were climbing into was the absolute bleeding edge of battle mech technology.

Oh, okay. You know, and you knew all of that and it was okay well you know where we're in these colors there were in these colors fight and we go back to the very beginning box set you know and this is all a rationale to have your toy soldiers shoot. So yeah there wasn't really the experience at virtual world and had the advantage of all of that backstory being there, but you didn't have to carry that around

on your shoulders and it was a thing. Okay, well cool. Yeah. Hi, well, thank you. It's, I've, oh, actually I didn't have one other question. Okay, what? There was a role-playing game that came out called McWarrier. That was another question. Okay. What there was a role playing game that came out Mac warrior that was another one. Okay, Mecton Zeta. Oh, okay

That when I talk about the giant robot genre. Uh-huh. I can talk about Mecton and Mecton Zeta because Mecton Zeta and Mecton and Mecton 2 which came for it Which I played all of them a lot. Were much more closely tied to the original anime roots of the giant robot genre. They're much more tied to mobile suit Gundam and super dimensional fortress macross and those elements of the genre

than to this Yankee fight, Western kind of thing. Okay. So everything about that system is much more on-im-a. Okay, whereas Mech Warrior is... Mech Warrior is a role-playing game where eventually at some point you climb into a Mech and shoot at other giant robots, Mech and Zeta is, no, no, the giant robot is the whole point.

Your character outside of that is just, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. All right. Well, thank you for geek history of time. I am Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock, and here's hoping that every one of your internal hits generates a critical. Thank you.