[EXCLUSIVE] 08th MS Team Vol.02 (Complete)

Today's update brings the remainder of the 08th MS Team's second volume, which concludes with that infamous plot point involving Kiki. Forgive me if I am going to rant here, but I'm going to spoil a few things for the sake of an explanation here. I apologize for what may seem like a rant.

Ichiro Okouchi’s novelization presents content that is quite startling to fans of the anime, many of whom write it off without so much as batting an eye. But, much like the original trilogy did, it emphasizes profound questions and ethical tensions surrounding the fictional portrayal of war. The story, if you've read thus far, is steeped in a somewhat "gritty realism," in contrast to the anime (or what Requiem for Vengeance was aiming for). Sure, it still highlights the forbidden romance between Shiro and Aina alongside interactions with his dirtside comrades and villagers like Kiki, but the novel also highlights the brutal confrontation between Federation and Zeon forces reminiscent of the Vietnam War, with local villagers caught in the crossfire. Kiki leads a guerrilla faction opposing both sides, yet gradually becomes an ally to Shiro and his unit, drawn by his atypical idealism. While she thrives as an upbeat, central character in the anime, eventually forming a warm bond with Michel, the novel subjects her to a much harrowing fate. Now, this is a spoiler territory, but she suffers rape at the hands of Federation soldiers, subsequently biting off her tongue and taking her own life. This has been a touchy subject on both sides of the language barrier, leading to the question:

Why was such a depiction necessary?

When framing this from a literary perspective, Kiki's fate serves as a critical turning point for Shiro. Unlike the anime version, the novel portrays Shiro as an enthusiastic fan of a fictional war drama called Captain Joe, which glamorizes combat heroics. The first volume, as you may recall, vividly introduces him absorbed in watching this propaganda-filled series, showing Joe defeating mobile suits single-handedly, an act he later mimics in battle, earning much acclaim. Believing naively that war was a righteous crusade, his illusions shatter upon learning about Kiki’s brutal assault. He comes to understand that "what he had convinced himself was a righteous war amounted to nothing but meaningless slaughter." As we'll see in the next volume, he'll come to reject Captain Joe and reflect bitterly on his earlier gullibility, with her tragedy confronting him with the stark reality of war.

While not as graphic as typical English war novels (and I'm not belittling my own translation here), this novelization still underscores warfare's harshness through other vivid scenes (such as Mati losing her leg to a hidden bomb). All of these changes, distinct narrative choices, introduce a somewhat critical theme absent from the anime: the pitfalls of understanding war through fiction.

Now, that's not to say media literacy is down or that readers are idiots, but with most viewers in Japan (and arguably around the world) now learning about war exclusively through media, this novel's perspective becomes especially poignant. Sure, it's over two decades old at this point, but the same was becoming true back then as well. Despite Gundam being lauded as "realistic robot anime" due to its gritty combat portrayals, it still inevitably differs from actual warfare. Heroes get idolized, warfare seems all too simple, etc. If you follow my interview translations, this is part of the reason The Witch from Mercury shifted away from the typical warfare depiction we've come to know for so long, mainly because there is that entire generation that doesn't (and likely will not) know what war is like.

As we'll soon learn in the third and final volume via Eledore, "war constituted nothing more than sanctioned slaughter writ large." Entertainment naturally demands excitement, but creators must wrestle with the moral implications of glamorizing war. The novelization, inevitably, becomes an explicit cautionary tale: using fiction itself to warn against complacently believing one truly understands war simply through stories alone.

It's not a perfect explanation, and I'm not expecting to change hearts and minds over it, but the man did have a reason for doing what he did with this version. I just hate how people write him off when they know nothing else of the story aside from a cherry-picked factoid (which I'm probably to blame all those years ago for anyway, so my translation is to make up for that).