Quarantine Control #185: After-War Oligarchs

DC Staff | October 19, 2023 | Animation, Features | No Comments

The biggest news continues to be the war between Israel and Hamas, one that easily usurped the drama in the House of Representatives. Even if Israel didn’t bomb a hospital in Gaza, the former country has done a hell of a job punishing ordinary Palestinian citizens with the crimes of the few in Hamas. Several countries around the world are also doing a great job providing free PR for Israel, above and beyond even for an ally. It’s the biggest war propaganda effort seen since the War in Iraq in the early-to-mid 2000s. Who knew we would revisit the past quite this soon? It’s lame, but probably inevitable given the powder keg that sums up the state of the world right now.

Geoffrey Barnes

After War Gundam X (1996)
Source: Blu-ray
Episodes: 39

The concept for After War Gundam X intrigued me from the previews, in a somewhat different way compared to other Gundam shows. This is another alternate universe (from the “main” Universal Century) installment, but one supposedly set in a more post-apocalyptic universe. The soldier uniforms and designs for some Mobile Suits reveal how this is an interpretation of the endpoint in the long battle between the Federation and Zeon, and their assorted successors in the UC. It all concludes with a catastrophic war between both sides that results in too many dead soldiers between Earth and the space colonies. Several civilian casualties are resultingly lost too. It’s a dark backstory, setting the stage for one of the darker entries in the series.

Well, that’s what it seemed like. Gundam X plays with this concept, and somehow ends up being one of the most optimistic Gundam installments. It’s a show with several good ideas and concepts, though not all of them come together.

The story picks up in the year After War (AW) 15, and follows the exploits of 15-year-old Garrod Ran. He meets a young girl who he has an immediate crush on named Tiffa Adill, who later turns out to be very clairvoyant. It’s after Garrod figures out who the more heroic and villainous types are that he joins the Freeden ship, one helmed by Jamil Neate, who seeks to prevent the mistakes of the last catastrophic war from happening again. Garrod is an experienced Mobile Suit pilot, which is why he finds himself piloting the GX-9900 Gundam X, a Mobile Suit very similar to the one used near the end of the 7th Space War. Unfortunately for them, there are still too many forces that love a good war and want control.

I didn’t mind the fact that Gundam X is nowhere near as grim as the prologue implied. In fact, I was prepared for it. It’s too difficult to dodge spoilers from a series that’s about 27 years old now. It’s fine that the show doesn’t lean into the post-war era it takes place in, though that would have been nice. But I did have problems with the pacing. The characters and world are intriguing, but man does this show take its time to develop them, while establishing more characters and locations at a slow-ish pace. The developments don’t really pick up until the series is more than halfway over.

This makes it easy to see why this series was cut short during its original Japanese TV run. Gundam X has a notorious reputation of being the first (and perhaps only) Gundam series since the original 1979 installment that started it all to have its episode run cut. The planned 49 episodes was cut down to 39 due to poor ratings. I have no doubt that temporary franchise fatigue was a partial culprit, but I’m sure the slow pacing didn’t help. There’s eventually solid payoff, with the second half of the series being rather well done; but it takes too long to get there.

The second half of Gundam X has its share of problems too, providing ample evidence that the production team planned a 49-episode run. It robs several characters of the proper payoff the series was building them up to, including fellow Gundam pilots Roybea Loy and Witz Sou, and especially (my favorite character) Ennil El. The other members of the Freeden don’t benefit either.

The series is also rather repetitive in nature. The Gundam pilots frequently grapple with the Frost brothers, Shagia and Olba Frost who frequently exploit Garrod’s skill issue in their constant fights against him. Yet, Garrod is continually lucky enough to survive the skirmish every time, either through a prognostication from Tiffa, assistance from the others, or through Garrod figuring something out. The Frost brothers never mix up their strategy too heavily, which mostly leaves Garrod unscathed enough to fight another day. The combination of this and the pacing make it easy enough to pinpoint why this was cancelled.

Gundam X, unlike the original series, wasn’t given the benefit of receiving a movie compilation redo to emphasize its strengths and potentially increase its popularity. That’s a real shame, because it could have used one. A retooling of the series consisting of at least four movies would have done wonders for the pacing and repetitiveness, and could have led to better use of its solid ideas. As it stands, Gundam X isn’t the worst Gundam show I’ve seen, but I’m placing it on the bottom half of my list. It’s at least better than Gundam Seed Destiny, even if that show had better pacing and never stopped being interesting even when it collapsed in the last one-third.

Angela Moseley

Sad Oligarch (2023)
Source: Cool Zone Media, iHeart
Episodes: 14

Since Russia furthered its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, things have been interesting for Russian oligarchs. There has been a steady flow of news coming out of Russia and other places where these rich men have suddenly died. The most common cause of death has been falling out of a window. Officials (at least in Russia) claimed they were accidents, but the timing was always suspicious. So when an advertisement for Sad Oligarch played on Behind the Bastards, I wanted to learn more about these suspiciously clumsy oligarchs.

Sad Oligarch is podcast series created and narrated by independent journalist Jake Hanrahan. He’s also aided in his research for the subject by his colleague, independent journalist Sergi Slipchenko. If you’re a frequent reader of this blog and column, you might remember me reviewing one of Hanrahan’s other podcasts, Megacorp for Quarantine Control #119. Sad Oligarch takes a very different approach from Megacorp, but it’s just as interesting.

The podcast covers a few high profile deaths from 2022 and concludes with the recent death of Wager Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. What’s curious about the deaths are the uncertainties surrounding the vast majority of them. For example, the show opens with the story of Vasily Melnikov and the deaths of his family. The oligarch was a businessman suspected of murdering his entire family, then himself in an act known as “family annihilation.” Except two of his adult children survived due to not being there, and the suspected murder weapon was a Russian Special Forces combat knife. Melnikov had never served in the military. Also, if he was trying to take himself and all of his immediate family with him to the grave, why would he not include his adult children? The surviving family members insisted their father would never do this. Hanrahan and Slipchenko can’t make conclusive claims about this tragedy, and the murdered Melnikovs took the truth with them to the great beyond.

The next few deaths on the list include a variety of rich Russians who died in a variety of ways. The hanging death of a Gazprom executive. A billionaire who died during a strange ritual involving frog venom. Another family annihilation again with surviving adult children. And multiple people who fell down steps and/or out of windows, including in the United States. The case of the Dan Rapoport was extremely curious, as he was a Latvian born Russian-American who waged a campaign against the Kremlin under an alter-ego as a Pentagon analyst. Prigozhin is ultimately, the cherry on top of this series as his private jet was downed in Russia after a failed coup. Being shot down, makes a much more convincing case for murder. For a moment, I feared his death wouldn’t be covered, but thankfully Hanrahan and Slipchenko didn’t let me down.

What makes the cases fascinating is how almost all of them are suspect, but there’s no definitive proof linking them to foul play sans Prigozhin. All of these deaths in the span of a few months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have been a wild coincidence, or directly tied to the Kremlin in some manner. There’s just no way to know, especially as authorities rule the deaths as suicides, and helpful security footage is simply not available. Or the few deaths caught on camera aren’t definitive of a murder– even as an extremely wealthy man goes tumbling out of a window.

What makes Sad Oligarch informative is how all the businessmen are related to Putin, the Kremlin, or the Russian state in some way. And how all most of their deaths don’t make much sense when all the facts are put together. Hanrahan provides three possible explanations:

These shady people angered or upset Putin in some way. That could be either speaking out directly against the war in Ukraine such as the cases with Lukoil Chairman Ravil Maganov, or nightclub owner Dan Rapoport. In other cases, these oligarchs oversaw companies or agencies responsible for feeding the war machine and corruption that benefited them at the expense of the war effort them was discovered. They could have been murdered as retaliation for stealing directly from the state– much like a mob boss that deals with members in the organization who fall out of line.
Other wealthy business people saw an opportunity to assassinate rivals in a bid to gain more influence and power. Not unlike mafia tactics.
These oligarchs are just that depressed and clumsy.

The timing of these deaths remains too curious to completely explain away as depression or suicide. It feels like the natural conclusion of a devil’s deal and deal-makers who have outlived their usefulness. But we’ll never know the full truth any time soon. If you’ve been following the deaths at all in the news, I recommend Sad Oligarch as a way to gain further insight into these deaths, and how business tends to currently operate in Russia.

Joseph Daniels

So over the past couple weeks, I’ve been working on several things for the blog that I hope to post in November. I’m not going to make any promises that I’ll have everything ready, but in the spirit of the Year of the Rabbit, I’m still going to provide a relevant teaser image related to one of the things I’m working on. Hopefully it’ll suffice instead of my regularly scheduled Quarantine Control contribution this week.

Envisioning the end of the war between Israel and Hamas will start with the former being more restrained in their approach with Gaza, and potentially giving back their land. We’re unfortunately set to do the opposite, with battles expanding and intensifying before that happens. It’s one thing to be concerned about the Israeli people, but not when it veers into Islamophobia. It’s possible, and even easy, to do both. Until next week, everyone.

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