Pleasant Evenings Book Club

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov

What happens after you die? What about after that? Or after that? And what if you just skipped the dying part entirely? How far can you take things? Isaac Asimov helps wrap our heads around these questions with the power of AI.
From a time when that had little to do with crypto-adjacent scams, Asimov's story used AI to plant a seed in our imagination. I had never felt closer to the entropic ends of the universe than until I read this story. It turns out its a place where all things converge: optimism and pessimism, individual and collective, emergence and cessation, man and machine. At least that's where our conversation went, the story itself is a straight shot into the titular question. You can read the story or listen here to find out what that is.

Mobile Suit Book Club // Char’s Counterattack

Char's Counterattack is as iconic to the history of animation as it is inaccessible to those not caught up to the decade of Gundam that came before it. Amid all the proper nouns and sci-fi jargon is the touching conclusion to the saga of Amuro and Char. And throughout the runtime of the film is also some of the greatest achievements in animation, art design, choreography and sound to close out the 80s Gundam era with a beautiful spectacle.
We break it all down and point out some of our favorite and least favorite creative decisions from the movie as well as a joyful reading of one of Director Tomino's most incredible interview quotes.

The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe

For how popular The Fall of the House of Usher is, it is quite a strange story. Poe guides us through a fever-dream where rather than ghosts or things of that nature haunting an old house, the house itself exudes menace that entrances our characters.
Without deviating too far from the story, we discuss abstract art, the fall of the aristocracy, fungi, and the Castlevania video games.

Mobile Suit Book Club // ZZ Gundam Part 2

This is where ZZ Gundam momentarily stops being the goofy show we came to love in it's first half, and the horrors of war rear up again and again. We found this second batch of episodes to be really impactful, cementing ZZ Gundam as potentially the funniest and most tragic Gundam series that we've covered so far. 
 
In this conversation we talk about how ZZ interacts with the themes that we've discussed so far in the Gundam franchise and how it handles it's peculiar tonal pendulum (we would argue quite meaningfully).

Exterminator! by William Burroughs

Who knew that reading about the world ending over and over again could be so fun?
Exterminator! isn't as talked about as William Burroughs earlier work even though it contains some of Burroughs' most popular short stories, including "Twilight's Last Gleamings", "The Discipline of DE", and "Wind Die, You Die, We Die".
In the context they're included here, we found the stories sang out twice. This is a collection of strange and affecting stories that seem to swirl together into a single text thanks to the steady (but not predictable) employment of leitmotifs throughout. Themes, images, phrases, or even whole characters or events pop in and out of these stories, adding to the richness of the reading experience.
Over our conversation on this pleasant evening, we attempt to scratch the surface in a wide-ranging discussion of these leitmotifs and their strange prescience concerning modern American life.

Mobile Suit Book Club // ZZ Gundam (Part 1)

We went into this iteration of Gundam hedging out bets, but it easily ended up being our favorite series in the franchise so far.
 
Bright Noa recruits a new generation of Mobile Suit pilots from the unlikely corner of Shangri-La, an impoverished space colony where we meet our new protagonists junking for salvage from the previous wars.
 
Despite dealing with some heavy topics and doing a lot to expand on the world of Gundam, this series takes a lighter more episodic tone for its first half. And we absolutely loved it.
 
Listen to our discussion of Mobile Suit ZZ Gundam and count the ways that we get Glemy's name wrong (we don't get it right once).

Mobile Suit Book Club the Novelization

So this book might literally be your grandfather's Gundam 0079 because it was released really close to the original run of Mobile Suit Gundam and written by Yoshiyuki Tomino himself, robbing me of claim to that cliche.
Nevertheless, reading this novel is a very different experience from the animated '79 Gundam experience. You can find out how in this episode.
It was really fun to record this episode as we fill in some of the gaps of Amuro's journey and the experience of newtypes.

Mobile Suit Book Club // MS Zeta Gundam Part 2

Finishing up Kamile's tragic story, Pleasant Evenings return to discuss the second half of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
We take turns discussing what it means to be a perfect soldier, brood parasitism among birds, and what happened to Reccoa's character in the back half of this show.

Mobile Suit Book Club - MS Zeta Gundam Pt. 1

A few months ago we announced we'd be diving into the world of Mobile Suit Gundam, and with our new episode talking about Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, it's officially a sub-series! Mobile Suit Book Club.
 
Yoshiyuki Tomino parlayed the success of the original MS Gundam theatrical run into a well-heeled sequel that doubled down on everything that made the original series so interesting, exciting, heartbreaking, and strange. Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is a favorite among fans, and we had a great time digging into everything we liked and didn't for the first half of its run.
 
Join us next time as we round up the rest of the series and continue our exploration into the Mobile Suit Gundam.

Ep. 13 - Mobile Suit Gundam (Movie Trilogy)

After a longish absence, Corbin and Roberto come back to announce our most ambitious project yet: podcasting the entirety* of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.
We're starting things off with the trilogy of movies adapted from the original series which we found to be a very exciting introduction to Universal Century and the poor people who have to live in it.
If you're Gundam-curious like us or already an ascended Gundam sage we hope you join us on this adventure.
Email: eveningspleasant@gmail.com