Char Aznable Has CTE

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Crosspost from Substack. Sorry if there's formatting problems. -KC

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979, Dr. Yoshiyuki Tomino) and its sequels (Namely, Zeta, ZZ, and Char's Counterattack) are very clear about one thing: War is hell. Power, at the global scale, cannot exist without war. Power cannot exist without collateral bloodshed. Global scale power, and its requisite war and bloodshed, is therefore the worst thing to happen on Earth. No amount of human empathy, evolution, or magical powers can stop this from being true.

In the effort to create the retrofuture that tells this story, Tomino does a decent job of world building. This is a future stuck in the '70s, '80s, and '90s, respective to the release date of its pieces. They have video phone in Zeta, but no cell phone. They have travel throughout the galaxy, but technology is built on existing concepts of nuclear fusion, and the warfare is dated, too - in 0079, we are shown the horrors of fleet battle, and in Zeta and ZZ, we see some semblance of what is almost guerilla warfare, yet a surprisingly stately example, even in allegedly “clandestine” groups such as the AEUG - not quite the asymmetric warfare we know from Afghanistan and Iraq. We know they have fast food, a corporatist or at least corporation-friendly government (whether Zeon or Federation), mega-monopolies like the Yamaha and Honda of yore in the name of Anaheim Electronics, et cetera.

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There's a few things about the world of Amuro Ray and Char Aznable that we do not know. Or, at the very least, some things are unclear. For example, we don't know the exact details of Newtype Theory as posited by Zeon Zum Deikun, nor do we know if he was a good and loving dad, although it is implied he was. We don't know if Char and Sayla's mom was nice. We don't know what Amuro would have grown up to be if not a pilot killed in action. We don't know what Kamille's social life was outside of his shortlist of athletic and technical accolades found in his background check. On a larger scale, we don't know the mundane movements of daily bureaucracy in the Federation, to what degree Sides had the power to self-govern, the nature of Side 6's alleged neutrality in the One Year War, literally anything about life in Zeon, and a whole slew of other details that Tomino and his team outright refused to cover. That’s fine, they had a job to do, and they did it well.

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Among the stuff we don't know is stuff we can't know, even if Tomino thought to cover it. One item I have previously written about is the physical sensation of combat MS piloting 1 - we have no real-world equivalent, nor the technology to easily, accessibly achieve an equivalent. We only have physics and anecdotal reports from combat pilots and astronauts. We don't actually have the ability to blend the two experiences - not yet, at least. Adjacent to this conversation is another, arguably more researched conversation, and that's the physical health repercussions of combat piloting.

Let me be clear: Char Aznable has CTE. In all likelihood, so does every single other ace pilot. There's just no two ways about it. So what makes me say that? And what does this mean for the stories we hear in UC?

I'm about to take you on a sad, sad journey.

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In my senior year of high school, one of our star football players died. Reports were uncertain at first, but it really quickly became apparent that he died of suicide. He had played in an away game not 3 days earlier, where he sustained a concussion and was taken out of play.

Word spread quickly, and the grief consumed our small town.

He was a nice guy, by all accounts; cheerful, upbeat, a team player. The school, as a whole, was completely shaken. We had half the week off. We had grief counselors available all days of the week for months and months. Even if you never met the guy, you couldn’t help but notice that the hallways were dead silent in his absence.

In the week that followed the report of his death, we had two more deaths by suicide: one, a student who was pivotal in the investigation of a teacher (my homeroom teacher, actually) who was in a sexual relationship with two sophomores in my freshman year. The final death was a former student who I shared a freshman year science class with. We came into school late, that day; allegedly, he died in the parking lot earlier that morning.

They were, as far as I could tell, unrelated, but in the time that followed, the school pivoted hard into education about one thing and one thing only: concussion awareness.

While I was initially confused by the lack of care towards mental health awareness, to be fair, you can get pretty depressed when you are concussed.2 It can range from "sadder than usual" to "suicidally psychotic". I've only ever had a mild concussion or several, all for stupid reasons: I headbanged too hard at a concert once and I've been knocked around my fair share in ice hockey. Having lived through that one week in high school, I was sure to take it extremely easy after, and to watch like a hawk for any worsening mental health.

Another thing that happens with concussions is each subsequent concussion is, to your brain health, worse than the last.3 It is cumulative damage. The cumulative damage builds up until eventually one develops CTE: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, which is a devastating neurodegenerative disease resulting in behavioral problems, mood problems, cognition problems, changes in personality, violent behavior, dementia, and eventually, death.4

Pretty serious, right? But in the world of sports, it isn't taken seriously enough. Per a Boston University study, it is reported that researchers found CTE in 110 of 111 deceased NFL players5, which is a shocking level of certainty. No amount of added padding or helmet "innovations" prevent this6 - concussions are often caused by a different type of trauma, or by rotational force. Your brain floats in a pressurized suspension of fluid, and when it gets knocked or rotated too fast, your brain can knock against the side of your skull inside that suspended fluid due to the rotation of your head - this is what causes the inflammation.

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In the world of professional hockey, it's found risk of CTE increases 34% for each year played.7 You play long enough, you're going to have it. Hockey's impacts aren't as repetitive nor pointed as football's - you can have many plays in hockey without getting hit, but in football, every play ends in a hit. Nonetheless, the risk is there.

So we all know that bonking your head real hard will give you a concussion, and that athletes bonk their heads a bunch, so that's why they go crazy and kill their wives. Big whoop. What does this have to do with piloting a mobile suit?

For one, we know for a fact that piloting a mobile suit in a combat situation means getting bonked around a bunch.8 However, this almost always (at least on screen) avoids direct blows to the head. That said, one notable episode of 0079 has Amuro recovering from a blow to the head after being jostled in the RX-78-2 with the telltale sign of a rapid head shake - something that Concussion Legacy Foundation and Mass General Brigham has identified is an emerging key sign of concussions, and one that ought to be incorporated into diagnostic criteria on the field.9

Anyway, we know sports don’t take blows to the head seriously enough. However, we are finding now that it isn’t just direct blows to the head that cause concussions.

I will get to that in a second. Related to this, on the list of people not taking CTE seriously enough includes world militaries.

One article details the grueling, desperate future of a Marine unit formerly deployed in Syria.10 Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 11th Marines never saw combat against ISIS in Syria. None of them ever reported hitting their head on the job. Their job, as it were, was one thing and one thing only: repeatedly fire artillery shells over and over, 24/7, for a brief span of time.

In the unfortunately paywalled New York Times article, one specialist described the brain as an elastic band. Any kind of jostling, such as rotational force, blast impact, and others, stretch the "band". And you stretch a rubber band over and over and over, it eventually creates microtears - you can see it in the old ones. And eventually, it breaks. These “stretches” of the elastic brain are not just caused by impact to the head but also by anything that significantly jostles the head, such as repetitive blasts, like from firing weapons, especially the blasts caused by firing artillery. For the Marines in Alpha Battery, the way these “microtears” would manifest is a barely-studied repetitive blast-induced version of severe CTE, resulting in massive personality changes, delusions, hallucinations, headaches to the point of complete impairment, and as was the case for a tragic few of Alpha Battery, suicide. The article linked above goes into harrowing detail about the ways in which repetitive blast-induced CTE has wreaked havoc on the lives of the Marines of Alpha Battery, and the ways in which the military has failed them after their service.

There’s something here to know about the military. Let’s talk about the United States Marines Corps a little further.

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From 2002-2005, MARPAT (short for Marine Pattern) was introduced. You’ve seen it - they were the first to do digicam, and theirs is still among the most effective in the field. Theoretically, every Marine should have been sporting MARPAT - either in woodland green or desert colourways - shortly after the end of 2005. In effect, due to logistical delays, supply issues, field conditions, and a long, long history of lack of care from command for the boots on the ground, many Marines were not afforded the significant tactical benefits of the highly developed MARPAT for another decade. This is a microcosm of ways in which the astronomical R&D budget for the military fails to serve its individual members.11

Another example is sleep deprivation. From a Pentagon report on sleep deprivation and military readiness,

Impairment from sleep deprivation can be equivalent to the effects of alcohol intoxication and significantly increases the risk of physical injury. A growing body of research, reviewed in this study, indicates that sleep deprivation has significant effects on the physical, cognitive, and emotional functioning needed for readiness, occupational, and operational mission fulfillment in the military.12

Despite this, and acknowledging that some degree of short-term sleep deprivation is unavoidable, service members expect disorderly sleep for their entire military careers, due in part to 12 hr/ 24 hr work cycles, watch duties, night shifts, or other operational requirements, even when not deployed in combat situations.13 Such minimal standards are also applied to nutritional intake, barracks space and living conditions, et cetera.

In short, the U.S. Military works in terms of minimum calories required, minimum sleep required, minimum space required, for maximum performance. No wonder Marines love CrossFit.

So really, we can expect that the Earth Federation Space Force, and the Zeonic Space Force, care little for the the well-being of boots on the ground as referenced by the frequent delays in supply and almost complete lack of support for the largely Civilian-staffed White Base in their deployment on Earth in 0079, as well as the AEUG’s flagrant lack of care for the well-being and preservation of its pilots, namely Kamille Bidan, whose on-screen symptoms are disturbingly descriptive of an active psychotic episode from the start of the series.14 That, coupled with the likelihood that military craft such as White Base or Argama have exceedingly loud environments (aircraft carriers range from 71 dB to 127 dB 24 hours a day, and presumably, even if they had the technology to reduce sound burden, it’s the military, they wouldn’t use it)15, the chronic under-report of injuries, especially head injuries, and the likelihood that nobody gets a check up after every sortie, well… It’s not looking good for the warfighters.

So what does this mean for our pilots?

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Well, for one, given the severity of every on-screen impact from both blasts and collisions both in space and on Earth or within colonies, combat MS piloting likely has a relationship with CTE like that of hockey or of military service in general: the longer your piloting career, the closer you get to 100% occurrence of CTE. For two, onset of CTE is often the chief explanation for radical change of behavior in both service members and athletes - so any radical on-screen shift in behavior can be attributed not just to combat trauma and life events but also to chronic pain and the physical degradation of the brain over repeated blasts and impacts over a piloting career.

For three, why does CCA happen?

I mean, c’mon. He’s had a long, long career. Char definitely has CTE.

#footnote-anchor-1

Every time I asked someone about the physical sensation of combat piloting, they would go into some tangent about PTSD or whatever, which is extremely beside the point and really emblematic of Reddit-style refusal of reading comprehension. Sorry, no, I’m not talking about PTSD. I’m talking about how it feels to get bonked around in a tin can in space. No thanks to Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and all Gundam fans for refusing to help me out on this one. Unfortunately, I have to give thanks here to my shitty dad, and to my older bro.

#footnote-anchor-2

https://www.verywellhealth.com/how-to-tell-if-you-have-a-concussion-5188754

#footnote-anchor-3

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5028120/

#footnote-anchor-4

https://www.sportsinjuryclinic.net/sport-injuries/head-face/head-injuries/signs-you-might-have-cte

#footnote-anchor-5

https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/07/25/boston-university-study-cte-nfl-player-brains

#footnote-anchor-6

https://qbi.uq.edu.au/concussion/do-helmets-protect-against-concussion

#footnote-anchor-7

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39630446/

#footnote-anchor-8

See literally every MS fight in 0079, Zeta, ZZ. If you need a point of reference, look for the first 5 episodes of Zeta.

#footnote-anchor-9

https://concussionfoundation.org/blog-press/new-concussion-sign-could-identify-undiagnosed-concussions/

#footnote-anchor-10

Can someone print this to .PDF? It’s a harrowing article but I want everyone to be able to read it for free.

#footnote-anchor-11

By the way, per Department of Defense budget and Department of Labour reporting as of 2004, I checked E-1 rates for 2003 and compared it to the average monthly wage of someone working at, like, McDonald’s, that same year. In 2003, an E-1 earned about $350 less per month than the average food service worker.

#footnote-anchor-12

https://news.usni.org/2021/03/03/pentagon-report-on-sleep-deprivation-and-military-readiness

#footnote-anchor-13

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6879759/

#footnote-anchor-14

https://www.verywellmind.com/schizophrenia-4157221

#footnote-anchor-15