Episode 155: Voltron vs Mechagodzilla vs Jaegers [GIANT ROBOT FIGHT]
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On this episode of Absurd Hypotheticals, Marcus Lehner, Chris Yee, and Ben Storms pit three giant robots against each other!
Time Stamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:03:18 - Marcus’s Answer - Mechagodzilla
00:11:19 - Chris’s Answer - Voltron
00:20:13 - Ben’s Answer - Jaegers
00:30:23 - The Fight
00:53:43 - Would you rather: write greeting cards OR write obituaries for a living?
01:00:13 - Outro
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TRANSCRIPTION
Marcus Lehner:
Hello, everybody. And welcome to Absurd Hypotheticals, the show we overthink dumb questions so you don't have to. I'm your host, Marcus Lehner, and I'm joined here today by Chris Yee and Ben Storms. Say hi, guys.
Chris Yee:
Hey, I'm Chris.
Ben Storms:
Hey, I'm Ben.
Marcus Lehner:
Guys, are you ready to fight with robots for the second week in a row?
Chris Yee:
Again?
Ben Storms:
Again?
Chris Yee:
Again?
Marcus Lehner:
Oh, but we're upping the stakes here. These ain't your daddy's robots. These are your robot's daddies. This is our giant robot fight.
Ben Storms:
Did you just come up with that, or were you playing that this entire time?
Marcus Lehner:
That was off the cuff. Thank you. So, last week we did a robot fight with like people size robots, like your C-3POs of the world.
Chris Yee:
We did not fight C-3PO.
Ben Storms:
Why didn't you name a... We used three robots. Why didn't you use one of the ones we actually did?
Marcus Lehner:
So, that I wouldn't show favoritism.
Chris Yee:
C-3PO would be a pretty awful fighter.
Ben Storms:
He would not be good.
Marcus Lehner:
It's why we didn't pick him. He would've qualified, though.
Ben Storms:
He would've qualified. You considered R2-D2, but we digress.
Marcus Lehner:
I did. I thought he had more gadgets, but the one trick pulls with the oil slick in Episode II is like the only thing he ever does that's like a new fighting ability. So, I'm like R2, you're cool and you probably would win the fight, but it would require slapstick comedy and it wouldn't work out in the episode.
Ben Storms:
It's basically just the oil slick and like a little cattle prod. Right? That's kind of it.
Marcus Lehner:
He's got a buzz saw, but like-
Ben Storms:
Oh, it's a very small buzz saw. Yeah. All right. Anyway.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. He wasn't doing it. These robots, though, these robots going to do it. These are giant robots that we're doing with like in the... I forget how tall your robot is, but like 300 to 400 foot-ish range.
Chris Yee:
The skyscraper range.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. So, if anyone who hasn't listened to a fight episode of ours before, basically the way we do it is we have each selected a fighter, we are going to give a quick, little overview of the robot that we've picked a fight, and we'll list their abilities, little backstory, yada, yada, yada. And then we are going to do a hypothetical fight. We're going to talk about who would win under what scenarios, and we're going to come up with chances to win in those scenarios. I'm going to do a bit of math at the end to put an overall chance to win to each of our robot fighters. And then we spin the wheel of final determination to find out which giant robot actually wins the fight.
Chris Yee:
I was wondering if you were going to remember the name you gave the wheel last week, and you did.
Marcus Lehner:
I did definitely spend a good 10 minutes trying to remember what it was until I did, but it is canon now and that is what it is called. As always, and fittingly for giant robots, we're going to be fighting in Central Park as our battle grounds, which is perfect for big robots. They're always fighting in big cities, oftentimes Tokyo.
Chris Yee:
We might end up veering out of Central Park, but we can start there.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Well, Central Park's actually decently big. We could all be there and and throw some punches in Central Park. It's a few city blocks. Anyway, we'll find out, I guess. And I'm going to go and get us started with our first fighter. In this corner, standing at 390 feet and weighing 165,000 tons, we have Mechagodzilla. As the name implies Mechagodzilla is the mechanical version of regular Godzilla. For those unfamiliar with regular Godzilla, he's a giant nuclear prehistoric sea lizard monster that swings wildly between murdering everyone and being only moderately murderous while trying to stop other giant monsters from murdering everyone.
Ben Storms:
He represents nuclear war. Yay!
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, there's a bunch of allegories about why he got popular and what he represents and all that. Those are less fun to talk about.
Chris Yee:
Does Mechagodzilla, is he an allegory for anything?
Ben Storms:
Mechanical war? Yay.
Marcus Lehner:
He's a mechanical version of an allegory. But just a bonus fun Godzilla fact, the Japanese name for Godzilla, Gojira, is a combination of the words gorira and kujira, which mean gorilla and whale, respectively, because during planning before he took shape, that was the physical description of what Godzilla would look like is a whale gorilla, which I thought was awesome. And since we just butchered the pronunciation and respelled it, I've taken the liberty of doing the same exercise in English about what Godzilla would... his real name would be if we just took will and gorilla and mashed them up. I did a couple attempts here just for fun. If you did whale and gorilla straight up, you have like a whorilla, which just sounds like whoa.
Chris Yee:
Whoa-rilla.
Marcus Lehner:
Big gorilla. And when you spell it, it sounds like you'd pronounce whorilla, which would be a really different movie. But I didn't give up. If you take beluga and gorilla, you'd get goruga, which sounds super legit and definitely what I would choose if I was in charge of making the movie.
Ben Storms:
And also the sound that the cartoon cat makes from seeing an attractive woman.
Chris Yee:
Goruga.
Marcus Lehner:
Goruga. Or if you just replace the gorilla instead of the whale, you can go whale and monkey and you can have wonky, which I just love so very, very much, but may not be the right tone for your big monster movie
Chris Yee:
Sounds related to Donkey Kong
Marcus Lehner:
Wonky Kong, the 400 foot tall mechanical monster and Mechawonky. But actual Mechagodzilla, though, he appears in several Godzilla films and actually has a few different origin stories because, apparently, the word canon in the Godzilla franchise only refers to things that harmlessly fire at giant monsters. So, you have the original origin, Godzilla versus Mechagodzilla over 1974 is consistent with the second movie, The Terror of Mechagodzilla a year after. In this case, Mechagodzilla was built by the evil aliens of Black Hole Planet Three. These aliens literally just have like gorilla mask assumedly left over from the bad planet of the apes remake and painted it green. But they built Mechagodzilla, it got rebuilt by the same aliens for the second movie a bit stronger, so just space built robot is the original origin.
Marcus Lehner:
Then about 20 years later, you had Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, which although it was called Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, is neither the sequel to the original nor the second movie, because the backstory is entirely different. This version of Mechagodzilla was constructed by, effectively, the UN by using parts of Mecha-King Ghidorah from a previous Godzilla movie that was also in a different side universe. And then Mecha-King Ghidorah was built in the future and sent back in time by modifying the corpse of King Ghidorah who was defeated in a previous previous movie, and so they took parts from that to invent the Mechagodzilla. So, it's basically like a reused mecha of a different giant monster. And then he was built by just the Japanese in the next film, Godzilla against Mechagodzilla and the sequel, Godzilla Tokyo SOS.
Marcus Lehner:
And so, the Japanese built Mechagodzilla, but it's a little bit different, it's a little cyborg-y than machine-y because it's built around the corpse of apparently the first Godzilla that died in the original Godzilla movie and they built it around the bones, and then it was released to fight a second Godzilla, which was problematic for Mechagodzilla because apparently the roar of the second Godzilla reawakens the soul of the first Godzilla within the Mechagodzilla and cause it to go berserk sometimes, which isn't great.
Chris Yee:
This isn't convoluted at all.
Marcus Lehner:
It's not. And then I will applaud the second movie because it starts off like with this moral quandary where they have this Mechagodzilla that defeated Godzilla before and they're like, "Hey, government, you should really put Godzilla's bones back of the ocean where they belong because they need to be in their resting place," and the government's like, "Well, yeah, but what if Godzilla attacks?" And then Godzilla attacks. It ends with Mechagodzilla and Godzilla defeating each other and falling back into the ocean by happenstance, so really, it just resolved without a moral lesson.
Chris Yee:
That was lucky for us.
Marcus Lehner:
It works out for everybody. And then what I didn't realize is that actually Mechagodzilla was also in the newest movie here, Godzilla vs Kong. I didn't realize he was part of that movie because I haven't seen it, but he was.
Chris Yee:
I saw it. It was a good movie.
Ben Storms:
I liked it. Yeah. It was very good.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. He was made by humans to imitate Godzilla and apparently this time piloted by a neural link. This time they used the skull of the regular Ghidorah, not the Mechaghidorah to base its neural transplant on, and it goes crazy because of old Ghidorah, just being a dick and not from the Godzilla roar. So, slightly different origin here, as well. So, that's all the different forms, but basically, at the end of the day, they make a mechanical version of Godzilla.
Marcus Lehner:
So, just going from there, just straight to his powers, he's got head, shoulder, knees, and toe missiles. It depends on what iteration you have, but he shot missiles out of everywhere. Very slightly between versions, but it is shot of literally head, shoulders, knees, and toes, also fingers sometimes. He's got missiles. He's got the mouth breath laser beam in most iterations. It's just like a big energy beam. In one of them it's an absolute zero cannon, which is pretty cool. So, it's either a big angry laser or a freeze laser coming from the mouth. He does have the power of flight in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II. Mechagodzilla is able to fuse with the Airship Garuda, which is basically like a fighter jet with two lasers on it, and it's able to fuse with Mechagodzilla. Because they built the airship to go fight Godzilla and they're like, "Man, this thing's not cool enough. We also need a Mechagodzilla." But he can fly and at Mach five, no less, which is pretty handy.
Marcus Lehner:
He's got lots of robot stuff. He's got his hands can be buzz saws, his tail can be a drill. He's got an electric wrist blade that he can deploy. He's made out of NT1 alloy armor, which is a sci-fi metal covered in a coat of artificial diamond. Probably the important bit is that it's able to absorb energy attacks and then use that energy to power its next ability, which is his most powerful attack, according to the lore, his plasma grenade. Which, while noted as his most powerful attack, and sounds epic as all heck, is just another laser beam that he shoots out, and this one awkwardly shoot out of his stomach, like where C-3PO's circle is, he also has one and it shoots out what they call a plasma grenade, which is a laser beam. It's not a grenade at all. Do not be confused.
Chris Yee:
Plasma grenade.
Marcus Lehner:
I don't know if it's specifically plasma. I don't know if lasers are specifically lasers. There's also masers. They say he has laser beams and maser beams. I didn't bother to actually learn what the difference between those was because they all just looked like laser beams.
Ben Storms:
It's the difference just that an M is closer to an L on a keyboard> Like someone fat fingered something.
Marcus Lehner:
I think of what they're trying to do, I think maser is actually a thing. It's like a laser, but with more magnetic effects in it somewhere along the lines.
Chris Yee:
See, the M is the, is the next letter in the alphabet, so it's better. It advanced a letter.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. It's slightly weaker than the naser and the waser.
Chris Yee:
The naser is very strong.
Marcus Lehner:
The naser is even stronger than the maser. But yeah, that's Mechagodzilla. He's big, he's stronk, he's got lasers and missiles and shit everywhere. And he absorbs energy attacks and then releases that out of his tummy. Chris, who's your giant robot fighter?
Chris Yee:
So, my giant robot in my corner is Voltron. He stands at 328 feet, and I could not find a weight for him, but he's probably heavy.
Marcus Lehner:
If I had to guess to guess.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, if I had to guess. Maybe a little lighter than Mechagodzilla because he's also shorter.
Marcus Lehner:
Isn't he mostly in space, in which case he weighs nothing?
Chris Yee:
No, he does stuff on earth.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay.
Chris Yee:
But yeah, Voltron has a bunch of different shows. The original show was in 1984. There was Voltron: The Third Dimension, which was in 1998, Voltron Force, which was in 2011, and then the latest one is Voltron Legendary Defender, which was in 2016. I think it ended in like... pretty recently. I should have looked that up. It was like a couple years ago, I think. And that's arguably the most successful of the four shows because it had the most episodes, 78 episodes. I actually watched that show, I think the first two seasons, and then I fell off because they were releasing them way too fast and I couldn't keep up.
Marcus Lehner:
Damn you producing too much content.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I know. Who knows, I might return to it later. It's a good show. But Voltron's origin, it kind of varies depending on which show you're looking at, kind of like Mechagodzilla, but the original show, the lore doesn't really make a lot of sense and has a lot of holes in it and it's not consistent at all. The new show clears up a lot of things and establishes a more cohesive backstory, so I went with that. So, basically, Voltron is built from an ore that's from a comet from space, and this material they say is infused with Quintessence, is what they call it. And Quintessence has like healing and longevity effects, but it also has a self-generating power source thing. So, it's basically like an endless power source for Voltron.
Chris Yee:
Now, Voltron himself, he's made up of four robotic lions and each of them are a different color, so there's red, green, blue, yellow, and black. And they all sort of align with like a different element kind of like Avatar, but not really because they don't really have the powers. The red one is fire, the green one is forest, blue one is water, yellow one is land, and black one is sky. I don't really know why they specify that because it has nothing to do with them, but it's there.
Chris Yee:
Now, the lions are actually controlled by people. They're called Paladins. They're not actually controlled by them. So, the lions themselves are actually sentient. They can move on their own and stuff and they make their own decisions. The relationship between the Paladin and the lions is more of like a symbiotic connection. So, the lions actually choose their Paladins and the lions won't activate if the person is not worthy of connecting with them. And the Paladins can actually swap between lions if they form a connection with other ones. You basically just have to be like on the same wavelength as the lion.
Marcus Lehner:
You got to vibe with that lion for it to turn on.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. Now, all five lions have some common abilities that they all share. They have claws that can tear through like... They're strong enough to through the armor of war ships. They all have mouth cannons, which shoot energy beams. They all have tail lasers which can shoot in any direction. Just a laser thing. They all have jaw blades, which they say that they can toss like a boomerang. I don't know what that means.
Marcus Lehner:
Wait, what?
Chris Yee:
I watched the show, but I don't remember them doing that.
Marcus Lehner:
Like throwing a pair of razor dentures?
Chris Yee:
I guess.
Ben Storms:
I love that it just reaches up, pops his teeth out, and chucks it.
Chris Yee:
And then it pops back.
Marcus Lehner:
[inaudible 00:15:07].
Chris Yee:
They all have a force field, which is impassable when they're stationary. So, if someone tries to control them that is not worthy, they won't be able to pass that barrier. And then they all have thrusters which allow them to fly. So, all the lions can fly. Now, in addition to those common abilities, each colored lion has their own unique abilities, too. So, the red lion has a heat ray which can be shot from its mouth and it can melt metal and stuff. It has a plasma cannon on its back which it can unlock... Some abilities they unlock if the Paladin has character development or something.
Marcus Lehner:
Character level ups. Once your Paladin is level four.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. And the red one can also withstand higher temperatures. The green one can unlock what's called a vine cannon, which I guess it shoots this energy thing and whatever it hits makes vines grow and it entangles them in vines. And it also has a cloaking device, which I think it didn't originally come with that, but the Paladin that was piloting the green one built it so now it has it. The blue one has a freeze, which is fired from its mouth, and the blue one can unlock a sonic boom cannon from its back which shoots a high frequency sound wave which can disorient enemies. It can also scan and map environments using this ultrasonic thing. And then the blue one also has increased mobility underwater.
Marcus Lehner:
And the yellow one has the power of friendship.
Chris Yee:
The yellow one unlocks what they call augmented lion armor, which I guess just has larger claws and increased strength and speed, so I guess it's just better generally.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay.
Chris Yee:
And then the black one can unlock something called ephemeral blades, which it expands... It's like an expanded form of itself and it boost its powers and speed. And it can also, they say, phase through physical objects, which I don't exactly know what that means either. The black one also has wing thrusters, which can increase its speed. Now, those are the five lions on their own, but these five lions can form together and make Voltron, which is a big, giant robot. And then each of these lions is like a body part. So, the red one is the right arm, the green one is the left arm, the blue one is the right leg, the yellow one is the left leg, and then the black one is the head and torso.
Chris Yee:
Now, in the shows, there's this really long sequence of them connecting to each other and it's all extravagant and cool looking. I was a little concerned that this would be a detriment to me in the fight if they take this long to actually get together so I timed how long they actually take. It's about a minute for them. Both in the old show and in the new show is like basically the same amount of time. It takes them a minute to combine, but when they do it, they fly into space so I think they're good probably, if they away from the battlefield to combine, then they should be okay.
Chris Yee:
Now, when the five lines combine, Voltron basically has his own abilities, which are pretty similar to the individual lion abilities, but there are some more. So, when he's Voltron, the black lion's wings can turn into a shield, which the green lion arm wields, and then they can still shoot the mouth cannons from what are now his hands. He still has the jaw blade. The individual lions can actually split off while Voltron is still formed, so they can do their own things still sort of if his arm is off. The green lion's head can detach and act as a distraction while Voltron does something else.
Marcus Lehner:
And the green lion, the decoy.
Chris Yee:
Yeah, a decoy. And then, additionally, there are these things called [bayards 00:19:02], which each Paladin wields. It's basically like a human sized weapon that they can use as a human. But if they're in their lions, they can use it as like a key to activate a certain ability of Voltron. So, all five of them have a bayard and it's person dependent. It's not bayard dependent or lion dependent. So, the yellow Paladin can activate a shoulder cannon. The red one can activate a sword. If the red and green one do it at the same time, they can activate a double sword. If the red and black one do it at the same time, they activate a blazing sword. And then, I think this isn't specific to a bayard, but Voltron can also shoot lasers from his eyes and from his sword if he's in a Quintessence field. I don't know what that means, but it probably won't come into play because I feel like they're not going to be in a Quintessence field.
Chris Yee:
But yeah, those are Voltron's powers. He has a lot of different abilities when he's separated and when he's combined, and I think the fact that he can separate gives him a lot of mobility and stuff and it lets him flank you and stuff. That is Voltron. Ben, who is your fighter?
Ben Storms:
So, I chose the Jaegers from Pacific Rim. If you're not familiar with Pacific Rim, it is a 2013 movie written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro, where basically the idea is in 2013, a breach opened up at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and a kaiju appeared, big, old monster, very Godzilla style. Basically wrecks San Francisco until we blew it up with three nukes. Kaiju kept showing up so humanity responded in the only rational way, which is building giant robots to punch them to death. I would like to point out, by the way, that if I were a world leader and I were in the situation, this is exactly what I would do, not because I thought it would work, but just because it would be really, really cool.
Marcus Lehner:
It's so hard to find an excuse to spend people's taxpayer dollars on giant robots in the regular day to day of governing.
Ben Storms:
I honestly wonder if you ran for president on a platform of, "I am going to build as a giant robot," how many votes would you get?
Marcus Lehner:
Not many.
Ben Storms:
Not many. Thanks, political system for at least stopping that.
Marcus Lehner:
Here in America, we're still fighting for crazy things like affordable healthcare.
Ben Storms:
Right. Yeah. Anyway. So, these giant robots, these Jaegers, is what they're referred to as, they are roughly 250 feet tall and around 2,000 ton humanoid robots. They are controlled by people who are inside of them. They're controlling them by doing what's called drifting, which is basically like a Star Trek mind meld where they connect their range together and act as one brain for the Jaeger. It's all kind of weird and they don't spend too much time explaining it because it doesn't really matter. You get the idea. There's two pilots and they control the Jaeger. How do they fight? Mostly by punching, sometimes other weapons they'll have, but generally, it is mostly pot punching. This is why, as I'm going to get to, I'm going to use four of them because otherwise I have literally zero chance in this.
Marcus Lehner:
Four times zero is zero, Ben, sorry.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. Math is complicated that way. In terms of like speed, it's never directly said how fast they are, but they do move with a standard human gait, and by scaling that up to their size and just some estimates based on scenes where they're walking by buildings and things, they walk at roughly 90 miles per hour and run at around 200. And they'll frequently also have jump jets on their back to either do leaps or sometimes boost their attacks. So, like I said, I'm going to use a few of these. There are four main ones shown in the movie. So, we're going to go in the order they get destroyed in the movie.
Ben Storms:
So, first up there is Crimson Typhoon, which is the Chinese Jaeger. It actually uses three pilots instead of two. They broke their one rule. Whatever. It's fine. The idea is apparently that two of them control the basic movements and then one controls the weapon systems. That one is 250 feet tall, 1,722 tons. It has three arms because why not? It looks cool. Its hands split open into buzz saws, basically. And it has an IB22 plasma caster which is basically just like a plasma cannon. You get the idea. It shoots a ball of plasma.
Marcus Lehner:
It's like a plasma grenade.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. Exactly. But a cannon, not a grenade.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, so is mine.
Ben Storms:
I know. And yes, it does get destroyed in the movie. It has its core ripped out by a kaiju. It's very dramatic and everything. One cool thing, also, I found a thing where Guillermo Del Toro talked about where they found different things to model the body language of the Jaegers and Crimson Typhoon was modeled on a combination of Floyd Mayweather Jr, who's a very good defensive boxer, and traditional Wushu, which is like a sort of... an East Asian martial art that's half performance, half martial art.
Ben Storms:
Next up is Cherno Alpha, which is the Russian Jaeger, the oldest Jaeger still in active combat. 280 feet tall, 2,412 tons. It is slow and heavily armored. Weapons, really just big old punching fists. The weapon listed along with that is what is referred to as the row of nickels, which is just like a cylinder of metal it can hold onto and make its fist heavier.
Marcus Lehner:
What?
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Chris Yee:
Okay.
Ben Storms:
It does also have Tesla fists, so it's fists have Tesla cells in them. And it can charge them up and then they'll arc between them, and usually uses these by punching both into both sides of a kaiju's head so it just charges its head electricity.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh, so he can be first to the fight because he can park in those electric robot spaces.
Ben Storms:
Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Also goes destroyed. It gets sprayed with acid, which melts through its armor, and then ripped in half by two kaiju. So, not acid proof. Should have though about that one, guys. The inspiration for this one was the MS-06 Zaku II from Mobile Suit Gundam, which is I think one of the enemy Gundams.
Ben Storms:
Next, there is Striker Eureka, which is the newest of the Jaegers. It's the Australian one. It's weapons, it has brass knuckles. Once again, like I said, a lot of punching.
Chris Yee:
Wait, brass knuckles, what is it actually made out of, though? What is the robot made out of?
Ben Storms:
Apparently the brass knuckles are a brass/steel compound that are cast around the joints of the fingers.
Chris Yee:
Okay.
Ben Storms:
Which I don't know. They did that. It also has sting blades which were a pair of retractable swords, basically, that are also laced with carbon nanotubes that can heat up to around 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Don't think that does literally anything when fighting robots.
Marcus Lehner:
That's not very hot.
Ben Storms:
They're hot, but robots can take hot. I don't know.
Marcus Lehner:
300 degrees fahrenheit is like not hot. It's not hot.
Ben Storms:
Against an organic thing, it's pretty hot.
Marcus Lehner:
It'll burn an organic thing, but it won't melt my pan.
Ben Storms:
No, no it will not. I think the big reason is that the kaiju do frequently have acidic blood and stuff, and the idea is that it cauterizes the wound so it doesn't just get acid on them. That was the intent. But I don't know. It looks cool.
Marcus Lehner:
I just like that they could pick any temperature and they're like, "Oh yeah, this goes all the way up to 300 degrees."
Ben Storms:
It did seem like, "Oh man, you you're hitting me with a low broiler. Oh man, don't come at me with a Burger King grill."
Marcus Lehner:
If you attached an oven to the end of that arm, it would be hotter.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. "Oh man, your sword can almost maybe cook a frozen pizza." Striker Eureka, I will say, does have the only actual projectile... I guess the plasma cans are short range projectiles. The only long range weapon on any of these, it has a six barrel anti-kaiju missile launcher, which has 18 warheads it can fire out that it says can kill a kaiju with a direct hit. I'm a little confused by this statement because that first one that came up took three nukes to kill it. And these are definitely not nuclear strength warheads. I'm not going to say it's three nukes because it's definitely not three nukes, but they're at least reasonably substantial missiles.
Marcus Lehner:
Can destroy a kaiju in one hit, not pictured.
Ben Storms:
Right. Yeah, exactly. And this one, its body language was modeled after Lester Hayes who was an Oakland Raiders cornerback, a football player, if you don't know what that means. And finally, there is Gypsy Danger who is the hero robot. It's the American one, of course, because go America. 260 feet tall, 1,980 tons. It has two plasma casters that are worse than the other one, but there are two of them, so sure. It also has swords. These are retractable GD6 chain swords, which are made from a steel obsidian alloy, which I don't think makes sense because obsidian's a stone, not a metal.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. It's also not particularly good.
Ben Storms:
Right. And those can be either used as solid blades or whips which, once again, I don't really know why you need it to be a whip, but it looks cool, so run with it. And also, and this is probably the definitive moment if you're explaining this movie to someone, it possesses a rocket in its right elbow which it can use to punch really hard. There was an article that calculated the force of the punch and said it would be roughly the same as being hit by a 747 going 60 miles per hour, which is pretty hard.
Marcus Lehner:
But 60's not that fast.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. I mean, that is the one thing that's holding these back is that they tried to make them move in reasonable ways, unlike, say, Mechagodzilla, who can fly despite being 150,000 tons.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. But I'll say this, I can swing my elbow faster than 60 miles an hour.
Ben Storms:
Well, no, okay. The fist moves faster than that. The force of it would be if something were hit by a 747 that was going 60 miles per hour.
Marcus Lehner:
This is why force calculations stink because-
Ben Storms:
I know. Force is stupid.
Marcus Lehner:
... it shouldn't be worse to get hit by buy a plane going 60 miles an hour then a car going 60 miles an hour. But if you add mass and speed together... It's a bad analogy.
Ben Storms:
It is. Anyway.
Marcus Lehner:
Whoever did hat math stinks.
Ben Storms:
They were trying to make it... People know that planes are big. They get the idea. All right.
Marcus Lehner:
So, they pick their unit of 47 before they've calculated their speed.
Ben Storms:
Oh they 100% did. And Gypsy Danger's body language was inspired by a UFC fighter, George St. Pierre. So, that's what I have. I have four robots that, despite having four of them, are, I feel, still far out classed by both of what you guys are bringing to the table, but hey, they're here too.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, the fight's not over just yet.
Ben Storms:
They're here to hang out and get a hot dog in Central Park and then get destroyed by Mechagodzilla.
Chris Yee:
I mean, we need to nerf you, anyway. You won 14 times.
Ben Storms:
That is true. Yeah. I'm going to get 1% chance to win and I'll still pull it off on the spinner. It's going to be great.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Before Ben complains too much, we offered him multiple, multiple, many opportunities to switch fighters.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. There just aren't that many comparable giant robots.
Chris Yee:
You just like Pacific Rim.
Ben Storms:
I do also really like Pacific Rim and I wanted to talk about Pacific Rim.
Marcus Lehner:
We also offered to scale up his robots to be the same size as our robots. He also declined that offer.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, I did.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. This is a better way to do it.
Ben Storms:
It is. I got four of them. We'll figure it out.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. Let me pull up a quick empty sheet here so I can take notes while we do this.
Chris Yee:
So, Central Park.
Ben Storms:
Central Park.
Chris Yee:
So, I think we usually, the way we start this is we try to decide who we think is going to fight first.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. So, I guess, Chris, would Voltron be assembled at the start or would he be separate at the start?
Chris Yee:
I think he'd be separate at the start probably. They usually start out separate and then if the fight isn't going the way they want, then they form.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay. Do you think they'll start fighting separate before they form, or are they going to see what's going on and peace out immediately to try and transform? So, they're going to try and fight as little robots?
Chris Yee:
Yeah, I think they will probably.
Ben Storms:
I feel like that's usually, anytime you have a thing made up of other things, for dramatic purposes, they always start out fighting separately and then have to join to come together.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Does that just make it very likely, in the way that fight narratives go, that all you little robots fight before Mechagodzilla gets involved?
Ben Storms:
I will say, and I hate to bring this up, but Jaegers are literally designed to fight kaiju and Mechagodzilla is literally a kaiju so it feels like that's a pretty... The dynamic makes a lot of sense to me that...
Chris Yee:
I was going to say that the dynamic there seems pretty obvious.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay. Okay. No, that's legit. That's legit. Yeah. I'm definitely the apparent bad guy.
Ben Storms:
Right.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. So, you guys are probably not going to fight before fighting Mechagodzilla so I'm just going to put that. I guess which one of you gets to me first.
Ben Storms:
Do you know how fast Voltron, like the components move?
Chris Yee:
I mean, he's pretty... I assume he is faster than the Jaegers. I didn't find a speed, but they fly.
Ben Storms:
They fly. Right. They're not just running on big legs.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. And they do stuff in space and stuff.
Ben Storms:
Right. So fast.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. They're pretty fast.
Ben Storms:
Okay. So, we'll say that first contact is Voltron v Mechagodzilla.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. So, I'm fighting the Voltron pieces at the moment.
Chris Yee:
So, I feel like we have similar weapons to each other.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. We do have similar weapons. The thing I was worried about was getting overwhelmed, like, "Oh man, I'm big and awkward and not very nimble." But frankly, Mechagodzilla also does a lot of punching because like-
Chris Yee:
How big are his arms?
Marcus Lehner:
They're regular size arms. They can punch. I mean, you watched the 2021 movie, especially, I know he did a bunch of... He would use his jets and shit to accelerate and punch... Because the thing is a punch is a good way to not resolve a fight, for someone to get a hit in without it being meaningful. So, all these kaiju and monster movies punch each other a lot. Also, if you go back far enough, it's a dude in a suit and special effects are expensive so lots of punching there too.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. I'm looking at a picture of him now. He does have normal size arms. For some reason I was picturing like a T-Rex arm thing.
Ben Storms:
Like tiny T-Rex arms?
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Ben Storms:
I love that mental image.
Marcus Lehner:
No, he's got like... They're not the biggest arms, but they are full arms.
Ben Storms:
Yeah, they are.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Ben Storms:
And which that also goes back to the fact that with a dude in a suit and that dude had arms.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, that dude could do the T-Rex arm thing.
Ben Storms:
Well, I guess, but it'd be more comfortable for him.
Chris Yee:
And he can't shrink his arms.
Ben Storms:
Okay. Here's what you'd do, is he would have his upper arms like down in by his chest and his forearms would be in the actual arms of the suit. I'm doing that right now in case you couldn't tell.
Marcus Lehner:
So, I guess I think my plethora of missiles and things would be pretty effective against the one fifth size robots.
Chris Yee:
Are your missiles homing?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. They're homing.
Chris Yee:
Okay.
Marcus Lehner:
I mean half the time they're homing, half the time they're not. Half the time they're a bunch of missiles and they come out of everywhere.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
He's kind of like a battleship salvo almost. I don't think the separator robots have much opportunity to win against Mechagodzilla. I guess what would be the effective attack they could do?
Chris Yee:
I mean, it's hard to judge how powerful an energy blast is against a space metal in either direction.
Marcus Lehner:
Yes, of course.
Chris Yee:
I mean, they're definitely stronger as Voltron or else they wouldn't form once they're doing poorly in the fight. I do think Mechagodzilla is stronger than them when they are separate.
Marcus Lehner:
What happens if I smoosh one of your parts? If I just take out your right leg robot, if I take out the... Was it the yellow one?
Chris Yee:
I mean, they can still fly so I think Voltron will still be fine. It just won't have a leg.
Marcus Lehner:
Right.
Chris Yee:
So, maybe you would take out one of my body parts or something before I was able to turn into Voltron.
Marcus Lehner:
I think the way that we resolve this with our system here is that it's like the first 40%, I think, goes to Mechagodzilla by just either they wait too long to try and form Voltron or I can cripple one or two body parts. If I can get enough damage pre-transformation. And then let's jump ahead a little bit to the Voltron versus Mechagodzilla because that's a little bit more of a-
Chris Yee:
An even fight.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. It's more of like a straight up one on one.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. So, I think you're bigger than me, you probably have more weapons on you, but I still have a lot of weapons on me and I have a sword and stuff so I feel like I'm better at close quarters. I have a sword and I have a shield too.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. It's going to be pretty tight. I think my advantage against some of the bullshit is the absorbing energy attacks with the armor. I'm not sure what specific types or what... You also have a lot of non-energy attack, and I wouldn't say I can absorb like a sword hit, like a laser sword hit.
Chris Yee:
Right. So, I think if it came down to a sword fight or like a close quarters combat situation, that I could beat you.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. That feels more like 50/50. Now it's just actual like, "Okay, two giant robots are fighting against each other." All our little abilities do nothing.
Chris Yee:
I think I have a better chance of beating you close quarters than you of me.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. I Feel like sword versus punches-
Chris Yee:
It's like a person trying to punch a guy with a sword.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
I do still have big lasers. I guess, yeah. If we're actually just straight hand to hand.
Chris Yee:
I mean, I have big lasers, too. I guess you can absorb them. Again, it's hard to tell how resistant my metal is to your laser.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. We have to assume that we can damage each other. We have to assume that the weapons outweigh the armor in general.
Chris Yee:
Because things that are fighting Mechagodzilla, he doesn't absorb every single thing. Does he?
Marcus Lehner:
So, Mechagodzilla was designed to absorb Godzilla's atomic breath ray attack. That's why he has that special armor, well, specifically to absorb like that big laser beam.
Chris Yee:
So, if it's like a heat ray or a freeze ray instead, would that be able to-
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I would say that... Yeah. If it's not exactly an energy ray, it'll be a more effective.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. So, I do have projectiles that aren't specifically an energy ray. I do have a bunch of energy rays, too, but I would say probably mainly the heat ray and freeze ray.
Ben Storms:
I will also say, Godzilla's breath, I just Googled this, it's basically like white hot radioactive fire. So, it's not necessarily an energy weapon.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay. I guess it doesn't really change it because you have energy and fire.
Ben Storms:
Right. Yeah. It's still basically the same, yeah, I guess, yeah.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. So, if you say that it's fire instead of energy, then I still have energy. How does Mechagodzilla do in water?
Marcus Lehner:
He's okay in water. He has jets that let him swim around because Godzilla emerges from the ocean. He's fought in the ocean before. I don't know exactly under what circumstances, but I know his jets let him move around underwater.
Chris Yee:
Does he have like a power source? Is he powered by anything or they just not explain it?
Marcus Lehner:
I think they just don't explain it. What powers Mechagodzilla? Maybe they tell us. Powered by a nuclear reactor, driving energy from heavy hydrogen and helium three in pellet form.
Chris Yee:
Okay. I don't know if that's relevant. It's probably not relevant.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. So, I'm not anything that you can specifically... It's just like an internal battery with my nuclear rector. It's not like a big energy backpack or I'm solar powered or something along those lines.
Chris Yee:
I mean, if I could somehow target that energy core, then, I could deactivate you somehow. It's probably not on your back or anything, but if I could target it, then that would be good.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh no, you can definitely beat me also just by cutting off arms and is sometimes defeated by his head getting cut off. I love that in one pair of movies, I forget which one it is, Godzilla wins the first one by ripping off his head. And then in the second movie, when they redesigned Mechagodzilla, they put a little secondary brain below the neck line so that when they ripped off the head he still had a brain.
Chris Yee:
Haha, didn't expect this, did you? My tiny second head.
Marcus Lehner:
It was a plot point.
Chris Yee:
Okay. So, I think we're saying that you have a better chance if it's long distance and I have a better chance of it's close quarters.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. And then there's some percentage for like pre-assembly.
Chris Yee:
So, it gets complicated for you to do calcs.
Marcus Lehner:
I'm just going to take them in a combination, like combined those two things is probably like 70/30, 65/35, somewhere in that range
Chris Yee:
I'll say 70/30 is fine.
Ben Storms:
That seems fair. Yeah.
Chris Yee:
I mean like you have an advantage when they're separate, but I think once you destroy one lion, then they'll form so it's not like the is over.
Marcus Lehner:
Right, right, right. I mean, I think I'd be advantage if you didn't have your full on suit, but I think I could hit one, it not be taken out of the fight, and you're like, "Okay, time to form up. This thing's clearly five times bigger than us."
Chris Yee:
Yeah. So, you having an advantage before we form, isn't the fight being over. It's just moving to the next stage and I'm a little disadvantaged.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. All right. So, then, assuming we jump one step down the narrative here, Mechagodzilla has defeated Voltron, Voltron is a scrap heap, all the missiles and things exploded, and the people of Manhattan are terrified. Now, the Jaegers are up versus Mechagodzilla.
Ben Storms:
Oh man. So, how susceptible would you say that Mechagodzilla is to punching?
Marcus Lehner:
He does get punched by Godzilla a bunched. Like I said I don't think it's crazy that either Mechagodzilla is a little bit worn down or you can't wear away at his extremities like you punch in his rocket launcher, you kick in a knee cap somewhere and-
Ben Storms:
You get a couple lucky shots in with the missile cannons off of Striker Eureka.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Like a coordinated assaults and a buildup of damage could, I think, wear down Mechagodzilla over time. I don't think it's the most likely scenario.
Ben Storms:
Right. No.
Marcus Lehner:
Beyond like, I think if I punch a Jaeger, it's-
Ben Storms:
It's pretty done.
Marcus Lehner:
... it stays punched.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Chris Yee:
Do you think a Jaeger would be able to rip Mechagodzilla's head off?
Ben Storms:
Two of them do have sword.
Marcus Lehner:
That is a weakness of his. We're all rooting for the Jaegers at the moment, though.
Ben Storms:
I know. That is kind of really my plan. Also, wait, is Mechagodzilla susceptible to electricity or not particularly?
Chris Yee:
I would guess not.
Ben Storms:
Or unknown.
Marcus Lehner:
He must have been-
Ben Storms:
He must have gotten shocked at some point. Right? Definitely threw him into power lines or something.
Chris Yee:
If I had to guess, I would say no.
Marcus Lehner:
Auto complete. Is Mechagodzilla weak electric Pokemon?
Ben Storms:
The people want to know. Would Pikachu beat Mechagodzilla?
Chris Yee:
That would probably answer our question.
Marcus Lehner:
The Heisei era Mechagodzilla was critically damaged by a wave electrical feedback from Godzilla.
Ben Storms:
Okay.
Chris Yee:
So, yes.
Ben Storms:
So, basically what my thought is, the Jaeger plan of attack then has to be... Because Mechagodzilla has 100 feet on them. They can't really get to the head easily as is, so cut out the... Not literally cut off the legs, but get Mechagodzilla to the ground somehow and either Gypsy Danger or Striker Eureka get the head with swords or Cherno Alpha could use the Tesla fist on the head. I'm sure that would, in some way, mess up Mechagodzilla. That's my game plan, I think. The question is just, can they get Mechagodzilla down? Right? Can they get to the head?
Marcus Lehner:
Right. Oh, if I fly up-
Ben Storms:
Oh yeah, if you fly up, this is done. It's basically just there are some missiles that they can launch, but you have a lot more missiles.
Marcus Lehner:
I do have a lot more missiles. Ooh. I was leaning towards like seven. I was only up to 70/30 for you, Ben.
Ben Storms:
I feel like the problem that the Jaegers have is that if Mechagodzilla can engage first from a distance, the missiles are a very real a problem.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. I'm going to say 80/20.
Ben Storms:
I think in the situation where they can be lurking when Voltron is defeated, yeah, 80/20 feels about right. They can get in and maybe get him down and take him out by going at the head.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. So, let's say it goes the other way and that Voltron has now defeated Mechagodzilla. The crazy red/green space sword is in the middle of Mechagodzilla's chest or the head is cut off, honestly. And now Voltron turns back its attention to the Jaegers.
Chris Yee:
Oh, so this is after I fought Mechagodzilla so I'd already be Voltron?
Ben Storms:
Right. Do we think that any of the lions have been destroyed?
Chris Yee:
Maybe. I mean, it depends on-
Ben Storms:
Like what happened in the lead up to Voltron forming and-
Chris Yee:
Yeah. Like when I formed Voltron.
Ben Storms:
Because my problem I really see is that Voltron has more better robots than I do.
Chris Yee:
I mean, they're smaller than yours, but they can fly and they have-
Ben Storms:
They are smaller. That is true.
Marcus Lehner:
They're significantly smaller, though. Like you're-
Ben Storms:
I guess that's true. Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
... separate robots are probably like 150 feet tall.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. I don't know how tall they are separately.
Ben Storms:
So, Voltron overall is... How tall is Voltron again overall?
Chris Yee:
He is 328.
Ben Storms:
So, the legs are what?
Chris Yee:
Well, so the wings span is 328.
Ben Storms:
Oh the wings span is 328.
Chris Yee:
I mean that's the same as the height.
Ben Storms:
Oh yeah. I guess so. Yeah. So, yeah, it's like 100, 150 foot tall robots. So, the Jaegers are bigger but probably slower, can't fly, and with no range weaponry.
Chris Yee:
And there's less of them.
Ben Storms:
And there's less of them.
Marcus Lehner:
The jaegers are what, 280? Is that what that was?
Ben Storms:
Yeah. 250 to 280.
Marcus Lehner:
I mean the high difference is kind of similar to Voltron versus Mechagodzilla in the small parts of Voltron to the Jaegers. How many Voltron pieces do you think you could beat?
Ben Storms:
It's tough. Right? Because the problem I see is that... I think if Voltron stays formed, they have a better chance than a Voltron separates or is separate.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. I think that is actually true.
Ben Storms:
Because if Voltron is separate, they're going to be able to fly around and harass and-
Chris Yee:
One on one each lion would beat your Jaegers, and one of them is fighting two lions.
Ben Storms:
So, it's really like, the plan here is basically, once again, just get there after Mechagodzilla has been slain, and once again, just probably losing a couple in the process, get it down and get a kill shot somehow with either one of the actual heavier weapons because the punching probably isn't going to really do it. Which seems tough. Because it also has to happen fast enough that Voltron doesn't just split.
Chris Yee:
Right. Because I can fly as well.
Ben Storms:
Right. And also, yeah, Voltron can just fly away and then... Yeah. So, it's basically what are the chances of a alpha strike while Voltron is relishing its victory over Mechagodzilla?
Marcus Lehner:
But also, like what if after the fight there's only two Voltron bits left?
Ben Storms:
Or that. Yeah. Right. That Voltron, it was like a Pyrrhic victory and there's two Voltron chunks remaining.
Chris Yee:
How many lions do you think one Jaeger could take?
Ben Storms:
I think they-
Chris Yee:
Yeah. How many Jaegers could one lion take?
Ben Storms:
I think that two Jaegers could beat a lion.
Chris Yee:
Okay.
Ben Storms:
Right? I feel like that's what it takes, though, is that you need to be able to tactic it. Right? If you just do it in a straight fight, a lion has a huge advantage just because of the nature of its weaponry.
Marcus Lehner:
Who got the better tactics? Who has the bigger power of friendship?
Chris Yee:
I feel like I have a stronger bond than you guys.
Ben Storms:
I mean the pilots of a Jaeger are... Well, I guess the pilots of a Jaeger are literally mind melded, but they don't necessarily like... They're not mind melded, all of the pilots.
Marcus Lehner:
Isn't one like Chinese, though, and one the American one?
Ben Storms:
Yeah. But there's bigger things at risk here. They're all working together. It's fine. Don't worry about it.
Marcus Lehner:
Famous international cooperation in the face of global problem.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. Come on.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. Give me your gut percentages, guys.
Ben Storms:
My gut is that there's a worse chance to beat Voltron than Mechagodzilla, and so I would probably say like 85/15 at best. I guess, so what's the chance there's only like two Voltron bits remaining. Right? I guess that's part of it.
Chris Yee:
I think only two is pretty low.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. Because I would say that's like even odds then.
Marcus Lehner:
All right, then that is what it is there.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. I just think that the flight and speed and weaponry is just going to be too much.
Marcus Lehner:
Okay. So, now we've talked about all the matchups here, so let's see if anything comes different. So, if it starts off as Mechagodzilla versus the Jaegers, probably still about 80/20, I mean the same stuff can still happen. Maybe you get some support from Voltron.
Ben Storms:
So, the problem is if that starts out, then there's a missile barrage at the start from Mechagodzilla.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. You can't really close the distance.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. I think this scenario is the one where Voltron's immediately peaces out to space to transform.
Ben Storms:
Right. Exactly.
Chris Yee:
Then he's already formed. Yeah. So, I have a better chance in this situation, but Ben doesn't.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah.
Ben Storms:
I sure do not.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. So, I'm going to up it to like-
Ben Storms:
90/10?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Probably.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Let's do it right.
Ben Storms:
Yep. Let's be honest here, guys.
Marcus Lehner:
Let's be honest here. So, then-
Chris Yee:
And then for me maybe like 60/40 Mechagodzilla/Voltron.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. Oh, this is interesting. The scenario that we're talking about now is the less likely scenario.
Ben Storms:
Jaegers and Voltron fight first?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. No, Jaeger is able to kill Mechagodzilla.
Ben Storms:
Oh right.
Marcus Lehner:
They get a good tactics head decapitating in and now Voltron descends from space and there's just four Jaegers waiting.
Chris Yee:
I don't think all four Jaegers would be left.
Ben Storms:
Well, right. Yeah. So, like maybe two Jaegers. Oh man. This is like a clean sweep. This is like 95/5.
Chris Yee:
Yeah.
Ben Storms:
At best.
Chris Yee:
I'm the pretty clear winner here.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
All right. So if all the little robots start fighting at first.
Ben Storms:
This is also very heavily weighted towards Voltron. This is another, at least, 90/10.
Chris Yee:
I mean, that's just a situation that we said before where-
Ben Storms:
Voltron is unformed and-
Chris Yee:
Yeah. One lion beats one Jaeger and I have more.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. And I think Mechagodzilla is like... If I'm fighting the remnants of all the little robots fighting-
Chris Yee:
Then you definitely win.
Ben Storms:
Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. I'm going to just put it like 90... I'll put 95 on Ben. I'll give you like 10%, Chris, on the assumption that like, "Hey, words."
Ben Storms:
If the Jaegers manage to take out like a couple lions and then Mechagodzilla can just alpha strike. Yeah. I will say a slight change the way we normally, I think, do the final math, I think that it's less likely that Voltron and the Jaegers fight first.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh, I have that factored in.
Ben Storms:
You do? Okay. All right. Cool.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah, I have it set up that the most likely scenario of Voltron and Mechagodzilla squaring up first is 50% of the time, 30% the Jaegers get there first against Mechagodzilla, and 20% of the time the little robots fight.
Ben Storms:
Cool. That makes sense. Yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah. So, actually, I was able to use my spreadsheet from last week because I didn't delete it, so I already have the numbers and they do add up to 100% which is excellent.
Ben Storms:
Nice.
Chris Yee:
Actually saving your spreadsheet.
Ben Storms:
How little do the Jaegers have? I'm going to guess 6%.
Marcus Lehner:
No, no, way better than that. Way better.
Chris Yee:
I think I'll be like 13%.
Marcus Lehner:
Wow. You guys are both equally wrong. It is 9.5%. You guys are actually both 3.5 away.
Ben Storms:
That's incredible.
Marcus Lehner:
Voltron has a 33.5% chance here. And Mechagodzilla has a solid lead of a 57% chance of taking this one. And Chris, have you prepared the wheel?
Chris Yee:
I have the wheel ready. Like last time, we are going to have the wheel on our video version. If you want to see that go to our YouTube channel, but we're going to spin it, and I'm going to share my screen first.
Ben Storms:
So we can react. Oh, look at that little sliver of Jaeger right there.
Marcus Lehner:
Little sliver of Jaeger over there. The wheel is set up. All right, I'm ready.
Chris Yee:
Okay. We have Mechagodzilla, giant slice; Volton, normal slice; and little, bitty, tiny Jaeger slice.
Ben Storms:
Little bitty Jaeger.
Marcus Lehner:
Little slice of Jaeger.
Chris Yee:
Here we go, I'm going to spin it.
Marcus Lehner:
Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.
Ben Storms:
Please come up Jaeger somehow.
Marcus Lehner:
Please don't be Jaeger.
Ben Storms:
Oh my God.
Ben Storms:
It was going there.
Chris Yee:
It was close.
Marcus Lehner:
It was actually like 10 degrees off Jaeger, not that far. But no, it landed in the big, big Mechagodzilla slice. So, here is how this goes. I think I like the scenario. So, we show up, all the robots descend, Mechagodzilla lays out a big old Kaiju menacing roar that's just slightly robotic because he is a robot. Voltron's like, "Outie. Peace," goes up to space. We're going to need to deal with this. Jaegers being the and noble-hearted buffoons that they are, charge right at Mechagodzilla, I think expecting him to be a bit bulky and slow. And the first Jaeger just tries to jump up and start climbing towards the head, and just as he jumps, Mechagodzilla just fists him into the ground, just boom, donezo. In that same motion, the back missiles open up, start firing, just obliterating the remaining Jaegers.
Marcus Lehner:
And then glint up on the sun, shiny metal, Voltron comes down in all its glory, strikes a menacing pose, pulls out its big energy sword. And I don't think it's very complicated. I think Mechagodzilla just takes a step back, open its mouths, charges up, and there's just that huge, giant red laser and it just blows right through the center, just obliterates Voltron, like melted torso with nothing else left. And then the two little legs run away. They detach and run away.
Marcus Lehner:
And that is the definitive answer about how a fight between four Jaegers, Voltron, and Mechagodzilla would end. But we're not done yet, folks, because we still got our would you rather question for the day. Ben?
Ben Storms:
Hmm?
Marcus Lehner:
Normally ask the winner, but since I won you can't ask me, so Ben, would you rather write greeting cards or obituaries for a living?
Ben Storms:
Oh.
Chris Yee:
I feel like this is an obvious one.
Ben Storms:
Which one do you think is obvious?
Chris Yee:
I was going to say greeting cards.
Ben Storms:
Oh, I was going to say obituaries. So, here we go. All right. So, my rationale is that writing greeting cards is basically just coming up with sappy bullshit. Right? That's kind of it.
Chris Yee:
I mean there are different types of greeting cards. There's the dirty humor greeting cards and like... There are different types.
Ben Storms:
So, my rationale is that writing obituaries means basically researching people's lives, which is pretty cool. Right? The idea that you just have to go learn about a person and then write down all the cool stuff they did.
Chris Yee:
But you have to always write positive stuff even if they're a terrible person.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, there's not many greeting cards that say negative things, either. There's very few, "Happy birthday, you piece of crap," cards out there.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. I know. But I'm not researching someone that I don't like and then lying about it.
Chris Yee:
Well, yeah.
Marcus Lehner:
Oh, you're worried there's so many people you dislike that you're going to have to write a lot of obituaries for your enemies.
Chris Yee:
I don't know. What if you write the obituaries for some dictator or something?
Marcus Lehner:
I feel like that's the rare case, that you have to write an obituary for someone who you're like, "Oh man, this person stinks."
Ben Storms:
Yeah. I feel like generally it's just kind of more like regular people and that's kind of cool.
Marcus Lehner:
Is it weird... The thing I was worried about obituaries was that's it's a bit depressing. It's not the funnest. My first instinct is that reading cards are more fun, if I'm going to lead a happy life that, "Hey, I'm a greeting cards writer. I write all these fun, little cards." But I don't think you can write a greeting card without really, really tempering the jokes that you're making. It's all held back. You would have all these great ideas for greeting cards that'll never get made into greeting cards.
Chris Yee:
The question is that you're doing this for a living, right?
Marcus Lehner:
Yeah.
Chris Yee:
And I assume that we're just saying you're good at whatever you choose?
Marcus Lehner:
You're good, but I think you can form to it. You're writing the Hallmark cards.
Chris Yee:
But you're not going to struggle to survive?
Marcus Lehner:
No, no. Let's say these pays similarly. You're financially stable. Let's not make that part hypothetical.
Chris Yee:
So, if that's the case, is your argument that you have all these greeting cards that aren't going to get made and you're sad about that because you want to get your word out there or what?
Marcus Lehner:
I think I'd be upset that it's almost a creative outlet, where you could do some cool stuff and maybe some you like a little better than others, but I feel like... I don't know. Maybe I just have a bad opinion of greeting cards, but I feel like an actual funny joke or an actual good thing just doesn't make it into a greeting card because it's not generic enough.
Chris Yee:
See, I feel like this would be my living, but it wouldn't be my creative outlet. My creative outlet would be something else, and since greeting cards are pretty short, it would be like, I could spend not that much time on the greeting cards and then have more time to do other stuff that is more creatively fulfilling.
Marcus Lehner:
I don't know if you have less work hours doing greeting cards than obituaries.
Chris Yee:
Yeah. We can say the same work hours.
Marcus Lehner:
Also, you have to do the art.
Chris Yee:
Oh, you have to do the art? You said write.
Marcus Lehner:
Or you have to do that layout or images and stuff. It takes a bit to lay out the card, I'm sure.
Chris Yee:
Are you designing it or are you just writing it?
Marcus Lehner:
I don't think writing the actual, just the words is a job.
Chris Yee:
Why not? That's what the obituary is. You're not putting the pictures and like... I don't know.
Marcus Lehner:
Let me put it this way, I can't imagine hiring someone who's only good at the words of a greeting card and not-
Chris Yee:
The company putting together a greeting card, I don't think it's the same person writing it as doing the visual stuff. Those are two different people.
Marcus Lehner:
I don't think it's two different people. There might be a team, but I don't think... Like I said, I don't think there's someone that's just such a good greeting card writer that they only do the words and everything else is delegated.
Chris Yee:
I'm basing all my information on Mr. Deeds.
Ben Storms:
As we do for all our facts on this podcast.
Marcus Lehner:
Is writing obituaries a more respectable job? You're at a party, what do you do for a living? I write obituaries. I write greeting cards.
Ben Storms:
I feel like you can play off writing obituaries as more like-
Marcus Lehner:
I think it's respectable. I think it's like oh yeah, someone's got to do it. It's an important thing.
Chris Yee:
But I think people would think that the greeting card job is a cool, fun job. Maybe less respectable, but it would be a cool, fun thing to say at a party.
Ben Storms:
I feel like you'd get a lot more dumb follow up questions if you write greeting cards than if you write obituaries.
Chris Yee:
I feel like you don't really get any follow up questions if you write obituaries.
Ben Storms:
Yeah. That's also probably true.
Marcus Lehner:
I don't know. I'd be interested. I'd pick someone's brain if they did. One, how did you end up doing that? How did your life take you that way? All right. I think I have my choice and I think it's just more of a gut feeling than a full reasoned out answer, but, Chris, it sounds like you've made up your mind.
Chris Yee:
Yes, I'm going greeting card because of all of the reasons I already said.
Ben Storms:
And I am going obituary because of all the reasons I already said. Haha. Marcus, what are you doing?
Marcus Lehner:
I'm going to go obituaries.
Chris Yee:
Because I chose greeting card.
Marcus Lehner:
Yep. Yeah, because I hate Chris and I just murdered his robot today. But no, I don't know. It seems to me like it would be... It feels a more noble pursuit to me. I don't know. It feels more fulfilling to me than greeting cards.
Chris Yee:
You always used to go with like the party story or whatever.
Marcus Lehner:
I think the obituary is more a party story than the greeting cards. I don't know. I'm not excited at all about greeting cards. They're soulless to me. And man, I'm sorry if you're a person who writes greeting cards. I'm sure there's a lot more that goes into it that I don't know about. And there are lots of good greeting cards out there that I have not seen. My experience with greeting cards is like just the ones in your local CVS and the five that I peruse before settling for one. But still, I don't know, I'm going obituaries, that's my personal choice.
Chris Yee:
There's less pressure on you because I feel like a lot of people that buy greeting cards or that receive greetings cards don't actually read the greeting, so you don't have to be good at it. People are going to read that obituary.
Marcus Lehner:
But I want to be good at what I do.
Chris Yee:
You might screw up the obituary and make them mad.
Marcus Lehner:
Well, if you don't stop trying to convince me, someone's going to have to write an obituary about you, Chris, so there it is. Shots fired. Missiles fired. Laser beams fired. Plasma grenade fired.
Chris Yee:
And if I keep on trying to give in to you, they'll send me a greeting card.
Marcus Lehner:
We don't have time for you to convince me of anything because now it's my turn to convince the listener right now to do stuff for us for free. Well, for us, for free, for them for money.
Ben Storms:
Okay.
Marcus Lehner:
Go to www.patreon.com/absurdhypotheticals. That's our Patreon page. That is where you can support us with your money. It is even cheaper than some greeting cards in that it is just $1 per month, gives you access to all our additional Patreon only content that we release each month. So, if you want to hear more of our dulcet tones, I guess, you can find us there. If you want to be part of the show, send us questions, send us would you rathers. Our question list is growing thinner and harder to come up after 100 and, Jesus, number of episodes.
Ben Storms:
Oh, 100 and Jesus.
Marcus Lehner:
100 and jeez number of episodes later we'd love to hear your listener questions, so send those... Probably the best way is via email either through our Patreon page or via email, absurdhypotheticals@gmail.com. Real easy to remember. But with that, that's all I'm going to ask you guys to do for now, until next week, when we answer the following question: what if all animals moved at the same speed?