To say that we are excited about the new Gundam anime is an understatement. We are absolutely hyped up for this. Because, after more than 5 years not releasing a major series, the most beloved mecha anime franchise in the world finally gave us a new series called Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury.
This new series promises to bring a lot of new things into this massive franchise, while also implementing familiar concepts at the same time. The most obvious one being the first ever female protagonist, and the psycho-frame in Gundam Aerial. So now that the first episode is finally released on Crunchyroll, let’s see what other new and exciting things that Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury has to offer.
The Witch And The Bride
The first episode is basically an introduction for the characters, and the main mobile suit for this series, Gundam Aerial. The main character is a girl named Suletta Mercury, a new transfer student for the piloting department at the prestigious Asticassia School of Technology. She comes from Planet Mercury, and she brought the mobile suit that was developed by her mother to the school, which is the aforementioned Gundam Aerial. A more extensive look into the early stage of the Gundam and Suletta’s mother can be seen in the Prologue episode.
Suletta is a shy girl who never went outside of Mercury, so she is extremely awkward around the other students at Asticassia. Be it through luck or misfortune, the first person that Suletta encounters there is Miorine Rembran, the daughter of the President of the Benerit Group, the biggest conglomerate in the universe. One thing lead to another, Suletta ended up picking a fight with Miorine’s fiancé, a rich boy named Guel Jeturk.
At Asticassia School of Technology, every dispute can be settled through a mobile suit duel. From something simple like bickering among friends, to deciding who you should marry, all of it can be settled through a school-sanctioned duel. Needless to say, Suletta ends up having to duel Guel, who happens to be the top duelist there.
Everybody who watches the duel doesn’t pay any attention at all to Suletta the newcomers. That is until she gets inside Aerial’s cockpit and activates the Gund-ARMS technology. As a result, Gundam Aerial manages to mangle Guel’s mobile suit in a matter of seconds. Unbeknownst to her, the winner of the duel also gets to be Miorine’s fiancé, so yes, for the first time ever, there seems to be a Yuri element in a Gundam series.
The Epic Duel
There is always a short but impactful fight at the beginning of every major Gundam series. It is basically a way to showcase the capability of the main Gundam of the series, and also act as a hook to make the audience interested to watch the next episodes.
At the start of the duel between Suletta’s Aerial and Guel’s Dilanza, the Dilanza completely dominated the Aerial. The reason is simply because it is Miorine who’s piloting the Aerial, and not Suletta. Seeing her beloved Aerial about to be hit by Guel, Suletta race through the battlefield on a scooter and forcefully grab Miorine out of the Aerial’s cockpit. “Aerial is mine, give it back,” she said.
When Suletta is finally in the cockpit, the whole fight turns from a simple duel to a one-sided massacre. Suletta immediately activates Aerial’s GUND-ARM system, which is similar to the Psycho-Frame in Gundam Unicorn. Aerial deployed its detachable remote-controlled swarm weapon system known as GUND-BIT, which is quite similar to the Funnels used by Sazabi and Nu Gundam. In a matter of seconds, Guel’s Dilanze is mangled with only its head and torso left intact. As a finishing move, Aerial takes out its beam saber and slices through Dilanze’s antenna, thus claiming the victory.
The other thing that makes the duel feels so epic is the music. The fight scene uses a theme song that will make you feel so hyped up and excited. It sounds quite similar to the theme song during the Witcher III boss fight. And if you ever play Witcher III or at least see gameplay footage of it on the internet, then you know the right music can make the fight feel so much more intense and exciting.
That is why this particular Mobile Suit duel is easily one of the most epic fights among all the early fights in the franchise. From the build up to the climax of the duel, everything is crafted perfectly to make the duel feel so epic and impactful to the viewers.
The Dual Mood
Right from the get go, it is clear that Gundam: The Witch From Mercury wishes to present two different storylines, with two different moods at the same time. On one hand, we get a rather lighthearted story of Suletta’s daily life at her new school. On the other hand, we get a thrilling political intrigue between the most influential economic powers in the universe. At some point, these two different worlds will collide and mesh into one riveting story.
As mentioned earlier in this review, The Witch From Mercury tries to approach lots of things differently than its predecessors. This is the perfect example of that statement. Because this kind of dual mood is extremely rare in a Gundam franchise. Usually, it would either be dark and gloomy from the beginning to the end, such as the case with Gundam Unicorn and Iron-Blooded Orphan, or quite lighthearted like Gundam Reconguista in G. This proves that The Witch From Mercury marks a brand-new milestone for this franchise. And if every subsequent episode can be as good, if not better, than this first episode, then this could be one of the best Gundam series ever made.