Witchcraft - Notes on Gundam Witch from Mercury Season 01

 

 I'm going to start watching season 02, or part 02 or whatever they're calling it, of the newest Gundam show Witch from Mercury. Why only now? Well, we'll get to that later. First, though, I wanted to jot down my thoughts on the first part. I've been a Gundam fan since I was the age of a typical Gundam protagonist, Wing was my introduction to the franchise, and I've been dipping into its back catalogue ever since. Witch from Mercury - Witch for convenience - was a bit of a surprise. I'd heard some news about it being in development, but didn't follow it very closely. I found out that it had been released because I saw a lot of fan art about it. 

Unfortunately, due to circumstances, it took me a while before I could watch the show. My IT systems were in storage, and I was confined to the house with an old smart TV and a chromebook, so I patiently waited for it to become available on the Gundam YouTube channel. Meanwhile, I had fan art and fan guesses to navigate past to avoid spoilers. When I did manage to watch the first season, it ended, leaving me with some thoughts about what I've watched and where it could be going in the next season.

So, before I take the plunge, I'll sketch them out and see how close my predictions are and how it handles what it built up in season 01. I know I'm not the first one to notice that Witch differs quite a bit from what is considered typical Gundam, but that isn't automatically a bad thing. Nor is it the first time that's happened, SD Gundam (chibi style comedy shorts) and the Fighter G Gundam (think wrestling with Mechs, or the anime adaption of the film Robot Jox) were extremely different and while not everyone in the fandom has come around on them, they have their fans. Personally, since I'm not a Japanese Gundam fanatic from the 1980s I think SD Gundam misses more than it hits, but there are still some episodes I quite like, and I really enjoyed the energy of Fighter.

 And Witch being different has opened the franchise to a new audience. I said that I discovered that the show had started airing thanks to the explosion of fan art, but interestingly, most of the fan art was being made or shared by people I follow on social media that had never expressed any interest in Gundam before. The Gundam fandom outside Japan has been growing over time and the Netflix deals gave it more of a push, but it's still a small pond, so further growth is welcome. Of course, Witch being atypical will mean that not every Witch fan will evolve into a Gundam fan, but in the gaps between seasons I have seen some start mining the franchise for another fix. And I saw an article that claimed that sales of the Mobile Suit model kits (Gunpla) in Japan have broken records, if true that means there's a lot more new friends to welcome.

Overall, I like Witch, and I think many of the changes from the formula work well and are refreshing. In the fandom, a vocal minority has been wishing for a female protagonist for some time, so it's good that it finally happened and the character and her plot is interesting. It's a bit odd looking back how long this has taken given how many Gundam stories have come out and how even back in the 1970s the shows would include viable candidates for main character status but just kept to the old formula despite being willing to change and experiment with the rest of it. I watched Reconguista a few months ago and well that's a blog post in itself but one of the few positives for that show was Aida Sururgan, making her the main character and the boy Bell her back-up/possible romantic partner* would've been an improvement. Anyway, back to Witch, I like Suletta and I like Miorine, I even remembered how to spell their names without looking it up!** I like both as individual characters, but at first I wasn't buying the relationship between them. I know that's something of a "hot take" given that the lesbian relationship seems to have been its main selling point amongst the Gundam first timer fans. 

Works of this nature were how I discovered the show, I'd credit the artist, but I found this on a wallpaper site uncredited.

I do understand the appeal both in having a main character LGBTQ relationship in a very popular show - I really loved how the show quickly established same sex attraction is considered practically normal in most of the society of the show, nipping that "but we're both X" angst in the bud- and that both parts of the relationship are very interesting personality wise and clash quite a bit creating friction in the will they, won't they? Style of teasing. And it doesn't hurt that the cute red head Suletta's character design made her easy to turn into a cuddly Racoon by fan artists. But, the relationship as depicted struck me extremely toxic. Suletta surprised me a lot in just how close to the bone she cut me. Watching her clumsy and confused attempts to navigate her emotions in what is essentially a military training camp for adolescents was giving me some quite vivid flashbacks. She even has red hair. And Miorine's abrasive isolation and defensiveness read very realistic to me. I'm not saying any of this is bad, I found it very interesting to watch, I just wasn't convinced the lovey-dovey path was viable and found the multiple episode cycle of Suletta clumsily trying to connect with Miorine without actually connecting (another deep cut there) while Miorine maintains a cold detachment and lashes out (and another) started to grate. Fortunately, around the time I was getting actively annoyed at the closed circle was when the show started to move on this. And the last few episodes seem to be confirming an awareness of the emotional vulnerabilities of the two main characters, the toxic relationship between Miorine and her father is obvious from the first episode, and once Suletta's dear mother shows up it quickly became clear to me that that relationship is just as rotten.
 

I was a little worried that the show would keep these two characters locked in an angsty will they, won't they? Oh, woe is me, why can they not see that they're perfect for each other? Cycle. Only to have a last minute or deathbed confession, but once the show dropped hints that the relationship has some issues that need to be worked out, my fears were calmed. And then the last scene of season 01 happens, and we get Suletta's sweet smile after she= well I won't spoil that, but after that scene I'm officially really intrigued and willing to follow this relationship wherever it goes. 

The setting has moved from battles between political-national factions, Zeon vs Earth Federation, Zaft vs a different Earth Alliance, MAFTI vs Earth Federation, the boys in Wing vs well everyone else, etc. To a setting dominated by corporations. This makes sense both in relation to the current year when corporations continue to grow in influence and importance in society and in international relations, and it builds on the limited criticisms of corporations and greed in military affairs that previous Gundam shows touched on, Anaheim Electronics supplying both sides, the cabal of industrial giants in Seed Destiny and son. But I find far less interesting as a setting. I get it, they're corporate heads, so they're petty and nakedly self-serving, but I find the talk of stock prices and intrigues over market concerns opaque and not very interesting. When Miorine forms her own company and essentially drags her friends acquaintances into joining her, I like the parts where they're trying to work together and interact with each other, but I still have no interest in the corporate side of it. I just do not have the interest or respect for business culture to buy into any of it. One of my hopes for the next season is that since the violence has ratcheted up quite a bit, the fights and physical conflicts will take more attention away from the corporate culture. Yes, functionally speaking scenes where bad people gather in a poorly lit room with a map and a communications system and plot violence are the same whether they're wearing military uniforms or smart casual office attire, I just do not care for their expositionary blather in the latter.

Class, class commentary has always been present in Gundam and Witch is no exception. Usually in the settings there is a distinct divide between those who live on Earth (Earthnoids) and those who live in Space (Spacenoids) and usually the upper crust and the elite are on Earth while the downtrodden are on the Moon, or asteroids or in city sized space stations. Witch has this divide too, Mercury in the title refers to a community living on the planet Mercury, but has flipped the positions. In this show, it is the Earthnoids who are the downtrodden underclass, with the Spacenoids exploiting and deriding them. I like how Miorine and Suletta as outsiders gravitate to the students from Earth, but they don't do much with this dynamic in season 01, though again the final bits of that season strongly suggest that season 02 will do more with this theme going forward.

So, that's where I am now, so far patiently waiting for the Gundam channel to make the season 02 videos available in my country. I know they've been uploaded because the Americans I follow have been chattering about them, and a plugin I have tells me they're hidden in the playlist. When I voice my displeasure at region blocking for online content, someone pipes up about VPNs. Yeah, I could use one of those, I could a lot of things in fact, that's missing the point, consumer hostile actions don't become okay because consumers can make use of loopholes.

Appendix

Gundam shows you might like if you like Witch (no refunds)

Gundam Wing; back in the day, Gundam Wing was the show that provoked a massive influx of new fans to the franchise. Partly because it was the first show to get a big push in English speaking regions, but also due to its five main characters being angsty boys with a lot of trauma and relationship issues with each other and everyone else they weren't tyring to murder inside a big machine. I tried watching the show again some years a go and, well I thought it was terrible, but maybe Heero and Duo and the rest's charms will work for you, I fell for them hard back in the day.

Turn A Gundam: Another show that was atypical to what had come before, features a plot full of intrigues between wealthy indivdiuals and also did experiment with gender representation. Is noted for having the first explicitly homosexual character in the franchise, though in the present day I don't think he'd be held up as a positive example, though I think it works in a sad way. Also its protagonist Loran reminds me quite abit of Suletta, though with a different background and upbringing so I wouldn't say she's a female copy of him. 

Iron Blooded Orphans: The series before Witch, its standalone so you don't have to worry too much about the lore of the franchise getting in the way. Had some LGBTQ and non-conventional relationships and leaned heavily into the power dynamics of the world. Also very bloody and covers some darker aspects of the setting which Witch has hinted at and may go down that root too but might hold back. We'll see.

*Yeah, I saw that twist coming and was hoping it'd swerve it.

** You can play a game with Gundam shows, type the names of characters into the Gundam wiki based on how they were pronounced on the show, Japanese original or dubbed, either way it'll be a challenge.