Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury

Sapphic gundam is enough to get me to watch gundam. And it was pretty good. It still has anime things that have been so ingrained in the format you can't help but try to find something eye roll worthy endearing, and sometimes I can do that. Sometimes though, stuff does not make sense because the priority is to surprise the viewer. So, watch this when you're in the mood to allow a lot of hand waves and want The Mood. You won't be sorry.

If you've heard that this is written excellence though, unfortunately this is not that. It's really fun and actually has some amount of queer rep though. And war is bad. Capitalism is bad. I can get on board with that.

Wanting for a new Gundam series to take the concept of "newtypes" in the right direction, to introduce new technologies and to elevate the stories that have been told for generations!

But it feels like this series wrote itself into a "hole" it can't wait to get out of.. imagined after properties that wished had the word "Gundam" in their name.. Taking the concept of puppeteers to the extreme, with parents playing chess with their kids in a nonsensical and unsatisfiable manner. With a plot of teenage-brides, a supposed-school where studying is not the focus and rushed settings that ultimately holds back what would be a meaningful entry. Seeing the things I'd be more interested in buried in a deeper layer and relegated to background ideas.. such as agitators and revolts, effects of technology, humanity, military issues, space politics and more! What dissatisfies me the most, is that it pretends to have some sort of Gundam-related Biotechnology (similar to newtypes), but it is just a thin-veiled power-up with no explanation.. not that something so cheap could be any interesting, anyway.

For what it is (another generic "quality anime drama" with robots, instead of filling the role of "space opera").. it is decent enough. Episodes could be watched out of order (from 5 to 9, unknowingly, in my case) and nothing felt out of place immediately.. make of that what you will. The writing, for the genre and the target audience, is okay. And the characterization and personalities are also well done. No one is particularly annoying for trope's sake, with decent action and technology.

It's just too bland for my taste to recommend.

There's only been like 4 episodes released so review is based on those.

It's not like typical Gundam series.

The animation is beautiful, the story is okay, but the main character Suletta is extremely silly. Many anime have silly moments and childish characters but Suletta is on another level. She has the mannerisms of a 5 year old child. Hiding behind people because she's too shy, crying like a toddler, which makes it even more weird that they're dueling over marriages.

They've basically made what would normally be the comic relief character the main character of the show. This makes it harder to take her seriously as a pilot when you see how she acts, it's hard to believe that she has the constitution to go into space and pilot a mobile suit. It's similar as to how in season 2 of Gundam00 the guy's ditzy girlfriend had become an elite mobile suit pilot. It just didn't fit.

They've shown little so far as per the normal themes of Gundam, but Im hoping it will get better. Even the Gundam has a more round cutesy face than normal, because the pilot is female, and females cute, shy and innocent, right?

I really hope it get's more serious later on.

This show started ok and it went downhill from there.

Think fanfic level of writing and you are getting there. The plot was more concerned with shipping two characters than being a Gundam series.

The show is usually 80% school drama show, 20 % Gundam, not good at all for a supposed Gundam show.

At the end of season 1, it started to get good, but after that is back to the boring school room com generic anime spiced with robots.

Do you remember all that political drama from other Gundam shows? Here is replaced for not-so-subtle anti-corporation quips, with no thought put into how a world like that would function.

Score more than a 5 are normie scores.

*This review is after watching Season 2*

This is sort of a guilty-pleasure anime for me. Because when it comes to the story, I stopped caring a long time ago. It was just too confusing for me to follow. At first, I thought the problem was within me and I was just not smart enough to understand this story. But after seeing the finale, I'm positive that this anime itself is a mess. The fact that they even opened so many plotlines, and ended the entire story in 24 episodes, is ridiculous. Things just suddenly happened in this anime, and I kept racking my brain to figure out why. The motivations of so many characters made no sense. Even the action scenes were hard to follow. That's why in between the story, I actually just gave up on following it.

So why did I continue watching it? Why don't I regret watching it? Well that's because the 2nd season did something that intrigued me. All these characters in the first season were just very immature and somewhat annoying in their own way. In this season, the writer just unleashed hell on all of them. Each and every character gets a brutal reality check. And this season just kept on coming at them, giving none of them any time to even breathe. And these characters were actually forced to improve. They had no choice but to grow up. There are so many character arcs that I actually didn't see coming. This season was not afraid to be dark. Even in the first season we saw that grim darkness a few times. But this season capitalised on that itself. And sunrise did do a good job on the soundtrack and animation. Not on the story though.

This isn't a good anime, frankly. I gave it a good grade because like I said, the character arcs and the darkness intrigued me. But that's why I know it's a guilty-pleasure for me. Because the story is just a mess, and many people aren't going to enjoy it.