The Witch From Mercury has become the ultimate Gundam show

One of the first questions to ask on your anime journey is literally a big one: are giant robots right for me? Lucky for you, there’s never been a faster way to find out. Just look Mobile suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.

Huge humanoid robots are an anime staple, and fewer names in giant robots are bigger than Mobile Suit Gundam – the mega-franchise spawned by Yoshiyuki Tomino’s 1979 anime of the same name. In some ways, Gundam is synonymous with giant robots, a bit like Kleenex and facial tissues. Like Kleenex, that can be an oversimplification. There are a lot of giant robot shows, old and new, and they all do very different things. This is true even within the Gundam franchise, which has already spanned eight U.S. presidents and is still counting. a lot of of various things from “grounded military sci-fi about the horrors of war” (the original) to “boy band revolutionaries” (Gundam wing) to “Street Fighter with robots” (Mobile fighter jet G Gundam).

Mobile suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury‘s selling point has always been its self-contained nature, making it the ideal starting point for the Gundam curious. It is also new Gundam, which is all too rare these days – despite the occasional movie – and thus carries a bit of an unnecessary burden of being everything to all people, the Gundam believers and the uninitiated alike.

The banana thing about it is that The Witch of Mercury pulls it off. Now that the show has started its second run of episodes after a short winter hiatus, the series is kicking into high gear and making a strong case for itself as the ultimate Gundam show, a showcase for all the many ideas that encompass, remix, and remix the Gundam franchise. them all into something that feels new and accessible, but does so by taking a little bit of everything from Gundam’s sprawling history – while also closing the loop on some of Gundam’s later, even more famous successors, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Funnily enough, it does this by playing in a different genre entirely: the magical girl/romance hybrid best exemplified by Revolutionary girl Utena, with which it shares an uncanny resemblance. Like that groundbreaking show, The Witch of Mercury is about a young woman enrolled in a military school, where she duels her classmates in combat exercises to win (and keep) the hand of a powerful heiress.

With this avoidance maneuver The Witch of Mercury quietly the heavy themes that Gundam and other giant robot shows are known for in his likeness, in exchange for a military school drama about the shy Suletta Mercury, the friendly girl from Mercury with an extraordinarily advanced mobile suit that binds her to one of the greatest human conflicts in the solar system. It’s a bit of narrative sleight of hand that only gets smarter The Witch of Mercury continues, as Suletta’s genius character and college haircuts are juxtaposed with the weapons of war she and her peers command for sport, and the political machinations of the adults they put there.

Image: Sunrise/Crunchyroll

Despite its sunny disposition, The Witch of Mercury is quietly eroded the longer the viewer thinks about it. Suletta Mercury is not your typical mecha protagonist. She is not a sad boy yearning for validation, nor a grim warrior forced to grow old too soon. She is a sincere soul, someone who wants to make friends and help people and be a good bride-to-be for Miorine, the girl she got betrothed to through a fight.

It’s honestly eye-popping how much The Witch of Mercury can do through the story of Suletta. It’s both brutal subversion and loving tribute, taking aspects of each great Gundam incarnation – the horror of child soldiers, the obsession with cool robots that are basically weapons of war, intense space politics – and balancing them all perfectly with a brave piece-life school rom-com. If you’re not sure if Gundam specifically or giant robots in general are for you, just stick with another episode – The Witch of Mercury has something new to show you.

Suletta Mercury unfortunately has the misfortune of being a Gundam protagonist and taking on all the horror of what that means. For the viewer, she couldn’t be a better guide to this kind of story – not just because she’s new to everything, but because she might, if she’s lucky, still come out on top.

Mobile suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury streams on Crunchyroll, with new episodes on Saturday.