However, twelve episodes in, and it’s clear that there are all sorts of new things going on in The Witch From Mercury. Some of which are superb and exciting, but there are also boring and unremarkable things happening, with a dash of mediocrity sprinkled throughout the season. And with the release of the 12th episode, we finally reach the midpoint of this series. So here’s a brief review for the first part of Gundam: The Witch From Mercury.
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Gundam: The Witch From Mercury
The story of The Witch From Mercury revolves around Suletta Mercury, a shy and awkward girl from Planet Mercury who comes to study at the Piloting Department of the elite Asticassia School of Technology, with Gundam Aerial in tow. Other than the fact that this prestigious school is operated by the infamous Benerit Group, the largest conglomerate corporations in the entire universe, there is one other unique thing about Asticassia School of Technology. Here, every student’s dispute is settled through a mobile suit duel.
Be it a simple scuffle between hard-headed students to ask one’s hand in marriage, everything can be settled through a duel. Needless to say, Suletta doesn’t know about this rule. So without even realizing it, she challenged the top duelist in school, and easily snatched her first win. As a result, Suletta becomes the new No.1 duelist in school, and she also finds herself with a new fiancé, a girl named Miorine Rembran, who happens to be the daughter of the Benerit Group’s president, Delling Rembran.
After that, things becomes a wild roller coaster ride to Suletta. One day she can’t participate in an easy exam because she doesn’t have any friend, the next day she founds out that Gundam Mobile Suits is actually banned, and she is threatened to be expelled and Aerial would be demolished. There are times when she has fun starting up a new company with Miorine, but there’s also times when she has to fight against a group of experienced fighters that is equipped with anti-Gundam tech. Life has become an endless series of chaos and excitement to Suletta.
The Princess and The Witch
After a couple of episodes, it’s clear that the story of Gundam: The Witch From Mercury often alternates between action-oriented episodes, and drama-oriented episodes. If Suletta engages in an intense fight in one episode, then you can be sure that the next one will focus on her school life. Furthermore, different kinds of episodes seem to have different protagonists. Suletta for the exciting action, and Miorine for the thrilling drama.
So in a sense, both of these characters seems to be designed from the ground up to take the lead role for certain parts of the story. You would rarely see Miorine involved in a fast-pace action sequence, because that is the part where Suletta shine the most. On the contrary, Suletta barely has any role during the slice-of-life part of the story, because that is when Miorine steal the spotlight.
This kind of approach is quite new for this franchise. We rarely get to see such a balanced duet between two characters like this in a major Gundam series. Their personalities are a perfect opposite of each other, and yet they work so harmoniously together. This approach to storytelling is definitely one of the best parts of The Witch From Mercury.
Novelty vs Familiarity
As the new major Gundam series after quite a long time, The Witch From Mercury strives to bring something new and fresh to the brand. It’s certainly great to see this old franchise innovate and experiment with new things. Furthermore, some of the new things introduced here become interesting novelties that might be used in future series, such as the aforementioned storytelling approach.
However, there are also quite a few aspects of the story that turn out to be quite disappointing, such as the school life drama. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t take a long time until the fans begin to expect the story to follow the usual Gundam formula, which is full-blown military conflict, thrilling political intrigue, and breathtaking action sequences.
It proves that while novelties are great, a certain level of familiarity is still needed as the overall foundation of the story. After all, for a series as established as Gundam, the fans already have certain expectations about what they want to see in a new series. And it seems like the production team also realizes this fact, because as the series progresses, the story begins to veer into the familiar Gundam territories. That is especially apparent in the last two episodes where it seems like we’re about to enter a darker and much more serious part of the story.
The first part of Gundam: The Witch From Mercury contains some thrilling combat scenes and quite a few interesting moments. However, as mentioned above, the story has numerous mediocre aspects as well. That being said, the series began to pick up some pace near the end of this first part and actually managed to wrap things up in a rather high note. So as long-time fans of this franchise, we are definitely excited to see the second part of The Witch From Mercury in April 2023.
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