Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

Episode 23

It is appreciable that even as it hurtles towards its mandated conclusion, G-Witch remains so very G-Witch in its approach. A lot of expected elements of sci-fi epics and Gundam, in particular, get checked off this week, but you can feel Okouchi and the rest of the team reaching out to comment or put their spin on them as they necessarily put it all together. It genuinely feels like they're just as attached to this world and these characters as we've grown, which makes sense. And there are places where that attachment or desire to show off or fill out everything they can outstrips the space or priorities of the actual narrative, but there are also places where that approach enjoyably freshens up what would be much more perfunctory points.

My biggest point of contention is in this episode's follow-through on the Guel vs. Lauda plot that was engaged last week, and how much of this big, penultimate, final-battle episode is taken up with it. I get that they've got to show off and sell the Schwarzette, which, to its credit, is an extremely cool robot. But very little about the motivation of the clash, from Petra being injured to Lauda learning that Guel killed their father, feels meaningful. Lauda attempts to instill some doubt into Guel about how Miorine got him to work with her brushes up against an interesting angle, but even that seems to lead Guel to attempt a sentimental sacrifice as proof of his sincerity. Thank goodness we had Felsi on hand to come in and stop this whole plot while also pointing out how played-out it was. Which does shaggy-dog that storyline a bit after all, but at least it resolves it in a less-stupid way.

That's all an example of a resolving plotline that might be interesting to see moved forward long-term if we were sure this show was getting another season, but for now, it functions as a reason for a B-plot robot battle. Suletta and Ericht can't take up all the action time after all, even if their fight is much more integral and looks every bit as cool. One thing I like about this setup, in line with expected Gundam thematics, is the way everyone doesn't even want to fight this battle. Eri is going through with this out of a feeling of indebted obligation to Prospera, the same way Suletta used to operate, while Suletta herself has concluded that stopping the plan is what would be best for everyone's psyches overall. Yes, it would be at the overall cost of Eri still being sealed in a killer robot tin can, but that issue may or may not have rendered itself moot by the end of this episode.

Even with everything I knew this episode had to do, I'm still coming away overwhelmed and at least a little impressed at the sheer number of moving parts it was maneuvering in getting there. I'm glad the Earth House gang and their allies are so integral, including El5n helping out while also sticking to his assertion that he's not going to do so by sacrificing himself in a Gundam. It is only a little funny that he's the one who dings Prospera into ultimate surrender after she was more appropriately clashing with the likes of Bel and Miorine. Although the latter gets the final reach-out resolution for an attempt at some good old-fashioned Gundam understanding. The whole sequence and its thrilling zero-g shootouts, including gun-toting Haros(!), is almost enough to distract you from the fact that Prospera doesn't do or say anything before she heads into that security room this episode.

Filling out all that mechanical plot stuff that moves these things into position comes off both overly busy but still surprisingly smart at times, to me. It's great to see that the writing didn't forget about the Space Assembly League or the Peil Technologies gang—I never should have doubted Okouchi on that one. And setting them up as the actual final opponents, specifically wrangling this whole situation just as a way to facilitate some aggressive corporate restructuring, is pretty great and in line with all the show's attitudes until now. But while their flippant disregard for Delling's attempt to invoke bylaws as a negotiation tactic makes for an amusingly wry detail, it also marks his appearance in this episode as amounting to little more than a name-check. And it just makes it feel much more perfunctory when their ultimate approach is simply to whip out a big satellite laser I don't think we'd heard about before. By the same token, Miorine's mom's secret tomato code being baked into Quiet Zero as a kill switch had been set up in previous elements, and I'm glad it amounted to something apart from an absurd, aside sentimentality. But it is also supremely goofy.

Then again, some inherent, knowing goofiness might be why we come back to Gundam, and it's definitely why we come back to Okouchi. For all my going back and forth on how this episode handed down all its plot points, they still hold water, writing-wise, and I sure as hell wasn't bored through any of it. Some parts of the story have been left behind, but they're integrating more of it than I expected. Do the likes of Prospera need more breathing room when so much of this episode was pointedly centered around Ericht's feelings, her potential sacrifice at the end (where were you on that one, Felsi?), and the way we might witness her mother's reaction to that in the fallout of the next/final episode? There are a lot of resolutions being corralled here, making me grateful that characters like Suletta and Miorine already reached the climaxes of their arcs. I'm still counting on Miorine to make good on her "family" proposal for this episode and start planning a real wedding for us to watch. All that "family" stuff, that's a thematic key that's still holding G-Witch together quite well in that regard. And I think if they can maintain that, they will be able to mostly stick the landing by next week's ending, even as we're watching countless other plotlines collide and checking "giant satellite laser" off of our Gundam bingo card.

Rating:

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is keeping busy keeping up with the new anime season, and is excited to have you along. You can also find him writing about other stuff over on his blog, as well as spamming fanart retweets on his Twitter, for however much longer that lasts.