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EP. REVIEW: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury


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Key
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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 10:54 am Reply with quote
zfunk wrote:
Second episode in a row that Suletta has been "dumped" by someone she cares about. I am really starting to think Suletta is going to be the final boss. You can only push someone so far that they go insane and want to destroy the world that continues to reject them.

Essentially, Eri is saying the same thing Miorine did, but in a much kinder way: "There's no need for you to be dragged any further into this crapfest. You've done enough, so go live the school life you always dreamed of."

Did find it interesting that totally taking Suletta out of the picture seemed to be Eri's decision, not Prospera's. Prospera's last words in the episode suggest that she's not as completely cold-hearted about this as she's comes across.
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Gem-Bug



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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 11:31 am Reply with quote
Key wrote:

Did find it interesting that totally taking Suletta out of the picture seemed to be Eri's decision, not Prospera's. Prospera's last words in the episode suggest that she's not as completely cold-hearted about this as she's comes across.


Not gonna lie, there was a moment there when I thought Prospera was going to shove her farther into space. Obviously it looks like they were both using her(and at this point, I'm not sure if Eri is just following Prospera, or if it's maybe the other way around?), but I'm glad that she's not being treated as disposable as Elan.
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dm
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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 11:48 am Reply with quote
The end of this episode mirrors the beginning of the series, where Suletta encounters Miorine "adrift" in a space suit. In addition: Miorine is now (again) on her way to Earth, which was what she was doing when drifting in that space-suit.

Speaking of: the special agents who accosted Bel in the corridor (interesting zero-G setup there, with the conveyor to help make progress) -- were they the crew of the ship that Miorine hired to pick her up in that early scene?
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Gem-Bug



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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 1:15 pm Reply with quote
dm wrote:
The end of this episode mirrors the beginning of the series, where Suletta encounters Miorine "adrift" in a space suit. In addition: Miorine is now (again) on her way to Earth, which was what she was doing when drifting in that space-suit.

Speaking of: the special agents who accosted Bel in the corridor (interesting zero-G setup there, with the conveyor to help make progress) -- were they the crew of the ship that Miorine hired to pick her up in that early scene?


They were, yeah!
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NeverConvex
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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 1:47 pm Reply with quote
Gem-Bug wrote:
Not gonna lie, there was a moment there when I thought Prospera was going to shove her farther into space.


I was more than half-expecting Prospera to, like, embrace Suletta warmly, then quietly undo her helmet and let the vacuum of space murder her... Shocked

What we got was certainly better parenting than I found myself fearing in the moment, though!
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Thesarum
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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 5:13 pm Reply with quote
More secrets come tumbling out, but they're kinda all in the wrong places. Nika knows the secret of the Elans, and has the first important piece of the puzzle regarding Eri but she's effectively Shaddiq's captive and can't get that information anywhere.

Suletta is fully keyed in on what Aerial is for the first time... but in the process she's been been cast deeper into the pit.

Meanwhile the only person with any real power to exercise, Miorine, is far more ignorant than she realises. With her information tightly controlled by Prospera, she's jumping from one bad decision to the next. Prospera still fully intends to destroy her piece by piece I think. She's trying so hard to do the right things too. It's painful to see her trying to move forward while Prospera tries to manipulate her into repeatedly betraying herself.

(Prospera seems to have Shaddiq's number though, so that could be a fun showdown between the two manipulative backstabbers, that or she just intends to humiliate Miorine and then jump ship using the Dawn of Fold link as leverage)

What was with that Haro confession booth? That's a weird feature for a school to have, no?
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Beltane70



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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 7:09 pm Reply with quote
dm wrote:
(interesting zero-G setup there, with the conveyor to help make progress


That's actually been used in quite a few Gundam shows. I think that I first noticed it in Zeta Gundam, but it might have been in the original series as well.
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Key
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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 8:12 pm Reply with quote
Beltane70 wrote:
dm wrote:
(interesting zero-G setup there, with the conveyor to help make progress


That's actually been used in quite a few Gundam shows. I think that I first noticed it in Zeta Gundam, but it might have been in the original series as well.

Something like that has also been in a number of other sci fi series where parts were set in zero G, so it's not exclusive to Gundam.
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zfunk



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PostPosted: Sun May 21, 2023 9:12 pm Reply with quote
Would it be something if Prospera is not really any mastermind, that Eri is pulling the strings and she is really just Eri's puppets. Every seen the We Baby Bears show, the main antagonists is this mother / daughter team, and the daughter bosses the mother around.
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Abraham Omosun



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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2023 8:52 am Reply with quote
I don't know what's funnier: the fact that the school for rich kids has a counseling room where you complain to the (AI?) mascot of the Gundam franchise or that Secelia just stays hidden behind the wall listening to it. I am really interested in what she is going to do now (apart from sit on the couch) Also please let Nika out of that room, I don't think she will last another week with Elen and Norea Laughing
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MFrontier



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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2023 8:57 am Reply with quote
Miorine and Guel are trying their best but as great as they look in business attire they are woefully out of their depth, especially with Prospera pulling the strings. Miorine probably thinks she can use Quiet Zero to help ease tensions on Earth but Prospera will probably hijack it and cause more trouble. And Suletta will have to come in and save the day. Kind of like what the OP implied. Gundam Schwarzette here we come?

Chuchu was a real friend to Suletta here.

The Space Assembly League seem to be inching closer and closer to exposing everything. They've got Belmaria and it feels like she'll break and tell them everything at this point. Are they going to end up arresting everybody? If Nika can somehow get to them than that screws over Shaddiq and Peil even more, and maybe gives Nika her chance at redemption. Especially when she knows the truth about Elan now.

Martin shouldn't beat himself up, Nika planned to turn herself in anyways. I'm not sure what Secelia running the school confessional means or how this is going to effect the plot, but it was quite the surprise.

So there's no way Prospera is oblivious to the fact that Miorine's honor guard has the man who killed her husband onboard, right?

Poor Suletta. Turns out she's a clone, can't handle Permet Score without Aerial taking it for her, and gets chucked into space because her sister and mother don't need her any more (even if they think it's for her own good).

I'm still not sure how Prospera feels about Suletta. We see flashbacks of her being a genuine mother, she seems to have the same intention of protecting Suletta like Eri does, yet it still feels like to me that she only sees Suletta as an extension of Eri.
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darkchibi07



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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2023 9:29 am Reply with quote
I have to admit, waiting 2 weeks for a new episode just to see Suletta get rejected even more is kind of pushing it. Amusingly, anyone marathoning this in the future wouldn't have to feel too much of the same pain the other viewers were experiencing.

zfunk wrote:
Second episode in a row that Suletta has been "dumped" by someone she cares about. I am really starting to think Suletta is going to be the final boss. You can only push someone so far that they go insane and want to destroy the world that continues to reject them.


Ehhh, that doesn't seem to be within her character to go on a revenge path. Ideally I can see her learning to take control of her actions and agency (don't from whom or what though) and probably travel to Earth to see Mirorine possibly even save her. Because something tells me those negotiations Miorine will try to pull will not go smoothly at all. Hell, there could be a situation where Suletta and Miorine get trapped together somewhere, and they REALLY let out their feelings for each other which would probably be the most cathartic climax of this show.
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DRosencraft



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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2023 10:04 am Reply with quote
I gotta say, folks seem way more optimistic about where this is all heading than I do, which is a stark 180 from how it usually is for me - I'm usually the optimist who sees the light at the end of the narrative tunnel.

Right now, I'm not seeing much of a happy ending for our heroine. I mean, yes, they obviously can write their way to one. But as things are set up right now, it feels like Suletta would be lucky to get off any better than Kamille at the end of Zeta Gundam. That war is absolutely going to happen, and when it does, I don't know that there's going to be anyone around to help Suletta deal with the mountain of personal stuff she's gotta struggle with right now. What has happened to her is the equivalent of a high school girl who is picked on at school getting publicly dumped by her crush on Monday then getting kicked out the house by her mother on Tuesday with big sis poking her in the eye first as she's shoved out the door, without ever knowing what they did wrong in either case.

I know shounen stories love the underdog hero trope - the herculean trials of piling adversity on the hero, watching them overcome it and triumph - but as someone else mentioned, in reality there is really only so much one person can take, and it takes help to climb out of such doldrums. Where is Suletta supposed to get that help from now? Earth House is about to become even more of an island at sea once the war starts, so it's not clear they're going to be able to do much counselling while struggling to stay alive, potentially relying on Suletta to be their ace pilot protector (Seed showed how that can mess with the heads of all involved). Everyone else at school either hates her, is a stranger to her, or wants to use her for their own ends to the extent they even see her as separate from Aerial. Her only family has abandoned her and told her to figure it out on her own. It's just not clear that the folks she could look to turn to for help and understanding that a person normally needs in such an emotionally terse period exist for her. Miorine's probably her best hope, but I don't know that Miorine is in any position to do anything right now, or until it's probably too late.
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Thesarum
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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2023 10:28 am Reply with quote
Quote:
It is amusing to see Miorine chafing under Prospera's marketing manipulations, even if she's technically not her daughter-in-law anymore. It's also all in service of setting up the point that her hope for "non-violent" marketing of Gundams probably isn't going to last much longer. Weapons make sales, and I can't imagine that Prospera wants Miorine to show the Aerial off to riotous protestors to demonstrate the machine's dancing prowess.


These are both plays to separate Miorine from earth house (not that the "betrayal" of Suletta hasn't already largely done that) I think. We can very much assume Prospera doesn't have Miorine's best interests at heart. I'm not sure how much she actually even cares about Miorine winning the presidency, she's clearly working an alternative option with Shaddiq (though that implied blackmail might backfire).

Instead she asks Miorine to betray her principles and friends, and seeks to separate her from the things she's found meaning and happiness with. Maybe some of these ideals are naive, but the things Prospera suggests probably aren't the only options. When Miorine refuses to betray the founding principles of GUND-Arm, which would definitely be the final nail in the coffin with earth house, she instead prompts Miorine to put those principles to the test in a way that will almost certainly achieve the same result. Prospera wants Miorine to suffer, and while Miorine I'm sure is aware of this, she currently can do very little other than bear it.
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dm
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PostPosted: Mon May 22, 2023 12:49 pm Reply with quote
Earlier I joked about the Hero's Journey and Suletta ("What's next, she gets kicked out of Earth House?") --- but Thesaurum's latest post suggests that Miorine may be going through a Hero's Journey of her own. When the manure hits the Aerial-fan as Miorine attempts to lope into a fraught conflict she has little understanding of, Earth House and Suletta will feel betrayed.

As a result, Miorine will be as isolated and miserable as Suletta is now.
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