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Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Redefining the Gundam Legacy in The Witch from Mercury
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 562 Location: PA / USA |
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Am I missing something? I feel like I'm going insane here- Keep in mind that I'm only 14 episodes in (part 2, episode 2), but this feels like one of the most paint-by-numbers Gundam shows, only barely more watchable than Reconguista purely just because Reconguista was incoherent moment to moment.
The more coherent parts of G-Witch feel like there's this big plot "secretly" happening in the background between the adults that is slowly pulling each of the kids in, a lot of it motivated by government/corporate control, but each self-contained episode plays out as some strange facsimile of a Revolutionary Girl Utena-School Rumble mashup with a "combat of the week" that leaves every episode feeling inconsequential. The school drama parts might be a means of pulling in younger viewers, but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels with it, and the references to other media aren't actually amounting to anything substantial. 1) The reveal about Eri was obvious within the first few episodes, and I have had to wait practically half the entire series for them even to acknowledge it so that rest of the plot can get moving. 2) I was excited for the Sapphic/Yuri tones that were advertised in the lead up to the show airing, but it feels like every episode is an abusive NTR arena where some male suitor injects themself in between the two leads just to gaslight the audience until OOPS! Back to the status quo! ....I wonder which guy will step up or plot against them next episode? (*sarcasm*) 3) I keep seeing Prospera compared to Char due to the mask, but she's almost exclusively defined by the tragedy that befell her family. The show has been giving us nothing about her character (on purpose) for literally half of the series so far - Char was this incredibly complex mess of teen angst, generational revenge, and a vehicle for despair in humanity and political posturing. To be fair he had multiple shows and movies to get there, but you quickly are made aware through Sayla and Garma that there's more happening with him. Everything with Prospera feels incredibly one-note, designed to string the viewer along until some twist towards the end. I'm still waiting for it. She's not any more or less screwed up than the other adults on the show. I'm legitimately terrified that G-Witch is going to end on the note that "she was a monster, because unlike the men that were doing this too, she was a mother, and should have known better". 4) Suletta feels like an infantilised female character in all of the wrong ways to me. I think they're both attempting to make her charming by making her a bit clumsy and additionally naive so that when the NTR happ.....I mean the plot twist occurs, finally revealing her mother's motives, the audience can be just as "shocked" along with Suletta. I realise her purpose as a main character isn't to be as motivated as someone like Audrey was in Unicorn, but she hasn't done or accomplished anything. I mean think about this - this is the part that blows my brain out of my skull: Suletta is the main character, the focus of most of the promotional art (along with Mio to an extent), and yet she somehow fades into the background of practically every episode. I know more about the school council, and the earth kids, Mio, the adults....even the Gundam she pilots! What, Suletta wants to stand up for Mio for.... some reason... and she talks to the Gundam? I guess? Mio is the one that is actually going out and doing things, she has the interesting, layered relationship with her parental unit, and Mio is the one with all of the stakes to lose if things go sideways. ....at least until the squashening, which brings me to my next point- 5) The squashening keeps getting compared to Code Geass' famous moment. I disagree that it's earned that - it feels like it was shoe-horned in after 12 episodes of the same school-guy-combat formula was on repeat. What made Code Geass' moment so big was that Lelouch was on the verge of getting everything he wanted. The entire central problem around the show as a whole, was in that one moment about to be resolved, and it wasn't even that something else took that moment away from him (would have felt a bit NTR if it had), it's that Lelouch himself was responsible for the scenes that followed, largely, if not completely due to him overestimating his own power/ability. The build up to that violent moment was so perfectly paced and meticulously shown, that when it finally happens, the shock isn't just in the violence, but the extreme reverse in momentum for Lelouch as both a character and an aspect of the overall plot. It immediately & forever changes how he interacts with the world around him. Suletta's moment has none of that build, and even worse the status quo is back the following episode. It feels like this moment of violence is only included to serve the purpose of artificially distancing Mio from Suletta, and providing the first half of the series with a shocking moment to end on. I can keep going - creepy Elan getting "retired" and replaced with even-creepier problematic behaviour Elan isn't dark when the whole purpose of the character is that we don't know his real face or emotions anyways. It's nothing compared to what we visually see Mikazuki go through on IBO. Earth girl with pink hair is loud and spunky - that's her character! Quiet earth girl seems to know the terrorists from earth, but we're purposely not getting to dive into their origins or background info - gosh, we sure like seeing her get bullied by them when they show up the immediate next episode for OMIGOSH! Surprise! an arena combat. This is more of a me-thing I think. I'm not telling people to not-watch G-Witch or that their fun is wrong for liking it - I'm no stranger to enjoying oddball Gundam experiences, and I will defend ZZ Gundam, which is historically not one of the favorites of the UC timeline because in spite of its first half meandering, it has a really engaging back half. I'm probably going to continue to emotionally flog myself here and finish out G-Witch in the misdirected hope that the next several episodes allows something interesting to happen to the characters or the world they inhabit. Prospera and her involvement with Mio seem to be steering Mio towards becoming a mirror of herself in the same way Suletta might be a replacement for Eri. I'm just not hopeful that my time and expectations are going to be rewarded based on what I've seen thus far, and if those small plot kernels of hope do come to fruition, I'd not be shocked if it were literally in the parting moments of the finale. I don't think I'll ever be able to call it the Sapphic/Yuri Gundam, or "the good one that finally had a female main character", and that saddens me. |
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Glordit
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I've watched a lot of Gundam series (UC and non-UC) and this one, just isn't doing it for me anymore.
They spent too much of the first half doing their SoL School life saga and kept the "big secret" for far too long and now they trying to shoehorn what remains of the story it into the last 5 episodes by cracking open this giant chest of twists. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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We all had our suspicions about Eri, but if you knew specifically that Suletta is spoiler[a clone of her "sister" created solely to advance her mother's insane plan to turn Eri's lingering consciousness into a transdimensional super-being (and that Suletta would be tossed to the space-curb the instant she was no longer needed)], then... good for you, I guess, but I don't think most people figured all that out. The nature of this sort of twist is that everyone has a vague idea that something messed-up is going on, and we're sticking around to find out the precise details (while arguing about what they might be). Code Geass is kind of a looser comparison than the others, since the revenge-seeking mysterious masked mastermind here is, of course, Prospera, a background character who gradually becomes the main villain. "The squashening" feels more like Madoka's episode 3, where ominous forebodings suddenly take center stage, and the plot takes a darker turn as characters and/or their relationships get killed off. It does have general similarities to Geass in the convoluted and unpredictable warfare and politics with a side of supernatural, though with a more... measured approach, rather than making every big moment the most incredibly anime thing you can possibly imagine. Ultimately, there's nothing I can say that would make someone who doesn't like a thing change their mind--but, personally, I've been pretty impressed by how it manages to crash Utena, The Tempest, Geass, and probably some other things I don't recognize into each other and make it all work without creating a trainwreck. I can't help noticing that most of the complaints are from long-time Gundam fans, but since I am definitely not one of those, I can't guess what that means. |
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kgw
 Posts: 1201 Location: Spain, EU |
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...outside Japan, maybe, as it became very popular after its second half (when they played "Silent Voice" for ED). Let us remember that many of the MS and characters of Unicorn came from ZZ (Elpi Prue* or however they spelled her name, namely). As for GWitch, while I am keep on watching, I fail to see many of the things the writers of this piece and the reviews say they see. The friction between Earthians and Spacenoids… (sorry, Spacians) come from nowhere. There is no previous invasion, or blockade, nor discrimination bar for some kids at some elite school. There is one terrorist group –which nobody knew about, neither in Earth or in Space– and that's all. EDITED for clarity. Last edited by kgw on Wed May 31, 2023 6:08 am; edited 1 time in total |
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LinkTSwordmaster
Posts: 562 Location: PA / USA |
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It's the byproduct of seeing so many various anime series, especially like 90% of all Gundams ever released. It's very hard to catch me offguard or surprise me. I think it's why viewers new to Gundam might not be catching all of the "tells" & telegraphing. But figuring out that spoiler bit was instant from a structuring/storyboarding standpoint - they showed us an episode 0 that is completely removed from the school setting (and more importantly the timeline). Prospera wears a mask, yet it seems that hiding her identity in the way Char was is not the goal. Suletta can pilot the Gundam with seemingly no ill effects, so the logical conclusion is.... I think the problem, is that Prospera is wearing a mask at all. To established Gundam viewers that fact immediately sends a statement based on previous characters that have worn one, the issue is she's missing a lot of the build that better characters in her position have enjoyed in screentime and motivation. Mio's father initially worked as a better villain/scapegoat, but with what's happened halfway through, the blonde guy and Prospera seem to be racing towards various levels of control over all of the money. At episode 14, their backgrounds and motivations are still incredibly muddled and disconnected. On the Madoka point, I'd have rathered the squashening happen on episode 3 instead of 12 - it would have eliminated a ton of meandering and allowed the rest of Part 1 to deal with the fallout. Now Part 2 has to tie up EVERYTHING, and I have seen very few series in my life that have so many threads in suspense like this, that they managed to resolve everything in a satisfying fashion. It is impressive though. G-Witch is managing to avoid Reconguista's failures. I've tried multiple times to sit and watch Reconguista, even being aware of the spots where it's intentionally trying to be obtuse or subvert Gundam tropes, and it is legitimately unwatchable. I was really hoping G-Witch was going to amount to more though. Prior to it, Orphans is possibly THE most singularly solid Gundam piece to show new folks since Gundam Wing. Like Glordit and kgw seem to be implying, everything just feels like a fluffy cotton candy or cheesecake "much sugar, no substance" take on the mech genre. The characters are marketable, the Gundams are shiny, there's..... a conflict of some variety and there's combat where characters have.... reasons, but the runtime keeps focusing on so much school life and none of those reasons at the core of the conflict. The interesting stuff all happened before the show started, and I feel like I'm being strung along, wondering if interesting things will be born of those offscreen events by the time it ends. |
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oogenesis
Posts: 25 |
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...but this is how in medias res works. we're thrown headlong into a dynamic, and then (hopefully) treated to one or more reveals of its origins over time. none of that earthian-spacian friction has failed to make sense. the students in this academy are all teenage scions of corporate nobility or union representatives; many of them are reporting back to same on a regular basis, and every last one of them is carrying baggage related to their position and personal histories on either side of this conflict. especially chuchu and nika. they are both from earth and have personally experienced what we the audience are finding out, piece by piece, about the situation there. said discrimination didn't originate on campus, but it still finds expression there, and it neatly mirrors some of my own experiences with grade-school racism. the friction is not difficult to understand from our current global socioeconomic standpoint either. the spacians have grown fat and wealthy off of resources plundered from earth, leaving earth's residents all the poorer for it. spacian children only know luxury and (relative) privilege; they see earth residents in their deprived state -- and earthian students by extension, who are rich enough to attend this school -- as dirty and 'lesser' without understanding how they personally benefit from earthian exploitation. not everything needs to be built up from zero or fully explained in-story in order to be coherent, and i'm enjoying the ride so far; i trust that the majority of my questions will be answered in time. the only piece of this story i'm still not on board with is eri's age at the time of her physical death / apotheosis into aerial. did she die in the process of escape from fólkvangr, or much later on mercury? has she continued to 'age' mentally and 'physically' inside aerial? (the avatars ericht shows her big little sister before spacing her look to be about 8 or so.) at any rate... i'm normally not a fan of obvious parallels with previous works, but this show has deftly braided so many of these together with enough variation to keep things interesting. that alone is keeping me invested. it is definitely starting to feel like miorine unwittingly traded places with suletta in order to spare her, just as spoiler[utena does for anthy, without fully understanding anthy's position or what her sacrifice would actually entail.] prospera has committed absolute character assassination here, in addition to straight-up murder on earth, and so quickly. wasn't aerial supposed to be unarmed? the whole time i've been watching miorine's current arc play out, i'm reminded of lando calrissian's raw deal with darth vader in the empire strikes back: 'i am altering the deal. pray i do not alter it any further.' this is the first full-length gundam series i've actually enjoyed watching. previous installments of this i've seen put me to sleep, with the thunderbolt OVAs being the sole exception so far. IMHO gundam is japan's answer to star wars. as such, it's a franchise-cum-religion that could maybe use some shaking up; i say this as a star wars fan. suisei no majo definitely seems to be alienating existing gundam fans with this take... |
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LinkTSwordmaster
Posts: 562 Location: PA / USA |
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I don't disagree with any of those points. I think the spot where myself and the others are finding that the show isn't clicking is that it's debatable as to whether or not G-Witch is employing these themes & devices well, especially in areas where previous Gundam shows have had similar themes or moments. Newer folks or viewers who have not poured over every inch of Gundam aren't gonna have as much of a "been there, done this before" sort of a vibe. As these things go, it's probably safe to assume that a Part 3 is coming, but it doesn't fix the fact that Part 1 already sort of stands as a bit of a wheel-spinning teaser for Part 2. And I cant imagine anything would wash away the weird NTR vibes either. Suletta isn't really sitting in my mind as a likeable character, in fact Mio is probably almost-exclusively the only character I'm rooting for on the show at this point. For the first Gundam to have a female protag, something I'd been excited for for AGES, I'd rather send it back for a refund and get the third part of Thunderbolt instead. |
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Gem-Bug
 Posts: 1333 |
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You keep saying this, but I'm sad to inform you that there is none so far in this series. 
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2499 Location: United States |
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Uhh...are you even aware of what NTR even means? It doesn't mean fighting over an SO, it's when someone actively cheats on a significant other with someone else. Besides, Guel and Shaddiq are literally the only people who try to fight Suletta and all of them lose save for Guel's recent win. |
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oogenesis
Posts: 25 |
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this is entirely fair! i didn't lean hard enough into the note-by-note shakespearean parallels or the utena near-retreading this show's writers have decided upon; both might fall under lack of storytelling skill. over the decades, i've seen enough anime -- both in and out of the mecha genre -- for such rehashing to irk me; so far it's not doing so and i'm not sure yet why. maybe it's that i love suisei no majo's bubbly, soft character aesthetic and the stark contrast with its subject matter; i'm also a fan of its score and soundtrack, outside the occasionally too-bombastic battle themes, and how it's being used to punctuate story beats. the series drops new revelations every so often that get me to reconsider characters i was ignoring. everyone here could potentially be a key player at some point. my not being bothered by the utena copying could also be that suletta isn't a direct utena export and miorine isn't anthy 2.0; their traits are blended in a way i find fascinating. also spoiler[saionji] guel taking a level in kindness and humility is also great to see. YMMV, definitely, but i'm not finding too many major bones myself to pick with the story's execution. i'm also just excited for a gundam series i actually like for once. so many of my anime-loving friends are huge gundam fans... they've shared their older favorites with me and even though i have a soft spot for military sci-fi, i confess the appeal is lost on me.
i liked miorine from the start, but oh, do i feel your dislike for suletta hard. i didn't hate her exactly, but her naïveté, her tendency to apologize for existing, her fear of people in general? 17-year-olds aren't naturally like that, and the story took a long-ass time to start justifying why. my own distaste shifted to pity around episode 7... her response in the next episode to her mother's blithely admitting to deceiving her her entire life was telling. suletta is sheltered AF and her mother seems to have created an abusive cult of two when raising her. spoiler[to an extent, i empathize and] the end of the last episode gives me hope for her coming into her own as a person. i don't think we see enough stories where the female protagonist grows a spine and a whole skeleton right in front of the audience. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2581 |
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I opened this thread thinking "Huh, I don't really get how effusive the reviewers are for this. Is is really a massive social phenomenon?", but somehow ended up at, "No, no I don't really think NTR is the word you're looking for." No mood so fickle as an ANN thread...
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LinkTSwordmaster
Posts: 562 Location: PA / USA |
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Not necessarily. If you're pulling that from Urban Dictionary and calling it a day, it's missing the subtleties of what I'm attempting comedically to get at:
So within the context of Suletta taking the male role and protecting Mio, especially given her voicing her desire to actively do so within the show and Mio more or less acknowledging/accepting it; when the other (usually male) characters step in to win/steal her away, kind of reads to that definition. In a Sapphic/Yuri context, this is further traumatising to the LGBT+ section of the audience, since (on top of Yuri as a genre being generally-poor at portraying real/lasting queer relationships,) the male characters coming around and invalidating their wishes, kinda goes further towards poking that bear. Again, not literal outright-onscreen NTR, but vibes - echos of that sort of tone, or at least an invalidation of the two women attempting to stick together, and it reads to me as creepy.
I'm hoping the show goes to a Part 3 and proves me wrong, and Suletta turns out kind of like Ahsoka did with Star Wars: Clone Wars - the story goes she was purposely created & written to start off a bit bratty and naive, and now she's one of the last threads of the pre-Disney Star Wars timeline that has remained consistent over the years & seems to have really gotten fans excited to see more of her.
Aha! Am glad to entertain~ 
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db999
Posts: 347 |
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I can sympathize with people who feel as if the show is moving a bit too slowly, but I wouldn’t classify the show as stringing the audience along. Like if you’re waiting for the typical Gundam trappings such as the characters killing and grappling with what it means to take a life then I can see how waiting until episode 12 for The Splat might come across as stringing the audience along, but I actually feel the show’s greatest strength is actually in not doing that. The show actually has a commitment to not dragging out its mysteries out for too long, except maybe for the Suletta is Eri’s clone stuff. For example, at the end of episode 1 after Ariel is revealed, the writers have the Benerict Group immediately in the next episode take action and put Sulletta and the Gundam under their control and put her on trial rather than waiting to introduce the school’s characters and their relationship to Suletta and having duels while the question of if the Benerict Group is going to do anything about the Ariel hangs in the background for multiple episodes. That would be in my opinion stringing the audience along. They also don’t drag out the Elan mystery out too long revealing in episode 5 what the deal with him is and killing him off in episode 6. Episode 5 also starts the hints at Eri being Ariel and not Suletta, with episode 7 expanding on that more and beginning Prospera’s manipulation of Miorrine and the establishment of Gund-Arm. However episode 8 is where I start to sympathize with the criticism that it’s dragging things out as I was starting to tire of the school setting by then, but we only spend 1 episode setting up the company before episode 9 where we get launched into the series biggest action scene to date with Earth House vs Shaddiq’s Harem. I can understand people thinking the last 5 episodes of the first season are too slow, as I think they could’ve done it in 3 episodes with The Splat happening in episode 10, but I just don’t see this dragging out of plot lines that other people do. However, I do think there is something to be said about the school stuff lasting longer than it should have as I started to tire of the setting by episode 10. I’m definitely interested to see what you think when you get past episode 14 as the season since starting with episode 15 the pacing really picked up and I feel like your complaints with the show have started to be addressed. I also don’t think the show is ending this season as this show has always felt to me like a 50-episode show although given that each season has been 12 episodes 48 episodes seems more likely. |
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kgw
Posts: 1201 Location: Spain, EU |
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I don't want to make extra-long quotes, so let me just say that I disagree with the "in media res". In other Gundam series, UC, AC, AW, UTC (delete what you think it's wrong), yes, we don't usually start with the war/whatever conflict, but we are told that there is one. We don't need to know why Zeons are killing feds, the deep historical reasons for the rising of the Titans (the dressed ones, not the human giants) or the collapse of human civilization that lead to the Turn A world: "this is the world you're living in, deal with it".
Here we have had SOL for a long time, no real causes for a conflict, except Prospera's revenge. BTW, I do not understand why is she wearing a mask: she does not look like her old self –in fact, I do not rule out she's a modified clone or whatever– so nobody can recognize her. It's as if the writers suddenly were told "remember need to have a war!*" and started to rush things. Interestingly enough, the Prospera-Eri-Suletta drama does not really need a war to develop. *probably to sell more models |
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Nate148
Posts: 521 |
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oh the comments are just the salty gundam fans who always hate the new show
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