Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

Episodes 1-3

In just three episodes (four, if we're counting the Prologue), Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury flips the script in ways not even the wiliest of viewers could expect. What appears to be yet another war story in space quickly shifts to a school setting where teenagers fight mecha duels. Our protagonist Suletta stumbles into a marriage engagement by the end of the first episode, and it's with another girl. The Char lookalike is very obviously Suletta's own mother rather than a shadowy, unknown player. And at the end of the third episode, Suletta gets another marriage proposal, this time from the guy who was formerly engaged to Miorine!

And yet, despite all the twists and turns thus far, I get the impression that G-Witch hasn't even finished laying out its premise yet. Suletta's first two duels establish her presence as the "witch" who disrupts the status quo, but none of this has been intentional on her part. She stumbled into her first duel almost by accident, and the second she was compelled to participate to prevent her expulsion. Primarily, they serve as an elaborate introduction to the duel system and its hidden stakes as a proxy war among Mobile Suit manufacturers. Only after the dust has settled on this first incident can Suletta's personal stakes start moving the plot forward.

With such an elaborate setup, G-Witch is admirable for how accessible and easy it is to watch. The first episode is exhilarating with its energy; Suletta and Miorine immediately make a likable pair thanks to some witty writing. "I guess Mercury is rather conservative," Miorine remarks, when Suletta initially protests their engagement on the basis that they're both girls. The visuals are well-polished; the lighting has a way of making the mecha battles stand out vividly, even when the Mobile Suits are static on the field. The visual and narrative allusions to Revolutionary Girl Utena are also a neat touch, as are the references to Shakespeare's The Tempest. These influences infuse G-Witch with an air of theatrical sentimentality, a far cry from the negative stereotype around the Gundam franchise for telling overly serious and ponderous war stories.

For me, G-Witch is already the best alternate universe Gundam in years. It takes the joyful artifice of the mecha battles in Gundam Build Fighters and combines it with interesting social commentary on the relationship between war and capitalism. From its very beginning, Gundam has always been about embracing futurism and forward-thinking in spite of the failings of humanity, and it's nice to see that core legacy continued in ways that genuinely do feel fresh and inventive today.

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