#mobile suit gundam wing the witch from mercury

[sananaryon]

This episode made me love Sophie Pulone even more

Back in season 1 it really felt like Sophie’s relationship to Suletta was going to be a bog standard Worthy Opponent You’re The Only One Who Can Challenge Me sorta deal. And that trope’s not bad, but I really loved the way they went with it instead.

Because Sophie genuinely thinks Suletta is the coolest thing since sliced bread

That is such a refreshing and fun dynamic, a villain who genuinely likes the hero and wants to hang out with them, and seeing the two of them interract throughout the episode is a delight. In the montage of Suletta showing Sophie around Asticassia, I get the impression that Sophie is having the time of her life, less like a terrorist infiltrating an organization she’s planning on bringing down and more as a girl who’s hanging out with her idol and has never been happier. She’s a bit unruly for Suletta, but she’s clearly having fun

Which also leads me into another thing, which is that the episode showed a surprising amount of vulnerability to Sophie. As far as I know, we don’t know her age, but going by character design, she seems to be around Suletta’s age or younger. She’s also an orphan who’s been part of a terrorist organization for at least long enough to become a skilled Gundam pilot, which makes this scene very telling.

Sophie has a bunch of very old, possibly homemade, stuffed toys that she refers to as her family, specifically pointing out the ones filling the role of her parents and sisters. With what little we know about her, it seems like Sophie treating these stuffed animals as her family is a coping mechanism for the trauma from her upbringing. And that completely reframed how I saw her.

At the end of the first cour, Sophie came across as a bit of a yandere type with an obsession with Suletta’s skill as a gundam pilot, someone who would be wholly antagonistic and who’s interest in Suletta would be played as creepy.

but after seeing this? Sophie isn’t a yandere, she’s a kid. The Dawn of Fold treat her as an adult, but she clearly isn’t. She latches onto Suletta because Suletta is someone like her, someone she relates to as a witch, and someone who can fill the role of big sister in her life. Getting to spend time with an older sister figure at a festival is the kind of experience that she should have had and probably wants, but never could because she lost her parents, but now she’s getting that chance, even if it’s on false premises.

And as for this scene?

Well, Suletta has made it clear that she doesn’t share Sophie and Norea’s worldview, but Sophie still wants her big sister in her life. Accepting the duel is both her way of trying to get Suletta to accept her view on things, and her following through on asking Suletta to teach her earlier. After all, Suletta is showing them how things work around Asticassia, and Sophie follows her like a lost duckling.

This girl may not act like it, but she’s a bundle of trauma and poor coping mechanisms, and I love her so much for it.

[amalgamasreal]

Surprisingly accurate.

[m33p2]

Took my Gundam for a walk

[athena-gunpla]

Gunpla showcase/display update!! Spent the afternoon building new shelves to clear up some room, although unfortunately I can't afford to buy new kits to fill it out right now.

Build Metaverse

Zeon suit collection

ZZ Gundam Team

UC EFF Display

WFM Display

[gundamfight]

[eggtempest]

sisters.....

[fireprincesslily]

I remember when I thought that Deathscythe was the Coolest Gundam

Then it was Epyon

Then it was the God Gundam (AKA the Burning Gundam)

Then the Banshee was the coolest

But Now I feel like I can safely say, no Gundam is cooler than Aerial.

The Funnels are just so cool!

[gremoria411]

How to get into Gundam

Because fuck it, I was gonna do one of these sooner or later anyway.

So you want to know what this Gundam thing’s about, maybe you like the mecha design, maybe you caught part of an episode one time and want to catch up, or maybe you saw a nice piece of Chamuro fanart and want to go to the source.

But there’s so many shows and timelines that it can be quite daunting on first look, so this guide is intended to give a rough overview.

I would however like to stress two four things beforehand however:

This guide is not intended as “The One True Way” or anything. There’s no harm it coming into it a different way, and these are only my own opinions.

There’s nothing stopping you from just watching one show and leaving it there. You don’t have to watch every single show going, even I’ve only seen most of these, not all. Gundam typically has variations on similar themes - it’s very nice watching multiple shows because they complement one another, but it’s not necessarily required.

I am very much an insider looking out here, so let me know if there’s any details I’ve missed.

I’m not gonna recommend these on a “if you like X, then watch Y basis”, mostly because I don’t personally find genre recommendations helpful, so I’d recommend picking based on promotional material (vibes, if you will).

I’ll be using this chart, supplied by the excellent@l-crimson-l, to illustrate everything.

Gundam as a whole can principally be divided into three sections: Universal Century (or UC), the Alternate Universes (AU’s) and the Build Series.

The AU’s are below the light blue line, near the bottom of the Chart, the Build Series is within the bright green line at the top-right corner of the chart and UC is the big line in the middle. We’ll talk about each of them individually.

The AU’s

The Alternate Universes were conceived as a way to get away from the continuity-heavy nature of Universal Century and provide an easy jumping-on point for new fans. The AU’s are standalone and require no prior knowledge, and are thus an excellent place to start. Honestly, I’d recommend quickly searching some promotional materials (like posters) and just going with the one you find most appealing based on that. They are (in production order):

Mobile Fighter G Gundam (1994)

New Mobile Report Gundam Wing (1995)

After War Gundam X (1996)

Turn A Gundam (1999)

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED (2002)

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 (2007)

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE (2011)

Gundam: Reconguista in G (2014)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (2015)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (2022)

There’s side series and movies and other things besides, but these are the mainline shows, if you will. I have specific notes on a few of them:

Witch From Mercury - It’s of a shorter length than is usual for mainline shows, so consequently it’s a much smaller time investment than the others.

Mobile Fighter G Gundam - While undeniably rad as hell, I would recommend watching another AU first. G Gundam differs from its stablemates in a few key areas, and I find it helps to have a contrast to fully appreciate those differences.

Gundam AGE - is probably the only one I wouldn’t recommend. I didn’t like the art style and the technical explanations just got on my nerves, so I stopped watching.

Turn A and G-Reconguista are technically part of UC as well, but it’s not really crucial information so don’t feel like you have to watch UC first (I’m only including this detail for completionism).

I’ve found all the AU’s I’ve seen to be pretty good, so I’d say that which one you start with really just comes down to personal taste.

The Build Series

Is just kind of doing its own thing. The Build series is basically Buy Our Toys: the series. It’s got a far lighter tone, and I’ve had cause to compare it to pokemon prior. It’s also chock full of references and in-jokes to the other series.

Build Fighters and Build Fighters Try are the ones I’d recommend - they’ve got actual stakes and the fight scenes are really good.

Build Divers and Build Divers Re:rise I can’t recommend - I just find Build Divers aggressively boring. Build Divers Re:Rise is just okay - neither standout good or particularly bad. Its main flaw is that it’s a sequel to Build Divers.

The OVA’s are pretty much bad across the board - I’d particularly recommend avoiding Gundam Build Metaverse.

Universal Century

Universal Century is the big main timeline of Gundam, and is the timeline the original Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979 takes place in. There’s a tendency among certain fans to place UC as the one-above-all of Gundam, but I wouldn’t really go that far. It’s all pretty good, but I wouldnt really say one timeline is better than another (save personal preference, anyway).

Because UC is so big, it can be subdivided a couple times. The primary division is “Mainline” UC versus everything else. Basically there’s four-five shows in Universal Century from which everything else flows. As long as you know roughly what happens in these shows, then you can watch basically anything else in UC and have a good idea of what’s going on. These are (in order):

Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) - sometimes called Mobile Suit Gundam 0079.

Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985)

Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (1986)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack (1988)

With Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (2010) as a nominal fifth (honestly I feel like you could argue either way).

The rest of the shows are:

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (1989 Three-Episode OVA)

Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991 Movie)

Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (1991 Thirteen-episode OVA)

Mobile Suit Victory Gundam (1993)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team (1999 Twelve-episode OVA)

G-Saviour (2000 Live Action Movie) - nobody ever talks about or acknowledges this one, it’s just here for completionism.

Mobile Suit Gundam MS Igloo (2004-2009 Three OVA’s with three Episodes each)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin (2015 Six-Episode OVA, adapted from the Manga of the same name)

Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt (2015 Eight-Episode Series, adapted from the Manga of the same name)

Mobile Suit Gundam: Twilight Axis (2017 episode, adapted from a light novel of the same name. Later rereleased as Gundam Twilight Axis Red Trace, with additional footage)

Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative (2018 sequel movie to Gundam Unicorn)

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (2021 ongoing movie series, very much adapted from the novel Hathaway’s Flash)

Most of the other series relate to events in the aforementioned “mainline” shows in some way, but a lot of the sidestories set during the One Year War require very little introduction (Thunderbolt, 0080 and 08th MS Team). Similarly, works set in “Late UC” (F91 and Victory Gundam) carry on from the other series thematically but don’t have any plot connections, so they can all be watched without any background knowledge of the rest of the Universal Century.

Compilation Movies

Just a quick note here - many of the Gundam series have compilation movies, where either a whole series or part of one are compressed down into a movie. While each movie compares differently, they usually boil down to this: Compilation Movies usually have worse pacing, but really nice animation.

One of the great things about Gundam is that different shows offer variations on themes, so seeing how different characters react to similar situations, or how different settings change their approaches can make it incredibly rewarding.

I haven’t seen enough of SD Gundam to make any sort of recommendations there, and Manga is something I might touch on another day.

EDIT: Oh hey also: You can watch a good chunk of these on YouTube, for free, officially. The Official Gundam.Info YouTube channel rotates the series shown on its channel periodically. I think it’s got F91 and SEED on there currently? But it’s had Wing, 00 and Witch From Mercury before. Also all of the Build Fighters series are there.

So yeah, that’s a thing.

[shera-dnd]

Not to be a fucking weeb, but I'm just so glad we live in the era of anime that we live in

Back in the day characters would have the most homoerotic declarations of friendship to each other and you'd still have to argue with people on the internet over subtext

Like unless you were watching a show explicitly about girls being gay you'd never get anything more than a "you're my dearest friend" said in a tone that made the word "friend" buckle from all the work it has to do

But now we have gays piloting robots, gays playing in rock bands, gays getting isekaied, gays playing underground golf for the mafia

And it's all so delightfully blatant

In Witch From Mercury when Suletta makes the cliche "but we're both girls" line, Miorine just comments on how backwards Suletta's planet must be

Then you have Kita, from Bocchi the Scissor Rock, directly saying that she has a crush on Ryo, and Ryo openly talking about how much of a chick magnet she is

Anisphia from Magical Revolution is even more blatant, straight up shouting at the screen "if I fall in love with anyone it's gonna be with a woman!" a statement that may not be taken all that seriously by her father, but definitely by her future father in law

Not to mention Aoi and Eve from Birdie Wing who - even tho they don't fully understand their crushes for each other - are so stupidly gay for each other that their two best friends refuse to let them share a room, because they don't trust them alone together for an entire night

In short it's a good time to be a lesbian who is into anime and I'm so happy to see how much things have changed in the last few years

Can't wait for the Chainsaw Man anime to get to the international assassin's arc so we can have an even more wonderful time as gay weebs

Now give gay men and trans people the same treatment you fucking cowards

[rock-n-roll-martian]

i just think they deserve to smoke a fat blunt together

[scianvih]

[amalgamasreal]

Reminder to artists: Suletta isn't just tall

She's the tallest Gundam protagonist in her entire age range.

[athena-cat-wizard-official]

Reccomending Gundam is like: "oh, i want to reccomend Gundam Unicorn, but that wont make any sesne if you haven't watched Char's Counterattack. but. hu. that doesn't really work well unless you've seen the original series, or at least the compilation movies. And tbh Gundam Unicorn works best if you've watched Zeta and Double Zeta, but the frst half of Double Zeta kinda sucks? Also 08th MS team is soo sooo sooooo good but its only 12 episodes and not related to anything else. still watch it though. And then i want to reccomend NON UC gundam, but there's so much? Like, watch IBO and Witch From Mercury for sure. but you should also try older stuff. SEED is really good but everyone hated SEED destiny, but theres a new SEED movie in 2023? also watch Turn A gundam and Gundam Wing totally, but i haven't seen them yet they're just in everyone elses recommend lists. Also some AUs feel like they'e connected to the UC canon but aren't at all, like 00 gundam. so like, watch them before or after UC? who knows. also theres late UC which happens, like, 50 or so years after the main series (0079). And that has an entire new enemy and new mobile suits and such, that are really barely connected to the original UC events, but there's apparently some good stuff there, like F91 and Victory (i didnt really like ep1 of victory so i never gave it a go). So do I reccommend that? do i tell people to start with late UC given you dont need early UC to understand it? Oh god oh fuck what about gundam build fighters!??! How do you even explain that" Anyway, if you liked Gundam Witch From Mercury, I think a good place to start is with 08th MS Team for a taster of UC, or Iron Blooded Orphans for a darker Gundam show with similar formatting, characters, and themes to G-Witch, but better pacing.

[athena-gunpla]

ooh she grows

[paxesoterica]

Women's Wrongs: Gundam Edition

[gundamfight]