This fall season of anime is going crazy, and especially during the first two weeks, new series keep coming with great looks. After so many years without a new series, ‘Gundam: The Witch from Mercury’ It had aroused a lot of curiosity, especially since the advances that we had been able to see had a very, very promising animation.
Already in September a special chapter that served as a prologue to the main story could be seen openly, but now that we already have a couple of chapters behind us, it is a good time to say that ‘Gundam: The Witch from Mercury’ is a real nonsense and I hope it keeps up this pace.
Evil corporations and high school dramas
‘Gundam: The Witch from Mercury’ is the story of Suletta Mercury, who has just arrived at the Anticassia School of Technology, a very elite academy serving the Mobile Suit builders, the Beneritt Group. As soon as he arrives, he meets Miorine Rembranwho is trying to escape from the academy and his father’s control.
It’s the first time Suletta is in such an environment, and she has to prove that she’s a pilot to be reckoned with as she gets into the dynamics of the school and the corporations that build her Mobile Suits. And if that was not enough, Suletta also pilots the Gundam Aerial, a type of Mobile Suit built with technology that was banned twelve years ago.
I have to start by saying that no matter how much you see the prologue, or “chapter zero”, it can be a bit lazy, yes I highly recommend it to go with more information to the series. In Crunchyroll, in fact, we also have it available before fully entering Suletta’s history, and beyond knowing more about his past, it gives us all the necessary context about technology. GUND Format and why Gundam models were banned.
Because a lot of the conflict in the anime seems like it’s going to go through here, and the prologue serves to give us all this exposure to the lore in a very natural and light way, and also has stunning animation and loads of giant mecha action. Come on, why we came.
Now, the first chapter already focuses us fully on Suletta and Miorine and their relationship, and it moves away a bit from the usual ‘Gundam’ anime by giving us a story with a taste of high school anime. We have the “mean girls”, the popular “jock”, the “nerds”… and also duels with Massive Mobile Suits where all the quarrels that may arise in the academy are settled.
This might sound a bit cheesy (it is), but the animation and tone of the duels manage to give it a heavy life-or-death atmosphere that fits the show perfectly and makes the duels a show you don’t want to miss. .
On the other hand, we also have a large corporation developing increasingly powerful mecha, with their own intrigues and internal power struggles. So far the first two chapters have introduced very well all these dynamics and the main players, with really good pacing that perfectly balances exposition, relationships of character and action.
We come for the giant robots, thank you
And of course, we can’t talk about a ‘Gundam’ anime without talking about the mechas, and the ones from ‘The Witch From Mercury’ are amazing. For the moment they have been seen at the right times, but both the design and the animation are stellar.
The combination of CGI and traditional animation it is well measured and both techniques come together perfectly. In fact, it is surprising that so many times we see the Mobile Suits animated and traditionally drawn, but it is one more example that on this occasion Sunrise has really pampered the final product and is giving us a final animation that gives you goosebumps.
Although the prologue has a much better animation, the following two chapters have also kept the level very well, with gigantic futuristic settings and very expressive characters with a lot of personality. Also, the series for now is giving a lot of weight to its female characterssomething that already played in the franchise, and Suletta she has all the necessary elements to be a good textbook protagonist.
There is also a lot of talk about whether there will be romance between the two protagonists or if we are going to eat a queerbaiting like a house, but apart from LGTBI+ representation, which also It is appreciated that we have two girls at the forefront of the story and that their characters are so well developed from the outset.
It is expected that in total ‘Gundam: The Witch From Mercury’ have a total of 25 episodes divided into two parts. For now the first one has started very well and totally hooks you to the intrigues of Anticassia and the Beneritt Group.