Last month the prologue of ‘Gundam: The Witch From Mercury’ could already be seen for free to give us some more context about the story, and on day 2 the new series of the legendary mecha franchise.
The anime presents us with a completely independent story that can be enjoyed from scratch, with a new setting and a new protagonist, in fact the first female lead to lead her own series. It’s not that there haven’t been attempts before, but until now sexism had gotten in the way.
The key is marketing
The first episode of ‘Gundam: The Witch From Mercury‘ has been well received by fans, but also by some veterans of the franchise. Koichi Tokita is a manga artist well known for his work on ‘Gundam‘ and whose art has been seen in ‘Mobile Fighter G Gundam’ and ‘Mubile Suit Gundam Wing’.
In fact, one of the things that Tokita has liked the most is that a Gundam anime finally has a woman as the protagonist, and he has remembered a time when it was impossible.
“A long time ago, I supported having a female lead for ‘Gundam,’ but was told a female lead Gunpla wouldn’t sell,” the mangaka wrote on Twitter. “Now we live in a time where you can have a female lead and she also has a plastic model. I think she’s great, I’m very happy.”
“Gunpla” is an acronym for “Gundam Plastic Model”, or what has been the same: plastic figures of ‘Gundam’. Is merchandise line reproduces to scale and with great detail all kinds of vehicles, robots and even characters from the ‘Gundam’ franchise. Part of the beauty is that you can also assemble them yourself from scratch and place them in different poses once assembled.
Well, as happened at the time with the villain that we did not get to have in ‘Iron Man 3’, in the end everything has been reduced to the sexist idea of thinking that a female character will not sell merchandising because it will not interest potential buyers.
In Bandai They must have finally changed their minds or we wouldn’t have Suletta Mercury, but better forty years late than never.