Witch From Mercury review: the ultimate Gundam show

One of the first questions to ask in one’s anime journey is, quite literally, a big one: Are giant robots right for me? Lucky for you, there’s never been a faster way to find out. You can find out by watching Mobile Suit Gundam The Witch From Mercury.

Massive humanoid robots are an anime staple, and fewer names in giant robots are bigger than Mobile Suit Gundam — the mega-franchise spawning from Yoshiyuki Tomino’s 1979 anime of the same name. Gundam has become synonymous with huge robots in some respects. Like Kleenex, this can also be oversimplified. They all have very different functions. This is true even within the Gundam franchise, which has spanned eight U.S. Presidents and counting — i.e., it has been around long enough to be a lot of different things, from “grounded military sci-fi about the horrors of war” (the original) to “boy-band revolutionaries” (Gundam Wing) to “Street Fighter with robots” (Mobile Fighter G Gundam).

Mobile Suit Gundam The Witch From Mercury’s selling point has always been its stand-alone nature, which made it the ideal jumping-on point for the Gundam-curious. It’s also New Zealanders are able to purchase new cars. Gundam, which has been all too rare of a thing these days — the occasional movie notwithstanding — and thus bears a bit of an undue burden to be all things to all people, the Gundam faithful and uninitiated alike.

Image: Sunrise/Crunchyroll

It is the bananas that are the problem. Mercury WitchThe show is doing a great job. Now that the show has begun its second cour of episodes following a brief winter hiatus, the series is kicking into high gear and making a case for itself as the ultimate Gundam show, a showcase for all the many ideas that encompass the Gundam franchise, remixing them all into something that feels new and accessible but does so by taking a little bit of everything from Gundam’s sprawling history — while also closing the loop on some of Gundam’s later, even more famous successors, like Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Amusingly, it’s doing this by playing in another genre entirely: the hybrid magical girl/romance best exemplified by Revolutionary Girl UtenaLike that seminal show, it bears an uncanny likeness. The show was seminal. Mercury WitchThis film is about a girl who attends a school for military training. She ends up dueling with her peers in combat to keep (and win) the attention of a wealthy heiress.

The swerve was made. Mercury WitchSuletta Mercury is the shy girl from Mercury who has a mobile suit with an extremely advanced technology that links her to the most important human conflict in the solar System. It’s a bit of narrative sleight of hand that only gets cleverer as Mercury Witch goes on, as Suletta’s genial nature and school hijinks are juxtaposed against the weapons of war she and her peers pilot for sport, and the political machinations of the adults that put them there.

Image: Sunrise/Crunchyroll

The sun is not always a sunny thing. Mercury Witch The longer you think about it, the more gutting it becomes. Suletta Mercury does not fit the mold of a typical mecha hero. She’s not a sad boy longing for validation, nor a grim warrior forced to age too soon. She’s an earnest soul, someone who wants to make friends and help people and be a good future bride to Miorine, the girl she’s betrothed to by combat.

It’s frankly dazzling how much Mercury Witch is able to do through Suletta’s story. It’s both cheeky subversion and loving homage, taking aspects of every major Gundam incarnation — the horror of child soldiers, the obsession over cool robots that are in fact weapons of war, intense space politics — and balancing them all perfectly against a plucky slice-of-life school rom-com. If you’re not sure if Gundam specifically or giant robots in general are for you, just stick around another episode — Witch of Mercury Has something new for you to discover.

Suletta Mercury has had the unfortunate misfortune to be a Gundam hero, which means she must bear the brunt of the consequences. For the viewer, she couldn’t be a better tour guide to this kind of story — not simply because she’s new to it all, but because maybe, if she’s lucky, she might still make it out OK.

Mobile Suit Gundam The Witch From MercuryCrunchyroll has new episodes every Saturday.