Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

Episode 15

"What about Bob?" is the question we've been asking for the past two weeks. After the events of the previous episode, pretty much everyone is going through a rough time, so what better time than now to round back to Guel Jeturk? He's a funny character, one who started as the earnestly punchable opening antagonist before unexpectedly endearing himself to the audience by just having life crap all over him in successively spectacular ways. So here we are, happy to finally see him again, even as we know that means also seeing him have a bad time. Would we have him any other way?

While this technically winds up being a Guel-focused episode, it takes some detours first. Things are in full-on fallout mode after the Dawn of Fold's terrorist attack at the school didn't go quite as planned. But instead of following our main characters as they pick up the pieces (Suletta doesn't even appear in this episode!), we shift to the Dawn of Fold back on Earth, on their back foot against the Benerit Group's forces. It's a fair move for G-Witch—it already effectively made us pour one out for Sophie last week, and Gundam's not not about humanizing all sides in conflicts to demonstrate their toll. Indeed, a huge chunk of the narrative in this episode is about how characters wind up on specific sides due to their experiences in said conflict.

Our actual focal point for most of this episode turns out to be Olcott, the Dawn of Fold member who picked Guel up after the events of the plant attack. Olcott's just one of many expressions of this episode's titular theme, "Father and Child," in his insistence on ignoring familial connections to be a more effective soldier in the faction he now serves in. His backstory is briefly explained toward the end, but we honestly don't need it when the episode is already effective enough at showing us his personality. Olcott shirks the idea of taking time to mourn Sophie's loss. He takes Guel in but keeps him alive purely as a potential bargaining chip. When Seethia is crushed by rubble, he immediately writes her off as unsavable, in contrast to Guel's efforts. Olcott is a man who had his family taken from him; instead of internalizing his connection with them as a motivation, cut everything off. A hand desperately reaching for a child replaced with a mechanical one of pure function.

Olcott's attitude is illustrated here as a foil because so many of G-Witch's main characters are motivated by internalized connections to parents and family, living and dead. This is reinforced among those we check back in on this episode. Shaddiq is making his play against his adopted father ostensibly because he thinks he's got better ideas about how to manipulate the military industrial complex, but if he can also get revenge for the Earthian side of his family in doing so, all the better. Miorine is still investigating Quiet Zero, doing what she thinks is her own research on her mother and father's past plans (even if she's dancing to the tunes of her fiancé's mother). And of course Guel's sole motivating thought through most of this episode is his crippling guilt over killing his own father.

It makes for some natural thematic endpoints even as the episode's initial orbit around Olcott can make you wonder: "Wait, who is this guy and why are we following him?" I'd say it ultimately works as a reintroduction to Guel, serving him up a fresh trough of trauma while giving him a foil.

As miserable as things are getting for him and everyone else, G-Witch hasn't slowed down on the mecha action fireworks show even after last week's big climax. There's a pointedly grittier, messier approach to the robot carnage on display here, compared to last week's showcase of Gundam-piloting wizkids and their bit-controlling laser-blasting space battles. If we weren't already fully aware of how far beyond the dressed-up duels of early G-Witch we now are, then seeing Guel Jeturk, arbiter of that initial gimmick, desperately climb into a grunt suit trying to save a little girl who winds up dying in his arms, makes it crystal clear.

Rating:

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

Chris is keeping busy keeping up with the new anime season, and is excited to have you along. You can also find him writing about other stuff over on his blog, as well as spamming fanart retweets on his Twitter, for however much longer that lasts.

---

Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc. (Sunrise) is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.