Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury

Episode 16

On paper, this could have been a pretty pedestrian episode of The Witch From Mercury by the show's regularly escalated dramatic standards. There aren't any major mobile suit battles as most of what's going on here simply moving all the main characters around, getting them back to the school into position for the next major arc that's about to get underway. But of course, we didn't get this far into G-Witch without seeing it execute even the most basic narrative functions simply. The series has always found ways to elevate its material. It does so by indulging in some calculated crowd-pleasing cruelty at the behest of one of its most appreciable orchestrators. Everyone has the parts they're playing here. But this episode, so much of what's transpired, thoroughly belongs to Lady Prospera.

Given the gravity of her big reveal in an episode lousy with massive moments two weeks ago, it makes perfect sense for this one to round back to Girlboss Gendou. But Prospera isn't content to simply coast on the power of the shocking truth about Eri and the Aerial that we had all already suspected. From the first moments of this episode, as she expounds on the possibilities of Quiet Zero and her bitstream baby, she devours the scenery and the show overall with the animated energy of her body language and Mamiko Noto's voice acting. G-Witch's Shakespearean influences come through in how we can tell that Prospera's theatricality is her putting on airs about her grandiose scheme, the same way she shifts across different manipulative mood motifs in her interactions with others throughout this episode.

It makes for a fascinating way to attain insight into the character while she acts like she's laying all her cards on the table. Prospera doesn't need to divulge her tragic backstory for the sake of us in the audience; we saw it ourselves back in the prologue episode. Thus, our familiarity with those events makes it more convincingly galling how ruthless Prospera's approach to her revenge comes off. It's hard to parse how much of her pursuit of the plan can be regarded as righteous since everything she does is in the name of puppeteering others for her purposes. Prospera is a uniquely awful kind of manipulative in how she doesn't just tell people what they want to hear, but also what she knows they don't want to hear at particular points. She thrives on poking at the extant sins of others like Bel and Miorine, drawing them into collusion by making them see themselves in her, representative of the reflection motifs so generously utilized by this episode's storyboards.

The propagated cycle of sin from Mercury's Mother of the Year seeps into the spaces of all the pieces moved around this episode. Even in Suletta and Miorine's highly anticipated reunion, Prospera's shadow can't be escaped. I appreciate the choice to have the wait give Miorine time to think about Suletta's traumatic tomato squish and her reaction to it, coming out the other side with more nuanced feelings on the situation. Her current concern over it is thus less a fear of Suletta, and more a fear for Suletta, especially as spending time with her Mother-in-law has let her realize the effect she's had on Suletta's state. We see it in Miorine's face as she grapples with that new, most raw fear: That even Suletta's courtship and care for her was only carried out at the behest of a mother's will she can't bring herself to defy.

The now-revealed scale of Prospera's machinations also lets them collide with other characters' stories as they're worked on this week. Knowing about Eri's presence in the Gundam treats us to a sequence of Elan No. 5 finding out that a virtual murder toddler works wonders as a vehicular security system. And Guel, fresh off finding his spot in the cycle of revenge, reunites with his brother and the wider cast to serve some role in the forthcoming arc. For the time being, it seems that will play out as a campaign confrontation between Prospera's ongoing scheme and Shaddiq, who, in proper foiling fashion, is operating having usurped the manipulations of his parent. That Shaddiq has seemingly moved past wanting to have Miorine as part of his plan just as she's found herself entrapped by Prospera is one more example of how the Lady has finessed things into place.

As an enjoyer of the kinds of malicious messiness Gundam series can get up to, I'm eagerly anticipating G-Witch's engagement with this election plotline. There's a delicious irony to the point that the more "civilized" practice of democracy is almost certainly going to lead to far more bloodshed than the duels ever did. It works as a storytelling symbol of the understanding of the adult world that the children of the school are having thrust upon them now: They can't play at resolving their conflicts just by smashing their toys together anymore. The grown-ups like Prospera are here to drag them into the real world, not necessarily for the good of their growth, but because the bureaucratic and capitalistic machines of that adult world require ever more bodies to participate in propagating them.

It's a keen representation of Gundam's recurring franchise points about children drafted into the war. They can push back against it, encapsulated in an exemplary way by Miorine asserting that Prospera and the other adults ought to kill each other for revenge instead of dragging their kids into it. But this episode ultimately demonstrates how the power of a puppet master like Prospera can render such demands futile. It illustrates that the conflict isn't going to be in watching Suletta and Miorine wins any battle or election but in finding a way to escape from being used as tools. In a series where the main mobile suit has seemed powerful enough to win any fight, that's how you make viewers still feel tensely trapped in an uncertain dramatic situation. Even the fourth wall can't protect us from being manipulated by Lady Prospera's machinations, but when it results in storytelling as gripping as this, I love to see a woman winning.

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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.