Should You Watch Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury?

The Fall 2022 anime season has officially started with “episode 00” of the new Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury episode, which just dropped. It’s a gorgeous production, filled with all the fantastic visuals and story elements that make us love the Gundam series. Let’s take a closer look at this new anime!

What Can We Expect from Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury?

It’s been six years since fans had a proper Mobile Suit Gundam series to sink their teeth into. While we had quite a few fun Gundam projects to enjoy during that time — my personal favorite was the first Hathaway Flash film — this is the first new series Sunrise has tackled in a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6MHD1BSjTA

The project is a 100% original story set in a new universe, taking place in the year A.S. (Ad Stella) 122. The story will follow Suletta Mercury, the first female main character in a Gundam series, who comes from the planet Mercury. She’s studying alongside her friends at the Asticassia School of Technology.

What Staff Are Involved with The Witch of Mercury?

The new Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch of Mercury series has a lot of talented staffers attached to it, including Hiroshi Kobayashi (Kiznaiver, Kill la Kill) as series director and Ayumi Sato (That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, The World God Only Knows) as art director. But the staff I’m most excited about is scriptwriter Ichiro Okouchi, who wrote all the scripts for such amazing works as Code Geass and Planetes, both of which stood out as shining examples of quality storytelling by Sunrise.

I often find myself writing posts highlighting the benefits of anime created by skilled manga artists with years of experience (like Spy x Family creator Tatsuya Endo) over “Narou-kei” stories that started out as online fan-fiction. While some of these webnovel-based anime are outstanding (Konosuba, Re:Zero, Mushoku Tensei), there are a lot more stories that are mostly a jumbled mess. My preference for well-told anime stories makes me especially glad to have a seasoned professional like Okouchi writing the new Gundam.

It’s a Whole New Mobile Suit Gundam Universe!

One of the best things about The Witch of Mercury being set in a totally new Gundam universe rather than the classic Univeral Century world is that it allows fans to enjoy a new story without all the baggage of 40+ years of past series. So if you’re not up on the politics of the One Year War, the civil war between A.E.U.G. and the Titans, and don’t know who Char Aznable or Amuro Rei or Minerva Zabi are, then great! You won’t have to wade through hours of wiki entries to learn the background, because it’s all new!

So if you feel “lost” trying to follow the story at first, don’t worry, all the other fans will be equally lost!

Which series took your “Gundam Virginity”? Blog post for you here!

What Do We Want in a Gundam Story?

There are some important core elements that fans want to find in a proper Mobile Suit Gundam story.

• We want a complex story with a good mix of “space politics” and Gundam battles.
• We want to be shown a vision for the bright potential future of mankind in space, much closer to Star Trek than, say, Macross.
• The zero gravity of space must be a “character” in the story as much as the technology of the Gundams.
• There must be a young main character whose development as a Gundam pilot we can follow. This has traditionally been a male character, but this time the show star is a girl, Suletta Mercury. This means more opportunity for lewds a unique and nuanced character study.

• We must have an opening or closing credits with the main character symbolically running eternally into the sky.
• The main character must have mommy or daddy issues involving a related tragedy.
• At some point, we must get a villain wearing a mask because it’s a Sunrise work.

Thanks for reading this post about the new Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch of Mercury! Are you hyped about the new series? Tell us your thoughts below, or share them on Twitter!

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