Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury – Episode 1

Thirty minutes in and she’s already the top duelist and stole the girl from the douchebag. Nice.

So the first episode of the series has come out and while there are currently… problems with getting to see it in English via official means, I still managed to watch the episode and liked what I saw despite it being somewhat less bombastic than the prologue. So we’ll be going over our heroine’s first day in the Academy and how she has basically made herself the center of a political storm in my Recap and Review of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury – Episode 1.

Recap

The episode opens with an older Eri on a ship inside of her mobile suit as they are heading towards the Academy where the story will take place. She speaks to the Gundam as if it were alive and states she filled out an application for her to join as well when she notices someone stranded out in space and sends a message to the bridge. They prepare a rescue team but she ends up getting in her mobile suit and going out to save them herself. The person in question, a young woman, is less than happy about the rescue and tells her that she ruined her escape and needs to take responsibility as the title card appears.

We then cut to an overview of the school as Eri is enrolled and we learn that her new name is Suletta Mercury. It’s the first time she’s been to school and her mother sent her there. The other girl is introduced as Miorine Rembran (Mio for short), and it seems her goal had been to run away to Earth but the topic gets interrupted by a duel between two mobile suits. Suletta (Su for short) nearly gets crushed by some chump who was supposed to be Mio’s fiance, but as she later reveals she never wanted to be with him but she lost a duel. Duels apparently determine everything in this school and her father was the one who made that rule up.

We then cut to a meeting of company big wigs as they promptly expel one company that was in the red for reporting losses three times in a row, headed by Delling. He makes it clear that even if they had a chance of recovery, he only cares about getting results. He doesn’t even care to meet with the guards he assigned to his daughter after her escape attempt, citing it as a waste of time.

Back with the girls, Su learns what a tomato is for the first time, with it being revealed that Mio’s mother apparently bred that strain of tomato into existence. It serves as common ground for Su to explain her own mother sent her there to find a way to make Mercury a more prosperous planet. But that’s when her fiance, Guel, decides that she’s going to live with him so she can’t run away before he trashes her greenhouse and throws her down like a dick with no one being willing to stop him.

So Su does it by deciding to challenge him to a duel, with the stakes being that if she loses she leaves the school. And while that’s happening we see that Guel’s father intends to kill Delling to ensure that the marriage happens with a bomb on his shuttle. The stage is set as the win condition for the duel is the first to break the blade antenna of their opponent’s mobile suit…

Except we learn that Mio pulled a gundamjack on Su and took control of it when she grabbed her phone earlier. She basically decided that she wanted to take control of her own fate rather than letting someone else do so, which is a problem considering that she doesn’t know how to use it properly. So Su uses Nika’s access to get back to her suit and takes control, changing his opponent to her instead as she releases the bit staves to form a shield and then a bunch of beam cannons that tear his suit to bits.

She promptly wins the duel, which nullifies the assassination plan since the engagement was broken the moment he lost two minutes before the explosion. Su also gets a custom outfit due to the fact that she defeated the best duelist, making her the new Holder and Mio’s groom. And same-sex marriage is commonplace so she’s now engaged to one of the most powerful individuals in the academy.

All on her first day.

Review

That was a fun first episode. Not only did it introduce all the major students but we see that she’s already changing the status quo not even 30 minutes into the series. Students duel each other to determine everything and politics happening in the background are influenced by it, which will likely land her on the radar of everyone since she bested the strongest duelist in five seconds.

Su was honestly a bit adorable. She speaks so normally when she’s conversing with her mobile suit, but when she has to try to speak with other people she stumbles over her words and tends to come out a lot less concise. Despite her being shy, she at least has morals and spine, likely due to the fact that her mother raised her properly rather than these spoiled brats like Guel.

As for Mio, she immediately made me question how she thought that floating in space was a great escape idea. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sincerely hoping her father doesn’t make it out of the series alive due to the prologue and her fiance is a jerk, but you need to structure things better. Space is freaking huge, at the very least you need some kind of smuggling vessel to get out.

That being said, her mother being into botany and even coming up with a strand of tomatoes before dying is new. And the fact that she wants to go to Earth for what seems to be reasons related to that is refreshing. Considering her father is a dick who I regret escaped death by Su winning her duel two minutes earlier, the apple could not fall further from the tree if possible.

Nika only got a few lines but came off rather nice given you could read her facial expression when those other girls started teasing Su without her realizing it and she gave her credentials to Su so she could get her mobile suit back. In contrast, Guel has immediately landed himself on my shitlist with barely five minutes of screen time. Acting all tough just because he’s the school’s number one pilot only for Su to strip him of that title in a hurry.

I also question the notion of safety when it comes to duels when you can just have them break out where the other students can get crushed. If he broke the boundaries of it beforehand then there clearly aren’t enough safety measures in place. Not to mention considering how easily Su shredded his suit I can only imagine someone getting killed by accident with one misaimed shot.

Overall, I enjoyed the episode and I’m looking forward to the second one.