Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury – Episode 7

Mio secures the position of best wife in the franchise by starting a company to save her bridegroom and giant sister.

The seventh episode for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury is finally out after a break last week. And oh my goodness, it came back with a vengeance. Easily one of the tensest episodes to date.

Let’s get into this with a Recap and Review.

Recap

The seventh episode opens with the four women from Peil openly admitting to the heads of the other big three that the Pharact was a Gundam as they decide to cooperate on a common goal to figure out what Delling has up his sleeve. Then we get a slight change in the opening with two Gundam models behind Delling before cutting to our couple back in Mio’s workshop, where Su admits to being worried that Elan has been missing since the duel. She asks Mio if she has ever been worried about someone else, but she denies it and states she only thinks about going to Earth.

Then they get an invitation to an Incubation Party. Mio wants to turn it down and warns Su she’ll have to make a speech if she goes, but her bridegroom wants to go to make sure Elan is okay. So those two, Nika, and the guy from Earth House all go as Su’s guests to the event party. There it’s explained to be an event to promote new business startups within the group but she notes that the concepts were all too old-fashioned to get funding.

We then cut to Elan Prime complaining to the four women that he has to clean up his clone’s mess because the next test subject wasn’t ready. Then Shaddiq shows up to chat with Mio and it’s revealed the two have some history since they saw one another a lot at previous events. He notes that Mio has changed a lot by acting for another person’s sake and calling it Su’s magic.

And then Su finally runs into her mother at the party and introduces her to Mio. Prospera sends her daughter off so she can talk to her about her relationship with her father given she’s about to be married into their family. She also states that the Vandis incident happened 21 years ago and how he was seen as a hero who banned Gundams, but Mio states that glory was in the past and their generation knows nothing of Gundams. The younger girl airs her grievances over how overbearing he was and thinks back to her mother’s funeral, but Prospera points out she’s still rather privileged and needs to throw away her pride.

Then we cut to Su making a mess by accidentally breaking glasses while Guel’s brother calls her pathetic. Then his dad tells him to get ready to pull off some shady stuff as Elan Prime goes to offer her a towel. And while that’s happening, Delling meets with Shaddiq’s father while his son goes to talk shop with Nika who claims he owes her thanks as the two get awfully chummy…

Su tries to apologize to Elan under the assumption that she made a mistake and is happy he’ll be returning to school. However, that shady bastard leads her to the stage for her speech where Peil basically throws Su under the bus by revealing that both she and Elan were Gundam pilots. They turned it into a Witch Trial and in accordance with the terms of the treaty will dispose of the machine and scrap their development team, with Jeturk pointing out that Shin Sei (Prospera’s company) should do the same.

Su, bless her heart, tries to call out to her mother for an explanation since she was unaware but she isn’t there at the moment. So Mio steps in to defend her and the Aerial by pointing out it beat them along with the fact that the Gundam didn’t steal the life of its pilot. She then uses the venture to get enough funding to purchase Peil’s Gundam development team and then merge it with theirs to get a new company that will ensure the development of safe Gundam technology.

No one is initially willing to back it, so Mio swallows her pride and goes to her father to borrow his credibility with a loan. He warns her she doesn’t know what she’s getting into but still gives it to her, which gets the rest of the funding needed since the “King” has basically given his taciturn approval of the project, and it’s a new concept. Prospera, who had been pulled away by Jeturk’s son, Lauda, notes that it seems things got lively before going to speak with the girls. She thanks Mio and agrees to leave her “daughters” in her hand before admitting to Su that Aerial is a Gundam.

Cue the shocked face ending.

Review

For not a single weapon to have been fired, this episode was tense! Shady corporates are the most terrifying people in this setting. They were willing to take a 120 Billion dollar loss just to force Shin Sei to do the same, and they put that poor girl on stage to crucify her. It seems instead of normal wars, we’re getting corporate ones.

I feel so bad for Su here. She only went to make sure Elan was okay and not only does she have stage fright that was likely made hundreds of times worse, but she had her world shaken up in a setup arranged by just about every one of her peers without realizing it with even poor Nika potentially being involved. Then she learned her mother lied to her outright. Poor girl is going to be so jaded by the end of the first cour at the rate things are going.

Thank goodness Mio is in her corner. From start to finish she was on edge about everything but she listened when Prospera told her to check her privilege. Not only did she manage to come up with a business proposal with damn near no time to prepare, but she was willing to throw away her dream of going to Earth and swallow her pride to save Su, even if it meant asking her father for a loan.

And speaking of that, I sincerely doubt it was out of complete goodwill since he’s a businessman and was responsible for the attack on Elnora’s home. Maybe he just felt that Peil or someone else would undermine him again by developing the technology under his nose (I mean, they were effective) and he wanted to get a solid foot in the door so he could oversee it. It couldn’t be that he had gotten soft in his old age…

And yet he still came off less shady than Prospera. That calm countenance as she casually moved pieces on the board revealed that she lied to Su with a smile on her face. She’s a manipulator without a doubt, and the fact that the Vanadis Incident happened 21 years ago means that Su can’t be Eri unless she was cryo-frozen.

Which has terrifying implications.

The next episode is going to have a really hard time topping this one.