The fairy sacrifices herself for the sake of her family.
The twenty-third episode of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury has aired. The battle between the Mercury sisters and Jeturk brothers kicks into high. In the end, will everyone walk away with families intact?
Find out in my Recap and Review.
Recap
It opens with Eri using her bits in order to try and blast Suletta and the girl racing around while riding her beam rifle in an amazing display of mobility. Suletta tells her not to do this, but Eri tells her not to get in their mother’s way while the Children of the Coven question why she’s there. For them, this is a matter only for those who can live inside the data storm, which she can’t so she needs to give up.
Meanwhile, outside of it Lauda is fighting his brother. He complains about Miorine bringing Gundams back into the public eye, resulting in Petra being hurt. He then opens fires and chips the ship with a few stray blasts, resulting in Felsi running out while Martin, Nika, and Chuchu head into the data storm with their pod. The moment they switch manual, Chuchu struggles to fly straight before pulling herself together and getting them towards Quiet Zero.
Back with Lauda and Guel, the former unleashes his bit system at the cost of increasing the strain on his body. Guel dodges the blasts and tells him to stop before it kills him, but Lauda tells him to make him by killing him just like he did their dad. He’s more upset that Guel didn’t tell him about it and questions if he was that undependable, but Guel states that it was his burden to bear. Lauda states that’s the sort of mindset that leaves people like Mio to take advantage of him and that his arrogance is his sin.
Outside of the two battles, Guston contacts the SAL Fleet along with Delling. The latter calls for an assembly despite his stained state as Eri continues to press on Suletta despite not wanting to hurt her. Suletta asks if her goal is worth killing so many people, but the Coven states while Eri wouldn’t do that Prospera won’t hesitate if they get in the way. That’s why Suletta wants to stop her before she becomes known as an evil witch and wants to be by both of their sides.
Eri stop playing around then, revealing she’s fully aware of Mio and the others trying to sneak in. She then surrounds them and tells Su if she won’t give up then Eri won’t hesitate either. But before she can do something, a signal code goes out of Quiet Zero and shuts down all the bits so that the others can fly free. Eri questions why “someone” is interfering as Prospera loads up a gun and prepares to do some pest control.
Meanwhile, we see that the SAL is planning to just fire an Interplanetary Laser that was disguised as a transmission system. Of course, they’ll take responsibility for all the damage it’ll do the fronts and their companies will lead the rebuilding efforts… which basically means they’ll be the ones in charge along with Peil being in charge of the Group.
Chuchu and the adults get inside Quiet Zero, aiming to shut it down. Kenanji hands Belmeria a gun to use since he can’t let the students shoot someone. But the moment they open the door they find Haros mounted in laser turrets that tell them intruders must be eliminated.
Back with Lauda and Guel, the latter is basically going insane as he realizes he can stop his brother, the witches, and Mio inside of the Gundam. Guel tells him he needs to stop before it kills him, but he refuses as if Guel won’t avenge their father and Petra by taking out Mio then he’ll defend the honor of the Jeturk name. He’ll shoulder the sins instead as he goes in to charge his brother with both of them having their blades at the ready…only for Guel’s blade to cut out, allowing Lauda to pierce the mobile suit.
Lauda flashes back to when they both met as children, and Guel gave him a hug while being happy to have a little brother. Guel tells him he’s right about their father and if he can’t forgive him then fine, he won’t run even as his mobile suit is getting ready to explode. He then repeats his father’s motion and pushes his Gundam away, telling him not to use it again.
Lauda watches on in tears as his brother’s suit is about to explode, but thankfully Felsi came prepared. She went out in a suit of her own and fired some sort of coolant or sealant to stop it from blowing up. She then calls them both out for threatening to kill each other in a sibling spat.
Back with the group inside of Quiet Zero, Elan pulls out a gun to help provide cover fire for Belmeria and Mio to get to the Core Block. He throws some shade at Kenanji, who seems to blind or shut down the Haros with a grenade of some kind. But the codes don’t work because Prospera changed the emergency shutdown, averting villains being stupid as she comes with a bunch of gun haro.
Eri tells Suletta that their mother is with Mio and that if it’s to get ahead, she won’t hesitate to kill them. Belmeria tries to reason with her, but she questions why would she when Eri is the child blessed by Vanadis’ ideals. If there’s no place in this world, she’ll make on.
Mio then asks if she even cares about Suletta for all her talking about Eri. She states she does, but now she has friends. Then Mio tells her to love both her daughters equally before trying to hack the system’s maintenance mode to get around the admin rights. Prospera then gets shot at by Belmeria, who feels she needs to stop her and Elan backs her in shooting down the Haros.
To their shock, it turns out that the answer to the password was the message hidden in the genetic code of the tomatoes. Elan shoots Prospera’s helmet off right as Mio finishes the hacking, allowing everyone to shut it down. The data storm disperses and Mio offers her hand to Prospera, since she, Eri, and Suletta will all be a family.
Unfortunately, there’s the matter of that massive laser backed by the Peil Hags. Aerial uses all the bits and herself to create a massive shield and stop it from killing everyone. But it came at the cost of herself, as all that remains is a few of her bits and the remains of Aerial while Prospera calls for her daughter.
Review
Well, I guess it wouldn’t a Gundam if not for someone having a colony laser or trying to drop it on the Earth. This episode was great, though I do have some complaints. We’ll go over those after I praise everything else.
First off, I take back everything I said about both the Calibarn and Schwarzette. Plain they might look, but they rock in terms of what they can do. The sheer mobility that Suletta put on display was nothing short of amazing, and Lauda bust out scattered beams, a sword that split into fin funnel, and that awesome look at the end when they doubled as beam backpacks.
Then there were the fights themselves. Suletta went full dodge tank mode, avoiding nearly everything and even getting in a few shots of her own. She couldn’t feasibly overwhelm Eri and I’m pretty sure Eri was holding back since she didn’t want to kill her, but her talent can’t be understated.
As for Guel and Lauda, their duel was… really about the same in terms of being one-sided. Don’t get me wrong, Guel was clearly holding back but every time this man has to go against a Gundam his suits get wrecked. I mean, I’m glad they didn’t kill him but I think this counts as another “L” for him. Can we please give him the Gundam next time?
As for Chuchu and the others, the difficulties of flying without Permet aside, they didn’t do much once they got into the colony. Really, it was basically Elan, Belmeria, and Mio who played the biggest role.
Elan was a decent shot and Belmeria finally deciding to stand up for herself was great, though I’m mixed on the results. If Belmeria had been the one to shoot Prospera, it would have felt somewhat coming full circle since both have taken Vanadis’ ideals too far. But Elan scoring that headshot was no joke either, and I thought for a moment he got her through the helmet.
And the reveal that the SAL had a colony laser (I know that’s not what they said it was, but we all know it is) was a surprise… but it’s Gundam. You’re going to have at least one faction with a massive laser. Plus, we knew they were hoarding Gundams, so I can’t say it came out of nowhere.
The Peil Hags backing them with the intention of wiping out the existing Group and being willing to damage the fronts so they could swoop in just shows how low they will go. They’re opportunists to the extreme, siding with whoever will benefit them the most. Here’s hoping Elan Five actually deals with them next episode.
And I loved Eri’s sacrifice scene. I’m not happy about it, obviously. But it was going to happen one way or the other since you couldn’t have a god machine running free.
And it gave us a new immediate target to hate for the final episode.
Now for the negatives.
Delling showed up to do basically nothing barring bearing witness to the SAL giving a major middle finger to everyone else. His calls for an assembly were met with a refusal and realistically, he could have made that call from his bedside. They just wanted him to be outside, I guess.
They don’t explain the original thing that stopped the bits from blasting Mio and the others to death. It seemed like Quiet Zero itself intervened, but that would imply there’s another party involved just beyond the data storm. And unless you’re telling me Mio’s mother uploaded herself into the machine, that feels like plot armor.
Speaking of Mio’s mother, I found the genetic code sequence random last episode. I think it was used as an excuse for Mio being able to save the day. It feels cheap… at least until I thought about it.
But if it turns out that Mio’s mother was just beyond the Data Storm and part of Quiet Zero then everything starts making sense. It’d explain why Delling worked with Prospera. It’d explain why that bypass worked. It’d even explain why Quiet Zero stopped Eri from blasting her daughter.
If that’s the plot twist they’ve been hiding until now, they’d need to show how she died. They’ve been holding out on that until that point, and I really want answers when we’ve only got one episode remaining. Unless we’re getting another Season.
I wouldn’t mind that either.
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