Episode Review: Gundam: Witch from Mercury ep 3 - Unexpected Dueling

“Suletta Mercury, please marry me!”

The 3rd episode of G-Witch is really unexpected – in many surprising ways. The writing team surely is having fun jerking us in so many directions with so many subversion and plot twists.

First of all, the animation, after three episodes, the animation is still consistent and outstanding at the same time. It’s as high quality as you could expect from Sunrise, regardless of all those rumors about the difficulties they faced during production. The battle between Darilbalde and Aerial is one of the best, period, even in the final seconds of the battle you could clearly see why Darilbalde’s blade antenna got broken. My regards to all the hard-working staff. The attention to the smaller details that matter is very high. Of course there are some shots that aren’t as high quality as the decisive ones, but the flow of the animation is very smooth.

That aside, in a matter of three episodes, they managed to develop quite successfully two characters: one is Miorine and two is Guel. For Miorine, she is the type of character that wants to fight back against those who are in power (her father), so that her life could be hers. The rebelling princess type is not usually present in Gundam – mostly boys rebelling against their father figures. So Miorine going super hardcore on her rebellion is pretty nice to see. And seeing her doing anything she could to thwart her father’s plan and then have a laugh at the end is a nice catharsis.

Guel – on the other hand, is the “gifted kid but got burned out by the surroundings and want other people to recognize him for what he is”. Noted, he had done horrible things, but in episode 3 there are scenes that speak for himself that Guel is not a horrible person at the core, and could be changed into a better person. Even though that final touch was, in my opinion, a bit too fast, considering he is the hot-blood, aggressive type of person, it’s still logical to some degree. It also helps that Suletta is the first person to ever speak out against him and hit the chords that strike him the most. Since his position is prestigious, noone dared to speak out against him before – and also his groupies that always going gaga for him doesn’t help either. After an honest “elevator” session with Suletta, he has changed. For that, both Miorince and Guel depictions are successful at the moment. I want these to also happen to other characters as well.

Elan, now I think that this guy probably will get developed slowly through out the series. His scenes are here and there, not concentrateđ in one episode like Miorine or Guel had. In episode 3, with the music and how Suletta’s face kind got red when Elan met her, and also when she saw the congratulation letter from him, that is definitely hinted as she has some feelings for him. But then, with how the music stop at his cold face, we knew that he did not have the same feelings that Suletta had, but what he said in episode 2 are also true: he has interest in her, and also had some kind of trust in her as well. If done right, we might have a duel between Suletta’s Aerial and Elan’s upcoming Gundam Pharact.

Shaddiq on the other hand, is a wild card that I’m not sure how this card would be played out in the story. He was shown as an informative person, lady-killer, and has his priorities differed from anyone we have seen so far. Also, his adopted father company is somewhat responsible for the massacre at Vanadis Institute (Beguir Beu and Shaddiq’s Michaelis are from their company as well) so it would be interesting to see how he would interact with Suletta later on.

Finally, my sweet spirit animal, Nika. Such a sweet, loving mechanic, and also the calmest in the Earth’s house got fully fleshed out in episode 3, but as we have seen in some animes before, the calmest tends to have the fiercest meltdown than the hot blood (Chuchu for example). Hopefully the show will do good with her characters.

Next episode: which trap, what trap, whose trap? Is it Guel’s after pulling such an unexpected maneuver?

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