Mobile Suit Gundam The Witch from Mercury Episode 22: The Witch is real

G-Witch has a fast pacing in its story, I believe this is one of its many well-known facts, one of its many strengths. But this episode is probably the first time that I would like to say: slow down, please. Because it was too fast. While it still was a good episode, It made me feel uneasy about what it will show in the next episode, because if the series Everything was built up for this to happen.

All of the main plots, all of the subplots, lead us here.
But We can not say that the delivery was good, because everything felt… too rushed.

Not to mention, Sunrise announced that Season 2’s finale would be episode 24th. This shocked us as even the most recent mecha from Bandai: Kyoukai Senki had more episodes than G-Witch, period. The announcement explained quite well why everything went from the slow (yet dense information and subplots) in season 1 to the unbelievably fast pace at the later half of season 2. And this result in episode 22, is not as emotional as we think it should be.

The plot surrounding Suletta’s POV is still great, if not one of the best parts of G-Witch. It built Suletta up bit by bit, and now her character has developed more than we could hope for. Miorine and Suletta’s reunion was well written. It paid off for all of the moments they spent with each other.

Miorine had been the one that dragged Suletta along her way. Her character was always the one that moved forward, and when she was afraid to move forward as it may result in more mistakes, and more death, Suletta finally stood in front of Miorine, and offered Miorine her hands so that both could move forward. This part was definitely one of the most emotional scenes in the series, and very well done also. Suletta and Miorine interaction with each other deserved to be praised. This also reflected Okouchi’s Utena where Utena was usually the one who pull Anthy along, but in the end it was Anthy that shone a light of hope on Utena and finally broke the two of them out of the cycle together.

Other characters were also well done. Especially Kenanji. The guy went from a cool ace pilot to a fat chubby man thought to be some kind of comic relief, only to become one of the nicest adults in G-Witch. When his first re-appearance was shown to be too fat, even one character jokingly said how could he sit in a cockpit, then he proved that guy and also us how wrong that assumption was when he fought and gave commands to both his Dominicus Squadron and Asticassia’s authorities as well. He did not hide behind his armchair, he acted and fought just as hard as his men, on the same battlefield.

And now for him to say that if the situation got too heated up, he would give Prospera the thing she wanted in exchange for Suletta and Miorine’s group safety because all of them are still students, and let the adults take the responsibility! My respect for Kenanji!

But aside from that, everything was rushed, quite rushed. And it did harm the series as a whole.
The very existence of Calibarn was one example. It had an amazing debut. Everything about it, from the design concept to the MS itself is good, the music did help the appearance more hype, and the fight, while was short but still well-crafted nonetheless. But when if you saw the whole picture, then its existence gave some cracks to G-Witch story as a whole.

First, let’s say, the duel between Guel and Suletta. It was a nice homage to Gundam sword fights between characters’ traditions, it was a good way for them to settle everything swiftly and quickly. And that final victory pose when Suletta triumphed was a nice call back to Gundam Last Shooting. But then, why fencing? There was absolutely no scene in which Suletta nor Guel engaged in this fencing activity in the past, let alone had a duel in fencing format. Granted, Guel did many duels in the past, so if he had a fencing duel it might not be that illogical.

But Suletta, especially Suletta, is another case. Nothing was shown that she had any kind of experience before, so her victory seemed too convenient. I would not complain if the anime had shown us that she was engaged in fencing before, even if just one small scene. The duel using Mobile Suit might seem to be the same as a fencing duel, but piloting a Mobile Suit was a vast difference to do fencing, we can’t say that because she was good at using Mobile Suit it would make her good at fencing. If this was the staff choice, then I guessed that they had no better option to, one, let Guel and Suletta duel with each other in a few seconds to settle stuffs, and two, paid some honors to Gundam past. And in that situation, it’s pretty impossible for Suletta to get a Mobile Suit to fight against Guel, so they had to improvise, and Guel obviously didn’t go all out when dueling Suletta.

And then when you went back to Lfrith or Aerial or even Aerial Rebuild’s first appearance, Calibarn’s could not able to deliver the same hype that those were packed with, let alone surpass them.
For Lfrith, you had all the teasers and the news, and when we actually saw its action, it had an end right after the climax of Prologue.
For Aerial, it had everything Lfrith had, but on another 2 levels. The hint, the pace, the music, the animation, everything was made with, in my opinion, near perfection. We got one of the most memorable debuts in recent years.

For Aerial Rebuild, we did not have a teaser like its predecessor, but after episode 9 the Aerial was so badly damaged that it was totally believable for an upgrade, and the time was spot on. Its delivery was top-notch as well, with the OST played on that scene was wickedly amazing, the animation impact was so on point, and at the end of its first appearance, it was followed with a banging, memorable end.
All three had one thing in common that made their debut so emotional, which was how they were delivered. They had some hints for them, they had time for the audience to anticipate their appearance, the time was right for them to appear in front of the audience, and what followed right after their appearance was time for us to feel for them or major events.

Calibarn, did not have that. Its existence felt like a deus ex-machina to solve the overpower Quiet Zero, not a glimpse of hint to explain why it was there, it just popped out of nowhere (the Mysterious Item B can not be counted in this situation when we could not even know if it was Calibarn or not at the time it was announced).

Not to mention, we don’t have the time solely for Calibarn after its debut because we all knew that the next episode will definitely be Calibarn vs Ericht, Schwarzette vs Guel’s Dilanza, then the final showdown to bring Quiet Zero down, etc. Everything felt short.

And then, Prospera’s case. They tried to tell us that the one person that was developed as one of the most feared Char clones, not by her power in piloting a Mobile Suit, but the insurmountable mastermind that set up many preparations for her revenge against, possibly everyone in the universe. Even if Shaddiq did interfere with her plan, it was like a small drop into the big ocean. Prospera was built up like an almost perfect villain, with less than a crack in her masterplan, even found and destroyed SAL’s Lfrith Pre-Production warehouse that this power force posessed… Somehow missed the Calibarn? With no hint about its existence in the first place?

Finally, the moment they did the exact homage from Prologue, We knew that Suletta, Miorine, and possibly Ericht’s storylines are about to wrap up in this season. Those were finely done, but what about the sub-plots? How will Sunrise handle the ending? How will they tie up every sub-plots that they have made along the way but never fully utilized, some even washed up Peil’s storyline, Lauda’s, things on Earth, etc?

We could not help but wonder, why they have to end season 2 like this? Why speed up too fast? Considering how popular and profitable the series has made, we could not come up with a satisfying answer.

Please don’t misunderstand us, the episode was not a bad episode at all, but when compared to how the episodes in the past had surpassed our expectations week after week, time after time, for the first time this episode and maybe ep 21 as well could not make us hype like we used to have. Hopefully, just hopefully, the final episode won’t be the final nail in the coffin.

Next episode: Will they end all Mobile Suit combat in the next episode?

>Reryuu<

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