Warning: Contains SPOILERS for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury anime.The newest entry to the ageless Mobile Suit Gundam line of anime, The Witch From Mercury, updates the franchise for modern sensibilities while retaining the classic themes and action that old-school fans and diehard followers demand.
Hiroshi Kobayashi's MSG: The Witch From Mercury tells the story of Suletta Mercury, a young and talented mobile suit operator with a mysterious past. As a child, Suletta, whose birth name is Ericht (Eri) Samaya, lived on Folkvangr, the laboratory and testing ground for mobile suit manufacturer Och Earth Corporation, where her father and mother worked as engineers. Having developed a mobile suit Gundam with the ability Och Earth's technology was well ahead of the times. But there were problems. While the tech was cutting-edge, it also lead to a high rate of injury among its human pilots. Sensing a chance to eliminate a rival, before a could be developed, a consortium of Earth Och's competitors secretly funded an attack on the Folkvangr compound. The attack would have been successful, but Suletta and her mother escaped in one of the experimental mobile suits. Now, more than a decade later, Suletta, her mother, and an upgraded version of the suit are back.
As usual for a Gundam franchise production, the series has not been shy to include "its message" between the lines and in the background. The exact message is currently being debated but is clearly geared toward capturing the interest of a contemporary audience. Whereas other previous Gundam series addressed such issues as the horrors of war and how political partisanship can take a society toward extremes, this iteration of the story examines cyberpunk-related themes such as the human-tech singularity, and the military-industrial complex, all issues relevant to a modern information-based society. In addition to technology, the series also touches upon gender roles, (as Suletta will be the franchise's first lead-female protagonist), and sexual freedom as illustrated by Suletta's engagement to Miorine Rembran, the daughter of her school's top director. While Suletta is more than a bit surprised by the practice, no one else seems to care about same-gender marriage, including Miorine herself.
Gundam Finally Becomes a Modern Anime For Modern Times
One of the most obvious "updated" messages put forward in the first few episodes is the growing impact of artificial intelligence on humanity. Artificial intelligence is everywhere in the series, but most notably depicted in the form of Gundam Aerial, the Mercury's advanced, all-around robotic companion. The fact that Suletta and her mother come to rely on Aerial for some of the most important decisions in their life, begs a common "in real life" question of how much trust can or should humans put into technology. A second, but related, message update is the bioethical concern of empowering humanity with super-intelligent, super-powerful Gundam. This is most clearly demonstrated in Elan Ceres, an "enhanced human" who may not even be human at all. In a time when society debates the reach of technology, Elan's presence begs the purely modern-day conundrum of just how far a society should go in using technology to "play God."
Whatever, side of the aisle viewers stand on these issues, it is clear that Mobile Suit Gundam's creators are putting them out there as a reflection of the current issues in real life. Outside "the message," or for those who are not interested in it, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury does not disappoint.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
