It Feels Like Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Will Get Darker

The first season of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (or G-Witch) was not exactly peaceful. We’ve seen executions, corporate espionage, and dynastic infighting, not to mention more giant mecha duals than you can shake a beam saber at. But even so, the majority of the time we’ve spent with characters at Asticassia School of Technology has been positively carefree compared to the grim bookends of the prologue and finale. That contrast is something I think we’re going to be seeing more of going into future episodes.

Editor’s Note: There will be spoilers for the first season of Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.

A major theme in G-Witch so far has been the way that corporations like the Benerit Group made vast amounts of wealth through exploitation of resources, people, and technologies alike. Even the originally benign medical technology of the GUND system becomes appropriated for use in war machines because it’s more profitable. And it’s this profit that builds the places where the ultra-rich live in luxury, places insulated from the harm their extraction causes. Places like Asticassia.

We’ve become familiar with these places throughout the first season: the pristine grounds of their schools, their luxurious parties and their shining technology. It’s not without ugliness, but no one is struggling for food or necessities, Suletta’s lunch mix-up notwithstanding. However, G-Witch never lets us forget that the luxury on display here is paid for with the exploitation of Earthian workers or the appropriation of technologies for use in war machines. The members of Earth House are getting a taste of how the Spacians live, but nearly every one of them has family back home suffering for this paradise. And there’s no shortage of rich Spacian kids ready to remind them that they dont belong here either.

However, we’ve only seen glimpses of how bad it is on earth or the poorer colonies. We’ve seen just snapshots and newscasts of civil unrest. If G-Witch wants to hammer the point home, getting a closer look at life outside the rich, Spacian bubble will be essential. For example, consider the scene in episode eight where the Earth house members grapple with whether to sell the GUND technology as a weapon. For them it’s more than than an academic quandary. It is a question about whether they can secure their place financially in the Spacian world without also exploiting their fellows on Earth. It’s a great moment on its own, and a conflict we’ve definitely not seen the last of. But if future seasons show us more of what its like to actually live back home in the fringes, it could resonate all the harder. We need to see the other side to understand how green the grass is on ours.

So my prediction, or at least hope, for futures seasons of Gundam: The Witch from Mercury is that we’ll see more of that other side. More of how the Benerit group’s machinations affect the everyday Earthians and how it drives them to civil unrest. More of how bad it is on Earth so that Asticassia can have children settling disputes with military hardware. And to do that, I think we’ll have to leave Asticassia itself behind. In the latter episodes of the first season, we saw specific mention of how the Earth House kids are learning how to pilot a company freighter, which could be very useful if say, the tenuous legality of the GUND technology forces Suletta to take her beloved Aerial on the run. It would not only allow the cast to visit a more diverse array of locales than being grounded at Asticassia would, but also parallel the original Gundam‘s journey with White Base. And we all know how Gundam as a franchise loves to re-use and re-contextualise motifs. Just ask Mr. Aznable and his many imitators.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Season 2 will begin airing on April 2nd. If you want to catch up on the previous season you can check out our guide here.