Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury S1E1: "The Witch and the Bride"

I heard this show had some Utena-isms. The episode title definitely supports these accounts.

We open on a somewhat older Ericht in the cockpit of a mobile suit, all darkness and ghostly holographic displays, in a shot that closely parallels the prologue's introduction with her mother. Instead of a delicate training exercise though, she has a handheld tablet out in front of her, and is reading aloud. School regulations. Admission procedures. Looks like she's enrolling at some kind of academy. While piloting a mobile suit. Like you do. She's also speaking to someone named Aerial, promising that she sent in an application for her as well. Is Aerial going to turn out to be a pet, or a comfort object, or something? Heh, maybe it'll turn out to be the name of her current mech. Eri's possibly-solitary-and-possibly-not application research session is cut off by a shipwide update.

This is it. They're docking at the Front Sector 73's Asticassia School of Technology. Finally, her destination. Forgetting about "Aerial" for the moment, Eri looks up at the cockpit ceiling and whispers to her mother that she's finally here, she finally made it. From how Eri addresses her, it's not clear if Elnora is actually dead, or just far away across the solar system. She turns on her cockpit's visual display, and gazes at the impressive-looking space station that houses this prestigious tech academy.

Then, Eri spots something on her suit's optic sensors. She taps in a command on her pad, and the cockpit display zooms in on a point in space just a few dozen meters off the station's hull. A space suit. Drifting, motionless, as if its occupant is dead or unconscious. And, apparently, nobody besides her was scanning the station visually OR otherwise at the time, because when she sends a panicky report (along with video feed evidence) of this to the ship's bridge, everyone there is shocked as well (though they don't react with the same babbling panic as Eri). Operations commence for the ship to signal the situation to the station, move off course to get closer to the possibly-still-alive spacewalker, and deploy a rescue vehicle.

Eri ignores everything that she just set in motion and just boots up her fucking gundam. Ignoring the voice commands asking her what the fuck she even thinks she's doing. Ignoring the fact that the locking scaffold is still in place and that her suit actually needs to force it open from the inside (probably damaging said scaffold in the process) in order to move. Ignoring the hangar crewmen running around her suit's feet who need to dive out of the way to avoid being kicked or stepped on by her multi-decaton death machine and instantly killed when it suddenly came to life without warning.

Not knowing what else to do at this point, the captain opens the hangar door (the room is already zero-atmosphere, as indicated by everyone being fully suited and helmeted, so there's no risk of blowing those poor schmucks out into space right after they avoided getting stepped on at least) and tells the mobile suit pilot that if she insists on doing whatever insane shit she's about to do then he'll at least prevent her from having to tear his hangar open from the inside in the process. Eri babbles a pathetic, stammering apology as she realizes what she just did (and perhaps, what she just ALMOST did), before leaping out into space and flying toward the astronaut in distress.

The way she's going, I half expect her to misjudge her deceleration speed and splat the person against her mech's hand.

Frankly, if I were the captain I'd strongly consider hitting that mobile suit with my ship weapons while its back is turned. Trusting this reckless fucking kid with a fully armed combination fighter/MBT right outside my ship, and right outside a space station full of civilians for that matter, is the kind of decision that a jury might well vote to convict me over.

Fortunately, Eri manages to not fuck this up more than she already has, slowing down to a stop within arm's reach of the astronaut and catching them gently in her suit's hands. When she does so, the astronaut moves their limbs, indicating that they are still alive and conscious and had been holding still until now to conserve oxygen. Which in turn probably means their tank is pretty low, since moving would have also made them easier to notice in the first place. She opens her cockpit, spacewalks out, and pulls the rescuee back inside with her before repressurizing it. A partial mirror of how Elnora and Eri sheltered together in the prologue. The rescuee is still moving; Eri saved them. The ship crew would have probably saved them just a few seconds later without damaging their hangar and almost killing three other people in the process, but still, Eri did save them.

Then the rescuee punches Eri across the cockpit and starts bitching her out for ruining everything.

She wasn't holding still because her oxygen was running out. She was holding still because she knew she had a long time to wait until her getaway vehicle arrived, and also it would make her less likely to be detected in the meantime.

Well. Either the station has a prison on it as well as a school, or some of the students are enrolled on a less-than-voluntary basis. Either way, Eri just committed what's probably a felony reckless endangerment act over nothing.

This is why it's generally better to do things by the book unless you have a really good reason not to.

Well, whatever is going to happen to either of the girls now, they're returned to the ship and it docks at the Asticassia Station. Or is Asticassia just the name of the school, with the station its on being named Front Sector 73? Either or. Anyway, there's some nice scenery porn with suitably enchanting music as we're introduced to the station's interior. The people of this new Gundamverse seem to prefer Stanford toruses over UC's O'neil cylinder designs.

The landscape they have displayed on the window interiors is a neat trick. I wonder if that's supposed to be the work of extremely intricate tinting, or if the "windows" are actually an opaque photovoltaic system with a TV or projector screen on the inside surface? The latter sounds less energy efficient (kinda defeating the whole purpose of this station design), but also way easier to actually build heh.

Zooming in on what looks like the research campus itself, there are a lot of mobile suits walking around. Or at least, mobile-suit-like constructs. These ones have much less of an intimidating military look to them than the franchise's usual, and appear to be slower moving. I'm not sure if the "mobile suit" designation applies to all robot walker vehicles, or only military ones. Anyway, they're obviously doing some high end robotics research, and seemingly a decent amount of actual production as well.

Then we see Eri getting off a tram, in a school uniform, and greeting the drone sent to guide her to the enrolment center.

Are we just going to handwave away the "ignored protocol, launched aircraft without so much as informing flight control, and almost killed three people" thing? It looks like we're just going to handwave that away. Can't say I approve of that decision. Gundam has always been way too flamboyant and melodramatic to be rightly called "gritty" or "realistic," but it usually has a bit more verisimilitude than this with regard to actions and consequences.

I guess I just need to adjust my expectations to something a little more shonen-y for this series. Not what I want from Gundam, but it could still be potentially decent as its own thing.

Our heroine eventually talks to another human, an older student who seems to be helping with orientation. And, said heroine gets named NOT as Ericht Samaya, but as "Suletta Mercury." Huh. Is this actually a completely different young redheaded girl with a mobile suit affinity, or did Elnora and Eri change their names to hide from the corpofash? We haven't been told how much time has passed since the prologue, so Ericht could be just about any age, and she could look a lot or very little like her child self. Well, I'll call Suletta Suletta for now, and see if Ericht shows up again as a different character later on.

Suletta seems to have some kind of anxiety disorder. She could barely get the words out to the captain back on the ship, and now, when hailed by Nika the sophomore greeter, she's unable to speak coherently at all.

Nika's attempts to calm her down only make her more flustered and embarrassed. Yeah, this is clinical social anxiety. I know someone who had this, and it's not just cute or endearing, it's a serious and potentially life-ruining mental illness. Suletta manages to just barely choke out that she's never been to an actual school before, which supports that reading; she may have only just now reached a point where she and her parents/therapists/etc think she can try and deal with a school environment.

As Suletta stammers and Nika worries, a trio of other girls come over and start being annoying. Asking if it's true that Suletta is actually from Mercury of all places (erm...she's named after the planet she's from? That would be weird lol)? How do people even survive that close to the sun? Did her mommy make her wear that last-century headband?

Her mommy did, actually, tell her to wear that stylistically outdated hairband, as it turns out. It was also by her mother's request that she came here. The other girls are less than tolerant of this background.

The three Heathers. They're in literally every piece of media that has a teenaged girl protagonist.

I stand in solidarity with my kind. You go queens.

Just then, the platinum-haired girl whose spacewalking escape Suletta foiled walks by. Suletta reacts in terror, like she's afraid of facing her again in a public scene where she's already feeling super exposed. The camera angles when we're looking from Suletta's POV make it seem more like she's just checking out her ass as she walks by, though. I guess Suletta has mixed feelings. Anyway, the would-be escapee with the ass is suddenly addressed by a staff member, who is less than amused by the stunt she tried to pull the other day.

She has a pretty name, though.~

She's given a stern warning (presumably just her most recent of many) for her escape attempt, before the teacher or administrator or whatever the guy on the mobile platform is goes back to what he was doing. Then, Suletta drags her feet up to Miorine and, hiding her face behind her tablet, tells her that she'd like to make it up to her for ruining her escape. Miorine isn't interested.

Her tune changes a little for the better, if also for the highly sceptical, when Suletta says she'll help her make another escape attempt.

Out loud.

In front of a bunch of other students, and just a few dozen feet away from that staff member.

Several other girls ask if she's sure she should be talking about that out in public above a whisper. Miorine seems like she's not sure if she should feel sympathetic or contemptuous toward Suletta at this point.

Then, the teacher announces that class is in session. Erm. Okay. That's pretty abrupt. It didn't look like there was any organizing of the students toward this place in particular, and it doesn't look like this spot is set up for anything, but okay. Then, the mountain landscape displayed all over the ring shuts off, revealing (or just displaying; not clear if the walls just turned transparent, or if its just playing a different .gif than the usual) a starfield all around. And then a set of captions announcing a...duel? What?

A moment later, a pair of hangar doors on opposite sides of that weird empty dirt field behind the campus open, and a pair of much more typical-looking mobile suits charge out and start going at it. A smug voice on the intercom assures everyone that this is an official, society-endorsed duel, so please don't try to interfere. Sorry for interrupting the classes and drills, but this has to take priority.

The mechs' energy weapons seem to be powered way down, if not outright simulated; we see a few beams hit the walls and only cause the intersecting holograms to distort each other a bit. However, they're not pulling any punches when it comes to servomotor-based combat. Even more than just that, actually, one of the duelling mobile suits is using some sort of laser-polearm thing that proves to be fully powered when it jams it into its opponent's cockpit, slicing through armor and hull.

-____-

Then, AFTER impaling the other mech through the head and pulling out the laser-spear to show that he did indeed leave a red-hot tunnel going all the way through it, the victor does this extravagant thing where he charges forward toward the buildings, pushing the hulk of his opponent ahead of him at high speeds, while continuing to chop and crush it to pieces of flying debris.

Is this a terror attack disguised as a duel?

It turns out that the charging mechs are going to run right over Suletta and crush her. And, somehow, it's ONLY Suletta who's in their path. Despite her having just been in the middle of a bunch of other people, near the buildings. Suletta seems to have frozen up from anxiety again, so Miorine has to run out to the spot way out near the duel that Suletta teleported to and drag her back to safety among the others that she'd teleported away from.

As the loser's mech finishes collapsing into a pile of scrap on the ground and the starfield returns to a sunlit mountain landscape, the victor stands his up to its full height again and projects his voice, addressing...Miorine, specifically. Bragging about what a great victory he just had, doesn't she see, isn't he amazing? He always wins. He, Guel Jeturk, will be taking control of the company, AND of Miorine herself. Yeah, he knows she tried to escape, but no use. She's marrying him no matter what.

Guel receives a transmission from someone quietly urging him to just walk his mech back into the hangar now and let everyone continue their classes. He completely ignores this instruction, and instead opens his cockpit to pose dramatically in the simulated sunlight, sneer down at his bride-to-be, and - voice still amplified - goes on a longwinded speech about how the person he just defeated (and possibly killed? That suit REALLY got totaled, and it didn't look like he was taking care to avoid the cockpit area etc) had mocked him. Made fun of how women would rather flee into the vacuum of space than be with him. Well, that guy is dead now, which proves that women would not actually rather flee into the vacuum of space than be with Guel. That's how cause and effect works.

He also declares that when you lose a duel, you have to apologize to your better while laying down in the dirt like a pathetic grovelling worm. Okay, maybe he didn't actually kill his opponent, then? It sure looked like he disintegrated the part that has the cockpit in it, but maybe not. When Miorine turns and starts walking away, he freaks out at her for not staying here to watch the loser apologize like a grovelling worm, she's supposed to WATCH this, her specifically. There's still no sign of movement from the defeated mech or its pilot; if he actually is still alive, he wants nothing more to do with this. Guel's cockpit speakers keep begging him to just quit it already and let everyone else's day continue, to no avail. I guess he's alive then, probably.

This was an amazing scene. It singlehandedly destroyed any and all enthusiasm I had to keep watching Gundam: the Witch from Mercury.

Next scene opens on a little pod greenhouse thing, where our heroine finds the unhappy bride-to-be and tries asking her more about her situation and how she can help prevent her marriage to Mech Pilot Gary Oak. Who explains to her that duels are very important to how things are done at this school, and her engagement to him in the first place was decided by one.

I had heard that this show had some Utena-isms. I had not heard that it was literally space Utena.

...

Apparently, the lead writer is also the author of some Utena novels from twenty years ago.

...

Suletta asks how the hell this social arrangement even happened in the first place, and Miorine bitterly spits out that it was her own father who set things up this way. I guess she's a daughter of the founder, or administrator, or something.

Cut to the father in question, on a different space station. He's presiding over a big meeting of the Benerit Group, an organization that seems to have evolved out of that old arms manufacturing consortium featured in the prologue. It's gotten a lot bigger, with monopolistic power over a long list of corporations and firms. Still weapon-focused, but probably not just that at this point going by how many logos are being displayed. Anyway, evil father bossman is congratulating the three highest-earning companies or franchises of this last period, rewarding their executives with extra bonuses and privileges and such. He also, he's sad to say, has a less happy matter to adress at this meeting. One particular Benerit Group constituent has reported a loss for three consecutive periods. They are no longer an asset to the group, and as such will be removed from it. Which means cutting them out of the entire market, and calling in all their debts, that amount to basically repossessing everything they own.

The executives of the company beg for mercy, but he just cuts them out of the conference call in a needlessly dramatic and dickish gesture that clearly just serves to remind everyone else who's in charge.

As the meeting end, evil bossman is approached by one of his underlings and addressed as Mr. Delling. He looks pretty different as an old man, but now that he's been named he's still clearly recognizable as the prologue's main antagonist.

I guess it's been much longer since the prologue's events than I thought. At least thirty or forty years, looking at how much Delling has aged. I'm guessing that Ericht grew up and had a daughter of her own, making Suletta the granddaughter of prologue protagonist Elnora and the spiritual great-granddaughter of the mad scientist, Cardo or whatever her name was. Gotcha. Mercury seems to have been settled pretty recently, from how it was being talked about in the previous scenes, so it's possible that Ericht and possibly Elnora were among the first wave of colonists. Makes sense for someone trying to hide and lay low.

Anyway, I guess Delling's "auditing agency" really ended up taking off. To the point of eating its parent organization(s). Back then, he seemed like some sort of pseudo-luddite firebrand. Now though, he's coming across much more like one of the grey, bloodless plutocrats who used to fear him because he wasn't quite on the same page as them. I guess either he's been worn down by greed over the decades, or he was only ever playing a character when he appeared to have an ideology.

Boss Delling is told that Miorine has just had two special agents assigned to keeping an eye on her at school, after that recent escape attempt of hers was only foiled by blind luck.

Delling seems neither reassured nor unpleased by this update. The impression one gets is that his daughter is a moderately valuable asset to him, but not something he cares that much about.

Splitting it here.

I'm not fond of the shonen-adjacent magic high school, at least in its most common form with its usual associated tropes. That would make this story a hard sell for me, regardless of where I found it.

Coming after a prologue that hews much closer to both what I'd expect from a new Gundam series and what I'd WANT from a new Gundam series, makes it a jarringly unpleasant surprise instead of just a hard sell.