Gundam: The Witch from Mercury channeled its anti-capitalist subtext into a single, incredible punch

is Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch of Mercury about the urge for personal revenge by the Medium giant robot? Yes. Is it about the gender dynamics of space exploration defined by economics over environment? Yes. Is it about space lesbians? Hopefully yes. But right now it’s also about an anti-capitalist queen beating the soul out of rich idiots.

This week’s episode of The Witch of Mercury“Unseen Trap” peels off a bit Utena-like dueling politics at her swanky school for mech-pilot corporate scions (the queer vibes between Suletta and her newfound fiancée Miorine thankfully persist) to shine a spotlight on the world the Asticassia School of Technology is preparing its students in a for way we haven’t really seen it on the show yet.

This isn’t fueled by mobile suit combat like the series has been to date, but rather a broader conflict between “earths” – natives of humanity’s homeworld – and “spacedwellers” – people born in humanity’s nascent space colonies and living there Life. Although there it was in shades (much of Suletta’s antagonism towards her fellow students is fueled by the fact that someone from Mercury, home to a small group of miners extracting valuable resources in dangerous, debilitating conditions, is considered a “bumboy”) , Unseen Trap makes this far clearer both on the macro level of the world beyond Asticassia and on the micro level between the haves and have-nots of the student body.

We first see it at school, where Chuatury Panlunch (one of Sulleta’s few potential allies at school) fails a student training exam in Asticassia’s “Demi-Trainer” suits when her mech’s screen camera is sabotaged with time-delayed spray. Chuatury, affectionately known (despite her aggressive attitude) as Chuchu, is revealed to be the head of Asticassias’ Earth House, one of many factions among the school’s students who are otherwise dominated by groups forming around the corporations that fund t and checkhe school, and the rungs of this enterprise. As Suletta, a Spacian herself—Ostracized by her fellow students after surprisingly defeating top duelist Guel Jeturk not just once, but twice – comes to Earth House in search of teammates to help her participate in their own pilot test, we learn that Chuchu’s wild antagonism towards Spacians is due in the horrific way in which they and other earthlings are looked down upon in society.

Chuchu and other terrestrials are treated as disposable workers by the Spacians, who have turned the solar system into an economic powerhouse, unworthy of inheriting the lavish efforts of space colonization undertaken solely because of the terrestrial labor. We see it at the Earth House in Asticassia, where the Earthian students are given a run-down hangar to fix their suitsand live in itrather than the lavish surroundings where we briefly see other students. We see it in the news flickering on their TV showing mobile suits from some of the most powerful companies in the Benerit group that controls Asticassia, which is cracking down on Earth workers who are protesting labor abuses committed in the name of Spanish capital became.

Dividing this great socio-political conflict into Earth vs. Colonies is no stranger Gundam—This has long been a core theme of the franchise — but relating it explicitly to the ills of capitalism and, beyond that, to the level of class conflict is something the franchise has otherwise kept on the thematic fringe, rather than making it as lyrically explicit as we have look here.

All of this adds upin the most brutal acts of violence in Witch of Mercury until now. When the same Spacians who sabotaged Chuchu’s Demi-Trainer use the same trick Suletta during her checks – not because Suletta is just a “dump” of Mercury, but for having deigned to associate with Earth House, Chuchu angrily watches as Suletta slowly collapses and attempts to work through her suit, which is being blinded, before crying her heart out to Miorine over her communication. When Chuchu notices the two girls watching their prank from afar and cackling happily, Chuchu jumps out of her own demi-trainer, dashes towards her and, well…

It is brutally. This girl’s body just flopslike she got a mental Blue Screen of death from a single blow. The fight between Chuchu and the second girl is just as brutal, catching Suletta in the crossfire with a horrific punch and eventually leading to Chuchu and Suletta becoming friends. but also in the fact that both have to take their pilot exams again.

IThat’s incredible A series that has given us some excellent, strong action scenes so far – ones that extrapolate the violence inflicted on the humanoid forms of their mecha to their larger themes of abuse, or, like in the same episode, the horror, these mechas versus humans directed to see goals – can specify his most brutal action to date a single smack echoing from one young girl to another the anger of Witch of Mercury‘s larger class conflict.

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