After a few months of rest, the new season of Gundam: The Witch from Mercury is finally upon us. It promises to deliver more thrilling action sequences while also keeping the heartwarming drama that was introduced in the first season. Another thing that we can look forward to in this new season is the complex web of secrets and betrayals that has been the staple of every major Gundam series.
And now, the first episode is finally available. Based on the brief summary that was released last month, this episode should take place a few weeks after the end of the last season. This means we are currently in the aftermath of the hair-raising attacks on the Plant Quetta that takes the lives of so many characters, and injured Miorine’s father, Delling Rembran. So let’s see how things will turn out in this first episode.
Envoys From The Earth
By the order of the executives of the Benerit Group, the terrible attack of the Plant Quetta by the Earthian mercenary called the Dawn of Fold is covered up as just an ordinary accident. Furthermore, Suletta and the other students involved in the incident are told to be quiet and not tell a soul about what happened to them. That is why most students at the Asticassia School of Technology can live their life as usual without a care in the world. So for now, they are simply busy preparing for the upcoming school festival.
Since Miorine has to look after her father, she can’t come back to school for quite some time. As it turns out, Suletta’s mother, Prospera, is also at the same place as Miorine. So Prospera uses this chance to tell Miorine about Delling Rembran’s secret project called “Quiet Zero”. Back on Asticassia, two new students come to the Earthian House. Two girls named Sophie Pulone and Norea Du Noc. Suletta and the rest of the Earthian House welcome them both with an open arm. What they don't know, however, is the fact that these girls are the pilots of the two Gundams that attacked Plant Quetta and killed numerous people just a couple of weeks earlier.
Action-Packed Openings
This episode starts with Suletta inside of Aerial’s cockpit, ready to engage in a series of duels. Apparently, as the title-holder, Suletta has to accept any challenge from her fellow students as long as they give her at least two-weeks' notice beforehand. Due to the latest fight against Shadiq that caused such heavy damages on Aerial, and also the terrible incidents at Plant Quetta, Suletta can’t fulfill her obligation to duel against her challengers. Now, she has accumulated ten duel challenges. Since scheduling a fight against every single one of them would take a long time, they decided to fight her at the same time, one after another.
Every challenger uses different kinds of mobile suits. There are some that use numerous guns and beam weapons, some are specialized in close-quarter combats, and there are also some that focus on the defense by using huge shields to guard against Aerial’s attacks. However, none of them means anything to the new version of Aerial. Aerial and Suletta mow down every single one of them in a matter of minutes, without suffering any major damages. Not only that, Aerial still has some energy left to spare. That is how different the power of a Gundam is compared to regular mobile suits.
Later on in the episode, we found out that Suletta will fight against the two Earthian girls from the Dawn of Fold, under the official dueling rules of the school. So the different fights that we see earlier could work not only as an effective way to convey Aerial’s new power, but it could also be used as a comparison between how a duel between a Gundam vs normal mobile suits looks like, compared to a Gundam vs Gundam fights that we’d likely see in the upcoming episode.
A Hint To Something Greater
There are three major plot points in this episode that could later turn into something huge. The first one is about the aforementioned Delling Rembran’s secret project, Quiet Zero. We don’t know what it is, or what is the ultimate purpose of this project, but since this is a secret project of the most powerful man in the universe, we can expect something groundbreaking and hugely influential from this project.
The second interesting development that we see in this episode is the collective decision of the Benerit Goup’s executives to launch something akin to a search and destroy mission on Earth. After all, one of their most important facility was attacked by an Earthian mercenary. Not only that, this attack heavily injured their leader and killed one of their top executives. It’s no wonder they want to retaliate using the full military might under their command. At this point, they still don’t know about Shadiq’s involvement in this incident, so all they can do is just try to find the Dawn of Fold, and obliterate them.
Last but not least is the purpose behind Sophie and Norea’s decision to come to Asticassia School of Technology. Why would they infiltrate the den of their enemies without a care in the world? What is the purpose behind such a bold mission? Are they working under the command of Dawn of Fold, or are they working together with Shadiq once again? There are so many questions to ask and so many mysteries to uncover. And that is how a Gundam series should be. So it looks like this new season is going in the right direction after all.