but I'll be honest besides the name "Ariel" I have no fucking clue what this has to do with the Tempest. is it supposed to be like the Tempest in reverse, like if Prospero sent Miranda to school in Milan?
i'm honestly very curious about the connections to The Tempest, and i've been trying to map them out in my head as the show goes on. obviously it's not a 1:1 but there are some cute little references (BIG SPOILERS for Witch From Mercury eps 0-6 under the cut)
This is a solid breakdown and basically aligns with what I'm thinking, but a couple of extra things are noodling around in my head (spoilers for Witch from Mercury 0-6)
Fully agreed on "Prospera is going to have Caliborn". After we watched episode 2 I turned to my bf and said "the final battle of this series is going to be Suletta in Ariel vs Prospera in Caliborn". It fits all the theming, including Prospera's gundam villain mask.
I started my thinking around the Gundam-Tempest links by thinking about ariel. One thing that is super fun about the tempest is that it has these two core themes/plots, one about the politics of the world and one about Prospera's use of magic. And I think that makes a nice mirror to the show itself, which has politics and has the magic of gundams.
If you're thinking "I bet episode 6 made eve feel a bit smug" then you're correct, because I had guessed earlier when thinking through the ep 0 connections and the use of ariel that Suletta was probably not the child from ep 0, and that the original child's consciousness/personality/soul was somehow in ariel. Ep 6 I think essentially proves that right. We find out that Elan is some kind of replicant or clone, wearing the face of another, and when ariel beats him, we get a glimpse of a small child made of light running around and laughing.
The tempest ends with Prospero walking away from magic. He breaks his staff and puts down his books. But before he does that, he's pretty villainous himself. Wronged by the world, he seeks revenge, and he manipulates others, including ariel. Ariel is a spirit who was imprisoned in a tree. Prospero frees them from the tree, but when ariel begs for actual freedom, prospero demands that ariel serve him instead.
The ending for WfM shows ariel covered in grass and plants, no longer a weapon of war. The happy ending is one where that magic staff gets set down, and ariel is granted their freedom - although in this version I suspect suletta will have to fight her mom to do it.
This is pure speculation but I think the magic element might explain why Elan is called Ceres too? In the play Prospero summons Iris, Ceres and Juno with the help of ariel, and when they vanish he tells Ferdinand not to worry, because they were just spirits he made with magic. I think you can read that as a mirror of what's happening in the series. Elan is a clone specifically made to pilot gundam, he's not a real person in the eyes of Prospero or the head of his house. "These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air:" Since we see Elan die at the end of ep 6, it seems like a kind of a chilling echo of that sentiment. He has melted into thin air because no one actually cared about him or recognised his desires, they only saw him as a tool.
If I'm right about this it would certainly please me, because it really does lean into a reading of the series where gundams are magic - powerful, beautiful, inspiring awe, full of majesty; and fundamentally evil and destructive, involving the coercion of children, something that needs to be put down so that peace can be found.
(Also, another core theme in the tempest is about how a younger generation brings peace because they aren't holding on to the grudges and wounds of their parents, and that feels totally carried over into the series. Guel is like 75% on the good guy side already, I'm just waiting for him to move into Earth House haha)
