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Consider Arson

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30 something transwoman. Setting your heart aflame.


animefeminist
@animefeminist

Content Warning: discussion of colonial violence, racism, ableism

Spoilers for all of The Witch From Mercury

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury is a show that does not just wear its inspirations on its sleeve but builds on them. One such reference point is William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, from which G-Witch borrows three characters: Prospero, Ariel, and Caliban. In doing so, G-Witch spotlights colonialist readings of the play, particularly by highlighting Prospero and Prospera’s manipulative tendencies. Prospera embodies multiple roles from The Tempest, which complicates the narrative. Suletta’s victory using the Calibarn Gundam enables The Tempest’s Caliban to reclaim his rights as an indigenous person by proxy, envisioning a world where the colonized can break away and heal from oppression by joining together.

Colonialist readings of The Tempest often point toward the relationship between Prospero and Caliban as a reflection of the colonizer and the colonized. Before the play’s events, Prospero had landed on the unnamed island, killed Caliban’s mother, Sycorax, and subjugated Caliban. Colonialist readings of the play paint Prospero as a colonizer “who [befriended] the subjugated natives in the name of cooperation […] and then [exploited] and [colonized] them”. Such interpretations align with Caliban’s description of Prospero as “a tyrant, a / sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island.” Caliban’s antagonism toward Prospero lies not only in murdering his mother but also in taking over the island that Caliban should have rightfully inherited.


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