The next season of mobile Suit Gundam the Witch from Mercury begins tomorrow (the first is all on Youtube now) so I went back to episode 12, and it's all about transitions. Big moment after big moment, revelations keep dropping, sure, but each of them says "what came before is gone, what's next is new". And that also holds with the small moments, like Suletta passing through a threshold and stepping onto blood splatter on the other side. But there's one I want to talk about more, so spoilers after the Read More.

Guel's fight? Exactly what I'm talking about. He loses the head of his mech. In every previous battle, that's the end. But those were all duels. This is a battle. He passes from duelist to something else (soldier? warrior? tune in next time I guess) by sacrificing the head and fighting without it. It's significant that happens before the eyecatch, before Suletta gets her pep talk, before the Gundams face off. In retrospectives, the after-credits scene is going to be the big moment everything changed, but it's actually Guel's sword punch.