YoshiKyon

10/10

Holy shit. I doubt I'll say anything here that people don't already know, but if you haven't watched G-Witch yet, do yourself a favour and watch it. I didn't watch much this season, so calling it my anime of the season or whatever doesn't mean a lot, but it's easily one of the best shows I've seen.

I've been vaguely interested in Gundam for a while, and I'm big into other mecha series, so coming in on the least-Gundam Gundam was a weird entry point, but I took it as exactly that - it's not Gundam necessarily, it's just a different mecha series under the Gundam name - so I can't say exactly how different this is for fans of the series. Ignoring the name factor though, this show managed to do everything I wanted from it and then some.

Mild spoilers below.

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I've always been a fan of any media that throws you straight into things, and Witch From Mercury wastes no time introducing the characters, the setting, and getting straight into the action with the duels. I know a lot of people compared this to Revolutionary Girl Utena (which I'm yet to finish, but I think my point still stands) and I get it but it feels superficial - there are lesbians and duels, and that's about it. The inspiration is clear (and presumably they're not even trying to hide it, since the writer has previously worked on Utena-related works) but it's just that, inspiration and nothing more.

In particular, the second half of the series veers far from that style - the political side of G-Witch is incredible, and seeing how each character navigates an environment that's seemingly hostile to everyone is fascinating. I won't name names for spoiler reasons (I'm intentionally keeping this one more spoiler-free because holy shit) but one particular character's motives and actions kept me hooked to the screen and will absolutely be a key factor in me watching the next season.

And then the final episode. I could talk about the final episode in and of itself, but to cut things short to avoid massive spoilers, it's one of the best episodes of any anime I've ever seen. Maybe the best. And maybe that's the recency bias talking, but it's definitely in the top handful, at least. Everything from the dialogue, to the animation, the still shots, the audio, the voice acting, the characters, the action... it's just an absolute wonder from start to finish.

The characters are definitely the big draw on Witch From Mercury - Suletta and Miorine will be the focal point of most posts because haha they're memeable, but the side-cast all have their own incredible aspects too. It's so easy to reel off a list of characters who have incredible moments, or individual stories, or emotional impact - honestly, it'd be easier to name characters who don't, and those are probably countable on one hand.

There are minor nitpicks - and I mean minor - but the characters are incredible, the animation is beautiful (and I'm not usually one to notice good animation, but it really does take it to another level), the action and narrative are perfectly written and perfectly paced, and I'm going to be counting down the days until Season 2.