*slight Spoilers Follow For Witch From Mercury Episode 17 (or Season 2, Episode 5)*

*slight spoilers follow for Witch from Mercury episode 17 (or season 2, episode 5)*

I have now watched the episode, and my principal emotion is relief. From the way y’all were talking, I was worried Guel was gonna die.

Moebius, 1971

*Follow-up to my previous post about Mcgillis and how Gundam Ibo does myth really well*

Honestly I really like Mcgillis from Gundam ibo, because I like how you can look at him and understand exactly why he does what he does, and why he thought that was a good decision at the time.

And I think this is because he’s quite…… childish? In his reasoning sometimes. Like, him wanting to become the successor to Agnika Kaieru to reform the corrupt gjallarhorn. It feels like a lot of who Mcgillis is and what he does was decided in that moment when he looked at that book, and he hasn’t really questioned or changed his goals in that period of time.

Around the end of Iron-blooded Orphans run, his plan was solidly criticised as he basically just wanted to get Bael, and assumed that the rest of Gjallarhorn would just bow down once he had it. But, to Mcgillis’ mind, why wouldn’t they? That’s the foundation of gjallarhorn. He essentially sat down in the empty throne and expected everyone to do as he said. It’s a simple, childish way of looking at things. And how did he get Orga and Tekkadan on side? He promised to make them “Kings of Mars”. Not ruler, not make them a Gjallarhorn branch. Kings. It’s something a child would offer. It’s why his rhetoric convinces the young Liza Enza, who’s with the revolutionary fleet.

It’s why he gets on so well with Mikazuki. And it’s why I think his relationship with Almiria is so interesting.

(Not that all that’s for nothing, he’s very intelligent and knows a lot about how Gjallarhorn works which is why he’s so effective. It’s just that his goals were decided when he was a child, so they’re still tied to the perceptions of a child)

I do believe Almiria’s underutilised in IBO - she doesn’t do that much and I feel that she could have been used to contrast Kudelia a lot more, as a “princess” figure. But she does showcase a lot of Mcgillis (and Gaelio’s) character. Mcgillis is very gentle, kind and understanding with her and reassures her when she expresses doubt or worry about the situation they’re in. Mcgillis has been in a similar situation to her and probably sees at least a little of himself in her. He treats her the way he wanted to be treated and his childishness probably allows him to understand her a lot better (Though I should point out that he does knowingly manipulate her, her brother and her father a lot during the show, even if he does believe every word he tells them).

Even Montag, his alter ego is another expression of this (and of course, Char reference), because it’s just so dramatic and theatrical. He appears and warns Kudelia like a masked theatre villain and even when he betrays Gaelio, you can tell that a part of him is absolutely loving this. It’s yet another childish affectation that makes perfect sense for someone who fully believes that if he can just get Bael, then everything will fall into place.

This is in contrast to Rustal Elion, who actually understands how the world works and how to change it, in addition to having the force to back that up. Rustal isn’t bound by some ancient legend, he’s looking toward the future and deals in what is, like Julieta and the Bearded Man.

I just find Mcgillis really interesting as a character, because his failure was essentially pre-determined, simply because he got swept up in the legend of Agnika Kaieru, while Rustal kept his feet firmly planted. But then it goes odd slightly, because Mcgillis’ leaves behind a legacy almost accidentally.

Mcgillis allies with Tekkadan, who pilot the legendary Gundam frames, and arranged to have two of the Seven Stars (Gaelio and Carta) killed. This knocks the Issue family out of the Seven Stars and essentially brings the Baudin family into his corner. Mcgillis is later killed by Gaelio, fully restoring the Baudin family and ending the Fareed family (unless that other blond boy Iznario had counts, but it seems unlikely). This leaves the Seven Stars two down. Then, after Mcgillis has died, Akihiro manages to kill Iok, ending the Kujan family of the Seven Stars. This, completely unrelatedly to Mcgillis’ schemes, causes the large-scale reform of gjallarhorn and the end of the Seven Stars system, purely because Mcgillis brought Tekkadan on board, who then got into a feud with Iok and Jasley.

It’s just kinda hilarious that Mcgillis’ plan, which is carried out by Rustal, his sworn enemy, kinda only succeeds post-mortem because Akihiro manages to bring down Iok.

I have also just found out it’s only going to be three episodes, as opposed to a full series.

The protagonist, Rio Hojo, is essentially standard energetic boy, his design reminds me of Wistario Afram’s a lot, and I’m liking the style of protagonists we’re getting here. He’s also Hawaiian, which is cool. It’s a nice contrast to his avatar, who while I don’t dislike, I do think looks kinda generic in comparison (it’s probably the black hair).

I don’t really have any strong opinions on the mentor, Seria Urutsuki, other than the fact that she’s probably gonna be Mask Lady, the Char. However, Mask Lady?

Is that an Ippei Gyoubu lady? I freaking love it so much. Yeah, it’s a lot like his other work, but his other work is good and we get to see this one animated. I absolutely adore the jacket. It’s always wonderful to see the similarities between how he designs people and how he designs mechs, which elements are common, and which are not.

And now; the mobile suits.

The Lah’s just fine. I don’t really dislike it or anything, I’m inclined to believe that a lot of the design choices are due to it wanting to be an Entry Grade, and thus needing it to be based of a suit that already has an Entry Grade model (this being reinforced by the Build Strike Exceed Galaxy also being an Entry Grade). I do like the RX-78 design and it is justifiably iconic, It’s just we see a lot of them, and it gets routine.

The aforementioned Build Strike Exceed Galaxy looks lovely, and I’m sure it’ll make for some wonderful poses and designs, especially with all the effect parts.

I honestly don’t have much of an opinion on either the F-Kunoichi Kai or the Plutine Gundam. I’m not that interested in Cross Silhouette as a line, and Gundam Build Divers re:rise wasn’t that long ago. I would hope that if they’re releasing the Plutine that we may eventually get kits for the Dubious Arche Gundam and Reverse Turn X from the finale, but I wouldn’t expect it. Though I will admit I would love to Display the HGBF Plutine and the HG00 Plutone opposite each other now.

And now the two I’m actually looking forward to. The Shin Burning Gundam and the 00 Diver Arc. The Shin Burning looks to have such a dynamic pose, and it’s precursors were all typically suits that had an emphasis on Martial Arts, so it’ll make for some cool poses even before considering the wings or effect parts. I do think that the legs look a little odd though, probably the roundedness. The 00 Diver Arc is an odd one, since while I very much disliked the 00 sky, I had basically no feelings on the regular 00 Diver. This one looks to have a fancy energy sword system like the AGE FX or 00 Quanta, which I’m very much interested in (as well as those little sword bucklers on the arms). However, I do find the chest quite boring. Sticking a gun in the chest isn’t an alternative to actual visual design.

Finally, I don’t actually have a stake in the “Metaverse” as a concept, in series or out. I think that someone at Bandai just realised they’d accidentally created advertisement for such a thing in the form of the build series. I should probably also mention that due to the massive amount of MMORPG’s and similarly massive, all-encompassing online things in Japan at time of writing, it’s quite possible that it’s a very different climate to that of the western world in regards to how feasible a metaverse’d actually be.

Okay, so we gotta a bunch of information on Gundam Build Metaverse this week, and I got opinions on it.

I’m also gonna just quickly preface this with two things for context.

1. If you’re new to Gundam (since there’s always a bunch of new people with any new show, and Witch from Mercury is no exception), then know that the Build Series has massively lower stakes. The general target demographic is a lot lower, and it typically patterns itself a lot of Pokemon - the whole shonen-y vibe, the whole “to be a master” thing. I personally also like this, but it can be a bit of a tone whiplash going from “mainline” Gundam to the Build Series.

2. As above, I generally like the Build series for both the Anime and the model kits, with both Build Fighters and Build Fighters Try having some of my favourite fight scenes in the entire Gundam series. However, I absolutely loath the first season of Build Divers (I might do a post on it later), and as such a lot of what I don’t want to see is directly cribbed form that.

In a nutshell, though it’s lower-stakes, I’m usually here for the fights and the model designs, and a lot of what I focus on is gonna be those.

I’m trying to stay away from long posts unless it’s analysis or me gushing about something, so I’ll follow this up momentarily.

Honestly, I always figured that the reason why the Clones are the way they are in Star Wars (IE, Why they exist, why they’re written as they are) is that, fundamentally, they were beholden to that line from way back in the original Star Wars (before it was A New Hope) back in 1977. “You fought in the Clone Wars?” So, Clones have to be involved somewhere, they’re stuck with that. They’d already established the Droid armies as being a thing in A Phantom Menace, and it sells the Trade Federation (and by extension, the rest of the separatists) as cowardly, since they’re relying on machines to do their fighting for them, and since they’re expensive, they’re rich as well.

It’s important to remember that around the time of the prequels coming out, there was the very real fear among people of mechanisation in the workplace, machines coming to take their jobs (I’m not saying that isn’t still a thing, just that it was less prevalent then than now), so with that as the backdrop it’s less likely that the viewing public’d get behind a robot army. So, we have to work clones in somewhere, and they can’t be the bad guys, and the Grand Army of the Republic has to come from somewhere…….

Eureka! Make the Grand Army of the Republic clones!

It solves the problem of the giving the republic an army for the conflict, without making them look like the aggressors, or implying that they would use a standing army to enforce rule on the galaxy. The Republic is still the good guys, remember, no matter how corrupt and inefficient certain parts of them are. It also enables them to sell this conflict as being a sith plan, since this army “just happens” to have been set aside for this very purpose.

It’s also worth noticing that, in the movies at least (near as I can tell, until The Clone Wars (The CG tv show) the clones have a far more varied depiction, from being varied characters with their own views on the war, to being essentially droids made of meat, with a lot of variation between those two binaries. The Clone Wars (as above) took the decision to follow the more humanist line. I’m focusing on the movies since, again, primary source) the clones don’t really have much personality. Mostly that’s because there’s only so much screen time, and it’s being taken up by Jedi, Senators and the like, but it really feels like the only reason they’re human is so we, the viewers can emphasise with them as the good guys and to provide foreshadowing as to where those suspiciously similar stormtrooper fellows come from.

“Are the Clones slaves?” Is, at least to me, a fairly thorny ethical question in its own right, both in and out of universe. I won’t go into the specifics of that now, but it is absolutely a fun and interesting question to ponder. But there’s a myriad of reasons as to why this decision was made, so making such a binary choice as throwing out everything else because the clones are apparently slaves is honestly just kinda doing the series an injustice.

People complain that the jedi don't act appropriately to being forced to use a slaver army, but they seem to forget that the jedi can't. Not just in universe (although yes, in universe there was nothing the jedi could do about this decision made by the senate) but narratively.

The jedi can't comment on the clone's slavery because the narrative won't let them! As a matter of fact, the narrative won't let anyone mention this! Literally no one calls the clones slaves seriously, even characters who by all accounts should feel that way because the narrative won't let them because they are fictional people created by a team of writers.

The clones aren't slaves in universe because the writers refuse to write them that way. Do I personally feel that this should have been a plot point? Yeah I think it would have been interesting! But they didn't!

Is it fun to explore this in fanfiction? Yeah it totally is! I know I would mention it in any fic I write in the future.

Does it make for good media criticism or analysis? No! This is just straight up not how you professionally analysis media. It is worth bring up in a discussion about the creators and exploring why they didn't bring these things up in the series. That would be good media analysis.

But as "proof" that some characters are bad this fails dramatically. Why? Because then you must apply this logic to every character, meaning not just the jedi are evil but actually every single character in the whole series, yes all of them, are evil. Once you do that you have successfully thrown away any meaning the original work had. It is all pointless now.

People confuse in-universe (watsonian) and out-of-universe (doylist) analysis. 'Why did no one do anything about the clone's situation?' is a shit watsonian analysis. But 'why the fuck did the writers write the clones like this?' is a GREAT doylist question.

Media analysis should add meaning, or explain meaning, or even describe why you feel the work lacks meaning, but it should never take all meaning away.

It is the same reason droids aren't called slaves. It would complicate the narrative and distract from whatever the writers were actually trying to say. The writers don't want to go there, so they don't.

Ah! I meant to make a follow up to this, didn’t I?

Well then, a large part of the factor of why I love this as an element so much is that it ties in significantly with Mcgillis, whom I really, really like.

Mcgillis is essentially shaped by the mythology of the world, specifically he’s based a lot of who he is on the legend of Agnika Kaieru. Which makes a lot of sense, honestly. He’s a child in this bad situation, so he reads an old book of legends and is enraptured by what he sees. The old, uncorrupt gjallarhorn. A time of legend, where mystical heroes piloting the legendary Gundam frames fought for the very preservation of humanity. Pretty much every action he takes after him and Gaelio first fight Tekkadan are to create this new, better world.

And he really believes it.

He believes he can do it, he believes that with the backing of Tekkadan, these heroes who pilot the legendary Gundam frames, used by his idol, the man he strives to be like, he can reform gjallarhorn to what it should be.

And honestly, he has a lot of successes. Conditions generally improve with Kudelia’s speech in parliament, the deaths of two of the Seven Stars weaken Gjallarhorn’s position and leaves him a lot of influence, and (as shown in IBO Gekko) at least some of the corruption in Gjallarhorn is exposed and shut down (like Coral).

But he makes sacrifices, like Gaelio and Carta. There’s a lot of interpretations of his relationship with them - was it all a fraud, did he ever value them etc. but the interpretation I tend to go with is that he does value them (as he says in his conversation with Gaelio when he fights him at Edmonton). He fully expects Gaelio to die and he seems like he wants to send him out well. I believe he generally did value them, but he realised that the best way for his plan to work is to have them both die (especially since Carta is essentially under the thumb of his Iznario, who Mcgillis definitely wants out of the way). He’s just gotten swept up in his plan actually working that he’s willing to pay any price.

It’s actually a really good parallel with Mikazuki. Mikazuki makes a deal with Barbatos, trading his bodily functions for the power to protect his friends.

Mcgillis makes a deal with Bael, trading his friends for the power to change things with Bael.

(Heck, there’s even a body autonomy argument there, since both of them are defined by not having control over their own bodies, Mikazuki with the Alaya-Vijnana system needing to be implanted to give him the power of piloting without training and Mcgillis with his body being traded to Iznario, granting him knowledge of Gjallarhorn and Agnika Kaieru. This is reinforced by Mcgillis choosing to re-create the original Alaya-Vijnana system and implant in his body in order to pilot Bael, and Mikazuki choosing to have a child with Atra).

I also think that Mcgillis’ relationship with Almiria is a really good facet of his character, but I’ll cover that in a separate post, since this one’s getting a little long.

In essence, Mcgillis gets swept up in this grand mythology, of which Bael is the lynchpin.

Just look at him when he rallies the fleet in Bael, it looks like it’s out of a painting, or a propaganda piece (honestly a lot of that scene has those vibes). It’s generally unclear as to whether he’s actively cultivating this image specifically to rally his forces, or whether he’s just so deep into being the resurrection of Agnika Kaieru that he just doesn’t notice. He says it himself “this is as it should be”. This. In this moment, he’s living up to the ideal he wants. He is Agnika Kaieru reborn, the man who will reform the corrupt gjallarhorn and lead it into a new, better age.

Then Rustal fires the second volley.

It’s just wonderful to watch, as Mcgillis is swept up in this grand mythology, converting the Gjallarhorn revolutionary fleet to his cause and promising to make Orga the King of Mars. And Rustal just does not care one bit.

I do really like the whole mythic aspect that Iron-Blooded Orphans brought to the table. Not just in regards to the Gundams or mobile suits specifically (though those are wonderful), but just the world in general.

Tekkadan being enshrined as “The Devils of Mars”, and Gjallarhorn’s naming convention having so much influence from Nordic legends and mythology. It really sells the world as not only believable, but where these things have power.

Where a legend can make or break something.

And the mobile suits exemplify this.

I really like the Gundams being these forgotten, almost revered machines. The legendary warriors that ended a war over three centuries ago. The relics of a bygone age, taken up by modern peoples for their own, comparatively petty, causes. That mystic aspect works really well, since it is a setting built on myth, with Kudelia’s Maiden of Revolution and Julieta’s knight imagery.

Gjallarhorn as a whole has a lot of knightly imagery in its mobile suits and it’s aesthetics. Gjallarhorn is the organisation that saved the world from the calamity war after all, so they project that image with their dress and mobile suits. Even Lieutenant Crank and Ein are emblematic of a knight and squire, with Gaelio and Ein only furthering the comparison

Ein’s is a squire, who’s knight is slain by bandits. In desperation he pledges himself to another knight in hopes of avenging his lord, eventually giving up his life to protect his new knight, who gave him that chance. He rises again as a black-armoured murderer, who is lost to his vengeance, focusing only on that single goal, being slain by the very bandits he sought to avenge himself on. Years later, his “memory” is carried by the knight he saved, which is used to give him a chance against his foe.

It sounds like a classical story, and that’s just Ein. It only touches on Gaelio, but he undergoes his own arc, intertwined with Ein. There’s a bunch of imagery like that, particularly with Gjallarhorn. One example would be railguns.

They’re fairly common weaponry, but they’re wielded so much like lances. Iok seeks to use one to slay Hashmal, so even though they’re ranged weapons in a world defined by CQC, they don’t seem out of place, because they still seem like a comparatively simple weapon. Dainsleif’s looking like bows and being employed en mass a la archers would be another example. It even adds to the knightly theme, since one of the main downfalls of knights was the invention of the longbow, a bow capable of piercing armour.

So you have this setting built on all this, where even Tekkadan, who don’t even pay lip service to the idea are part of this grander mythology.

And then Rustal shows up and completely upends it.

It just all works really well.