*Spoilers For Witch From Mercury Finale Follow*

*Spoilers for Witch From Mercury Finale Follow*

Oh! I do just want to call out dead quick - Ericht is in the little red iceman, and they state that Suletta moved “them” out of the Gundam. Assuming that they don’t mean it in a “we are legion, the one who is many” way, this implies that Elan 4 has been moved to the little blue iceman.

The lack of burgers in Witch from Mercury is giving credence to my theory that burgers are not so much a calling card for Gundam as they are a calling card for Yoshiyuki Tomino. Stay with me here.

Burgers most prominently feature in the original Mobile Suit Gundam, in Zeta Gundam and in Gundam ZZ. Each of them have multiple episodes with burgers, and in many cases, those burgers are explicitly addressed — not incidental details. Zeta Gundam, famously, has Bright chowing down on a burger while Emma drops some psychoanalysis of Kamille on him, but it also has Bright being told off for eating a burger on the bridge. Burgers are all over ZZ, including a scene where Judau hands them out to the crew from a basket. And MSG has a burger as Sleggar Law's death flag, but also an entire episode dedicated to Bright trying to procure salt to make the ship's burgers taste better — both of which were iconic enough to become meals in the Gundam cafe.

And one thing these three shows have in common is that they were all written and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino.

Four examples of burgers in early Gundam works. The top two are from MSG; the bottom two are (L-R) Zeta and ZZ

Tomino doesn't feature them as prominently in other works, but they do still appear. For example, Victory Gundam still includes a scene of characters eating burgers, and Gundam F91 has a burger on a sign in the background. That second example doesn't seem like much until you remember that F91 was originally planned as a full TV series before being compressed into a movie, and has little opportunity for characters to have downtime — so that one appears at all feels very intentional.

You can also see burgers on display in another Tomino work from the period, Space Runaway Ideon.

L-R: Victory Gundam, Gundam F91, Space Runaway Ideon

Meanwhile, when Tomino was kicked off the franchise, the burgers went with him. In G Gundam, Domon is offered a pizza, and there is no sign of burgers. In Unicorn, Banagher takes Aubrey to get some fast food, but they visit a hot dog stand. In Gundam Hathaway, Hathaway and friends get fried chicken. And in Witch from Mercury, the only food on display — aside from the tomatoes — is cafeteria grub and, uh, slabs of ham.

Really, the only instances I know of burgers appearing in a non-Tomino Gundam are in Wing, and all that has is a burger on a billboard and a Wacdonald's sign — both blink-and-you'll-miss-it background details. While on the surface, this may seem comparable to F91, it really isn't: when you have forty-nine episodes and a movie to work with, you can do a lot more than a sign.

Gundam characters pointedly eating something other than a burger

And what happened when Tomino returned to the franchise with Reconguista in G?

The burgers came back too!

Reconguista in G

There is a single exception here: War in the Pocket, not directed by Tomino, does prominently feature burgers (and I don't mean the meme). But that, itself, may be telling. War in the Pocket was the first Gundam series to be made without Tomino's involvement; were the creative leads perhaps inspired to add a gratuitous burger scene to evoke the spirit of Tomino?

All that said, the reason this is still only a theory, and not a master's thesis, is that I don't have all the data yet. I haven't seen every post-Tomino Gundam series (though, frankly, I have no real drive to see what I've missed), and the only one of Tomino's non-Gundam works I've seen is the aforementioned Ideon. If burgers show up in Xabungle, L-Gaim or King Gainer… then I'll really know I've cracked the code.

So I talk a lot about the Calamity War. About what it must’ve been like, about the sheer scale and size of it. About how it wrecked the moon, and grants the Gundam frames this near-mythic significance.

I also know that we’re never gonna get a proper understanding of what happened in it, and that’s ok.

But Y’know what I’d currently settle for?

Knowing just what the hell the Gundam Seere’s about.

What we know:

It’s the ASW-G-70 Gundam Seere, and was completed just prior to the Dantalion. From this, we know it was deployed in the calamity war fairly late. It was active in P.D. 323, whereupon it attacked a civilian craft, resulting in the death of Argi’s family. It’s presumably connected to Ville Klassen (who’s maddeningly difficult to find a picture of when you don’t have the original manga to hand) and therefore the Warren’s (and maybe the Zalmforts?).

Because, while I’m sure that the only picture we have of it (above) is supposed to represent Argi’s perception of it during the event, and may not accurately represent what it looks like, part of me wants to try and kitbash it. But other than it’s hunched pose and clawed hands, I wouldn’t really know where to go. The head does resemble that of the Astaroth, but again, that could be artistic licence to tie it in better when Argi pilots the Astaroth later.

Thing is, it doesn’t otherwise show up in Iron-blooded orphans Gekko, nor does Ville Klassen get his comeuppance. Which makes me think the manga was originally supposed to have another Arc, but I can’t really find anything on this to suggest either way. I don’t think the manga ended poorly, I just think that there were a lot of loose ends, the Seere being one of them.

And now we come to my feelings on Zeon’s mobile suit designs in Mobile suit Gundam Code:Fairy. After my feelings on the Federation’s MS were…… broadly positive, my opinions on Zeon are a tad more divisive.

First up, the Zaku II Sniper type. Honestly, I get it, you want a sniper unit, but you don’t want to deal with the Zaku I sniper type being unwieldy, so you make a new Zaku variant and give it a fancy rifle. Honestly, it’s just fine. No real strong feelings here.

The Zaku high mobility ground type Alma Stirner custom annoys me perhaps more than it should, because the more I look at it the more I think that a Gouf with a rifle would have been a better choice. My main quibble is that the standard version was one of the best mass-production ms of the entire war, being agile and exceptionally suited to combat on earth, in addition to retaining the regular Zaku’s wide range of armaments. So a fancy custom version of one of the best units available as the unit you start with….. it feels a little much. If you’d started with a regular Zaku then upgraded, then sure, that’d be fine. But knowing how good that suit likely is really makes it ring hollow when the plot tries to say that Alma’s outgrown it.

Right, right, enough complaining. What do I think of the design? I do like the basic High Mobility Ground Type, and Alma’s is essentially an up-armed version of it, being equipped with a heat sword, shotgun, missiles and Vulcans in addition to the normal armaments. I do very much like the Vulcan placement, and the missiles pleasingly evoke the Zaku Desert Type, but besides that it’s really just an ace custom unit with some different shoulders. It does do a good job in-game of being the close-combat specialist to the other two’s ranged firepower, but again, I think a Gouf with a rifle would have been similarly adequate.

I’ll probably cover the Zaku Half-Cannon if I ever do anything about the Zaku Cannon, but I honestly don’t have a whole lot of opinions on it, so I’m just gonna skip.

The Dom Gnomides. HATE. I usually find it difficult to express how much I dislike this design. The base unit being a Dom Tropical Test type? Fine, no problems there. But shackling a giant box to its back? The whole in-universe point of mobile suits is that they’re supposed to be agile units that fight at close range, where visual contact is key and the have to be able to dodge enemy fire. The Dom Gnomides can dodge fire about as well as a slug can dodge salt pellets. In-game, it’s difficult to identify incoming fire because the suits so massive it gets in the way. They took a Dom, a suit known for its high speed and mobility, and turned it into something that would struggle to outrun the Zock. But surely, that massive cannon must make up for it, right? Oh, you mean that massive cannon they obtained by

Grave Robbing?

The Dom Gnomides Pilot, Mira Brinkman, obtains the main cannon from the wreck of the Hidolfr, the mobile tank from Gundam Igloo.

In-game, they justify it with “well, at least we can give commander Sonnen (the pilot) a proper burial” but Mira’s primary concern is obviously the cannon. It’s just quite creepy, because at this point, they’re all sunshine and cheers about the whole thing “oh boy, let’s get a cannon for our suit and bury our fallen comrades along the way”, so knowing that in order to build this, they had to hose the remains of Commander Sonnen out of the Hidolfr just feels…… off? At odds with the tone? I know in war you should strive to recover equipment wherever you can, It’s just a massive tonal whiplash if you’ve actually watched igloo. The Dom Gnomides is armed with other weaponry, but honestly, they’re just fine.

The Efreet Jäger is the only one of the main three mobile suits to get a HG model, most likely because they’d already made a bunch of Efreet Variants. Honestly, it’s one of those rare models I would buy purposefully to mod. Paint some camouflage on there, maybe hook a ghille cloak or something over its shoulder, swap the odd weapon or two and I think it’d look really really good. The Efreet Line is another design series I’m very fond of, simply because the basic Efreet and Gouf are both designed to do the same thing, but approach it from different angles. Both are designed to be CQC suits par excellence, so are armed with heat swords, but whereas the Gouf fights more like a Gladiator, with its sword and shield it’s primary weapons, and then the Heat Rod and Vulcans to trip up the enemy; the Efreet fights more as a raider. Armed with two heat swords, trading defence for offence, and smoke discharges to temporarily blind the enemy to its movements- a fatal mistake in a sword fight. It’s typically also armed with a shotgun, for when something’s just out of range of the swords (though in GBO2, you can swap it out for a bazooka or Machine Gun). The Efreet Jäger is a sniper, unheard of in such a melee-focused line. This is essentially my only real criticism of it, another suit that is absolutely amazing at one thing being pigeonholed into yet another generalist. There are good sniping suits available, like the Zaku I Sniper, so an upgraded unit would fit very well. But instead they took a close-quarters unit and handed it a sniper rifle. I will fully admit that maybe something different for the line would be a good idea, but when it’s entire identity is built around one speciality, shifting to a different one just feels wrong.

The basic suit design is quite nice, the chests been modelled nicely and the asymmetry really plays up that this is a suit built for sniping and guerrilla tactics - asymmetrical warfare if you will. The rifle is gorgeous, and I like how it’s got grenades as part of it’s loadout. If I were to say the Efreet jäger is my least favourite Efreet, that’s more about the strength of the Efreet line as a whole than the weakness of the jäger on its own. I will say that, in game, the Efreet jäger is the best thing since sliced bread, purely on the strength of its sniper rifle having two settings. All my quibbles melt away after using it in-game, since you can just pop out of cover, nail an enemy with either single-shot, or explosive bust ammunition, then move on, with chaff and spotter abilities if you feel like playing support, and a heat kunai and shotgun if you need to fight up close.

Finally, we come to the Titania. It shares its name with the fairly obscure PMX-004 Titania designed by Paptimus Scirocco and is based on the absolutely fantastic Kämpfer (another of my all-time favourites). I do very much love the design, a little overarmed maybe (it’s got Vulcans, so I don’t really think it *needs* the arm gatling, and I consistently forget about the Beam Machinegun when using the Titania in game. GBO2’s decision to make it an optional weapon was, I think, a wise one), but the actual design of the mobile suit itself is wonderful. It’s slightly more heavily armoured than the original Kämpfer (so we’re told, anyway) and this is reflected in its remodelling, squaring off the Kämpfer’s smooth lines with blocky armour. The shoulders are just splendid, giving it a good silhouette along with the fuel tanks (which give the impression of wings). The choice to keep the original Kämpfer’s backpack was also a good one, since it effectively breaks up what could have been a rather boring back, and the extension of this design philosophy to the leg vents is also lovely to see. The legs appear to be slightly dainty, but none the less armoured for it, a design I appreciate. The head is gorgeous, it looks like it belongs one one of the Zabi’s royal Guard and evokes the design sensibilities of the Sleeves. Does it suit a Guerilla unit? No. Do I care particularly? Also no. All in all, it’s just a wonderful design variant on the Kämpfer.

However. The rationale behind its creation in-universe bothers me in the same manner that the Dom Gnomides does.

So, upon receiving the Kämpfer frame, unarmoured (and really missing a trick to tie it into the prototype Kämpfer, but whatever), the chief mechanic looked at it and decided “this design promotes recklessness, and is built for speed and power at the expense of armour”. Yes….? It’s an assault suit, designed to get in, cause as much damage as possible, then get out. Heck, the “E” in the Kämpfer’s model number is stated to stand for “Einhauen” - one strike in German. It’s not built for protracted combat, because it was never designed to be. So looking at the Kämpfer, a very specialised unit, and deciding that that specialisation is, itself, wrong is just kinda dumb. Like, they could have been sent the wrong materials, it could have only been intended to be used for one mission and Noisy Fairy managed to keep it running beyond that, it could have been an indication of how desperate Zeon was getting. Heck, the Kämpfer itself is stated to be one of multiple units built of the prototype Kämpfer each tuned for specialist uses, maybe they could simply use a different unit in the line? All of these options would have been better than “well it promotes recklessness and that’s BAAAAAD”

My other criticism is that it’s stated that they added extra thrusters to the design to offset all the extra weight of the armour and weapons (since the Titania doesn’t cast off its weapons like the original). Really now. You’re telling me you added “extra thrusters” to a unit that was already roughly 60% thruster by volume? I know it’s petty(ier) but it still bothers me.

However, none of this detracts from the fact that the Titania is a pretty sweet design, even if I do think I could’ve been integrated better (glances meaningfully in the direction of the Prototype Kämpfer).

Artista - @nizisousakudayo

Sanjulián, wraparound cover illustration for Starstrike, by W. Michael Gear (DAW Books, July 1990). Oil on canvas, 19.5 x 28 inches. (Heritage identifies this painting as Treasure of Light, but that appears to be an error; see the page at the isfdb, https://bit.ly/3BvfH7Y.)

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