Kidou Senshi Gundam: Suisei no Majo - Prologue

"Happy birthday dear Ericht…"

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Prologue) serves really well as a, well, prologue.

It's a great first step, and an essential one, to the follow up series (that is currentely airing as I'm writing this and you just really check out).

Here in this 25 minute episode we're hit with a lot of emotions that at first glance may seem irrelevant as most of the characters here aren't in the show for reasons I'll not elaborate here, but this standalone episode manages to make you feel for them in a really compelling way, and for me that's it's biggest strength.

Well, that and ... the frankly AMAZING production by Sunrise as always, they are absolutely great when it comes to Gundam (and other series as well).

So if you love mechas, Gundam, and otherwise, give this a shot, and the follow up series too.

Ps: This made me cry like a baby by the end of it, so beware.

- Will Neot

The WfM prologue is simply amazing. The animation is tight and fluid and there are never any overt signs of them resorting to CGI to pad the budget. The soundtrack is a perfect complement to every scene, swinging from orchestral highs to bassy digital lows that underline everything happening on screen. Additionally, the sound design itself is so clear and crisp that there’s an impact and almost addictive tone to everything. The designs of the mechs themselves, which will always fall under the territory of subjective taste, are all incredibly solid and interesting machines that highlight the differences in design philosophy between the two companies ... present, like in the later WfM media.

And while you’re not given much time to be invested in these characters and the struggle they’re facing, it truly does the best it can to make you invested in them with the little time it’s allotted.

No matter what you think of the series that followed, this is as close as you can get to a perfect prologue.

It's funny that the original MSG—as well as many other mech titles of the 1980s and onward—would get ragged on for being the equivalent of overly long toy commercials, but as time went on and the genre became more sophisticated and scripting improved, this ceased to be a common criticism, yet it seems like we've come full circle and now it looks more like a toy commercial than ever, as the overcooked CGI varnish slathered all over the mobile suits makes them look like stop-motion action figures, zipping around through space and firing lasers and satellite weapons everywhere.

I don't want to be too harsh ... with The Witch from Mercury prologue, as it's essentially a short 24-minute 1-episode teaser/pilot for the upcoming series, but it looks like it'll be another stale rehash of the CGI era of the Gundam universe, and certainly not up to par with Thunderbolt. The action is okay, but this is far from the glory of 0083, 0080, Zeta, and countless other series.

It starts fast and there's no real personality to any of the characters or time for them to stand-out more than the cardboard characters they use in the backgrounds for Mawaru Penguindrum or whatever. TWfM features an alternate timeline, as the plot appears to involve greater human integration with technology to even venture into space and colonize the stars. Why? I don't know. They seemed fine doing whatever and making colonies and dropping colonies like it was nothing, even without any shiny add-ons in all the other series. Apparently, if they don't, their face gets red and it looks like they have hundreds of fire ant bites on their face—ouchie!

There's a bunch of political blather and something about feuding corporations—apparently, the "good" guys want to expand into space, and the "bad" guys want to prevent that from happening, probably because of opposition to the transhumanist aspect or corporate competition, but it's not very clear.

Of course, we get classic scenes such as the baddies waltzing into the old girlboss's office, and they're like "You're gonna die today, granny." Then they just sit there and gab with each other for a while, pointlessly. I've never understood these scenes. Is the idea to make them piss their pants and beg for mercy and embarrass themselves? Why not just shoot them? Guess the credits weren't long enough... there's nothing that compelling about the script, but you can't expect much from 24 minutes.

When we observe wider shots of the art, the CGI percentage tends to be high, but it's not too bad for the character art and tighter shots. The music reminds me a tad of Penkin because of the style of the choirs, but most of the tracks are pretty humdrum and sound about as good as the bland gray textures of the hallways of the space shuttle look.

Definitely not a good start, but here's hoping to them pulling through and producing a good story.