Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury - Anime Episode Discussion

[Xeiros]

This whole story/show so far has been predicated on a problem. How can humans live in space without their bodies succumbing? One solution people came up with is using Permet to ehance their bodies via Gund-Arm technology. Doing so however causes data storm feedback of which prolonged exposure results in death.

This nagging little issue was never resolved. The Gundam Curse. So Delling goes these big robots shouldn’t kill people. People should kill people. Let’s destroy all them Gundams and kill all the people that make them! So they did or so they thought...

A couple decades and change later Gundams are still being produced, are still killing people and one of the survivors of the let’s get rid of them Gundam attacks actions has resulted in the direct and indirect deaths of hundreds to thousands of people.

All of that loss of life from those who died using Gund-Arm to those that died because they were involved in its research to those that died because they tried to halt said research. All of it for nothing.

Ericht Samaya was the one exception. That smaller glimmer of hope that Permet and Gund-Arm might just be humanities ticket to a better future in space. She could have changed everything, but instead they destroyed that chance and with it forfeited countless more lives as a result.

I suppose if sales had been poor it certainly would have been for nothing. Even if Eri, Prospera, and every one else survives this battle the whole show has quite the bleak depressing outlook if it ends with the Gundam Curse still a thing, with people still struggling to live in space. What was it all for?

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by azarhal

Rewatch the scene where Prospera nudge Miorine to go down the Earth and read the TV news headlines. It clearly says that Quinharbour is an active warzone with multiple casualties on both side before Miorine decide to go down to Earth. Violence happening is why Miorine decided to go there in the first place.

And? No one denied that.

You may want to rewatch the scene where Miorine secured a truce before Prospera fucked it up. Even before that, violence had eased off because of her arrival.

The place being violent beforehand doesn't absolve Prospera of responsibility for her action.

Although, I think I see where you are coming from. You think the Earthians thought the Benerit troops were setting them up with the tank and returning fire on them. But nothing suggest that in the dialogues or the sequence of events:
- tank fire at Aerial
- considerable lapse of time so Aerial can fly outside of the city, pick up the gun, find and get into the underground bunker and then fire the gun
- Gundams explode underground outside the city behind a mountain
- Earthian A: An attack!?
- Earthian B: They did it, its's the Spacians!
- Earthian troops start to unload everything on the Benerit troops.

The Earthians B didn't check what exploded or if any of their troops were actually attacked.

I think violence had eased off in the city and Prospera very deliberately reignited it for her own goals.

What she did was the equivalent of going into a crowded theater, screaming "Gun!" and then firing a gun into the air so that people would end up getting killed in the press of people running away.

As for Prospera wanting Miorine as President. I'm actually puzzled about it personally. It doesn't appear to be the case with Prospera ghosting Miorine back on Earth and booting up Quiet Zero almost at the same time Miorine got elected President. I've seen a lots of people complaining about it online too.

Nothing to be puzzled about. She just needed to Miorine to be President so she could finish up Quiet Zero. Plus Shaddiq was on to her so she definitely needed to make sure he couldn't become President.

Torturing Miorine was probably icing on the cake.

[Key Board]

Prospera didn't need Miorine to win
Just to buy some time and stall the election results.

Quiet Zero was nearly complete by the time Miorine went to Earth.
It had hundreds of Gundnodes and that's not something you can rush in days.

I suspect things would mostly play the same way even if Miorine didn't go to Earth.
It only meant Quiet Zero having to fight more Lfrith Gundam types,
And that's useless against QZ unless you can go Permet 5 and only Suletta is uniquely capable of doing that without instantly dying.

//

[Frontier]

Originally Posted by Xeiros

This whole story/show so far has been predicated on a problem. How can humans live in space without their bodies succumbing? One solution people came up with is using Permet to ehance their bodies via Gund-Arm technology. Doing so however causes data storm feedback of which prolonged exposure results in death.

This nagging little issue was never resolved. The Gundam Curse. So Delling goes these big robots shouldn’t kill people. People should kill people. Let’s destroy all them Gundams and kill all the people that make them! So they did or so they thought...

A couple decades and change later Gundams are still being produced, are still killing people and one of the survivors of the let’s get rid of them Gundam attacks actions has resulted in the direct and indirect deaths of hundreds to thousands of people.

All of that loss of life from those who died using Gund-Arm to those that died because they were involved in its research to those that died because they tried to halt said research. All of it for nothing.

Ericht Samaya was the one exception. That smaller glimmer of hope that Permet and Gund-Arm might just be humanities ticket to a better future in space. She could have changed everything, but instead they destroyed that chance and with it forfeited countless more lives as a result.

I suppose if sales had been poor it certainly would have been for nothing. Even if Eri, Prospera, and every one else survives this battle the whole show has quite the bleak depressing outlook if it ends with the Gundam Curse still a thing, with people still struggling to live in space. What was it all for?

I don't know if there's any way to resolve that that's not inserting human consciousness into Gundam's that can take the brunt of the Permet aftereffects.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by Key Board

Prospera didn't need Miorine to win
Just to buy some time and stall the election results.

Quiet Zero was nearly complete by the time Miorine went to Earth.
It had hundreds of Gundnodes and that's not something you can rush in days.

I suspect things would mostly play the same way even if Miorine didn't go to Earth.
It only meant Quiet Zero having to fight more Lfrith Gundam types,
And that's useless against QZ unless you can go Permet 5 and only Suletta is uniquely capable of doing that without instantly dying.

//

Shaddiq already had Prospera in his sights. So if Miorine didn't go to Earth, Shaddiq would win the election and probably kill Quiet Zero on day 1.

[azarhal]

Originally Posted by Endscape

And? No one denied that.

You may want to rewatch the scene where Miorine secured a truce before Prospera fucked it up. Even before that, violence had eased off because of her arrival.

The place being violent beforehand doesn't absolve Prospera of responsibility for her action.

You denied it when you said that Prospera was responsible for the powder keg exploding. Prospera has nothing to do with the insurgency in Quinharbour. It was ongoing long before they got there. There was only a ceasefire for the negotiation with both side having heavy armed troops looking at each others ready to shoot if necessary.

And the leaders only promised to extend the ceasefire for 10 days (which nobody had the time to communicate to anyone). If Miorine didn't win the Presidency (which she wouldn't have with just 10 more days of ceasefire), it was back to full assault for the Earthians.

Originally Posted by Endscape

I think violence had eased off in the city and Prospera very deliberately reignited it for her own goals.

Kenanji didn't bring more troops than Miorine ordered because things were eased off in the city.

And Prospera only stated goal was destroying the Gundams because they were a threat to Quiet Zero. There is nothing that suggest she gave a damn what happened after she blows up those Gundams. The next time we see her, she is booting up Quiet Zero.

Originally Posted by Endscape

What she did was the equivalent of going into a crowded theater, screaming "Gun!" and then firing a gun into the air so that people would end up getting killed in the press of people running away.

Comparing a warzone full of heavily armed troops under a flimsy ceasefire with one side having zero troop discipline to a theater with people doing a panic rush exit. That's something.

Ceasefire have clearly market troops and safe zones for the duration of the ceasefire. All parties involved in the ceasefire are responsible for their own soldiers respecting the ceasefire. And if something explode near your troop during a ceasefire you check what exploded and if your troops were actually hit, you don't start yelling it's the other side who did it right away and start firing on them.

Originally Posted by Endscape

Nothing to be puzzled about. She just needed to Miorine to be President so she could finish up Quiet Zero. Plus Shaddiq was on to her so she definitely needed to make sure he couldn't become President.

Prospera boot up Quiet Zero the same episode Miorine just gets back from Earth to Benerit HQ and the TV news mention Mio just won the Presidency. Which means Quiet Zero was finished before Miorine won the Presidency, so Prospera didn't need her to win for that specific reason.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by azarhal

You denied it when you said that Prospera was responsible for the powder keg exploding. Prospera has nothing to do with the insurgency in Quinharbour. It was ongoing long before they got there. There was only a ceasefire for the negotiation with both side having heavy armed troops looking at each others ready to shoot if necessary.

And the leaders only promised to extend the ceasefire for 10 days (which nobody had the time to communicate to anyone). If Miorine didn't win the Presidency (which she wouldn't have with just 10 more days of ceasefire), it was back to full assault for the Earthians.

No one said Prospera was responsible for the tensions at Quinharbour. What she is responsible for is restarting the violence when they had a ceasefire. People died who would have otherwise lived because of her actions.

Kenanji didn't bring more troops than Miorine ordered because things were eased off in the city.

Things eased off because Kenanji brought the troops, but Prospera restarted the violence anyway.

And Prospera only stated goal was destroying the Gundams because they were a threat to Quiet Zero. There is nothing that suggest she gave a damn what happened after she blows up those Gundams. The next time we see her, she is booting up Quiet Zero.

It was Prospera's idea for Miorine to forcibly suppress Quinnharbour so she could be President. Miorine refused and decided to negotiate instead, so Prospera did a false flag to get her desired outcome anyway.

Comparing a warzone full of heavily armed troops under a flimsy ceasefire with one side having zero troop discipline to a theater with people doing a panic rush exit. That's something.

Ceasefire have clearly market troops and safe zones for the duration of the ceasefire. All parties involved in the ceasefire are responsible for their own soldiers respecting the ceasefire. And if something explode near your troop during a ceasefire you check what exploded and if your troops were actually hit, you don't start yelling it's the other side who did it right away and start firing on them.

You know it's not an either-or thing, right? Benerit and the Earthian forces having bad fire discipline doesn't mean her attempts to start a false flag are suddenly not a big thing.

Prospera boot up Quiet Zero the same episode Miorine just gets back from Earth to Benerit HQ and the TV news mention Mio just won the Presidency. Which means Quiet Zero was finished before Miorine won the Presidency, so Prospera didn't need her to win for that specific reason.

That'd be a trick, since Quiet Zero is still not finished.

Prospera rushed her plan and decided to start Quiet Zero early. Prospera wanted Mio to win so she could finish up Quiet Zero peacefully, but Shaddiq getting rolled and the SAL moving against Benerit for real forced her to step up her game.

[azarhal]

Re-watching the Aerial vs Calibarn fight sections, there are multiple scenes where we see "lightnings" inside of the Calibarn cockpit. I wonder what that means.

Originally Posted by Endscape

That'd be a trick, since Quiet Zero is still not finished.

The missing units were already built, the main station was operational. It was finished. All that was missing was shipping the missing Units to Quiet Zero.

I'm still in coin toss mode over Prospera accelerating her plans. On one side it seems SAL involvement made her do so, on the other she said "the wait is over" when she learned they were into them which makes it looks like she was waiting for them to make their move to move to the next phase of her plan.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by azarhal

The missing units were already built, the main station was operational. It was finished. All that was missing was shipping the missing Units to Quiet Zero.

So it wasn't finished. I mean, didn't they say the output was what, 60% of the max?
That's not complete, that's good enough.

I'm still in coin toss mode over Prospera accelerating her plans. On one side it seems SAL involvement made her do so, on the other she said "the wait is over" when she learned they were into them which makes it looks like she was waiting for them to make their move to move to the next phase of her plan.

I took that as more of a "Damn, they finally caught on to us" than them actually being a part of the plan.

[azarhal]

Originally Posted by Endscape

So it wasn't finished. I mean, didn't they say the output was what, 60% of the max?
That's not complete, that's good enough.

I consider something finished when it's functional with all its features. Quiet Zero is functional with all its intended features even if its performance can be boosted further.

It's also a bit unclear if the missing parts are just more gundnodes or something else. A fan on twitter calculated the amount of vertices in the first showing of Quiet Zero datastorm sphere and there was ~650 gundnodes involved. To have a larger sphere, you'll need more gundnodes.

I actually have a lots of questions about Quiet Zero too:
- the permet reactor has to be recharged, that means the datastorm can't be permanent. Was it designed that way or is it a tech limitation?
- can it build its own gundnodes? Because Suletta destroyed quite a few and that means the datastorm sphere size is exposed to over time attrition (wear and tears or attacks).
- Have wee seen 60% Quiet zero so far? Because 40% larger of what we have seen will not cover all of Earth and the Earth-Moon Lagrange points around it (if that is what they call Earth Sphere).

I feel like something doesn't adds up about Quiet Zero or the writers didn't really think it through.

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by azarhal

I consider something finished when it's functional with all its features. Quiet Zero is functional with all its intended features even if its performance can be boosted further.

By this definition, Quiet Zero is still incomplete, since it cannot operate at its intended design specifications, which is one of it's features.

The parts Prospera wants aren't add-ons.

[azarhal]

Originally Posted by Endscape

By this definition, Quiet Zero is still incomplete, since it cannot operate at its intended design specifications, which is one of it's features.

The parts Prospera wants aren't add-ons.

You are basically saying a server side software isn't finished two years after its release because the devs made it scale better post release.

Nothing in what Belmeria said suggest how QZ works is going to change because the datastorm covers a larger area. The units are in fact add-ons to improve its scaling based on what Belmeria said. Also, said add-ons are finished, just not installed and they are probably not hard to install because there was just 5 people and one MS in Quiet zero.

edit2: Another point, viewers believe that Prospera needed Miorine to finish building Quiet Zero (i.e. resources to build it), not to assembled finished parts.

---edit
Rewatching the scene where Belmeria explain things, the top right text mention "[datastorm] domain predicted to expend further in the future" and the one under it says that the datastorm is growing bigger overtime and at a faster rate. There is zero mention of the units on the tech display. Maybe the units are really just power packs/generators and Quiet Zero naturally expend overtime if it can stay on.

[Key Board]

Originally Posted by Endscape

Shaddiq already had Prospera in his sights. So if Miorine didn't go to Earth, Shaddiq would win the election and probably kill Quiet Zero on day 1.

I think 2 weeks is more than enough time. It was already too late for Shaddiq. I would even argue that it was already too late once Aerial reached Permet 8

and as said QZ already had hundreds of Gundnodes. That's not something you can rush.

I concur that she did need Miorine to run though. Otherwise maybe they wouldn't even bother with an election campaign at all. She just didn't need Miorine to win. Being a smoke screen, and a means to divert Jeturk assets for a bit more Gundnodes was good enough.

I'd argue that she needed to keep Miorine in sight too, because Miorine is one of the only people who could have disrupted QZ due to her connection to Nottrette.

//

[Endscape]

Originally Posted by azarhal

You are basically saying a server side software isn't finished two years after its release because the devs made it scale better post release.

No I'm not. Quiet Zero was built to operate at a certain range and because it is lacking in certain equipment it cannot perform to specification, thus it's incomplete by your own definition.

Nothing in what Belmeria said suggest how QZ works is going to change because the datastorm covers a larger area. The units are in fact add-ons to improve its scaling based on what Belmeria said.

The range at which something is operational is part of how it works, yes, especially when it cannot operate at max because it's lacking parts.

Also, said add-ons are finished, just not installed and they are probably not hard to install because there was just 5 people and one MS in Quiet zero.

And? If it's not installed, it's still unfinished.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by Xeiros

This whole story/show so far has been predicated on a problem. How can humans live in space without their bodies succumbing? One solution people came up with is using Permet to ehance their bodies via Gund-Arm technology. Doing so however causes data storm feedback of which prolonged exposure results in death.

This nagging little issue was never resolved. The Gundam Curse. So Delling goes these big robots shouldnÂ’t kill people. People should kill people. LetÂ’s destroy all them Gundams and kill all the people that make them! So they did or so they thought...

A couple decades and change later Gundams are still being produced, are still killing people and one of the survivors of the letÂ’s get rid of them Gundam attacks actions has resulted in the direct and indirect deaths of hundreds to thousands of people.

All of that loss of life from those who died using Gund-Arm to those that died because they were involved in its research to those that died because they tried to halt said research. All of it for nothing.

Ericht Samaya was the one exception. That smaller glimmer of hope that Permet and Gund-Arm might just be humanities ticket to a better future in space. She could have changed everything, but instead they destroyed that chance and with it forfeited countless more lives as a result.

I suppose if sales had been poor it certainly would have been for nothing. Even if Eri, Prospera, and every one else survives this battle the whole show has quite the bleak depressing outlook if it ends with the Gundam Curse still a thing, with people still struggling to live in space. What was it all for?

Very understandable concern. But then again, Gundam shows are always about portraying humanity's penchant for conflicts & violence pretty much in every situation. Many Gundam shows didn't really end with the protags resolving the bigger conflicts. Instead, we follow their life choices and decide for ourselves whether it's good or bad, while the bigger conflicts persist in various degrees.

Yes, Eri is a small glimmer of hope for the future of humanity but so were Amuro Ray & Lalah Sune in the OG Gundam but reality screwed up their lives. Both of those Newtypes got dragged into war until it claimed their lives without achieving much progress for human civilizations. Even if the people in this AS (Ad Stella) timeline find a way to make living in space a non-issue, I'm pretty sure the conflicts will continue whether it's between Spacians & Earthians or between the corpos. Heck, look at Gundam SEED. The Coordinators in Gundam SEED are basically Cardo Nabo's dream comes true but the CE-verse in SEED also has rampant war based on manipulated-gene-racism.

[azarhal]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

Even if the people in this AS (Ad Stella) timeline find a way to make living in space a non-issue, I'm pretty sure the conflicts will continue whether it's between Spacians & Earthians or between the corpos.

The conflicts will continue because they are manufactured/controlled via Spacian War Partitioning to generate profits and contained to Earth. And since the money generated is used for Space development (researches, colonies, armies and lately superweapons), the Spacians don't want it to stop.

With Eri tanking the orbital canon attack, it might be the beginning of real not controlled conflicts in Space thought instead of corpo backstabbing, targeted assassination and sabotage.

[Kanon]

Place your final bets: yuri ending or not? I say yes. I hope they don't blueball us again like with Birdie Wing.

[Twi]

Originally Posted by Kanon

Place your final bets: yuri ending or not? I say yes. I hope they don't blueball us again like with Birdie Wing.

Meh. I came for the Gundam more than the Yuri, but I'll take another Kudelia/Atra ending without the death of most of the pilots.

I'd also like to see Pharact being used again. That poor neglected Gundam.

[TheDoctor324]

Originally Posted by Kanon

Place your final bets: yuri ending or not? I say yes. I hope they don't blueball us again like with Birdie Wing.

I predict that Patrick Colasour with show up in the Pharact and singlehandedly destroy the solar cannon and end the space-earth conflict.

[magnuskn]

The series has, if nothing else, been quite unpredictable in many aspects. Hence I'd rather wait another few hours to see what's up. ^^