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

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Kanon

Odds are she'll be manipulated by someone else (likely Shaddiq) and forced to pilot a Gundam that will actually put her life at risk.

That would be an interesting way to show that Miorine's actions only made things worse for Suletta.

It goes to show Miorine really is Delling's daughter after all. They only know how to destroy everything they touch.

[ryllharu]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

Miorine never learns. This is not the first time she acted this way. She thinks she knows better and looks down on everyone else. I don't think she does it deliberately but it's her main character flaw all the same.

I bet she doesn't even realize she was manipulating Suletta just like Prospera did. So much for good intentions.

You're way too harsh.

Miorine is doing exactly what Eri would be doing in her place. Neither want Suletta involved in Quiet Zero or Elnora's revenge plot. They want to see Suletta live out her dreams instead of dying for a cause she has no motivation to be involved in, accomplish her wishlist of things with people her own age, and eventually found a school for Mercury.

The problem is Miorine sucks at reading a room or the emotional temperature of those she interacts with. It is her character flaw to think that her intentions will come across, but they never do. It's not that she thinks she knows better, and it isn't arrogance, it is that she is smarter than most of the cast. Most aren't able to follow along with her poorly-communicated thought processes.

So it comes out of her mouth in the worst way possible. Classic tsundere style.

She's not manipulating Suletta the same way Elnora is. Miorine is doing the political maneuverings absolutely familiar to Benerit Group heirs, to a person who is used to everyone plainly saying what they mean and how they feel, guards down. Elnora deliberately exploits that. Miorine repeatedly fails to grasp that Suletta doesn't have a shred of duplicity to her.

Shaddiq is the only one who keeps up with Miorine growing up, but they've also both diverged in their goals. He's taking his bitterness over her rejection of their reunion very personally and trying to trap her back into his orbit.

Originally Posted by Kanon

That said, I'm very interested in what will happen to Suletta now. She'll no doubt be depressed for at least one episode, but she has to be brought back into the plot somehow. I don't think Prospera will pull her back in, she's outlived her usefulness to her. Odds are she'll be manipulated by someone else (likely Shaddiq) and forced to pilot a Gundam that will actually put her life at risk.

Elnora still needs her to activate Quiet Zero with Aerial at the center. I think it is becoming more evident that Elnora doesn't know that Eri talks to Suletta directly, just that Eri is "beyond the data storms" and taking the brunt of the Gund Format backlash for Suletta. My guess is that she thinks the emotionally stunted Suletta cutely talks to Aerial the same way that Eri talked to Lfirth and personified the machine where her "true" daughter is trapped. Elnora has manipulated Miorine into setting up Suletta to willingly sacrifice herself going as high as Permet can go because by the time she asks Suletta to go back in the cockpit, Suletta will believe that's her only value.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by ryllharu

She's not manipulating Suletta.

She totally is. She told Suletta to duel and gift her a victory. It was a lie since Suletta had no chance to win because Miorine herself had sabotaged Aerial. That's manipulation, even worse than Prospera's because at least Prospera's manipulations usually resulted in Suletta gaining something. Here Miorine manipulates Suletta to take everything away from her.

Of course Miorine had good intentions, but so what? Good intentions don't justify horrible actions.

she is smarter than most of the cast.

It's arrogance. If she was truly smart she wouldn't have fallen for Prospera's scheme so easily.

[ryllharu]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

She totally is. She told Suletta to duel and gift her a victory. It was a lie since Suletta had no chance to win because Miorine herself had sabotaged Aerial. That's manipulation, even worse than Prospera's because at least Prospera's manipulations usually resulted in Suletta gaining something. Here Miorine manipulates Suletta to take everything away from her.

Of course Miorine had good intentions, but so what? Good intentions don't justify horrible actions.

Lying is not manipulation. People lie every day for social reasons with purely positive outcomes for all involved. Manipulation is much more malicious in nature because it is always selfish. Lying is a tool used in manipulation, but so is using the truth at the opportune time.

Miorine lied to Suletta so that their plan would work, because Suletta is incapable of deceit. She lied to Suletta with the keychain to drive her away from the mess the Benerit group is in, which is an overused cliche, but that's why it is annoying to the audience. It shows that Miorine sucks at communication, which is consistent with her prickly personality to everyone.

ElanPrime and Elan5 manipulate Suletta (or rather try and fail because they're both creepy). Elnora manipulates Suletta to the point of brainwashing her into always believing her.

Miorine just fails to tell Suletta what's going on.

It's arrogance. If she was truly smart she wouldn't have fallen for Prospera's scheme so easily.

I did say "most." The entire series is dancing to Elnora's plan, with her intervention only required when she has to nudge it back on course, or needs someone to act in a role that keeps it on track with things out of her control threaten or delay Quiet Zero specifically. Eri agrees with half of the plan, but probably not all of it.

[Dengar]

I really, really liked this episode. Suletta is finally getting what is coming to her.

I mean I get that both Miorine and Guel did this for her own good. And I agree, it is for her own good.

So long as she is completely incapable of making her own decisions, she does not deserve to be flying that unit. And she shouldn't be. She is going to be causing a lot of harm to both herself and others so long as she stays the doormat she has been for the entire series.

Imagine being angry at people for saving the one they care for, who clearly is headed on a path to destruction, and incapable of course correcting for herself.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by ryllharu

Lying is not manipulation.

When you lie to influence someone to do something you want, that's manipulation. Miorine was taking advantage of the fact Suletta wanted to gift her something for her birthday. She used that to manipulate her into dueling. Then when Guel said he wanted Ariel and Suletta seemed doubtful again, Miorine's like "it's okay, you just have to win," fully knowing that Suletta CAN'T win. All this is manipulation.

I did say "most."

It's arrogance.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

That would be an interesting way to show that Miorine's actions only made things worse for Suletta.

It goes to show Miorine really is Delling's daughter after all. They only know how to destroy everything they touch.

I'm hoping Suletta will come into her own and forge her own path but sadly I think it's more realistic she'll be manipulated by someone else instead.

Regardless of how it happens, I'm at least certain she'll pilot another Gundam for a while and suffer backlash.

Originally Posted by ryllharu

Elnora doesn't know that Eri talks to Suletta directly, just that Eri is "beyond the data storms" and taking the brunt of the Gund Format backlash for Suletta. My guess is that she thinks the emotionally stunted Suletta cutely talks to Aerial the same way that Eri talked to Lfirth and personified the machine where her "true" daughter is trapped. Elnora has manipulated Miorine into setting up Suletta to willingly sacrifice herself going as high as Permet can go because by the time she asks Suletta to go back in the cockpit, Suletta will believe that's her only value.

I don't know. I think Prospera is really done with Suletta, her plans for her were to win over Miorine so she'd be easier to manipulate. Now that it's done and she basically owns Miorine, she has no need for Suletta. She took back her daugther Eri before leaving and left the extra baggage behind. But like you said, she will most likely realize Suletta was a lot more special than she assumed and that she actually needs her to bring her plan to fruition.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Dengar

who clearly is headed on a path to destruction.

That would be Miorine who fell for Prospera's scheme and is helping her with Quiet Zero.

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

See? Guel can be Suletta's foil without him being the main protag 😏

[azarhal]

Miorine has manipulated Suletta in this episode and she did so in the most cruel way possible.

Prospera's comment to Miorine about Suletta being "worked up for it" before the duel was a warning. Prospera's knows that without Aerial and Moirine, Suletta will call mom for advises and she only promised to keep Suletta out of the revenge plot.

I still think Shaddiq will scoop Suletta has a way to counter Miorine instead of her running back to Prospera thought. Depressed and emotional destroyed people are super easily manipulated.

On a side tangent, Aerial is getting more and more murderous. She's going to be the last boss at this point.

[Frontier]

Prospera's got Miorine twirling around her finger for Suletta's sake, setting up the final and most pivotal duel of all .

Shaddiq's making a deal with Peil to keep producing Gundam's out in the open and promising to give them Aerial...though that sure didn't happen, which is satisfying in it's own right .

It's nice to see Suletta and Miorine together again even if there's still a little tension over everything...but it seems like Suletta has marriage on the mind as much as Miorine's birthday. Too bad that won't go well .

Ugh. No. 5 creeping on Suletta again and even bringing a stun gun. Although Suletta gets her first clue that he's not the same Elan, though I'm not sure if they're going to do anything with it .

Whether it's No. 4 or No. 5, any Elan that hurts Suletta Mercury will have to answer to Guel Jeturk! Who finally gets a win, in only the physical sense! Even gets to have a reunion moment with Suletta and confess his feelings to her. It almost makes you disappointed that she has to reject him even if we all know she loves Miorine. And of course Miorine overhears all this, but that just makes what she has to do even harder .

I was not expecting things to come so full-circle. Miorine challenging Guel to one last duel against Suletta like what started all this, for Miorine and the Aerial at stake, all for the sake of Prospera's plan and for, in Miorine's mind, freeing her from having to be involved in Prospera's revenge plot. And of course Suletta is oblivious to all this .

Although it's not an ideal match. Aerial isn't 100% Repaired (though not that that effects it that much) and Guel is still having PTSD over what happened with his dad and on Earth. But it's actually kind of nice seeing the Daribalde again after, what, episode 3 ?

No. 5 making hooking up with Shaddiq's group to keep his head above water? I guess they're probably more reasonable and less likely to outright execute him than the Peil hags. And it lets him and Norea bounce off each other more, which is fun. I wonder what Nika will do with the knowledge about Gundam's that kill ?

So are Lauda and Petra official ?

You know with Guel's people rooting for him helping him get over his emotional issues and watching him hold his own against Aerial, you almost kind of want to see him actually win...of course the Aerial is so OP that the only way it can actually lose is when it's deliberately sabotaged. Even when Guel wins it's not a complete win, and he knows it .

Suletta was betrayed by the girl she loves, her mother, and even her sister...and now she's pretty much lost everything. Is the point in the story where the protagonist gets at their lowest before getting character development in picking themselves back up? Does Prospera really not need Suletta at all for the rest of Quiet Zero? How will Suletta get the Aerial and Miorine back? Will she make herself involved in the main plot ?

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

That would be Miorine who fell for Prospera's scheme and is helping her with Quiet Zero.

Ah yes, and stupid dumb Suletta becoming a mass murderer because her mummy tells her to be one is sooooo much better. At least now there is a chance to turn this all around now that Suletta is out of the picture.

[quagmire]

Was it really rigging Aerial or more so Elnora telling Eri to stop fighting upon receiving the signal from Miorinne? We hear Eri apologizing right before Aerial shuts down.

Either way..... Was somewhat on the right track of Guel being the one to back Mio for President. Just not the how.....

Shaddiq is typical slimy business person. Nice person, but when it comes to business, ruthless, unethical, etc. But it seems to fit right in with Benerit Group's beliefs. The Peil ladies managed figure out most likely that Shaddiq is probably the person behind things, but is going along with it due to it benefiting them.

Elan5 is on the run after his last desperate attempt to get Aerial by harming/kidnapping Suletta backfires. Pisses off Norea big time.

They really love with the back and forth between Mio and Suletta ever since episode 10 of causing rifts and making up.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Dengar

Ah yes, and stupid dumb Suletta becoming a mass murderer because her mummy tells her to be one is sooooo much better.

Prospera had no intentions of making Suletta be a mass murderer. Prospera's attention has always been on Quiet Zero. Miorine made all the wrong assumptions and ended up making things worse by helping Prospera get closer to have Quiet Zero ready.

[Dengar]

Originally Posted by quagmire

They really love with the back and forth between Mio and Suletta ever since episode 10 of causing rifts and making up.

Hey, at least I'm finally convinced that Miorine actually cares.

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

Prospera's attention has always been on Quiet Zero.

Yes, the totally benevolent project that totally doesn't somehow involve many deaths using Suletta and Aerial as a catalyst.

[Kazu-kun]

Originally Posted by Dengar

Yes, the totally benevolent project that totally doesn't somehow involve many deaths using Suletta and Aerial as a catalyst.

It doesn't use Suletta. Why do you think Prospera agreed to let Suletta out of the hook in exchange for having Miorine help with Quiet Zero? Suletta is not needed. Only Aerial is needed.

[Frontier]

Even if Miorine is mature for her age she's still a kid and one dancing around an adult's finger, so even if she means well that doesn't preclude her from making a mistake or doing something with the best of intentions even if it ends up severely hurting the one she cares about.

I guess Suletta really was just a bit of a patsy to carry the Aerial through it's matches if Prospera doesn't need her any more.

Originally Posted by azarhal

Miorine has manipulated Suletta in this episode and she did so in the most cruel way possible.

Prospera's comment to Miorine about Suletta being "worked up for it" before the duel was a warning. Prospera's knows that without Aerial and Moirine, Suletta will call mom for advises and she only promised to keep Suletta out of the revenge plot.

I still think Shaddiq will scoop Suletta has a way to counter Miorine instead of her running back to Prospera thought. Depressed and emotional destroyed people are super easily manipulated.

On a side tangent, Aerial is getting more and more murderous. She's going to be the last boss at this point.

I'm starting to wonder if the real reason they've made Aerial so OP was because it was intended as the Final Boss.

Like I remember in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's they gave one of the main characters a really powerful and nigh-unbeatable deck but that was apparently partially because the plan was for him to be the Final Boss.

[ryllharu]

Originally Posted by Kazu-kun

It's arrogance.

That's Shaddiq. His purpose in the narrative is to be the arrogant mirror of what Miorine could have been.

He does think he's smarter than everyone. Hell, he's open about it. He believes he can manipulate the hags into doing what he wants (the same four who all but openly developed Gundams for a decade or more under Grassley's nose and violate dozen of other ethics with their experiments). He is very blatantly the quintessential "Kids know better than adults" character archetype. He toys with Dawn of Fold because he believes he can control them. They will reject his planned control of Earth under his stewardship because he's a Spacian. He keeps Norea around with his harem (led by an Earther) despite how viciously she hates Spacians and will kill them if she gets the opportunity because he believes he can control Norea too. He's kidnapped Nika, but not killed her, like a Bond villain.

Shaddiq is building this enormous stack of dominos on end to reach his goal, and it will shatter underneath him at any point. He believes he can control the whole thing from the top, and he won't be able to. He's going to lose everything. He hasn't learned his lesson either after being sniped in a 6-to-1.1 duel.

On the other hand, Miorine has spent the majority of the series trying to escape. After multiple failed schemes to do so, she's started to accept responsibility for all the privileges she was afforded as the Benerit Princess. Sure, she schemes and takes over businesses, not because she wants to or thinks she can do it better than anyone else, but because she has changed and believes she needs to clean up the messes everyone made around her while she was playing Boheimian gardening games in her twin-pod Hameau de la Reine.

Miorine doesn't plan for any of the situations she's thrust into. She reacts to them with responsibility, if misguided. She took over Gundam research to save Suletta...but spent the time learning from her father how to run a new firm, rather than doing it all herself the way Shaddiq and she dreamed of doing when they were younger and naive. She's stupidly believed Elnora, but we'll see how that pans out.

Miorine still hasn't learned the lesson that pushing people away to keep them safe doesn't align with the, "If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two," motto of the series.

Miorine is definitely not the arrogant one.

[azarhal]

Originally Posted by Frontier

I'm starting to wonder if the real reason they've made Aerial so OP was because it was intended as the Final Boss.

I actually think this is unlikely now. The MS was OP because of Aerial/Eri, but now she seems to have been moved to Prospera's helmet (it glowed the same right around the "shutdown") and achieving that is why Prospera needed Belmeria's help and she thanked her for it.

In other word, Jertuk just got an an empty shell...and the OP Gund-Bitmancer is now elsewhere.

So the final boss might be controlled by Aerial/Eri, but it's going to be a totally different suit.

[Frontier]

Originally Posted by ryllharu

That's Shaddiq. His purpose in the narrative is to be the arrogant mirror of what Miorine could have been.

He does think he's smarter than everyone. Hell, he's open about it. He believes he can manipulate the hags into doing what he wants (the same four who all but openly developed Gundams for a decade or more under Grassley's nose and violate dozen of other ethics with their experiments). He is very blatantly the quintessential "Kids know better than adults" character archetype. He toys with Dawn of Fold because he believes he can control them. They will reject his planned control of Earth under his stewardship because he's a Spacian. He keeps Norea around with his harem (led by an Earther) despite how viciously she hates Spacians and will kill them if she gets the opportunity because he believes he can control Norea too. He's kidnapped Nika, but not killed her, like a Bond villain.

Shaddiq is building this enormous stack of dominos on end to reach his goal, and it will shatter underneath him at any point. He believes he can control the whole thing from the top, and he won't be able to. He's going to lose everything. He hasn't learned his lesson either after being sniped in a 6-to-1.1 duel.

On the other hand, Miorine has spent the majority of the series trying to escape. After multiple failed schemes to do so, she's started to accept responsibility for all the privileges she was afforded as the Benerit Princess. Sure, she schemes and takes over businesses, not because she wants to or thinks she can do it better than anyone else, but because she has changed and believes she needs to clean up the messes everyone made around her while she was playing Boheimian gardening games in her twin-pod Hameau de la Reine.

She still hasn't learned the lesson that pushing people away to keep them safe doesn't align with the, "If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two," motto of the series.

Miorine is definitely not the arrogant one.

It feels like the only thing that didn't go his way was Guel getting the Aerial and Miorine, but that's also part of Prospera's plans which he's oblivious too.