G-Witch Episode 6 Thoughts

 Thoughts and impressions on G-Witch, Episode 6.

Following up the stakes set up from last time, this episode throws a whole lot of plot swerves amidst the build up to Elan’s duel against Suletta.

Suletta’s Friendship Tour

Suletta continues with her efforts to befriend everyone at the school, but I appreciated that she was more reflective of how Elan treated her last episode. She realizes that Elan took advantage of her kindness for the sake of roping her up in his plan to win the Gundam, and she berates herself for her attempts to feel happy blindsiding her to that. Miorine convinces her to snap out of it in her own prickly way, but Suletta at least seems aware that her constant attempts to befriend people can cause her to lose sight of things, even if it hasn’t backfired too hard yet.

Miorine comments that Suletta is insistent on befriending people to the point of annoyance, but it’s helped that she’s one of the few earnest people in this setting. It fails a bit at first when Elan rejects her PA announcement to him, but her refusal to give up on people ultimately helps her bring him over after their duel. Miorine again reminds her to not back down after she’s kept pushing forward, which is something that also came up in episode four, but Suletta has gotten better at taking the initiative in conversations compared to how she started. She’s still very apologetic and awkward, but her moments of clarity when she’s alone with Miorine and her friends work very well.

Miorine the Understanding Bride

Miorine is still a bit possessive of Suletta when she gets angry that she agreed to duel without talking to her (which is technically correct with her going to meet Elan without asking her, even if she had no idea this whole duel arrangement would even happen). On the one hand, she doesn’t really have the right to dictate that Suletta get her approval on everything she does, but she does have a point that they both depend on each other through this marriage arrangement in the school such that Suletta can’t do whatever she wants. She was again proven right, even if her general abrasiveness and jealousy colors what she says. So far this hasn’t formed any lasting tension between them since Suletta manages to prevail, but I can see this becoming a bigger issue the more Suletta takes risks.

Even with her berating Suletta, the episode makes it clear that she still cares about her beyond the circumstances of their marriage arrangement, and Nika is perceptive enough to recognize this despite her denial. The hard cut from her saying she’s fine with some “minor two-timing” only to immediately get pissed that Elan is late is also quite telling. Her dynamic with Suletta hasn’t changed in a huge way since episode three, but it works well enough seeing these points come up with Suletta taking things too far and getting them in this messy situation.

However, there is a minor problem that I’ve noticed with how their arrangement is set up. Since having the holder uniform is what keeps her bound to Miorine in this marriage arrangement, it’s almost forcing it so that she can’t lose any duels. I expect that some wild stuff will happen closer to the end of the cour, and the fights have still been entertaining from her end so far, but it somewhat kneecaps the stakes when there’s not really a way for her to lose without losing the holder title, can’t happen repeatedly since that would remove them from the school. I can see this becoming more of a wedge when Suletta fails in a bigger way eventually, but I’m starting to notice that it’s a bit of a dramatic crutch for whenever they focus on duels.

Elan the Birthday Boy

There are several things to unpack with Elan’s story this episode, which comes to quite a heated conclusion (so to speak).

First off, this Elan is a body double of the real Elan (whom I’ll call Master-Elan to avoid confusion). Master-Elan is almost a totally different character with his smug and merciless attitude. He presumably holds some high position in Pell, although the fact that Elan is running around school in his place implies that he’s at least keeping himself somewhat less public. Elan also has a deteriorating lifespan that worsens with increased use of the GUND tech, which again explains his earlier fascination with Suletta.

The fact that Elan has some residual memory of the birthday candle, Master-Elan’s comment that Elan accepted the role of his double, and Master-Elan’s promise to give him his face back implies that he’s probably not a clone. I read this as Pell mind-wiping and using surgery to alter prospective people the chance to pilot their technologies, but I could be wrong about some details. I’m also not sure what to make of Elan saying he was already cursed before he even got involved with this enhancement, nor that his candle flashback shows his POV of a dilapidated room.

More so than any of the overarching story details, the important part in the episode was Elan finally connecting with Suletta when she shows him genuine affirmation and kindness. Some of this kind of repeats how she quasi-befriended Guel, but it’s different enough here in that Elan struggled with not having any tangible identity and shutting himself from everyone else. His gloominess makes more sense if he knows he won’t survive for much longer, as does his anger that Suletta seemingly has everything he doesn’t. But Suletta rescuing him from potentially burning in the cockpit at the end and promising to give him something to celebrate finally got him to understand. It’s straightforward but still feels earned enough for both of them.

I’ve seen this arc compared to the cyber-newtype storylines Gundam has done before. This treads some similar ground with how it shows these enhanced but unstable individuals suffering through their conditioning, but I think both tying it to the broader company plotline and giving Elan a more dieect parallel to Suletta’s use of the GUND makes it different enough (and arguably more interesting than prior examples).

The biggest swerve afterwards is that the Pell CEOs appear to terminate Elan at the end of the episode It’s a tragic end that, while I probably should’ve seen coming, and still managed to strike me on the initial viewing. It also doesn’t totally negate all the development Elan went through since we saw him open up at the end, but it is still a risky move to have him wiped out this early on. I also have no idea where they can take this. Will a new Elan come to school with no memories left? How will Suletta find out about this? Will she have to get rejected again? While the show has mostly stuck to two self-contained arcs with Guel and Elan, and I would like to start seeing Shaddiq more, I hope this gets followed up in a big way next episode.

A Decent Space Battle

The Elan-Suletta duel was a full space battle, but it was a solid improvement over the one in the last episode, even if it fell a bit short of the battles in episodes one and three. The duel again took up a substantial amount of time in the episode, but this did a better job of integrating the story elements through the fight than the one in the last episode. Even if this is some typical Gundam mid-fight speechifying, seeing Elan’s anger at Suletta builds through the fight helps continue the points touched on in his scenes with the Peil people.

There was one shot that looked like a slight CG trace and a lot of the standard static flying through space, but the Pharact and the Aerial both got some solid maneuvering and snappy dodging throughout that made it a bit more interesting than a standard Gundam space fight. The GUND bits also got some creative uses with the shielding from the Aerial and the stun lasers from the Pharact, and they remain some of the flashier parts of these recent fights so far. Suletta’s EMP at the end was a bit of a sudden pull, but I understand why it makes enough sense to add mystery to the Aerial. Still, it doesn’t come across as tactical ingenuity from Suletta compared to her cleverer uses of the bits earlier in the battle, since it’s an ability that hasn’t really been shown before even if she did know about it.

The more mysterious details of how Suletta defeats Elan is better for the next section, but I like how sudden and deliberate the laser barrage is. Even if Gundam has yet to find a more advanced battle technique than funnels, they’re at least put to enough interesting uses so far.

21 Years

The Prospera conversation and Elan’s vision from the GUND bits at the end were the biggest bombshells of the episode, and they both hint at the same thing: something’s up with Suletta.

When Prospera is talking to Belmeria about their past involvement in Vanadis, the latter is about to berate her for holding a “twenty-one year-old grudge.” But Suletta was celebrating her fourth birthday when Vanadis was raided, and she doesn’t seem to be twenty-five in the show so far. The more mundane possibility is that the “twenty-one” refers to the militaristic takeover or the development council’s crackdown on the GUND tech even before the raid, which would make this comment a misdirection.

The more explosive alternative is that this is intentional and that something is wrong with Suletta that goes beyond her mother just obfuscating her name and age. I was aware of this theory before this episode, and I didn’t bring it up at all because it seemed kinda crackpot to me, but there’s speculation that Suletta isn’t the same person as Ericht. The additional wrinkle is that, if that’s true, then Eri was possibly incorporated into the Gundam and Suletta is either a separate modified person or a clone of some sorts.

There’s two points further boosting this idea. The more minor one is when Pospera says that the Aerial will win and then says that she trusts her “darling daughter,” which is vague enough to validate either end. But the bigger one is that when the Aerial and its bits activate some kind of EMP self-defense, Elan sees silhouettes of someone appearing around him and a childish laugh from all of them. I want to say that the outline almost resembles Ericht’s hair and spacesuit, but it’s so vaguely shaped that it can be read wither way.

Suletta also addresses the bits as “everyone,” which I thought was just her standard childish way of speaking, but she then says she could hear the Aerial’s voice more clearly. From the few things she’s said about her past, she implies that her father passed away more distantly than she can remember and that she felt a somewhat personal connection to the Aerial.

I’m still not fully convinced that Ericht and Suletta are different people, mostly because I can see how the twenty-one years comment could be a misdirection depending on the time frame, but the child laughter from the bits is something hard to square with that. Either way, they’ve set up a huge mystery that will hang over the rest of the cour, and though it hasn’t affected the characters directly yet, I hope it soon will.

A slight issue with this mystery is that it’s only possible because they aren’t giving any precise dates in the show except for the current year being AS 122. Knowing the precise dates wouldn’t affect things too much since Suletta is still not twenty-one given what she’s talked about with Miorine, but it feels like there’s a slight contrivance with how they’re revealing the timeline of events in order to sustain this setup. The show has played a lot with ambiguity so far, which makes me worried if the official translations are capturing enough things accurately, but that’s a minor concern at this point.

Speculation aside, I think these reveals were well-incorporated in the episode even though they were each brief at the beginning and near the end while keeping the bulk of the focus on the duel and character moments, which are ultimately more important for a single episode than the vast overarching mystery. We also get a continued sense of Piel’s standing in the GUND tech development through the four board members and Master Elan’s introduction while the stakes are still personal to Elan. The past few episodes haven’t had as huge a dramatic thrust as the first three, and while I think they still worked fine, it was good that these twists escalated the stakes.

Miscellany

• The Earth House side cast continues to delight. I wish the scenes of them building the booster were a bit longer, but everyone still got brief good moments. Martin being hapless only for the two girls to nudge him was the best part.
• Nika finally got to have some nice self-satisfaction after the Aerial won the duel. She’s done such a good job trying to stay humble and keep herself calm even though she’s basically the only one holding the Earth House to succeed, so it was good to see her have a self-satisfied smile at the end.
• You can tell Elan’s VA was having a lot of fun playing Master-Elan of him in that scene, and he does a great job of contrasting their voices while keeping them similar enough.
• Did Elan using drone technology really not make anyone else in Cathedra suspicious that it was GUND tech? It was strange that they didn’t really follow up on that at all considering how crazy they went over Suletta. My best guess is that Peil was a bit more well-established in the group compared to Shin Sei, so their tech was more transparent, but it still leaves me confused as to what exactly separates GUND tech from everything else.
• Funny that Suletta wishing “happy birthday” now has a kill count of two, whereas “I’ll kill you” from Wing has a negative kill count. Just saying.
• Miorine being in the same room as others but not appearing on screen until she insults someone happens twice here. It’s a minor but mildly amusing storyboarding choice.
• Two choice music selections this week: the haunting track when Master-Elan enters, and the great flute song when Suletta holds Elan in space. I hope the official soundtrack comes out soon after the first cour finishes.
• Also, big credit to the sound design this episode. The Gundam fight was mostly standard, but the great use of quieter moments like the cockpit retrieval and the haunting use of the candlelight, GUND bit laughs, and revving up light all without other sounds sold those huge moments throughout.
• Guel Getting Jobbed Count: 3.5. Not a duel, but him getting kicked out of his house and camping in the woods is close enough. It only lasts a few seconds, but something about him squatting in a tent and watching Gundam was weirdly endearing. I almost hope he gets to stay camping for a bit longer.
• The week-long episode delay afterwards is a bit concerning for how things are going behind the scenes. So far, the show hasn’t had too many worrying visual issues aside from a few wonky character art parts of some episodes, but my standards for anime are also not that high. Here’s hoping the gap gets things a bit more on track.
• Very minor note, but it was odd that the break card came only about eight minutes into the episode.

Final Thoughts

While the duel took up a lot of time this episode, and the story has some issues with how its hiding and revealing information, this was a strong conclusion to the storyline with Elan that gave Suletta and Miorine more self-awareness about their interactions so far. A lot of dramatic plot twists got dropped throughout that help to propel the overall story for the remaining episodes even though the focus has been fairly contained so far. The Gundam space duel had enough engaging moments and seeing Suletta get Elan to open up was a satisfying conclusion despite its tragic end.