Kidô senshi Gandamu: Suisei no majo

Looking at these reviews, most of the comments are regarding the initial episodes giving negative comments after watching a boring overutilized plot. This Gundam plot isn't it. The first couple of episodes start off cute with a non-death-related duel between characters. It starts off cute and innocent with a peaceful storyline with some episodes showing dark symbolisms of the Gundam we are used to. The character development in the show plays extremely well, and there aren't any useless/annoying or rushed characters like how several gundam anime will include: Katz. The finale really takes a huge leap into the territory of gundam throwing off viewers as what we thought was an innocent gundam builders plot was secretly a gundam masterpiece.

I really can't wait for the next season. Artwork/animation/plot has all been incredible. Also make sure to wait for the end credits on the final episode. Extremely important for the next season.

I missed the Gundam franchise altogether and maybe I'm late to the party now, but started watching this show with high hopes anyway. I tried watching retro mecha anime many times, but couldn't get myself over the retro look. I'm sensitive to art quality.

The Witch from Mercury looks stellar. The characters are pretty neat and it really reeks from atmosphere, the space scenes are particurarly atmospheric also the music is supporting it well. I was engaged from the beginning and will definitely watch this show for a longer duration. It's a mixture of mecha battles, campus slice of life and political intrique and a little yuri romance. Still on the positive side, there are no annoying characters, unnecessary drama, fan service or filler episodes and the male characters are cool too.

The battles are somehow not that stellar, even tough, there is one almost in each episode. Battle choreographies are simply not clever enough (watch The Expanse for what I mean by clever; even the end of the first Appleseed movie packed more gunpowder). Somehow the script is dumb. It takes on grand schemes, which is respectable, but then it falls short with the implementation, mostly in the "political intrique" department. Not ridicuolusly annoying, just a bit childish, like Suletta herself. I guess teenagers might be able to wholeheartedly enjoy it, but as a grown up adult I was constantly skeptical and smiling ironically. Maybe, this could have been an acceptable story somewhere in the 80's, but by today's standards, well... there are more cleverly written shows out there for certain.

Still, it reaches the bar, as long as my bar is concerned. I'm a big sci-fi fan, so I'm less strict with this one. I could complain endlessly, that characters are not polished enough, especially the side characters are neglected, they are just "being there", but the story moves ahead with a comfortable pace, it never gets boring and it always feels good to look at the screen. It's a bit flat and Suletta's and Miorine's relationship is not really going anywhere crazy or fast. I had the very same feeling with Angel Beats. Interesting enough to do not stop watching, it has a heart and can be loved for what it is, but wouldn't watch it again or recommend it to anybody as one of my favourites.

UPDATE: At the end of Season 1 it finds its fangs and switches gears to a darker and more serious tone (people starts dying, so the main issue is not who marries Miorine anymore... ;) ) which makes it way better, so I raised my seven to eight. Battles are still somewhat boring, but at least it's not duels now, but real war. I'm a bit more angry for all the script pitfalls and overdone scenes (didn't these guys know proportion?), because it could have been a masterpiece rather just being good. But it definitely has memorable moments, worth watching once.

This show started ok and it went downhill from there.

Think fanfic level of writing and you are getting there. The plot was more concerned with shipping two characters than being a Gundam series.

The show is usually 80% school drama show, 20 % Gundam, not good at all for a supposed Gundam show.

At the end of season 1, it started to get good, but after that is back to the boring school room com generic anime spiced with robots.

Do you remember all that political drama from other Gundam shows? Here is replaced for not-so-subtle anti-corporation quips, with no thought put into how a world like that would function.

Score more than a 5 are normie scores.

Sapphic gundam is enough to get me to watch gundam. And it was pretty good. It still has anime things that have been so ingrained in the format you can't help but try to find something eye roll worthy endearing, and sometimes I can do that. Sometimes though, stuff does not make sense because the priority is to surprise the viewer. So, watch this when you're in the mood to allow a lot of hand waves and want The Mood. You won't be sorry.

If you've heard that this is written excellence though, unfortunately this is not that. It's really fun and actually has some amount of queer rep though. And war is bad. Capitalism is bad. I can get on board with that.

So firstly let me say the good stuffs. The art and music in this anime is done pretty well.

That's it for the good stuffs so let the bad ones roll.

1. Plot. The whole plot is full of plot holes and a lot of the direction of how the story progress is due to chance/fate? Its completely random and I think I would shoot myself in the head if I am the author of the story.

2. Main character. Suletta is not an interesting person at all. They tried to make her likeable, but she is not cute or interesting, or relatable. I understand that there might be due to further character development, but I don't see anything interesting until the last episode where we finally see something going on but its too little and too late.

3. Other characters: The is no one that is particularly charismatic or interesting. Miorine is too much of a princess. Guel is too arrogant, Elan and Shaddiq are both too pretentious.

In my humble opinion, just skip this for now. If season 2 does pick up, then maybe can consider to watch this. I've regretted spending like 6 hours on it...