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Last edited by Fluwm on Mon Jul 03, 2023 4:11 pm; edited 2 times in total

zfunk wrote:

No kiss, the only confirmation we get is hand holding like it's grade school, and Eri calling Morine her sister-in-law I don't get it because Japan is more liberal than the United States when it comes to this.

They're literally wearing wedding rings... it's not exactly subtle.

And I am concerned about why you'd think Japan is more progressive re: LGBTQ+ relationships, because it really... is not. It hasn't even been a full month since their courts voted to uphold the constitutional ban on gay marriage. It would be a mistake to look at the relatively progressive content found in some Japanese media -- typically aimed at very specific niche audiences -- and extrapolate from its existence some greater permissiveness across the entire country.

I would assume from your comment that you're an American? I would also encourage you to remember that queer relationships have been incorporated into American media for decades, often portrayed negatively, but not always. There are TV shows from before I was even born -- and likely before you, too, were born -- that would still be viewed as radically progressive today. I would encourage you check out Matt Baume's YouTube channel to learn more about LGBTQ+ history in media -- it's very interesting stuff! And while doing so, consider how often the attitudes expressed in those stories were and sometimes still are extremely at-odds with how hostile the realities of American life were and are.

That we got something so progressive out of, of all things, a Gundam series is well-worth celebrating.

EDIT: I should probably also note that the article linked to above cites a 70% public approval rate for gay marriage in Japan, which is approximately the same as it currently is in the U.S., though I'd urge caution in taking these polls (or any others) at face-value.

BluesPro wrote:

Mami-kouga wrote:

the show never cared about earth either honestly

This was probably the most insulting part of the show. They created this setting where an incredibly malicious corporatocracy exploits the Earth by turning its population into an underclass to be used either as cheap labor or as meat to put into the grinder of endless wars for war profiteering. And they then proceeded to do basically nothing with that. Our two principle Dawn of Fold characters barely show up in the show proper before being killed off (or spending most of their time in locked room limbo), and the one episode that actually calls attention to the plight on Earth instead places the focus on a rich kid from space so that he can "grow" from experiencing their squalor. Makes me think of how much better ZZ handled stuff like this; Masai's episode was about Masai, it didn't just use the dispossessed African population as a tool to prop up Judau.

And in the end, the show chickens out on actually confronting any of the hard hitting issues it embedded into its conflicts. What's to become of Earth? How do we plan on dealing with the fact that some new entity is just going to swoop in and take the Benerit Group's resources away from Earthians? Don't worry about it, what matters is that the show wants you to feel good, even if it's completely unearned and spits in the face of what it seemingly wanted to tackle at the start.

If the show just wanted to be the love story of Miorine and Suletta, then that's all it should've been. Adding in all these elements they either cannot or are not willing to explore just made it a worse show.

I think Guel's whole thing would have worked if he still showed more of a connection to thinking of how to fix things there. I assumed him and Olcott would have more of a relationship since they both felt responsible for the deaths of their father and son respectively. Instead it just gets forgotten.

More so than that even Miorine's earth attachment is....vague at best. She wants to go there because her mum was from there but the show never has her even think about what she could want from earth. Where was her mum from? Does she have any living relatives? Is there any specific plans she has for the planet? It's just a vague thing that remains vague to the very end, does she even ask any of the Earth house characters more about the place?

Last edited by Wyvern on Mon Jul 03, 2023 10:34 pm; edited 1 time in total

This is my new favorite dialogue exchange in all of Gundam:

Perfect, no notes.

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We are almost certainly not getting a sequel season or series out of this.

You say that as if Bandai didn't love money. G-Witch was a huge success for them, with model kit sales absolutely eclipsing previous installments. If they can find an excuse to pull a Gundam Seed sequel movie out of the blue after 20 years, they can find a reason to continue G-Witch if they really want to. I'm not saying that's a good idea, story-wise. I'm just saying one of the themes of this story was, "companies don't care if something is a good idea, they care if it's is a profitable idea."

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it's only a little galling that Prospera seemingly gets off scot-free and is allowed to retire to Suletta's big farm upstate.

And meanwhile Shaddiq is going to be in prison for life and seems perfectly okay with paying for everyone else's misdeeds. I suppose since he was probably already going to get life (or worse) for the stuff he actually DID do, he may as well confess to a bunch of other people's crimes while he's at it. It's not like they can execute him twice.

zfunk wrote:

No kiss, the only confirmation we get is hand holding like it's grade school,

I was disappointed too, but not surprised. Anime still can be annoyingly skittish about portraying same-sex kisses, even when a show is an obvious gay love story (never forget Yuri on Ice and its obscured kiss!) In any case, at least our Gundam girls got married.

zfunk wrote:

Speaking of those kids, those are Suletta and Morine's kids? Or are they just random neighborhood kids?

If they were their kids they would have to be adopted, since they all look much older than three. But I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be Suletta's students, given that we go right from the shot of Suletta playing with them, to her talking about opening a school (and the dialogue implies that she's already opened at least one other one.)

Anyway, G-Witch was some first-rate Gundam, even if at times it bit off far more than it could chew plotwise. But even if it was a bit overstuffed at times, the core relationship it was built on remained charming and compelling throughout, and that was enough to overcome any other issues the show had.

Thank you Space Lesbians, for once again showing us the way.

G-Witch was an excellent show, restoring a lot of my faith in the Gundam franchise, at least the non-UC part. The past few AUs have been middling efforts, but G-Witch is so exceptional that it's probably up there with some of the better UC shows, too. It had an unconventional way of doing things that still included Gundam tropes, but found new ways of conveying them.

If they're going to do something else with this wing of Gundam, I'd like to see a sequel movie that concentrates on how Moirine's reconciliation with Earthians goes. I'm sure there's more stories that could be told with this group of characters.

A solid 8 out of 10.

zfunk wrote:

No kiss, the only confirmation we get is hand holding like it's grade school, and Eri calling Morine her sister-in-law I don't get it because Japan is more liberal than the United States when it comes to this.

There are tons of yuri titles out there that showcase kissing as well as more explicit forms of affection. I get Gundam is popular and therefore attracts more people as a result but G-Witch was never meant to be a yuri or even a romance series, even if some people made it their entire fandom. I don't understand why people always look towards shows that aren't about yuri/BL for yuri/BL content and then become upset when it's not the focus when there's so many actual titles out there for this stuff if that's what people only care about.

I guess my contribution to this conversation will be pointing out that many Gundam titles in the past also never had its Main (Straight) Couple kiss on-screen. On the other hand, the only one with actual marriages between the main couple before G-Witch was AGE, and I'm not sure if it counts since its "three generations" premise required them.

Fluwm wrote:

And I am concerned about why you'd think Japan is more progressive re: LGBTQ+ relationships, because it really... is not.

This is true, but there are two obvious reasons why someone might get the wrong idea: anime itself being (sometimes) more open-minded than the Japanese public, and the recent backlash and legal backsliding in the US towards numerous social issues, especially LGBT ones. Americans are still far more liberal on average, but it sure doesn't feel like it these days. Grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side syndrome also applies here.

In regards to the "no kiss???" issue, as I said earlier, this is typical of Japanese media, be it straight or gay. Why that is, I'm not sure; maybe it's considered inelegant or something. If you absolutely must see a yuri with at least one smooch scene, though, spoiler[Magical Revolution] has you covered.

Last edited by macattack on Mon Jul 03, 2023 10:10 pm; edited 8 times in total

I’m going to preface this with my grade for the whole anime so people will know whether they want to read my hogwash or not. It’s a C+.

We’re not going to have an honest conversation about G-Witch for years in many circles. Maybe not even for 5-10 years. Everyone on the usual social media sites is rabidly overjoyed over the SPACE LESBIANS getting their happy ending that they won’t acknowledge the many flaws in G-Witch, or worse. I will say that the SPACE LESBIANS part is probably the only thing G-Witch managed to not screw up, though even that got rushed at the end.

What kills G-Witch is the pacing. The horrific pacing is what throws the anime completely out of whack. It never really got to properly explore its ideas and it had many interesting ones. There’s been rumblings that the production has been a living hell and that may have played a role in why Sunrise cut this short even though it’s been a shocking success. But it feels like, at least at the start, the producers and writers were anticipating a 50-episode Gundam like most series and was crafting their work to that effect. The first cour is exceptionally slow-paced, almost to the point where it’s unforgivable in retrospect because of how much time is wasted on things that did not pay off, and on introducing characters that ultimately never got a chance to develop. In the end only the SPACE LESBIANS got the time to get close to their full potential. Particularly egregious is Dawn of Fold, who got a spotlight episode that ultimately leads to nowhere for what seemed to be a small but fascinating group of underdogs. Honestly, it’s ironic that the best episode of the anime was the only one where the protagonist was entirely absent. But in retrospect it comes off wasted because nothing ever comes out of it.

I feel like the ax came down somewhere around episodes 20-21 because that’s when the pacing went completely off the rails and started rushing. Ultimately the last episode is a cruel joke as it clumsily ties everything up with a bunch of nonsense introduced out of nowhere and gives lackluster consequences to everyone but Shaddiq. But that’s going to be ignored because the writer was smart enough to make sure the SPACE LESBIANS received their happy ending (and not just a happy ending but one of the happiest in all of Gundam). Whether intentional or no, the SPACE LESBIANS getting the happy ending will be an effective shield against criticism for what a cluster the final episodes were and how they retroactively make many of the earlier episodes worse.

In the end, regardless of who is at fault for this, G-Witch will go down as the most poorly paced of the non-UC Gundams. Started too slow, ended too fast, never was able to properly explore its ideas or characters, and ultimately pulled a lot of randomness out of its ass so there would be a conclusion at all. It’s a real shame. The characters and their world deserved better, and, sadly, so did Suletta and Miorine. I would have really loved the closure they got if it hadn’t been so rushed.

EDIT: There’s some circumstantial evidence for my theory of the show being cut short in that the official soundtrack has 4 discs’ worth of music, which is simply unheard of for a 24-episode anime. Usually it’s approximately one disc per cour. There’s going to be an insane amount of unused cues on that soundtrack especially since few cues were written to scene. Ultimately that OST will be a glimpse of what could have been.

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And I got to see Secelia in business wear, meaning I, personally, absolutely won.

You and me both.

OL Secilia fanart. OL Secelia fanart EVERYWHERE.

Suletta still felt like more of a side character than Guel, but overall I felt pretty good about the series. I wish it was a bit more ambitious with handling some of the larger world building because the Earth plot felt like a throw away, but at least G-Witch didn't drop the ball. The pacing was ruined a bit by the school sections eating a lot of time, but it still recovered well for a 2 cour series. The Gundams dissolving felt pretty dumb as I'm pretty sure they're not completely made out of permit particles or anything, but whatever.

Easily the best AU since 00 which isn't exactly high praise, but it is something. Maybe with this new energy for Gundam, we can get something longer with more time to explore the premise.

I don't disagree with the idea that quite a few of the themes of the show were under-utilized, to be honest, but I very much heartily disagree with the idea that the show is closed off to the point that a sequel series can't be produced.

As the review states, the core story wrapped up very neatly in a way that very much evokes a Shakespearean comedy (emotional resolution of the protagonists, a fade into obscurity/impotence for the antagonists). But I don't think it's hard to conjure up more exploration into the world state in the finale, which is still extremely tenuous despite having dissolved the major players. The writers very clearly have an extremely fully-realized new setting in the Ad Stella timeline, and have mostly left it as set dressing for now.

I do think Witch from Mercury would have benefited from a few more episodes to let the story breathe but whatever nips and tucks they made to the storytelling was extremely economical, and I'm adamant that the slower first cour was absolutely vital to establishing the parts of the story that paid off in the second cour. I don't think people would have loved the story beats they landed nearly as much, if that spider web of relationships and emotional entanglement hadn't been explored to the level of detail that those first 12 episodes did.

macattack wrote:

There’s been rumblings that the production has been a living hell and that may have played a role in why Sunrise cut this short even though it’s been a shocking success. But it feels like, at least at the start, the producers and writers were anticipating a 50-episode Gundam like most series and was crafting their work to that effect.

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I feel like the ax came down somewhere around episodes 20-21 because that’s when the pacing went completely off the rails and started rushing

lmao that's not how television productions of any kind, let alone anime, work

macattack wrote:

But that’s going to be ignored because the writer was smart enough to make sure the SPACE LESBIANS received their happy ending (and not just a happy ending but one of the happiest in all of Gundam). Whether intentional or no, the SPACE LESBIANS getting the happy ending will be an effective shield against criticism for what a cluster the final episodes were and how they retroactively make many of the earlier episodes worse.

Apparently you haven't read any of the last few pages of this thread, but GWitch has taken plenty of criticism around here over the exact points that you're mentioning. Even so, people have mostly been satisfied with the ending, warts and all.

And if you were referring to other, more fanboy/girlish sites, do you ever really expect critical analysis from them?

Last edited by Covnam on Tue Jul 04, 2023 2:16 am; edited 1 time in total

I enjoyed the show, but thinking on it as a whole I do feel that it would have benefitted from a longer episode count to further develop it's many plot threads and the main character relationship. I would have liked them to go further with the world building when it comes to the tech like permit.
I think the first season was much better than the second (though not to the degree of say 00 or IBO), and that the end of the first season was definitely the peak imo. It felt like the second season had two seasons worth of plot condensed in to one.
The ghosts in the data storm was a bit odd, but no too much of stretch when they were showing people killed that had died from Gundam use, but then just anyone was showing up, so I'm not sure if they were still supposed to be there because of the data storm or just the usual character remembers everyone kind of thing...

edit: Forgot to mention that I thought they could have done more to show 3 years had passed other than a couple of hair cuts. Most of the cast looked basically the same despite being at an age when 3 years can make a difference. I get that it was just for a few shots, but it would have been appreciated none the less

Key wrote:

macattack wrote:

But that’s going to be ignored because the writer was smart enough to make sure the SPACE LESBIANS received their happy ending (and not just a happy ending but one of the happiest in all of Gundam). Whether intentional or no, the SPACE LESBIANS getting the happy ending will be an effective shield against criticism for what a cluster the final episodes were and how they retroactively make many of the earlier episodes worse.

Apparently you haven't read any of the last few pages of this thread, but GWitch has taken plenty of criticism around here over the exact points that you're mentioning. Even so, people have mostly been satisfied with the ending, warts and all.

And if you were referring to other, more fanboy/girlish sites, do you ever really expect critical analysis from them?

To be perfectly clear, the “SPACE LESBIANS” part is me expressing my annoyance/bitterness at the G-Witch fanbase on Twitter, Reddit, and other such sites. Not for the relationship itself, and not referring to here.

Most people are gonna be satisfied when their favorite characters are shown happy and safe, writing be damned. Those social media sites were mostly watching to see if the SPACE LESBIANS were even gonna get together, everything else be damned.

Its not a fair way if judging a series I admit, but Sunrise were smart enough to focus on what the people liked.

Basically, pandering to your audience does infact work.

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