(This review covers seasons one and two)

Gundam has never been high on my priority list when it comes to anime. To date, I've only seen Gundam X, War In The Pocket, and both seasons of 00 (Excluding the movie), though as of today, I'm adding Gundam: The Witch From Mercury to this list. The reason I haven't watched many Gundam shows is that...well, I have a hard time keeping up with and comprehending hard sci-fi stuff and the technobabble they try to throw at you. Because of this, I originally had no interest in G-Witch at all, even when it was first announced. But then I heard my online circles talking about it and praising it up the wazoo...and hearing the news that it apparently became so popular that accompanying merchandise outsold pretty much every other Gundam property EVER. The first episode made a gigantic splash across the world, bringing in a huge influx of new fans. Learning that G-Witch also took place in a school and would tone down the technobabble is what convinced me to finally sit down and watch it, and I'm glad to say I don't regret it. But while I do genuinely enjoy G-Witch as a show, there are things it could have improved upon.

In the year Ad Stella 122, a young girl by the name of Suletta Mercury transfers from her home planet of...well, Mercury, to the prestigious Asticassia School of Technology, a planetary academic institute run by the megacorporation known as the Benerit Group. While on her way there, she encounters another girl, Miorine Rembran, trying to escape the institute and head to Earth in order to free herself from her controlling father and his plans for her. Asticassia is known for letting students engage in staged mecha duels to decide on everything, no matter how petty, from apologies to marriage arrangements, and duelists all over constantly battle each other for the right to marry Miorine for their own gains. Miorine really wants to take her life in her own hands and is sick of being treated like little more than a prize to be won. Through a series of events, Suletta winds up winning a duel against a bully, which results in her being set to be Miorine's...betrothed? But this is just the beginning of Suletta and Miorine's complicated life together at the academy, and only one piece of a much larger agenda tying into the origins of Suletta's beloved mobile suit, the Gundam Aerial.

Compared to the few Gundam series' I've seen, G-Witch's overall look leans more on the overtly cartoony side of animation rather than the more rugged, rustic, realistic designs from series' past, even compared to the very first Gundam anime. The female characters look more cutesy and moe, most of the guys are pretty boys with multi-colored hair, and some of the adult characters have designs that border on being kind of ridiculous, namely that quintet of old ladies who run Peil Technologies. Other than some off-model moments scattered throughout the show, the animation is fairly consistent throughout. The backgrounds are all well-made, and the series has no small amount of fluid giant robot action, especially near the end of the series. Plus, the actual mobile suit designs, even the ones for each company in-series, are all visually distinct, helped by the fact that Sunrise hired four mechanical designers to design them for each in-series corporation, all of whom worked on previous Gundam series before G-Witch. Though...I have to admit, I like the general soundtrack, but I admit I wasn't a fan of the openings and endings save for the second opening. Seriously, the singer's voice for the second ending makes my ears bleed.

The overall storyline tends to be all over the place, though in the beginning, this isn't a bad thing. At first, G-Witch seemed to be going the really cheesy route of "Kids good, adults bad!" "Down with the patriarchy!" message, what with having several of their villains be abusive parents shouting stuff like "Children should obey their parents without question!" without a hint of subtlety, though thankfully that got toned down as the series went on. I know some people had issues with the slow pacing of the earliest episodes, but I personally didn't, as I felt they did a fair enough job of not only easing us into the setting, but fleshing out the cast of characters, especially Suletta and Miorine. I hate this idea that a show has to be nothing but non-stop action and story progression, because if all you do is go fast, fast, fast, without taking the time to develop your characters and show what they're like outside the main conflict, how can we, the audience, be expected to care about them? And as far as the characters go, the main trio—Suletta, Miorine, and Guel—carry the show wonderfully. Not every character gets the screen time needed to really flesh them and their backgrounds out beyond the main conflict (Shaddiq's cohorts are especially hit hard with this, as we literally know nothing about them besides that they work for him), but the ones that do fulfill their roles in the story pretty well. In my opinion, Guel is the best developed character in the whole series, and G-Witch did an amazing job at showing his growth from entitled, arrogant jackass to a more humbler, calmer, and more intelligent man.

But as much as I hate to say it, as you can tell by the rating I gave it, G-Witch isn't without its issues, all of which culminate in one thing: G-Witch feels like it should have received way more episodes than it wound up getting. Previously, Gundam series used to be able to receive 40-50 something episodes, even if circumstances mandated that they be cut short. The very first Mobile Suit Gundam series was planned to have 52 episodes but was cut down to 43 due to low ratings upon its initial airing. Gundam X was planned to have 49 episodes but was cut down to 39, though it was able to finish its story on its own terms, so it wasn't outright cancelled. G-Witch is the first mainline Gundam series that I know of to have only been given 24 episodes, barring the Prologue episode (Do correct me if I'm wrong)...and I think this episode length wound up working against it. The last half of part two really bum rushes through its story at a rapid pace, introducing new concepts, characters, and conflicts out of nowhere with absolutely no foreshadowing or explanation whatsoever, discarding other subplots wholesale, and writing themselves in a corner to the point where they pull random Deus Ex Machinas out of their ass just to be able to resolve everything. Even the finale is loaded to the brim with random resolutions to the entire conflict that have absolutely ZERO explanation for how they happen, especially in regards to one character, and only raise more questions than they answer. I like happy endings as much as the next person, but the road to getting to said ending needs to make sense, and G-Witch wasn't given the time to smooth that road out. You'd think G-Witch's popularity would have allowed Sunrise to give it more episodes so it could actually flesh all these things out rather than cram them all into a quarter of the series. Plus, as a result of this, several important plot points just seem to get thrown to the wayside. Like, the series and the characters in it seems to flat-out forget that Guel's father was a complete jackass who berated his son over every little thing, but when the guy dies, everyone talks about his death like it was the worst thing ever when the guy did nothing to deserve any lick of sympathy from anyone. There are even points where G-Witch flat-out contradicts or retcons previous plot threads it established, even as far as one of the prologue novels.

So yeah, as far as G-Witch's flaws go, all of them are the result of not having more episodes to work with. But with all that said, I still enjoyed G-Witch as a show. Granted, I do like Gundam X and War In The Pocket a little more, but that's not to say G-Witch doesn't have anything of value to offer. The fact that it managed to rekindle Gundam's overall popularity, especially overseas, proved that the franchise is here to stay, and to me, reigniting new life into a franchise is the best thing that Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury can do.