In order to talk about Season 1 of Witch from Mercury, we have to get Season 2 involved. That’s because Season 1 actually didn’t grab me and had me wondering where Witch from Mercury’s great reputation came from. However, after watching Season 2, I realized that pretty much all of the things in Season 1 that I didn’t entirely care about or didn’t like actually had good payoff by the end. Not only that, but even if Season 1 remained “just okay,” Season 2 was so intense that I think it’d be worth going for anyways.

I want to emphasize that Season 1 doesn’t actually do anything wrong. I didn’t find anything outright boring or annoying. But for the most part, the overall events of it can be summed up by a nervous girl (Suletta) going to Mech School and using her overpowered mech to win high-stakes duels. Now, at the same time the anime’s companies have interesting power struggles and use plenty of dirty tricks to get ahead (which is the real plot of this anime)...but there weren’t enough “wow”ing ones in Season 1. The mech fights also aren’t much to look at (besides Suletta’s beautiful Gundam Bits), which is a shame considering there are a good chunk of battles — especially with how duel-heavy Season 1 is.

However, the end of Season 1 and the entirety of Season 2 utilizes all of the events from Season 1 that were actually just setup and had me glued to the screen. There are so many sparks that go off between so many different characters/groups and well-done emotional moments that I was addicted to seeing what happened next. Admittedly, it got so complex that I had a hard time following who was doing what sometimes, but the general escalation of everything was straightforward enough that I wasn’t damned for it. Granted, some things felt asinine enough to take away from the experience, but not enough to lower my score.

To go back a bit, I will say that I didn’t really get attached to too many characters in Season 1, including the leads. They were still good though, and I like how much attention the sheer amount of side characters get! Season 2 helps by fleshing out everyone’s depth for sure, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t end up getting attached to most of the cast by the end in one way or another. However, I feel like a lot of good character moments come more from their place in the plot than from the characters themselves. “A character was cool for doing x moreso than how they did it.” It’s not bad and goes to show just how well events in the anime are done, but I do wish it could’ve been more of both. (Miorine probably suffers the most from this which is actually pretty bad since she's the co-star.)

While Witch from Mercury being “two seasons” doesn’t make much sense for the one continuous story that it is, it does make it easier for me to pinpoint when it immediately shifts from “okay” to “insane” on the first watch. Patience pays off with this one, assuming you even need it.