The Official Gundam: The Witch From Mercury Anime Thread Mk I

[Kuruni]

Really, I hope that Bob's will ends up a Spanner in the Works.

[Mafty]

I'll admit that I didn't see Guel getting positive character development, I thought he was going to stay a rather one note jerk like Jerid. That being said

Spoiler

I never guessed that Shaddiq would become so ruthless, It remains to be seen if he will become a full on antagonist, or an anti villian. Also Nika being a mole for a mercenary group is also unexpected, though some how I doubt she'll cross the line, despite the pressure.

[Underrated GM Custom]

Yeah same, based on the 1st episode I expected next to nothing from Guel but he's certainly become the one plotline I'm looking forward to following the whole season.

This was a pretty good episode, although I couldn't help think watching it they were addressing a lot of criticism from previous episodes where it simply didn't make a lot of sense which Seto already went through in his breakdown.

I'm glad to see the writers/director were willing to portray Miorine in a bad light, since she's been pretty terrible towards Suletta for most of the series so far. That said I wonder if they'll continue with this or if it will all be water under the bridge in a couple episodes.

[JulieYBM]

Looks like The Witch From Mercury is demanding 13,000 in-between drawings from a Chinese animation company for an upcoming episode. Jesus Christ, this series is being made at the last second.

Expect the series to crumble even more soon because these dumb fuckers running the production committee won't give the production team healthier production schedules to make up for the high-quality animation that they keep demanding from the team.

[Seto Kaiba]

Looks like The Witch From Mercury is demanding 13,000 in-between drawings from a Chinese animation company for an upcoming episode. Jesus Christ, this series is being made at the last second.

Granted, that sounds extreme on its own... but it's really not that far outside the norm for anime production as a whole.

Bandai Namco Filmworks AKA Sunrise is abnormally well-off in its industry owing to it having multiple "in-house" studios that it can call on for design work and key animation production support, but even they have to live with the incredibly tight production schedules for a weekly TV anime. Contracting the tweening - which is manpower-intensive - out to production support studios in South Korea and China has been the norm for nearly as long as the anime industry itself has existed. Why? Because it's WAY cheaper than having the work done in Japan. In the days of hand-drawn animation, it wasn't at all unusual for a production to farm the tweening work and even portions of the key animation production work out to multiple studios simultaneously.* Even with such aggressive cost-cutting measures, very few anime series actually turn a profit while the series is still airing. Many never break even at all, and many of the ones that do only do narrowly manage to do so thanks to time and merchandising. Producing anime is done on a hair shirt budget to make turning a profit as easy as it can be made, and even then success or failure typically depends on merchandising.

Conditions are WAY better now than they were back in the days of hand-drawn animation too, thanks to the advent of digital animation tools that greatly reduce the amount of time and manpower needed and are far more rework-friendly should a frame not pass inspection.

Expect the series to crumble even more soon because these dumb fuckers running the production committee won't give the production team healthier production schedules to make up for the high-quality animation that they keep demanding from the team.

Oh my sweet summer child... welcome to the reality of the anime industry. Japan's corporate culture is toxic as f*ck on its own, but the anime industry's corporate culture is toxic as f*ck even by Japanese standards. The hours are long, the pay is awful, the working conditions are at-best unhealthy, and it's cold comfort that the folks in Korea or China doing the tweening work for you have it even worse. I guarantee you the staff who're working on The Witch from Mercury have it no worse and likely no better than any other Gundam production... and probably at least a little bit better than the folks working for smaller studios on less-established properties.

One Korean former digital animator of my acquaintance once opined that he knew it was time to get out of animation production after a 100 hour work week that left him so exhausted he started hallucinating. He's now doing a job nearly as undignified but with far better hours, managing licensing for one of the most hated small companies in the entire anime industry.



* The most complicated arrangement I'm familiar with was the production of 1982's Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which saw Studio Nue contract with Tatsunoko Production and Artland to do the key animation and they ended up having to bring in several more studios to help including the newly-founded AIC, Daicon Film (later and better known as GAINAX), AnimeFriend, and the Korean studio StarPro in order to get the job done.

[Mafty]

Unfortunately that doesn't surprise me, I've long heard about how hard it actually is to work in the animation industry( or the film industry in general). Maybe I'm being hypocritical because I still watch anime, but hopefully this will change; it seems unlikely because oftentimes economizing comes before everything else, but sometimes if there's enough negative publicity , things change.

That being said wasn't Japan actually an animation outsourcer at one point? I seem to remember reading that Sunrise and TMS (amongst several other studios) worked on American cartoons during the 80's and 90's.

As for the hurried animation, isn't it the case that sometimes sloppy animation is presented during the first air date, and fixed for Blu Ray releases?

[Underrated GM Custom]

They were indeed, Rankin-Bass outsourced a lot of work to Japanese animation companies. For another example Voltron was also very successful in the west that they asked Toei to provide additional animation since they changed the story a bit from GoLion.

[Seto Kaiba]

Unfortunately that doesn't surprise me, I've long heard about how hard it actually is to work in the animation industry( or the film industry in general). Maybe I'm being hypocritical because I still watch anime, but hopefully this will change; it seems unlikely because oftentimes economizing comes before everything else, but sometimes if there's enough negative publicity , things change.

It probably won't change... not without some downright seismic changes to Japanese corporate culture and how the anime industry operates.

Part of it is how Japanese corporate culture emphasizes keeping your head down, your mouth shut, and doing what you're told even in the face of unreasonable demands from your employer. Making a fuss is unseemly, and it's been going on for so long thanks to their stolid unwillingness to modernize the way they do business in a lot of fields that putting up with involuntary overtime and other bad working conditions is seen as "paying your dues" as a low-level employee. (Not that they'll ever admit it, but this is a big part of the reason the national birth rate's in the toilet.)

The anime industry in particular is unlikely to ever change because of the aforementioned cost-performance issue. It's very difficult to make money on anime. So much so, in fact, that many titles never earn back what's spent to produce them. Without strong merchandise sales, it's practically impossible to turn a profit because the broadcast and streaming rights just aren't worth that much. It can take months or even years for a series to break even and start turning a profit from merchandising, home video sales, and distribution agreements outside Japan. The industry's basically constantly floating on the bubble of a small number of hits which were popular enough to quickly turn a profit and a trickle of residuals from the rest. That tiny tiny profit margin is why they aggressively push to keep production costs down, to make it as easy as possible to turn a profit on a series as quickly as possible. That means keeping wages low, keeping the hours long, and farming the heavy lifting out to cheaper studios in South Korea and China where wages are even lower. (They're one of the few industries I know of in Japan that actively pushes to modernize tools and methods as often as possible to leverage new ways to cut costs... a fair amount of the rest of their country still lives in the fax machine era.)

As for the hurried animation, isn't it the case that sometimes sloppy animation is presented during the first air date, and fixed for Blu Ray releases?

To a certain extent, yeah. If the production schedule didn't permit for fixing animation errors or providing the level of quality and detail the production committee wanted in the broadcast run, the studios will sometimes go back and touch up the footage or redo renders for CG with higher-detail textures for the home video release to increase its appeal to fans.

(e.g. David Production went back and fixed a bunch of off-model facial animation in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for the home video release, and Satelight re-rendered the mecha in Macross Delta with more detailed textures.)

[Kuruni]

So... It look like poor Bob going to sits in sideline until the second half. Kenanji looks far more friendly than in the Prologue.

Spoiler

Prospera is working with Delling all along, which mean their action in past episodes might be facade. We still have no idea what's their plan, but with Delling gone from OP, things look grim for him.

Prior to this episode, I thought Aerial going to get trashed because she's more or less a glorified toy for Duel game and as confirmed in Demi Trainer's gunpla manual, students' MS only use low output beam, so I thought her first real battle will be ugly. But since it look like she got upgraded, I'm not so sure anymore.

[JulieYBM]

Episode #11 has Okiura Hiroyuki's first television credit in ten years. That's a surprise.

Looks like The Witch From Mercury is demanding 13,000 in-between drawings from a Chinese animation company for an upcoming episode. Jesus Christ, this series is being made at the last second.

Granted, that sounds extreme on its own... but it's really not that far outside the norm for anime production as a whole.

That's a bad thing.

Bandai Namco Filmworks AKA Sunrise is abnormally well-off in its industry owing to it having multiple "in-house" studios that it can call on for design work and key animation production support, but even they have to live with the incredibly tight production schedules for a weekly TV anime. Contracting the tweening - which is manpower-intensive - out to production support studios in South Korea and China has been the norm for nearly as long as the anime industry itself has existed.

The immediate issue is that there are no available animators in Japan right now (which is in large part due to the slavery-esque work conditions). Even then, that's not the issue currently affecting this production. The problem is that production committees do not provide a long enough production schedule for the production team to work with and because of this the entire industry is finishing episodes day—if not day-of—before broadcast. That is not sustainable.

Why? Because it's WAY cheaper than having the work done in Japan. In the days of hand-drawn animation, it wasn't at all unusual for a production to farm the tweening work and even portions of the key animation production work out to multiple studios simultaneously.* Even with such aggressive cost-cutting measures, very few anime series actually turn a profit while the series is still airing. Many never break even at all, and many of the ones that do only do narrowly manage to do so thanks to time and merchandising. Producing anime is done on a hair shirt budget to make turning a profit as easy as it can be made, and even then success or failure typically depends on merchandising.

Conditions are WAY better now than they were back in the days of hand-drawn animation too, thanks to the advent of digital animation tools that greatly reduce the amount of time and manpower needed and are far more rework-friendly should a frame not pass inspection.

Expect the series to crumble even more soon because these dumb fuckers running the production committee won't give the production team healthier production schedules to make up for the high-quality animation that they keep demanding from the team.

Oh my sweet summer child... welcome to the reality of the anime industry. Japan's corporate culture is toxic as f*ck on its own, but the anime industry's corporate culture is toxic as f*ck even by Japanese standards. The hours are long, the pay is awful, the working conditions are at-best unhealthy, and it's cold comfort that the folks in Korea or China doing the tweening work for you have it even worse. I guarantee you the staff who're working on The Witch from Mercury have it no worse and likely no better than any other Gundam production... and probably at least a little bit better than the folks working for smaller studios on less-established properties.

One Korean former digital animator of my acquaintance once opined that he knew it was time to get out of animation production after a 100 hour work week that left him so exhausted he started hallucinating. He's now doing a job nearly as undignified but with far better hours, managing licensing for one of the most hated small companies in the entire anime industry.



* The most complicated arrangement I'm familiar with was the production of 1982's Super Dimension Fortress Macross, which saw Studio Nue contract with Tatsunoko Production and Artland to do the key animation and they ended up having to bring in several more studios to help including the newly-founded AIC, Daicon Film (later and better known as GAINAX), AnimeFriend, and the Korean studio StarPro in order to get the job done.

I'm an adult—just like you—and I won't be referred to as a 'sweet summer child'.

Furthermore, I've been following the industry since the late 2000s, I am well aware of how it operates and why the manner in which is operates is bad. We need to criticize how the industry operates to spread awareness of its issues so that we can support the demand for better work conditions for the industry.

[BrentD15]

So, critique of the animation industrial culture Japan has been cultivating for decades, to the actual episode itself.

Spoiler

That chase sequence between Suletta and Miorine was so good!

[Seto Kaiba]

Granted, that sounds extreme on its own... but it's really not that far outside the norm for anime production as a whole.

That's a bad thing.

Nah, it's just the cost of doing business. The tight production schedules are, in large measure, necessary to support weekly serialization and also carry the added benefit of keeping production costs down by making the production period as short as possible.

The immediate issue is that there are no available animators in Japan right now [...]

Nope... this has nothing to do with the availability of animators in Japan.

The reason that every studio outsources their tweening work to South Korea or China has nothing to do with the availability of animators in Japan. It's all about the cost. Tweening is manpower-intensive animation work even with modern digital tools. The industry has long since come to the collective realization that the best balance of quality and cost-performance is to have the design work and key animation done by Japanese artists and contract the tedious and exacting tweening work out to a greater number of less expensive animators in South Korea or Japan.

Even then, that's not the issue currently affecting this production. The problem is that production committees do not provide a long enough production schedule for the production team to work with and because of this the entire industry is finishing episodes day—if not day-of—before broadcast. That is not sustainable.

It's been a viable business model for... sixty years, give or take a few? On that basis, I'd say its sustainability is well demonstrated.

It's not pleasant, by any means, but that as I said is the cost of doing business. By its very nature, film production is EXPENSIVE and as a result most aspects related to principal photography whether it's a live action series or animated, broadcast television or theatrical film, are done as quickly as they feasibly can be in order to keep production costs down. There are few industries where the phrase "time is money" is so distressingly literal.

I'm an adult—just like you—and I won't be referred to as a 'sweet summer child'.

It's an idiomatic expression of deep disgust with your naivete, more like saying you were born yesterday than calling you a literal child.

Furthermore, I've been following the industry since the late 2000s, I am well aware of how it operates and why the manner in which is operates is bad. We need to criticize how the industry operates to spread awareness of its issues so that we can support the demand for better work conditions for the industry.

The substance of your argument here strongly argues against your supposed familiarity with the subject.

You opened this line of inquiry by acting like these conditions were unusual or unprecedented and asserted they were going to have significant negative effects on the Witch from Mercury... when they're actually the norm for the industry as a whole and every Gundam production has performed under the same pressures.

[Seto Kaiba]

Anyway... this massive nothingburger of an episode...

Spoiler

Miorine's ship is on its way to Plant Quetta. Somehow, someone was willing to trust this pack of idiots with a ship? I can only assume the hope is that they'll accidentally kill themselves and nobody of consequence will have to dirty their hands.

In the least surprising development ever, Suletta has once again been relegated to menial tasks. She is mopping the ceiling of the ship's bridge and then is summoned away to an emergency call involving livestock that they brought on the ship for some reason or other. The disrespect this show has for its protagonist is real... but, considering how dimwitted she's been so far, possibly warranted. She volunteers to help Belmiria with an item of the ship's cargo and immediately spills it.

There's some ominous foreshadowing of something called "Quiet Zero" being built at Plant Quetta. Delling accuses Prospera of having brought a Gundam to the plant just to confirm that. Prospera tells her he can call her Elnora Samaya if he prefers. Apparently Aerial's permet score reached six in the last duel against Grassley House. Four was killing people pretty quickly in the prologue. Prospera hands over a thumb drive containing the data on the Aerial's network architecture, which is apparently needed to complete Quiet Zero. It sounds like Delling and Prospera have been conspiring on something, possibly an autonomous weapon, which seems a little out of character given that Prospera's goal is revenge on Delling.

Fold of Dawn is busy transferring weapons and Mobile Suits from their ship onto the captured ship that Guel was working on. Guel, bright spark that he is, spots the thread and notices that Fold of Dawn are using an old (but not obsolete) model of Jeturk MS called Desultors. He notes that it's not something terrorists could easily obtain... correctly implying they have support from someone highly placed. (Not that he suspects that that support comes from his own father and from Sarius Zenelli.) Probably not worth getting attached to Sophie and the other Witch, since they're almost certainly going to die in the forthcoming fight.

Suletta's agonizing over lunch, believing she's been slighted and going off to cry in the toilet because someone accidentally grabbed an extra one.

Wim Jeturk's having a meeting with Delling about Grassley's petition to have formal charges brought against Prospera Mercury, Shin Sei, and Suletta for unlawful GUND Format use. Delling hits him with a downright laser guided rebuttal about his missing son, suggesting he should put his own house in order before worrying about other people's children. He throws an obviously choreographed fit and uses that moment to plant a listening device on one of Delling's guards, then calls Shaddiq. He can't seem to resist baiting Shaddiq, which leads to Shaddiq launching the operation immediately instead of waiting two hours, apparently hoping to catch Jeturk in the crossfire.

We finally get to see some Dominicus Corps soldiers, who are talking sh*t about their CO. They get word of an approaching Jeturk ship.

There's a mildly amusing chase sequence that starts with Suletta opening the door of the loo to see Miorine standing there, then without changing expressions tries to close the door again. It leads to the two of them fighting over the door, then Suletta fleeing through the plant from a furious Miorine. They ALMOST get to have a moment, as Suletta expresses her doubts, only for them to get drowned out in more of Miorine's shrill demands and a few actual punches... including some complaining about how Miorine is not taking care of the tomatoes properly or cleaning her room for her.

There's a Meaningful Name on the supply ship carrying the Fold of Dawn attack force to Plant Quetta... it's Kashtanka, the name of a short story by Anton Chekhov (of "Chekhov's Gun" fame) about a lost dog that joins a performance group after being rescued by a kind new owner, then because it's a stupid creature of habit returns to the family that abused it after they see it in a show. The three Desultors deploy jamming pods to cut Plant Quetta off from the rest of the network, then the Lfrith units proceed with their attack on the plant. They use some massive (apparently single use) beam weapons to cut C Block out of the plant entirely, ending with one of the two finding Suletta trapped by emergency bulkheads.

All in all, a snore of an episode that halfheartedly attempts to shift aside the previous episode's rather blatant reveal that Miorine doesn't actually give a damn about Suletta except as a useful human shield against her father's succession plans.

[Underrated GM Custom]

Yeah I was bit disappointed this episode since they immediately resolved the interpersonal drama between Suletta and Miorine, I guess the writers just don't like letting tension build.

Spoiler

I think Ryujin was the first one to guess that Delling and Prospera would be cooperating. Quite surprising considering the accompanying novel mentions her wanting to get revenge on Delling, I'm curious how they're going to portray her motivations in the show and why she is willing to work closely with Delling which seems like a massive liability to a revenge murder plot.

The single use massive beam cannons were pretty neat, kind of like a single-shot Mega Bazooka launcher. One thing I did notice is that Delling seems to be the only one who's power did not go out when the attack hit, so perhaps he was not near the transmitter when the attack hit.

[BrentD15]

Spoiler

I'd chalk up the tension of Miorine and Suletta as down to poor communication between the two.
Meanwhile, those new Gundam pilots are replacing Delling in the intro. And they're using Lfriths, too!
Does that mean Prospera is involved with them, or did they acquire the Gundams through other means?

[Seto Kaiba]

Yeah I was bit disappointed this episode since they immediately resolved the interpersonal drama between Suletta and Miorine, I guess the writers just don't like letting tension build.

It's one of the things that makes this series really frustrating to watch.

We're nearly a dozen episodes into The Witch from Mercury and there's been no real indication of what the central conflict driving the series is. Instead, the story thus far has been a parade of little emergencies that are all presented as story-ending calamities for the protagonists and yet are all either overcome with largely trivial effort or are simply forgotten about as the series course-corrects towards its latest emergency.

Spoiler

I'd chalk up the tension of Miorine and Suletta as down to poor communication between the two.
Meanwhile, those new Gundam pilots are replacing Delling in the intro. And they're using Lfriths, too!
Does that mean Prospera is involved with them, or did they acquire the Gundams through other means?

It's honestly starting to feel like Cathedral's extermination order against Volkfangr ended up like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdQPJFgt0o4

We already know they missed at least two of Carto Nabo's proteges from the Vanadis Institute... at this point, it would not be at all surprising to learn there were other escaped Witches who were sheltered by Grassley Defense Systems, Jeturk Heavy Machinery, and other tech firms internal and external to the Benerit Group. Not to mention any Ochs Earth staff involved in the trial production of the Lfrith.

Spoiler

We saw in the Prologue that Ochs Earth was already manufacturing the XGF-01 Lfrith in limited quantities both for testing at the Vanadis Institute and for eventual sale to one of the Fronts. The Vanadis Institute's two XGF-01 Lfriths were destroyed by the Dominicus Corps while the XGF-02 Lfrith prototype escaped and became the Aerial, so it's likely the Lfrith Ur and Lfrith Thorn are part of that trial production lot that Ochs Earth's factory built before being broken up by the MSDC.

Maybe the leader of the terrorist group Fold of Dawn is a former Ochs Earth employee who made off with a couple Lfrith units while the company was being dissolved like how Elnora fled the witch hunt on Folkvangr by stealing the Lfrith II prototype.

Considering the fuss and noise made in previous episodes about incorporating AI and drone technology into Mobile Suits as an alternative to the GUND Format as on the Jeturk MD-0064 Darilbalde from Guel's second duel with Suletta and the lie Prospera told to cover up the Aerial's prohibited use of GUND Format...

Spoiler

... are we headed back into Mobile Doll territory?

Jeturk Heavy Machinery's latest and greatest MS Darilbalde made use of drone technology and a support AI to allow it to fight on an even footing with the GUND-ARM Aerial, and we (but possibly not Suletta) know that the Aerial has a powerful AI system of its own that enables a lot of its antics. We saw Elnora/Prospera handing over data on the Aerial's AI architecture to Delling in this most recent episode, ostensibly so that it can be used to complete something called the "Quiet Zero". Given that Delling's moral objection to the GUND Format was that the technology had an unnecessary cost in human lives in terms of the damage it inflicted on the pilots, it would make a lot of sense for him to be interested in unmanned Mobile Suit technology as a means to remove loss-of-life from the equation of warfare altogether.

Spoiler

Especially if the secret to the Aerial's perfected GUND is that there is an advanced AI system acting as an intermediary between the pilot and MS in order to keep the permet communication free of data storms and regulated to safe levels. An AI capable of providing the kind of operation support the Aerial needs to do the things it does in the series would be an extremely potent technology to apply to unmanned Mobile Suits.
Unmanned Mobile Suits were dangerous enough in Gundam Wing thanks to superhuman reaction times and the lack of a pilot to worry about even when they were dependent on a central computer. Imagine how much more dangerous a fully autonomous unmanned Mobile Suit with the Aerial's GUND-Bit capabilities would be.

[Janx]

Honestly my main thoughts on this episode is having farm animals in zero-g with nothing to collect their droppings would be a titanic mess.

I do find it funny a friend of mine said this show had better pacing than IBO, when we just sort of go from one quickly resolved disaster to the next, and then from ep 7 its felt like a long stretch of nothing AND a series of quickly resolved issues at the same time.

[Mafty]

I'll admit to finding the show oddly engaging, but I agree the plot could do with more development

Spoiler

Seriously we're at the last episode and this is only the second real battle in the series, which really isn't what you go in thinking from the pilot. Not to mention all the background dealing are more than bit confusing, and even create some plot issues (i.e. Elnora partnering with the guy she wants revenge on?)

On a more positive note

Spoiler

The Earth witches are pretty interesting , and they have cool mechs, so hopefully they get more screen time. Plus it will be interesting to see just how many Lfrith units actually survived the prolog.

[Chris]

I'll admit to finding the show oddly engaging, but I agree the plot could do with more development

Spoiler

Seriously we're at the last episode and this is only the second real battle in the series, which really isn't what you go in thinking from the pilot. Not to mention all the background dealing are more than bit confusing, and even create some plot issues (i.e. Elnora partnering with the guy she wants revenge on?)

Spoiler

What at all is confusing about Elnora partnering with Delling? It lets her get close enough to him to betray him at the opportune moment.

[Ryujin]

It was nice to be somewhere warm enough for just a T-shirt over the past week or so.
In any case, an assortment of thoughts, opinions & observations about the previous two episodes & then some.

About Suletta:
I've come to realize something integral to Suletta: her sense of self-worth is

Spoiler

tied directly to how she thinks she can be a benefit to others. It's something that's intertwined with her personality, something that's been constantly drilled into her from the time she arrived at Mercury, where her family’s acceptance into the local community was, to her, predicated on winning them over by her usefulness as a MS pilot. When we see her doing all sorts of menial tasks--delivering fertilizer, doing errands, she was doing this voluntarily & unhesitatingly, even cheerfully. I doubt that it was Miorine tasking her to serve drinks to Shaddiq & Sabina, it was most likely done on her own volition. It would totally be in character if ‘work at a maid café for the high school festival’ was on her bucket list.

It can be argued that Miorine was taking advantage of this proclivity, but she was ready & willing in any case. Afterwards, Miorine probably had good intentions with regards to getting caretakers for the greenhouse & Elan as a test pilot in order to lighten Suletta's workload, but to Suletta, it was a criticism, that her efforts were subpar, she's not worthy of her duties--which leads to her going overdrive with swabbing the deck, rushing to handle livestock, etc. It's wide open to interpretation of course, but that note of exasperation from Miorine at the livestock bay may as well be her saying, "What the heck, this is beneath you, why does my groom insist on doing this?!?"

It's been noted that, intentional or not, she displays clear signs of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria in the latest episode--Suletta's basically bullying herself and it's kind of symbolic that she's doing her misery spiral in a toilet stall. In the following confrontation, Miorine realizes what's happening quickly enough & does the right thing afterwards--in hindsight, she's also shown a propensity for reading people, albeit far from Prospera's level--and in the process drops the cantankerous facade that she constantly hides behind to express her own honest feelings. I might expound on that in a later thread, along with other observations about her character development but, suffice to say, her words were explicitly a variation of “Make me miso soup every day.” which elicited quite the reaction from JP viewers.

Parallels between Parent & Progeny:
'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.' I'm sure that many of you have already noted it, but I may as well put it to writing.

Spoiler

Miorine & Delling can both be described as being pushy and overbearing, with a willingness take bold, decisive action (often impulsively in Mio's case) and damn the consequences. Furthermore, they keep their true emotions hidden behind either a cold or a cantankerous façade. Most of the time though, this can only be discerned through nuances & unassuming visual cues that are easily missed, ignored or discounted. However, both also share a sense of responsibility for said consequences, as can be seen by Miorine hijacking Aerial at the very start and the twisted roundabout way that Delling 'handles' Miorine. Unfortunately, this treatment appears to have warped Miorine a ways, such that she ends up treating every relationship, every exchange, as a transactional one. That is, until Suletta bumbles along with a genuine concern for her well-being & an earnest, selfless slap to somebody's butt.

Both Guel & Vim can be described as being straightforward, impulsive, with an absence of subtlety. The difference though is that Guel’s actions have an earnest quality to them; he is guided by his personal moral compass, while Vim is driven more by ambition & malice, petty or otherwise (and he knows it--no excuses or justifications are needed). We also see flashes of it in Lauda’s temperament, but he generally keeps it hidden under a cool exterior. Perhaps the influence of his mother, the presumed mistress? The fact that his Dilanza is armed with a giant axe, along with being highly ranked by the bookies, speaks volumes.

Segueing a bit, at one point I didn’t really know what to make of Guel’s DV actions towards Miorine in the first episode, since it felt at odds with his evident distaste towards Shaddiq for the treatment of women as betting chattel & his subsequent white-knighting of Suletta. I'm speculating that, asides from Miorine’s continued refusal to accept her situation, the pressure of maintaining his Holder position and living up to his father’s expectation must have been getting to him as well; note how little a provocation it took to spark a duel with Parker Eastcott, who subsequently serves as a convenient avenue for his underlying frustrations. He may have also been feeling emasculated at insinuations that he couldn’t ‘keep a leash on his woman,’ so to speak, not to mention a certain fragility to his self-worth that Secelia effortlessly pounces on. Further on, the need to reconcile his ideals & his love for his father would’ve been eating at him as well, leading eventually to his ultimate decision (taking one step...to the side? lol).
As an aside, Miorine’s constant attempts must’ve given him a nice series of lessons on what NOT to do, and everyone expecting him to leave Asticassia would’ve given him a good head start however he planned & executed it. Should’ve dyed that forelock black, though.

Sarius & Shaddiq are both decidedly cautions & calculating, favoring the use of a third party for their schemes. It can be seen with how Sarius wove Peil & Jeturk into his own plans while keeping himself at a safe distance from possible fallout and, in the process, having to exert virtually zero effort & resources to boot! He may have overextended his hand by bringing his complaint directly to Cathedra, but then again, his opposition to the GUND format appears to be a matter of public record & well within expected behaviour. This caution is reflected in Shaddiq’s fighting style, with how Sabina’s squad did most of the heavy lifting. Even ChuChu’s takedown involved misdirection with the Beam Bracer. It also figured prominently in Shaddiq’s relationship with Miorine with how he saw Guel, again a third party, as basically keeping her safely in reserve for him, but that ultimately led to green tomato on his face. Too little, too late, as is said.

Incidentally, all three had lost their mothers at an early age, and the lack of guidance & tempering from a maternal figure at an early age has clearly had a negative effect on their emotional growth. An oblique Tomino-ism?

Regarding the DoF Desultors,

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a long-running Pet peeve of mine is that Gundam, nay, a majority of shows from Japan involving mecha, persists in using the outdated Vic formation, instead of Finger-Four. I presume it’s good for story-driven character dynamics & makes for easier choreography, but it’s frankly a tactically inefficient relic from Imperial Britain & Japan.

On the matter of the Space Assembly League

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Miorine didn’t seem to be distressed about Feng Jun's affiliation, which suggests it’s some sort of legal organization, a neutral third party whose members just happen to dabble in the occasional 'victimless' crime. Call it a hunch based on zero evidence but, while not illegal, might it be a group that’s looked down upon by the big corporate groups? Perhaps something akin to a space truckers’ union, an organization that offers a modicum of agency to the blue-collar crowd? For an organization interested in quickly raising its own armed forces to a state of minimum credible defense, I can see the appeal of mobile suits equipped with the GUND format as it would seem to offer a shallower learning curve and shorter training time to achieve a working level of proficiency. A means to quickly obtain & raise viable combat pilots to a standard that’s sufficiently competitive with those of longer-established forces.
On the other hand, it may well be a collection comprised of what modern gamers would refer to as 'indies,' a coalition of small- and medium-scale industries loosely allied together as a measure against the massive AAA groups. Again, similar reasons to obtain Gundam-types.

Incidentally, Feng Jun’s the only character of note with a distinctly oriental name. Well, maybe Norea, her surname suggests a Vietnamese lineage. There’s a noticeable lack of Japanese surnames. Maybe Japan’s economic situation & declining growth rates finally caught up with it (throws shade at Kyoukai Senki). I don't remember anyone or anything referring to Earth specifically as a 'hellhole,' but abandoned infrastructure overgrown with weeds, colorful as they may be, may as well be visual shorthand for 'economic disaster zone.' Too many people fixated on equating 'hellhole' as 'apocalyptic nuclear wasteland' all thanks to pop media, methinks. Even then, places like the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone today serve as a counterpoint to this.

Edit: Forgot that Nika has an all-kanji name.

There have been comparisons elsewhere between Sophie Pulone & Nena Trinity,

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but I find it superficial at best. Nena was literally a child running around with a big gun & virtually no adult supervision, but Sophie strikes me more as the stereotypical edgy teenager with a father figure who’s lenient enough to permit her a flashy act or two (besides, it helps with the intimidation—dominating the fittest, most aggressive hostage is pretty much a textbook play)--Bob was never in danger of being shot just for shooting his mouth off—but asides from that, I doubt she’ll endanger missions by disobeying orders. No crossing the line, insomuch as how Naji defines it, anyways. Her subsequent antics also have the feel of a long-running schtick with Norea.
Speaking of which, I’m thinking that Naji may have taken a shining to ‘Bob’ in the course of that exchange, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up on Earth way before everyone else. You blue-collar guys don’t really have it much better than us Earthians, right? Gotta show a bit of solidarity here, them corpos profiting from the fruits of our labor & all that. Also gotta put that Guel Camp experience to good use, yo.

It's certainly not for everyone & can be frustrating to some, but I personally find the murkiness of the plot

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just fine--it invites audience involvement, investment & speculation, offering a measure of unpredictability while maintaining some veneer of plausibility & rational story structure (Y NO CATHEDRA WITH GUNS A-BLAZIN', the masses cry. Now they know why). I'm seeing this as the midpoint of the series, the 2nd Act of a traditional 3-Act structure--everything's still in the process of coming together as the co-MCs encounter obstacles whose primary purpose is to drive forward their character development. It remains to be seen if the 2nd cour will be the 3rd Act all the way, but I feel that Kobayashi & Okouchi, (and apparently an enthusiastic staff) will deliver

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and that the overall sales numbers & positive reception will hopefully persuade Sunrise to loosen the budget purse strings some more.