Bandai Namco and Sunrise revealed on July 14th the first full-length trailer for Mobile Suit Gundam The Witch From Mercury, showing some mecha action, new visuals, and revealing the seiyuu voicing the main cast.
All these announcements happened at the Gundam Next Future - Link The Universe- event at Yokohama in Japan, which also included a screening of the "Prologue" episode. It will also be screened in California at San Diego Comic-Con on July 21st.
One of the most important reveals of the trailer is the animation itself: Gundam The Witch From Mercury will be using traditional 2D animation for its mecha scenes and battles. Most mecha anime nowadays use CG instead, but the Gundam franchise is among the few who keeps privileging the use of 2D animation.
It's reassuring for many fans to see The Witch From Mercury will keep on using 2D. Personally speaking, while there are many good mecha anime series using CG, I believe 2D mecha animation is simply superior in every way. You can check out the trailer right below.
Gundam The Witch From Mercury - Main Cast's Comments
The seiyuu voicing the main cast have also been revealed: Our protagonist Suletta Mercury is voiced by Kana Ichinose (Ichigo in Darling in the Franxx, Hisui in Tsukihime Remake). Main character Miorine Rembran is voiced by Lynn (Lilia in Mushoku Tensei, Maruzensky in Uma Musume).
The official site includes profiles for all the characters if you'd like to learn more about them. We translated below the newly published comments from the seiyuu.
In her comments, Kana Ichinose mentioned she never imagined playing a leading role in Gundam and is incredibly happy to voice the first female protagonist in a Gundam TV series. She described her character Suletta as someone similar to her, who has trouble communicating with others, so she could easily relate to her during the audition. She loves how Suletta tries her best to overcome her lack of communication skills, and how cool she becomes when piloting the Gundam Aerial.
Lynn explained she was even more excited than usual when going to the series' audition, as she heard it would be different than past Gundam shows. Voicing a main character in Gundam was one of my dreams, so she's incredibly happy to be voicing Miorine, though she's feeling a lot of pressure as well. She will do her best to portray Miorine's anger, wishes, and all her complexity as a character.
The two seiyuu also made an appearance at the reveal event and shared some photos on their respective Twitter accounts:
Personally speaking, as a long-time Gundam watcher, I'm definitely excited for Gundam The Witch From Mercury. I just hope the series will be truly different, and won't simply do the same things Gundam series always do but with a female protagonist instead.
In particular, there's currently no masked antagonist in sight, but I bet Miorine will end up playing that role. I'm also a fan of many of the previous mecha series scriptwriter Ichiro Ohkouchi worked on (Overman King Gainer, Code Geass, Valvrave) so my expectations are high.
Gundam The Witch From Mercury will start airing every Sundays from October 2nd, 2022. Outside Japan, the GundamInfo official YouTube channel will simulcast the series, and it also plans to stream the "Prologue" episode. Details will be announced at a later date. A trailer for the upcoming 1/144 HG Gunpla of the Gundam Aerial was also just revealed. Check it out below.