Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury has finally been revealed.
The new teaser video reveals that the show will have a female central protagonist, the first in the franchise's 40-year history. The trailer also gives a first look at the mobile suit that she will pilot, the Gundam Aerial, which looks like a blend between the visual styles of the Gundam Barbatos from Iron-Blooded Orphans and the Gundam G-Self from Reconguista in G. Line art and a look at the Gundam Aerial's High Grade 1/144th-scale Gunpla model kit were also revealed.
The Witch from Mercury is still scheduled with a premiere window this fall, but the series' producers will introduce the series' new world and continuity with a prequel story, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury Prologue, which is planned to be released this summer. The announcement did not specify if the prequel was being released as an anime special, movie, manga, game, etc., but Bandai Namco describes it as a "fully-fledged project" with its own storyline and characters. Two new mobile suits from the prequel project were also revealed: the Gundam Lfrith, which looks very similar to the Gundam Aerial, and the Beguir-Beu.
The new anime will be the first original series in the Gundam franchise since the debut of Iron-Blooded Orphans in 2015. Since then, the franchise has been dedicated to new spinoffs within its lighter Build sub-series, as well as producing animated adaptations of stories set within the franchise's original Universal Century continuity, such as 2018's Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative and 2021's Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway.
Gundam fans have plenty more to look forward to in 2022 besides the new series: Iron-Blooded Orphans will be rebroadcast in Japan this year with a "Special Edition" cut in order to promote the release of a new spinoff, Urgr Hunt, whose story is being told through an expansion of the Iron-Blooded Orphans mobile game. Additionally, the next Gundam movie, Cucuruz Doan's Island, is scheduled to be released in Japan this summer. The film is a feature length remake of Episode 15 of the original 1979 Gundam anime, which sees hero Amuro Ray traveling to a supposedly deserted island in order to hunt down some Zeon stragglers from the battle of Jaburo, but instead finds an old man and a group of war orphans. A sequel to Hathaway is also in development, though the series producers have warned that the movie is still years away from release.
Source: YouTube via Anime News Network
