When Cell Swimsuit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury ended earlier this yr, it did so by taking a step ahead within the franchise’s historical past that few different sequence had the prospect to make specific in their very own prior examinations of queer love. However after guardian firm Bandai pushed again on what was, within the present, a textual affirmation, the sequence’ personal director has pushed again in flip to remind us: these girls are married, dammit.
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Hiroshi Kobayashi, a director who labored on each seasons of Witch From Mercury, made the feedback in an included booklet as a part of the ultimate quantity of the sequence’ Japanese Blu-ray launch.
Kobayashi’s feedback, discussing the creation of the epilogue to the present’s last episode (by way of Automaton Media) explicitly describes that the occasions between the conclusion of the sequence and the epilogue see Suletta and Miorine wed one another. “I knew I used to be going to make an epilogue, but it surely was some time earlier than I made a decision upon the precise variety of years that ought to move in-between,” Kobayashi says. “The ending itself follows [the Shakespeare play] The Tempest, and depicts Suletta and Miorine getting married and turning into companions.”
As soon as once more, it must be stated that that is very clear within the precise episode itself, and never a possible interpretation of subtext. Within the epilogue, Miorine is instantly known as a sister-in-law by Suletta’s sister, Eri, and when Suletta and Miorine reunite within the last moments of the scene, shining silver bands on their respective ring fingers are highlighted with a glimmering sheen to carry them to the viewers’s consideration. They’re intimate and shut to one another of their presence, talk about their future collectively, and conclude the sequence by going to their residence collectively. It takes an terrible lot of dangerous religion to misconstrue the intent of the scene.
And but, that’s what makes Kobayashi’s remark, in an formally launched piece of merchandise, so essential—as a result of Dawn (née Bandai Namco Filmworks) homeowners Bandai beforehand tried to misconstrue that intent. A remark throughout an interview within the July 2023 situation of Gundam Ace from Suletta’s voice actress, Kana Ichinose, the place she referred to Suletta and Miorine as married, was faraway from later print runs and a digital transcription of the interview after launch at Bandai’s request. On the time, the corporate described the language used as “primarily based on the hypothesis of the Gundam Ace editor” slightly than an endorsement of the sequence’ personal textual content.
“We wish you to benefit from the work by leaving it as much as each one in every of you who’ve seen the principle story [of Witch From Mercury],” a press release launched by Bandai, apologizing for the necessity to appropriate the problem launched on the time, concluded partially. The controversy prompted a vocal wave of backlash from Witch From Mercury followers from Japan and around the globe, who flocked to the social media hashtag “#スレミオ結婚,” or “Sulemio Marriage,” referring to the couple’s ship identify, and noticed the transfer as an try and censor any official acknowledgement of what’s, for now, Gundam’s most outstanding queer romance story within the franchise’s four-and-a-half-decade-long historical past.
There may be, one way or the other, nonetheless an opportunity that Bandai may push again on even this—simply because these feedback from Kobayashi are included within the official Blu-ray launch of Witch From Mercury doesn’t essentially shield them from being altered after the very fact in future print runs. In any case, Gundam Ace is an formally licensed Gundam journal, and the controversy over the summer time reveals that Bandai was, not less than then, prepared to undergo with this type of censorship, and might be prepared to take action once more.
Hopefully the truth that these feedback made it to print within the wake of that preliminary Gundam Ace controversy point out that Bandai truly listened to the response over its makes an attempt to minimize what continues to be a historic milestone for Gundam—a second that helped, as the corporate at all times hoped for with Witch From Mercury from the second it was introduced, carry the franchise again to successful and prominence at residence and overseas it hadn’t seen in a very long time.
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