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I'm in my meme era
4 + 5 + ELAN CERES | Mobile Suit Gundam: the Witch from Mercury
HES PERFECT
HES TRAVELING THE WORLD TO SEE IT
Been watching Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury for the first time.
Just finished episode 10 and it's great!
Don't know if straight baiting is common for yuri, but I guess it worked! Time to enjoy the actual yuri.
GWitch: A Tale of Two Calibans
In the Tempest, there is a character called Caliban. If you've seen episode 21 then this will sound familiar to you. We're told Guston and Belmeria need Suletta to pilot this monstrous gundam and it's without a permet filter. A true cannibal. Dire stuff, and not what we want for Suletta.
Yet I'm not entirely sure she will. Though she has some characteristics of Caliban, bound in servitude to Prospero, he's a symbol of impotent wrath beneath a slaver's chains, the injustice of colonialism, and failed revolution.
He loathes Prospero and is routinely tortured by the man's magic. Yet Suletta, even while outcast by her family, never succumbs to anger. Hers is a heart filled with love even as her Miranda (Eri) and master forsake her.
Caliban by contrast is unable to forgive Prospero for his misdeeds and scorned by Miranda's harsh treatment of him after her rejection. You can interpret that his love was true and he did not intend rape, but his affection for both Miranda and Prospero has soured into hatred.
It's a bit ill-fitting to place Suletta in the Caliban machine as a monstrous gundam capable of devouring its pilot. But then if it's not her, who else?
The Tempest describes Caliban as the son of a witch whom Prospero took as his servant. 'Hag-born, not honour'd with a human shape'
Elan 5, like Suletta, is the unnatural progeny of a 'witch', in this case Belmeria. And also subject to the injustices of Peil, his Prospero. He rankles beneath his fetters and wants more than anything to gain freedom. We're told Peil steals orphans to be used as research, the effects of space colonialism. He's the closest to a true Caliban this show has.
And like Suletta. he was rejected by Miranda. Only his was an attempted violation. It's no coincidence as I see it that 5lan aggressively harasses Suletta either. They are specifically invoking the Caliban parallel. And it's the same for his sympathetic moments
5lan wants freedom from his chains, to live freely without sacrificing himself for a corporation's whims. He's sly and angry but not without cause. And there's a certain weight to how he was forced into servitude wearing another man's face. It's like Suletta, but unlike her he does not serve with love. Only discontent.
As with Caliban, who allies himself with Trinculo and Stephano in the hopes of killing Prospero, I see 5lan doing the same. Him using a brutish path to freedom because it's all he knows and throwing it all on using a gundam, even if it means his death, would be fittng. We know he wants to live but in the wake of Norea's demise I wonder if he's concluded death is inevitable so why not take Peil down with him? This is just speculating on my part, but I did find his change in attitude strange. He's weirdly calm, it reminded me of 4lan. And that's not a good thing. Most tellingly, while Caliban rails against his master, he isn't freed; a message none of us want for Suletta.
I may very well be reading into things, as is my habit, but the fact these two are juxtoposed is significant. We do have two unanswered gundams coded with a black name, one male and the other female; Calibarn and Schwarzette.
Elan 5: “I would never reveal a secret” Elan 5 less than a SECOND later: “am clone”