I've talked about it a lot over the last 6 months, but with the year ending, I want to express my feelings once again, with more clarity.
There may never be a character who means as much to me as Suletta Mercury does. There may never be a fictional couple that means as much to me as Suletta & Miorine do. Not just because I love them so much, but also because of what their representation meant to me.
I've been a Gundam fan for over 20 years. I'd basically given up on a female main character in a main series before G-Witch. Suletta Mercury gave me representation I desperately wanted from a franchise I'd loved for decades. Representation that I'd lost hope of ever seeing.
And then they gave me even more representation by making her a queer woman. You could not have convinced me before G-Witch aired that Suletta would fall in love with another woman. That Gundam would take that step with it's first female main character, especially with a target demographic of mostly teen boys. But it did. Suletta Mercury fell in love with a woman, and not just that, she fought and earned a happy ending married to that woman. A woman who is just as equally amazing as she is.
(And while it's not representation for me personally, I think Suletta providing representation for women of color and disabled fans is also a big deal.)
I'm sure as I grow up, queer and sapphic media will continue to push boundaries, and we'll get more queer female leads in mainstream media. But I can't think of any other franchise I love where making the main character a sapphic woman would mean close to what it meant to me when Gundam did it.
Certainly there's "better" anime out there, even Gundam anime. But none of them mean to me what The Witch From Mercury meant to me. None of them come close to the love I have for this show and these two women.
