Mixed FeelingsWell-written
The second season was an expected life-changing twist in the story that would take the show back to the "real Gundam" side, ditching the much-maligned "high school romantic comedy" format of the first season. And to be honest, the start really seemed promising when the show took the first season finale, which many called "one episode worth 11 episodes of mindless high school nonsense" and ran with it. But unfortunately, having dealt with a number of the problems of the 1st season, the 2nd season created its own. First of all, it is the pace and writing depth. This is the shortest TV Gundam ever, onlytwo cours long and it really feels like it. So much so that the staff seemed to be forced to work at a crazy pace, or they themselves decided to work in some kind of crazy speed competition. The second season is pretty good at creating subplots, especially compared to the first season. Not to mention being true to the Gundam philosophy as a franchise. It explores the use of violence to protect justice in desperate situations, false flag violence, desperation in an attempt to protect loved ones, and finally, the toxic nature of aggression. However, most of this is very badly and disappointingly resolved, often quite formally, as if the creators did not have the time or, most importantly, the desire to bring the intrigue and exciting plot to the end. It's extremely frustrating, especially when you're really involved with the story and care about the characters. Because of this, most subplots seem very formal, as if they exist only for the technical content of the plot. Somewhere in the middle of the season, we will be given two large subplots that will develop over several episodes only to then have everything decided in a couple of short scenes with minimal resistance.
The show is critically afraid of killing important characters or taking the plot in a truly tragic direction. Throughout the anime, countless nameless characters will be killed and a couple of sacrificial lambs who are the villains of one of the arcs and that's it. This further separates the show from the prologue (prepare for the villains to avoid any responsibility and punishment for war crimes and violence thanks to shonen-ish forgiveness and the power of friendship), with its ability to set the stakes and make the death or suffering of characters an important part of the plot. It comes to the ridiculous, in one of the scenes they literally want to cause hard feelings from us after the characters suffer due to the death of a character whose name is literally all the information we know about him. This is so strange that it can even make you laugh. All that important characters can expect is a resurrected version of the old American cartoon "she's in a coma" meme. I'm not at all going to be your typical edgylord who thinks that gloominess and cruelty will make any thing better, smarter and deeper. But with this approach, the show just doesn't work as either a Gundam mecha anime or a political conspiracy show, because it just discounts any bets it tries to make, only making it worse with the solidified formula of "school kids who change the world when adults can't do anything." It was so pointless that for the finale they even had to come up with something like the last boss out of nowhere to create at least some kind of threat to the characters.
Secondly, the second problem, or one might say, the weak point of the show is the relationship between the two main characters, Suletta and Miorine. From the beginning of the show, it was made clear and open that the relationship between the two would be the focus of the show. Regardless of how it ends, it is first and foremost "shoujo-tachi monogatari". This works great if you're involved in their ship and are ready to declare them lovers ahead of time, as many people have been doing since the premiere of the first episode. The characters have quite strong bonds and you can easily believe in the depth and sincerity of their affection for each other. But if you're neutral about it, then things start to fall apart very quickly when you realize that the engagement has not only become an artificial hook to keep them together, but at some point it actually took over every other topic on the show.
G-Witch is one of those yuri shows that suppress as much as possible any manifestation of romantic affection between women, either turning any words of affection between them into the most ambiguous lines, or never going beyond what can be taken as physical intimacy on the surface. To such an extent that until the end of the show or official resources avoided any mention of romance or love as such (with the exception of the American twitter Gundam info, which in an attempt to be trendy even caused several ship wars), and the first time when girls directly spoke about love there were words about love between parent and child in the penultimate episode. Even when the characters finally said things with an almost direct romantic context, it was cut off with an artificial cliffhanger, after which the characters not only did not return to it, but even continued to call each other friends. Even the ending isn't immune to it, muting any affection to a set of hints in speech or character interactions. This, again, is incredibly disappointing and strange for a show with such a central theme, where all the straight characters always talk about their romantic feelings directly and without any ambiguity. Of course, Miorine's words in the first episode about the familiarity of same-sex relationships for their universe remain the butt of one joke, you literally will not see anything LGBTQ in the show except for the described relationships of girls and a couple of some blurry couples (?) from side characters in, again, the last episode. Unsurprisingly, back in the first season, it got to the point where Guel at some point became more popular than both the main girls combined due to his development and a really unpredictable judge, because of which many people even preferred ship Suletta with him (even the usually formal Japanese media wrote that Guel is more interesting to watch, since Suletta is the type of protagonist who is tough and invincible from the very beginning).
This could still easily work for a potential same-sex relationship between the two best friends, and to be honest, at some point the show does try to break off the engagement in order to seem to make the development of their relationship more sincere. But no, we are not only being returned to the artificial status quo, but even covered up with an almost open rationalization of arranged marriages, which actually completely destroys the good development of Miorine before and throws her entire subplot as a character from the first season into the trash(which, if you think about what I described earlier, is especially ironic, considering how their wedding itself ends up being left out of the picture, devaluing all the intrigue of this engagement subplot). This suggests that the show's writer either overdid it with creating suspense out of the blue by censoring the display of affection between the characters in a formally unambiguous relationship, or, returning to the topic of haste, simply couldn't figure out how to write it more deeply, tying them to each other. sincerely not noticing how this destroys the chosen subtle approach to writing the development of their relationship. Which is really extremely strange if you think that the show was never positioned as romance, but at the same time, at the end, it literally completely boiled down to romance, throwing out all the previously declared main themes.
We were initially shown Suletta as a very meticulous person about duty, to the point where she instantly agreed to become Miorina's "faithful husband" only because of a formal engagement in the second episode (obviously at that point there was no talk of real romance on either side yet didn’t go) or perceiving her status as a fiancé as a responsibility to Miorine and a guarantee of their friendship, so such a depiction of their relationship devalues them very much, making you suspect the girls that their love is just a formal union in the spirit of the IBO final (if you think about it, shows are really suspiciously similar to each other, especially in the final part). Of course, this will not be a problem for shippers (many of whom literally follow the show just because of it) who will say that they always knew that the characters were a couple, even if at the point under discussion in question, there was clearly nothing between them yet But if you're not one of them, it's just confusing and makes it hard for you to understand the intentions of the authors. To sum it up, despite the show's writer's huge love for Utena and the cult show's strong influence on G-Witch, Ichiro just doesn't know how to write Nisekoi-type romance, turning the characters' relationship more into a forced-debt and pink promise-based romantic friendship than a full-fledged romance. Especially when next in the season you could see the show Otonari no Ginga with a similar plot, where the characters not only built an unusually relatable romance even being engaged against their will, but also in the end deliberately canceled it in order to get together already on sincere and honest terms.
Remaining problems like Suletta becoming more and more Mary Sue, who can only lose because of betrayal and foul play, excessive superficial copying of other shows, or the degradation of most side characters and themes to tools that return to the screen only to artificially twist the plot in one way or another direction already seem to be secondary consequences of what I have described above.
Ultimately, we got a show that could well have been a great experimental fresh spin-off to one of the Gundam series than a full-fledged new TV show. Ichiro Okouchi is really good at building interesting subplots and creating relatable characters, making us care and cherish them with his favorite over-the-top twists, cliffhangers and trendy writing, but a lot of that goes to waste due to sheer rush and pacing issues due to unusually short time for a television Gundam anime. The weird writing decisions between the girls, which are only made more painful by the fact that at some point the show drops all other topics in favor of just focusing on their relationship, definitely doesn't help matters. I really believe that this could have been a good spin-off, despite the problems I described above. All this would obviously be perceived much easier and simpler if the show did not have excessive ambitions and, accordingly, did not meet high expectations. The show just can't satisfy them, especially because it's overloaded with influence, homage, or even outright copying of old or relatively old shows like Utena, Kannazuki no Miko, the Last Witch Izetta, or a number of later UC Gundams, because of what it claims to be "New Age Gundam" and the second SEED in terms of attracting a younger audience just feels like a local show full of references. And it's kind of weird that people seem to like it, since at one time the more Gundam-like Darling in the Franxx was outright accused of plagiarism due to the similar overuse of nods to old shows.
It's not a bad show and I really would like to love it. I even feel real relief that it's finally over. Even leaving aside my salt with Sunrise's attempt to turn the show into a trendy zoomer bishoujo mecha, or the resulting controversy between old and new fans(ironically, this is one of those Gundams where at the end the Gundams are destroyed for world peace, which really creates implications). But I just feel disappointed at how much it shattered my high expectations, even though it could easily have been avoided. In the end, even if it wasn't my favorite anime, I could at least just like it, it just turned out to be another original show that was blown away in the final stages. Ichiro's traditional abusive twist and cliffhanger writing style, as usual, only reinforces and worsens this, because being involved and then frustrated makes you feel manipulated and emotionally exploited in an effort to at least temporarily get your attention. Now I can only hopefully wait for new Gundams, including previously announced UC and SEED updates, to remove this sad aftertaste. And also with even more excitement to wait for the previously announced anniversary Macross from Sunrise, as this creates a risk that the problems of writing G-Witch can successfully move there as well.
