For this year’s Halloween illustration, the Gundam franchise has decided to get witchy with an artwork that depicts the characters Suletta Mercury, Gigi Andalucia, and Shiiko Sugai dressed up with pointy hats.
Shiiko is the newest of the franchise’s “witches.” A focal character in one episode of this year’s Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, she’s a former Federation ace pilot who gained the moniker “The Witch” as a result of her exploits during the war with Zeon. Anime Trending had the chance to ask director Kazuya Tsurumaki and series composer Yoji Enokido about Shiiko’s creation at Anime Expo.
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Suletta is the protagonist of the 2022-2023 Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury TV series. My memory of the lore is a bit foggy, but after taking a quick peek at one particular scene and the title of one episode, “witches” in the show’s Ad Stella timeline seems to refer both to those involved with the development of the GUND format — originally a medical technology meant to counter the effects of space on humans that was adopted for military mobile suits — and the pilots who can interface with it without issues.
As for Gigi’s witch connection, the shallow answer that comes easily to me is the second Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway movie’s Japanese subtitle, Circe no Majo (the official English version is The Sorcery of Nymph Circe, substituting “majo“[witch] for “nymph”). It’s been a while since the first Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway movie and even longer since I read about Ulysses’ encounter with the Circe of Greek mythology, but it would seem that Gigi has a more intricate connection to the word than the other characters.
The Sorcery of Nymph Circe is set to open in Japan across 363 locations on January 30, 2026 JST. A North America theatrical release is also planned, though there’s no word yet on whether it’ll be shown in theaters in other countries, or whether it’ll be on Netflix like its predecessor. In the meantime, I suppose I’ll use Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey to give me a refresher about Circe when it comes out.
Source: @gundam_hathaway
