I’ve been watching Gundam: The Witch From Mercury as it airs. So far I’ve been (mostly) enjoying it, but there is one thing I find surprising: I don’t care much for most of the mobile suit designs.

It’s not that I think they’re bad or anything. They just don’t do much for me (and I have no idea why).

So far the only exception has been the Gundam Ilfrith, from all the way back in the show’s special Prologue episode from last summer:

It’s the only suit in the show that I find appealing (well, that and Aerial, since it looks so much like Ilfrith). Which is why I chose it to be among my first - and maybe one of my only - GWitch kits.

Some Background

It’s kind of hard to talk about the Ilfrith without talking about some of the fictional technologies featured in Witch from Mercury, since these technologies are central to most of the show’s conflicts, and are fundamental to the way its mobile suits work.

But that’s a bit of a problem. I don’t want to turn this into a mini review of the show, but in my opinion GWitch does a fairly poor job of explaining its fictional tech. I can tell you what Ilfrith uses, but I can’t necessarily tell you how or why it works. And not in the sense that I can’t tell you how it works because it is fictional, but rather because there isn’t enough hand-wavey technobabble in the show to help me explain it.

In short, I’ll do my best.

But first, our usual courtesy warning:

Spoiler Preface!!!

This post contains a whole truckload of spoilers for Witch From Mercury. You may want to skip it if you haven’t watched the show.

About Permet

Everything starts with Permet. It’s a fictional mineral found on the Moon (and on the planet Mercury). Its primary characteristic is that it can transmit information. It is unknown how it does this, or what exactly what kind of information it can transmit, or how it is better than existing methods of data transmission. Suffice to say that almost every bit of tech in the show allegedly uses Permet in some form or another.

(I think it’s also used to make fuel for whatever reason, but I digress).

For our purposes, the main thing you need to know is that mobile suits use Permet. Again, it’s not entirely clear why or how, but they use it nonetheless.

About GUND

GUND is a technology that uses Permet for the purposes of prosthetics and body augmentations. GUND differs from real life prosthetics in that it can be used for significantly more substantial augmentation than we’re currently capable of. If these images are accurate, it can replace a spinal column:

And possibly even an entire body:

It’s not entirely clear how Permet comes into play here. Occam’s Razor would suggest that the Permet helps to better transmit signals from the brain to the prosthetics, but there’s no explanation as to why that is necessary versus other neurological interfaces.

The other thing to know about GUND is that it was designed in part to help people survive in outer space. But again, the details aren’t clear. It’s never stated whether people are getting prosthetics due to accidents that occur in space, or whether their bodies are falling apart due to radiation exposure (or other harsh aspects of space life), or if some people are preemptively adopting cybernetics.

About GUND Format

The idea of “GUND Format” is to basically take GUND and use it for military purposes.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s not exactly obvious how this works. The simple assumption is that it allows pilots to use GUND to control a mobile suit as if it were a prosthetic limb. But every MS in the show - even the ones equipped with GUND Format - has a normal cockpit with normal controls. It may be the case that pilots are using their minds to control some aspects of the MS’ operation, but certainly not all of them.

Another theory is that GUND-equipped mobile suits have some sort of onboard AI, and that GUND Format allows the AI to learn by using the pilot’s brain as a training set. In other words, by using the Permet link between pilot and machine, it can look into your brain and figure out what you’d want to do/how to fight, and can learn accordingly. There are some things in the Prologue that suggest this may be the case, but there’s nothing I’d consider direct evidence.

About the Gundams

In GWitch, Gundam is an in-universe portmanteau. Mobile Suits equipped with GUND Format come to be known as “GUND Arms”, which then gets shortened to Gundam.

Yes, it’s stupid. But it is what it is.

About the Vanadis Institute (and Ochs Earth)

The Vanadis Institute is the research group that is the primary creator of GUND. Ochs Earth is a corporation that eventually becomes the primary source of funding for Vanadis, and essentially forces them to develop and improve on GUND Format so they can use it to sell weapons.

The most important thing to know about the relationship is that Vanadis isn’t particularly keen on using their tech for military purposes, but are basically forced to in order to keep the lights on. Or at least that is what they claim.

About Data Storms

This is the kicker. Under normal operation, the Permet link between pilot and mobile suit is benign. But if you’re using a GUND equipped suit, and you want to kick its performance into high gear, you can raise the “Permet Level”.

However, doing so comes at a cost. Jacking up the Permet Level results in something called a Data Storm. At first, the Data Storm may simply cause the pilot some degree of pain (due to the Permet in their body reacting to the storm). But jack it up too high, and the Data Storm will intensify to the point it can cause permanent damage, or even death.

This caused a major in-universe backlash against Gundams, as they came to be seen as being too dangerous to use. And it is amidst this controversy that the Witch From Mercury Prologue begins …

Permet lines

If you pilot a GUND-equipped mobile suit, and you raise the Permet level too high, the Permet in your body will react, creating red lines across your face. If you see this, you know the pilot is in pain (or on the verge of death). And it's not just the pilots. There's a panel on the Ilfrith's chest that's normally dark: But that changes once the Permet level goes up:

About the Ilfrith

Gundam Ilfrith is the latest and greatest prototype built by the Vanadis Institute. It comes in two different “flavors”. You’ve got the Ilfrith Pre-Production type (AKA the “Grunt” version):

And then you have the original, one-off Ilfrith prototype (which is what this model kit is based on):

The OG prototype is different and special compared to the Pre-Production models. In fact, the head researchers at the Vanadis Institute believe it to be the key to mankind’s next evolution (though, again, they’re not clear as to why).

Their plans (whatever they may be) come to an end during the events of the Prologue. A coalition of business ventures named the Benerit Group - who are essentially, if not literally in charge of the government - decide that Gundam-type mobile suits must be banned on account of their danger. As part of this effort, they send a kill squad to Vanadis’ home space station to murder their staff and destroy the mobile suits.

While they are mostly successful, they are unable to destroy everything. Elnora Samaya, one of the Ilfrith’s engineers (as well as its test pilot), escapes in the mobile suit alongside her four year old daughter Ericht. After Ericht interfaces with Ilfrith, she achieves a level of synchronization never before seen, at which point the mobile suit runs a clinic on its attackers.

They’re almost stopped in their tracks, however, by the arrival of a new mobile suit that is capable of shutting down GUND Format (and thus rendering the Ilfrith inoperable). However, Elnora’s husband Nadim intervenes, sacrificing himself in an Ilfrith Pre-Production unit so that his family can escape.

This is where the Prologue ends, and it is the last we see of the Ilfrith. At least, that’s the last we see of it in its original form. It does come back, in a manner of speaking …

But that’s for another day.

Artificial Intelligence

The ending battle of the Prologue is the best evidence we have that GUND Format equipped mobile suits - or maybe just the Ilfirth in particular - has onboard AI.

At one point, Ericht simply points at a bunch of targets onscreen, and the mobile suit proceeds to attack. It’s clear that the kid has no idea she’s in a combat scenario, so clearly she didn’t deliberately order it to attack. Nor is she capable of knowing how to pilot it. The only explanation is that Ilfrith itself somehow interpreted Eri’s interest in the targets as a desire to attack.

Weapons and Stuff

Ilfrith is equipped with the standard Gundam armaments - beam rifle, beam sabers, and shield. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

The shield is made out of a whole bunch of smaller “GUND Bits”. They’re basically super powered versions of Nu Gundam’s fin funnels. They can fly around independently and fire beams at targets:

They can also attach to Ilfrith’s main beam rifle to augment its energy output:

Or they can attach to its backpack to provide additional thrust:

And of course, they can combine together to shield the mobile suit:

The sheer versatility of the GUND Bits makes the Ilfrith a menace on the battlefield. They’re only tempered by the fact that the Bits can’t really be used without upping the Permet Level, meaning prolonged use may result in the death of the pilot.

Feminine Design

It was only a few short months ago that we were talking about another mobile suit with a feminine visual design. But here we are again. Many folks - myself included - feel that Ilfrith is also very strongly female coded.

Ilfrith has a tapered, hourglass figure and rounded hips. It’s not quite as literal and humanlike as the Engage Zero’s, but it’s still noticeable.

It also has, um, fairly thick thighs, but relatively dainty ankles.

And while it doesn’t have boobs, perse, its chest does extend out moreso than most mobile suits.

Lastly, as much as I dislike the stereotype, it is true that pink is stereotypically coded as a “girly” color, and some of Ilfrith’s trim is as bright pink as you can possibly get.

And it’s not just the visual design. In the Prologue we see a lot of women working on Iflrith - as scientists, engineers, etc (and for what it’s worth, we only ever see the OG prototype unit being piloted by women):

I’m not saying the ladies absolutely did build the mobile suit in their image, but I also wouldn’t judge them if they did. Or maybe the humans of the Ad Stella timeline have really embraced the idea that “The Future is Female” 👩‍⚕️

Furthermore, multiple human characters refer to it as a “she”. So just based on what we get from the text itself, I think it’s okay to refer to this mecha as female.

And hey, that’s not a bad thing! Like the Engage Zero, the Ilfrith may look female coded, but it doesn’t look (or act) “sexy” or “feminine” or “girly”. It’s another warrior woman, an angel of death more than a cute girl.

About the Build

I got this kit back in December, right around the time that GWitch kits started to become available on western shores. But it took me literally half a year to drum up the courage to put it together.

To be clear, I started it back in December, but I didn’t get very far before I put it away. Suffice to say that I immediately felt intimidated.

Part of that was due to what I thought was the complexity of the build (mainly the shield). But part of it was also that I had built this model up in my head before even starting it.

My kids fell in love with it as soon as they saw that it was bright pink (and because I told them it’s a girl). That made it feel special, and so I started to treat it special. I got a custom display base:

And I sweetened the pot even more by buying this accessory back in April:

The problem with doing all this before building the model is that you have no idea if it’s going to be worth it. What if it ends up looking crummy? What if you break something? I was so afraid that something would go wrong that I became paralyzed. It was only after my kids begged and pleaded that I finally decided to dive in and accept whatever came of the build.

So let’s do just that. I’ll see you soon.

Other Thoughts

• Yes, I know that the antennae on the head look like bunny ears, but I still don’t think that makes the Ilfirth look “cute”.
• Is it just me, or does the packaging for Witch From Mercury Gunpla look an awful lot like the packaging for the Sega Master System: