It’s been a few months since it ended, but let’s talk a little about The Witch From Mercury. More specifically, let’s talk a bit about it’s mecha.

There are certain traditional tropes that GWitch plays straight. For example, its lead Gundam gets a midseason upgrade that drastically changes its look, and the show doles out a steady stream of (previously unknown) prototype MS, each of which threatens to stop our hero(ine) in their tracks.

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Spoiler Preface!!!

This post contains some spoilers for stuff that happens in the back half of Witch From Mercury. You may want to skip it if you haven’t watched the show.

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But there is at least one thing it does that feels rather unique; it gives a couple of mobile suits a midseason weapon upgrade.

The most notable example is the Darilbalde. When Guel returns from his self-imposed exile, he finds his mobile suit with an upgraded loadout. This “new” version of the Darilbalde has the following:

• Bigger shoulder shields
• A gun
• A Sword
• It’s backpack can now hold four drones instead of just two, making for a total of six drones if you count the hands

It’s a pretty significant boost, but here’s the twist - the actual body of the Darilbalde is exactly the same as before. The upgrade is literally just a bunch of new gear.

And it isn’t just the Darilbalde that gets a weapon upgrade. The Pharact gets a nifty pair of new guns (which can combine into a single, larger gun):

And the Michaelis gets some weird wire-equipped spear thing (I don’t really like the Michaelis, so didn’t bother hunting down a screen grab)

We’re so used to seeing Gundam shows that trot out an endless parade of new, supposedly superior mobile suits that each get squashed in due time. And to be fair, GWitch is guilty of still doing this at different points in both seasons.

But at least when it comes to this handful of rival mobile suits, GWitch hits the brakes and lets them stick around a bit. That feels … notable:

• It makes GWitch feel a little bit less like a giant toy commercial (but only a little)
• It lets these fan favorite mobile suits participate in more awesome battles
• It makes the setting feel more grounded. Most of these mobile suits were top of the line in Season 1, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t still be in Season 2

I have a lot of problems with GWitch as an overall show, but I admire how much love it has for some of its main mobile suit designs. It wants them to feel good and capable and worthy of our respect.

What about the Gunpla?

Now we get to the original point of this post. All of these mobile suits were revealed (and their Gunpla released) during the show’s first half, but these midseason weapon upgrades were revealed during the second half. The question on a lot of fans’ minds was: “How are they going to release these new weapons if the model kits are already out?”

There were at least three plausible scenarios:

1. They could re-release the model kits with new runners for the new accessories
2. They could release the new weapons as accessory packs.
3. They could do nothing, and not release the new weapons in Gunpla form

Option #1 doesn’t make a ton of sense. There’s not a lot of people who are going to double dip on two kits like that.

Option #2 makes the most sense, as they’ve made plenty of accessory packs for previous shows.

Option #3 might have been prudent if they thought it wasn’t worth the cost to design and manufacture the weapons.

In the end Bandai chose a mix of Options 2 and 3. They’re releasing a single accessory pack that contains all the weapons for all the mobile suits, and it’s going to be exclusive to Premium Bandai.

Naturally, the Internet was none too happy about this. They’re convinced that this should have been a standard retail release, and that it would have sold just fine. At the risk of sounding like a Bandai apologist, I’m not convinced this is true.

Let’s look at some of the things we know:

• Any time a new mobile suit was revealed on GWitch, Bandai was quick to announce its model kit. In contrast, Bandai chose to announce this weapon pack months after GWitch went off the air.
• The pack costs $22, which is roughly double the cost of a typical accessory pack. That implies that they could, in theory, have split them up into two separate packs (perhaps one for just the Darilbalde, and one for all the others)

This is pure speculation on my part, but these two data points tell me that maybe Bandai wasn’t confident that these weapons were going to sell well. If they were confident, I feel like they would have announced them sooner, and/or released them as separate $11 packs.

Now let’s look at what we don’t know:

• We don’t know how well accessory packs like this tend to sell.
• We don’t know how kits like the Darilbalde and the Michaelis sold.
• Indeed, I don’t think we really know how GWitch (both the show and its Gunpla) performed financially. At most we’ve heard some claims that the High Grade Aerial broke some sales records, but I haven’t found a direct source for that claim. Meanwhile, if you look at other signs and signifiers, there’s at least some superficial evidence that maybe Bandai and Sunrise decided they wanted to bury the show and move on.

All of which is to say that this might be a case where a general retail release would have bombed, and that the switch to Premium Bandai was more prudent from a business perspective.

And yet having said all that, this still feels a bit gross. Look at some of the other accessory packs released for other shows. Most of the packs from Build Fighters are not tied to a specific mobile suit. They’re essentially grab bags of extra weapons or accessories that you’re encouraged to use on different models as you please. Pretty much any builder can get a lot of mileage out of them.

Now consider the packs made for Build Divers: ReRise. Each one contains accessories for a single mobile suit. That means you only need to buy the ones you need for the suits you own. You’ll never be stuck with things you can’t use.

But this pack is more reminiscent of the ones Bandai made for Iron Blooded Orphans, where a given box has multiple accessories that are specific to multiple different mobile suits. If you don’t own all of those models, you’re basically overpaying for the handful of accessories you do need¹.

Then you toss in tax and P-Bandai’s mandatory $10 shipping fee, you’re looking at over $32 for some accessories. That’s a big ask.

Ultimately, it was an ask I was willing to pony up for, but I don’t feel great about it. I’m consoled by the fact that the majority of the accessories that come in the pack either must (or can) be used by the Darilbalde:

Alas, it doesn’t ship until March, so it’ll be a while before I can build it. But I’ll certainly be looking forward to it.

Other Thoughts

The pack also comes with some new beam effect parts for Guel’s Dilanza. It’s a nice little bonus, but not really one of the highlights of the Set.