Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (2025)

The Infamous Man said:

Isn't this the same company that was convinced a female led Gundam wouldn't sell?

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Let's see...

• Space Battleship Yamato II effectively launched Modern Anime as a thing in part due to the efforts of the writing staff, and in part due to it being a showcase of Studio Nue's talents in 1978-79.
  • Note that's a Budget and Expectations thing, and there was a high demand for staff that worked on Space Battleship Yamato II afterwards and Studio Nue in particular.
• We have some records that point to Tomino raging at... being stuck with not-Studio Nue with the original run of Gundam 0079 which originally ran from 1979 to 1980, and landed with a proverbial thud.
  • Gundam 0079 would effectively be saved from irrelevance by re-runs in later timeslots where it found an audience with adults, rather than the originally intended Child audience.
  • As a result there's a relatively solid argument we really should be talking more the 1981-2 time period for Gundam being a thing.
  • 0079 had a whole slew of plot relevant female characters, and while Sayla Mass' first outing with the Gundam was... not exactly positive she did later end up being a combat pilot in another form in addition of course to characters like Kycilia Zabi.
  • Tomino has made statements pointing towards part of the aversion of irrelevance of 0079 was... Fujoshi taking an interest in Char similar to a similar noted trend with... the original Star Trek.
• For reference Urusei Yatsura's TV run started in 1981, which is relevant to a few things for the 1980s trends.
  • And well... There's a reason a certain female character of said series became a de facto icon of anime.
• Zeta Gundam would then follow up Studio Nue's Macross in 1985 with not one but two different Cyber Newtypes girls piloting the Psycho Gundam as a thing, and a protagonist with a certain issue with his name that's a bit of a meme.

In turn Tomino was thoroughly full of himself when Victory Gundam rolled around in 1993-94 and his poor, poor understudy Hideaki Anno basically got dragged through hell, and had to sit there and nod along to Tomino running his mouth about how much better he was than the filthy upstart Record of Lodoss War in that infamous 1994 interview around the timeframe Neon Genesis Evangelion would have been starting production before airing in 1995.

And it's totally [not] a coincidence that Yoshiyuki Tomino kind of resembles Gendo, Hideaki Anno self identifies with Shinji, and Victory Gundam effectively amounted to a situation where Tomino dragged Anno back in after Char's Counter Attack to a series that was... a bit of a disaster...

Who prior to that had collaborated with Studio Nue in the wake of working with Tomino on Char's Counter Attack to produce:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkPjeK4Xnvs

A certain not exactly unimportant OVA Mecha series in the late 80s. In an era where things like Bubblegum Crisis was actively being produced.

Anyways... as part of being involved in the production of various flavors of Not Go Nagai's Getter-Robo series produced in the 1970s in the wake of Go Nagai's Getter Robo:

Did have a tendency to include Female Pilots as part of the associated combiner teams because... Go Nagai went there with Mazinger in the early 1970s, and while not necessarily a focus that was a thing in 1970s era Getter Robo. Incidentally the idea of killing off _the_ fan-loved character being a Mecha thing?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0C8tW5us0c

Toei did it first with Getter Robo.

Along those lines Beast King GoLion which is noteworthy outside of Japan a more than Yet Another Not Go Nagai's Getter Robo was produced from 1981-2 and is a bit infamous in the West for a certain princess operating a certain blue robot. So in Industry terms that was already a thing in the 1980s.

Let's see...

As far as Sunrise goes... Even if we ignore the 1970s they literally let Tomino to have a female part of an ensemble cast with the next project with him after Gundam 0079 aka Ideon, and arguably so on... For that matter they produced the Dirty Pair TV run, where the ensemble team included no boys. In turn they collaborated on Patlabor in the late 1980s, which if it needs to be said is a female led Mecha series.

The Late 90s sees Sunrise funding stuff like Vision of Escaflowne where the main character is a girl in 1996, Crest of the Stars with a female lead to try to follow up on the Legend of the Galactic Heroes audience in 1999, and Angel Links launched as a female led follow up attempt to Outlaw Star literally the same Month as Turn A Gundam...

So... Sunrise clearly didn't have a problem with female led Sci-Fi or Mecha series. That said... After Tomino put his poor understudy through Hell, mouthed off at Record of Lodoss War, and "showed" his "superiority" with infamously bad Garzey's Wing it isn't impossible that Sunrise might have been... skeptical about how much rope they should let Tomino have.