The Gundam franchise’s history with queerness is longer in the meta text than it has been in the text of the franchise itself. Shippers have been matching up same-gender characters with each other for generations before Witch From Mercury‘s first episode climaxed with its female deuteragonists getting engaged, kicking off a relationship that even Gundam‘s owners couldn’t deny was more than simply open to some level of interpretation. But it’s the energy in the wake of that that makes the arrival of Gundam GQuuuuuuX so interesting, because now the odds of that shipping hyperfixation being in fans’ favor are higher than ever.
The first episode of GQuuuuuuX premiered around the world last night, and while all of its material was already covered by the compilation movie Beginning when it released a few months ago, the TV release did add one thing in particular: the show’s end titles sequence. Set to VTuber Hoshimachi Suisei’s track “I don’t care,” the ending sees protagonists Machu and Nyaan sharing a cozy, cluttered apartment together, living a quiet life quite unlike the ones we’re introduced to in the episode. There’s singing, there’s dancing, there’s pizza parties, and the girls are seen crashing out together side by side. It’s very sweet, but it’s sent any fans hoping a for a repeat of Suletta and Miorine’s relationship in Witch From Mercury into speculation overdrive.
Of course, no amount of speculation over shared ankle bracelets and disco-filled domestic bliss can change the fact that, at the end of the day, an anime ending is not always entirely true to the text of the show itself (although it’s certainly fair to say in Witch From Mercury‘s case, both of its opening and ending sequences did play up Suletta and Miorine’s romance even before it was clearly established within the show). No matter the intentions or the interpretations of the sequence, GQuuuuuuX‘s ending might just be a cute what-if scenario that doesn’t pan out in the show.
But that’s not to say that GQuuuuuuX itself isn’t at least projecting a lot of queer vibes to some people, in both Machu and Nyaan’s early encounters and even other potential pairings on the show. There’s an electric chemistry between the duo in their early encounters, one made all the more interesting when Machu tags along with Nyaan to drop off a smuggled piece of kit that will ultimately see the former wind up piloting the show’s new Gundam. At first, a tagalong is exactly what Machu describes herself as, but then she pointedly notes she could even be a Mav—in GQuuuuuuX‘s worldbuilding, the term for a duo in Mobile Suit combat tactics, pioneered during a prior war by the Zeon ace Char Aznable and his partner, Challia Bull.
“Mav” is used multiple times in the series with a level of closeness that goes beyond simple wingman though, making Machu’s use of it (beyond her intrigue at potentially joining in on underground mecha fights) interesting. Challia’s relationship to Char—who went missing alongside the original Gundam at the end of the war, sparking a search that Challia has been conducting for five years since its end—is described at one point to him by a character early on in the episode as Char being “his friend, or rather, his Mav,” to suggest a bond even closer than that.
Anyone who’s seen Beginning will also know that another character describes Challia as still being in the “thrall” of the Red Comet, Char’s nickname from the war. And all that’s even before getting into the fact that series writer Yoji Enokido (who has written on, among other things, the likes of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Evangelion, and FLCL, all series with varying levels of explicit and implicit queer intimacy) has said in press interviews that, despite it being a military term, it’s also one he could see as being used to refer to the bond between friends or romantic partners.
Of course, all this remains open to interpretation (and not in the way Bandai wanted Suletta and Miorine’s marriage to be, for now at least). GQuuuuuuX could pair off any number of its characters, or the hints and details fans hoping for a Sulemio repeat could be nothing more than just that: hints. It would admittedly be very funny for Gundam to do back-to-back female protagonists who happen to be queer, a landmark first for the series in Witch From Mercury made even more notable by it happening immediately again from another, unconnected creative team, but we’ve simply not seen enough of the show yet to know if that’s going to be the case.
That fact won’t stop shippers from hoping anyway. And if it doesn’t? Well, that’s the joy of fandom shipping, isn’t it—they’ll be able to create plenty of work imagining otherwise regardless.
Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is now streaming on Prime Video.
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