Bandai Wants Gundam’s Lesbian Couple to Be Open to Interpretation, Somehow

Witch From Mercury broke ground for the Gundam franchise with—and sales records spurred in part by—its depiction of the burgeoning romantic relationship between its main characters Suletta Mercury and Miorine Rembran. But while the series itself came about as close to text as it could on their bond, Bandai itself is more hesitant.

This past week the latest issue of Gundam Ace magazine featured an interview with voice actress Kana Ichinose, who played Suletta Mercury, in the wake of the conclusion of the show. The final scenes of the series, set in a flash-forward to three years after the events of the main show, depicted Suletta and Miorine embracing and wearing matching silver bands on their ring fingers.

“After three years, they seem much closer, and to see them married like that really touched my heart,” Ichinose’s comment reads in part, the first explicit confirmation of the characters’ marriage outside of the show itself. News of the confirmation saw “#スレミオ結婚,” or “Sulemio Marriage,” trend on social media, as the characters regularly did throughout Witch From Mercury’s broadcast run.

However, digital copies of the issue of Gundam Ace had Ichinose’s statement edited to remove the mention of marriage—leading to concerns of censorship that eventually saw Sunrise (née Bandai Namco Filmworks) parent company Bandai Namco officially respond yesterday. Not to apologize for the removal, however: to apologize that the reference had made it into the print run in the first place.

The statement, shared on both the official Witch From Mercury and Gundam Ace magazine accounts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, apologized for “causing confusion” between the digital and print editions of Gundam Ace’s September 2023 issue.

“In the article, there was a sentence based on the speculation of the Gundam Ace editor, and despite requesting corrections at the time of proofreading, the correction of the relevant part was not reflected, and it was released on July 26th,” a machine-translated version of the same statement reads on Bandai’s Witch From Mercury website in part.

“We would like you to enjoy the work by leaving it up to each and every one of you who have seen the main story [of Witch From Mercury],” Bandai’s statement concludes, “so after consulting with the Gundam Ace editorial department, we will make an electronic version that can be modified. The description has been revised as originally requested and is now being distributed.”

Removing commentary about Suletta and Miorine being married to each other and instead saying that it’s up to people who’ve watched the show to make their minds up is absurd, especially since the text of the show itself goes about as far out of its way as it can to show viewers that the duo have gotten married by the time of the series’ concluding flash-forward. Early on in the sequence, Suletta’s clone-sister Eri refers to herself in conversation with Miorine as the latter’s sister-in-law, while scenes featuring the older Suletta and Miorine meeting each other specifically highlights matching silver bands on their ring fingers—to the point of adding a gleaming light effect to them to draw the audience’s attention.

While homophobic Gundam viewers could somehow, in spite of this, deny the obvious interpretation of the material, they’ve now been bolstered by Bandai’s own acquiescence in trying to sit on the fence instead of standing with the material they themselves released. It’s a disappointing note to what had been a major step forward for the Gundam franchise, one that had helped in part not just usher in huge sales boosts for the series across the world—in model kits and merchandise of Suletta and Miorine—but brought Gundam to new audiences in ways it hadn’t seen for years, which is what Bandai wanted out of Witch From Mercury from the very moment it was announced.

Those same audiences are, at the very least, letting Bandai Namco know how they feel about their capitulation. That same Sulemio marriage hashtag that originally trended upon the release of Gundam Ace is now filled with art and commentary from both Japanese and Western Gundam fans alike proudly and happily showing Suletta and Miorine as a married couple, or highlighting more formal ways audiences can complain to Bandai about their statement. They, at least, have found the way they’re willing to interpret the work Bandai gave them, even if the company itself hasn’t.

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