Thread by @Minaplo1

#G_Witch thread time! Spoils abound.

This time I wanted to dig into an element of the setting that intrigues me- Asticassia School of Technology. Specifically, what we can infer from the setting and the themes of the show from how Asticassia operates.

A society's institutions reflect the nature of that society. Being curated spaces, whatever happens there is permitted to do so.

Schools are key institutions because, being aimed at the young, they both impart skills society needs, but also instill society's value into them.

When my parents went to school, there were two special classes: Industrial Workshop and Home Economics. The first taught students how to use tools and machines to make things, the other, how to cook and clean.

Only boys could do Workshop. Only girls could do Home Ec.

So what can we learn about Spacians from Asticassia? Who is Asticassia for?

It's not part of universal education, but a technical college where admission requires corporate patronage. It teaches students piloting, mechanics and business.

In other words: it's for Benerit.

Practically, Asticassia creates the human capital Benerit needs to function- MS engineers, pilots and business managers.

But it also inducts those students into the Benerit business culture, so they can continue it.

A detail I enjoy is the school uniform (always a thing charged with assumptions and values!). Asticassian school uniforms are unisex and practical for low-g.

They also look like a junior version of the Benerit Group's own uniform. One grows into the other.

So this overt connection is clear, so let's talk about the Benerit Group values.

... So Asticassia has right in the core of it the duel system, designed around compelling the elite students, the MS pilots, to settle disagreements by kicking ass.

Dueling is permitted and encouraged. It serves lots of practical purposes- it allows the pilots to practice their skills, get a feel for specific suits, and acts as entertainment.

It also works as demonstrations of MS in 'lifelike' conditions. Advertising and combat data.

The stakes in these duels can be huge. They can compel behaviour, settle relationships and transfer property (up to and including mobile suits!).

And that's *fine*.

Dueling helps teach the students that using mobile suit violence to get what you want is entirely okay!

Furthermore, duels are deliberately unequal. You can be a great pilot and still lose because your opponent can afford a much better mobile suit. Each of Benerit's 'big three', Jeturk, Peil and Grassley, dominate both the profits and the dueling scene.

Jeturk House straight up messes with the environment in Guel and Suletta's rematch and it's *fine*. Part of the game.

Winning at any cost is permitted and encouraged. Victory correlates with the pool of resources at your disposal. (Pilots are also a resource.)

Dueling is a big part of student life. Everyone watches the duels, some bet money on the outcomes and become fans of individual duelists and house dueling teams.

It's war machines repackaged as a form of entertainment.

That is, Asticassian students are literally the meme:

And all of this makes sense. Benerit is a MS cartel, coordinating in some ways, competing in others. The duels help fuel competition and provide design feedback, whilst also getting everyone at Asticassia psyched about mobile suits.

(Lots of MS vets in Benerit C-suites too!)

Sophie and Norea get it. And of course they would: Spacian society uses its overwhelming military might on Earthians, because Earthian exploitation underpins Spacian prosperity.

Guel and Chuchu also see past the illusion after they've seen what MS violence looks like.

In fact, that might be the entire point of Earth House. Benerit's next generation are exposed to Earthians whose House is *structurally* doomed to be terrible at duels, the big social capital on campus. You can prank or bully them with essentially no consequences, too.

Demonstrating Earthian inferiority whilst also encouraging people to ignore the death mobile suits wreak is a recipe for creating a generation of students entirely happy to keep the system the way it is: Spacian society mugging the Earth at gunpoint forever.

And this is where the themes really kick in, because G-Witch loves to examine when people become complicit in atrocity. When does seeking power to achieve your ideals become using your ideals to launder your power grabs?

G-Witch then poses a test to many of its characters as to whether or not they can stick to their ideals without becoming another instrument of this violent machine.

It's a question Earth House has to wrestle with when making Gund-Arm. Do we make safe cash making arms or not?

The test is not a one-off. It's ongoing. Ep 18 sees Mio turn down Prospera's suggestion to introduce the Schwarzette as a Gund-Arm collab, but she also sees the violence on Earth as, partially, a chance to strengthen her presidential credentials. Which is more important to her?

I love this theme, because whilst Gundam is full of horrific war scenes, for those of us living in the world's wealthy, prosperous societies, those scenes are fiction. Most of us have never seen war.

But the military-industrial complex is a lot more real.

I have an American friend who studies aerospace engineering. One day he went to a job fair and realised that over half the companies were defense contractors. Not just big names, but little ones, too.

He had a crisis of faith over it. Was there something sick with his field?

Many, many people wrestle with the same test G-Witch illustrates. Few of them intend to cause harm, but end up falling into positions developing ways to hurt and kill others. They have to rationalise away their sins.

This is their embodiment in G-Witch.

G-Witch received some criticism early on for focusing on a school setting and not on a war. But if Gundam is to be anti-war, then it cannot simply focus on thrilling, high-impact scenes of violence. It must interrogate the root and stem.

When society helps the designers of war machines rationalise away their complicity, that's war. When schools can act as pipelines for military recruitment, that's war.

The horrors of war culminate on the battlefield, but they begin in the classroom and on the factory floor.