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GQuuuuuuX Record #9: The Rose of Sharon

A perfect, untouched Earth is a great symbol. But it could never be reality, especially within the world of Gundam.

Our Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX coverage continues with the ninth episode! There will be spoilers after this point.

Last week on GQuuuuuuX, Nyaan travelled to the moon and learned that it sucks. This week, her former ally Machu finally visits Earth. The planet that she, Nyaan and their friend Shuji have wanted to visit for so long. Does it live up to her expectations? Nope, Earth sucks too! Its gravity may be real, but so are the rules that keep children hungry and enforce sexual servitude for women. Machu can’t even see the ocean she longs for over the trees and tall mountains of India.

Talk about a cruel turn of events. But I don’t think it could be any other way. Director Kazuya Tsurumaki and scriptwriter Yoji Enokido’s collaborations have always had a stubborn streak. Diebuster offered the viewer visions of limitless power only to frustrate every single one of them except for love. FLCL gave Naota the ultimate episode-long fight scene, Brittle Bullet, only to reveal that his crush Haruka has been lusting after his robot child the whole time.

A perfect, untouched Earth is a great symbol. But it could never be reality, especially within the world of Gundam. People brought their violent baggage to the stars. How could Earth be any different? That’s where it all started. There may be wheat fields, but the soil is soaked in blood.

lalah can be seen through a frame of leaves, on a swing

Sacrificial lamb

Speaking of symbols: Lalah Sune is the newest legacy Gundam character to make her appearance in GQuuuuuuX. Unlike original timeline rejects like Challia Bull, though, Lalah was quite important in the original series. The protagonist of Mobile Suit Gundam, Amuro, quickly developed a connection with her when they meet in the last quarter of the show. Yet Lalah was loyal to Char Aznable. By taking Amuro’s killing blow to save Char’s life, she set the two men against each other, leading to a tortured relationship that lasted the whole Universal Century.

Lalah is quite a fraught character. On one hand, she’s a sacrificial lamb who is expended to move the story along. On the other, she’s at the heart of some of Mobile Suit Gundam’s most dramatic and visually stunning sequences. The world revolves around Lalah whenever she's on screen and yet she cannot help but be trapped by that gravity. It’s no surprise that her character reportedly inspired Anthy Himemiya from Revolutionary Girl Utena, another woman of color who is both victim and witch. Utena, of course, was also scripted by GQuuuuuuX writer Yoji Enokido.

Secret Rendezvous

The Lalah in GQuuuuuuX has no grand fate. Instead she is a sex worker who plies her trade in an Indian mansion. To be fair, her maids love her and she clearly has a reputation among her peers. She also retains her Newtype abilities. Lalah dreams of herself, Amuro and Char playing out their little tragedy in other worlds. She dreams of space and its infinite potential, just as Machu desired the material reality of Earth.

There’s no Char in this world to bail her out. So she must sleep each night with an assembly line of Zeonic officers, without any say. It’s the kind of grim twist that would make you think the staff of GQuuuuuuX were trying too hard to make their alternate universe “gritty” or “complex.” Except that Lalah’s origins as a sex worker are baked into the original Mobile Suit Gundam. Its director Yoshiyuki Tomino even wrote a novella about it, 1997’s Secret Rendezvous: Amuro and Lalah.

machu looks at the camera, framed by window grate

Spotlight

Throughout GQuuuuuuX, Tsurumaki and his staff at khara have sought to elevate the marginalized. The show reserves its sympathy for refugees, traumatized war veterans, garbage haulers, and now sex workers, rather than the space fascists. While GQuuuuuuX’s predecessor The Witch From Mercury had similar ambitions to confront inequality, it filtered those concerns almost entirely through its wealthy and charismatic cast. GQuuuuuuX shifts the camera back towards ordinary people, and that’s one reason why I respect it.

On the other hand, that framing only really works if the artists are empathetic enough to know what they are doing. This episode ventures into dangerous territory by touching on sexual slavery and abuse. Fans of Utena often give Yoji Enokido a pass for how he handles these topics, but I can't forget that the single worst part of his earlier work Diebuster was a poorly handled sexual assault scene that frankly played as if it were embarrassed by its own existence.

machu and lalah percieve one another through the kira kira

Escape to space

At the climax of this episode, Machu escapes the mansion together with Lalah. She offers Lalah freedom via the GQuuuuuuX, the chance to travel to space as she has long desired. But Lalah turns her down. She cannot dream of leaving Earth’s surface without meeting Char, as is her destiny. Lalah is claimed by her handlers, Machu escapes, nothing is resolved.

You can rotate this scene in your hands and find that every angle presents problems and possibilities. Lalah gives up her freedom for a man. So despite their intentions to create a Gundam series about women, Tsurumaki and his crew cannot escape their own sexist biases, just as Tomino was bound by them too. But is this not deliberate? Is it not a tragedy that someone like Lalah, who we know to be immensely powerful, is caged by her fate from the original source material?

the rose of sharon, a large green ship, is pulled from the ocean by a vast machine.

The gravity of Earth

By asking Lalah to run away with her, Machu is retracing Nyaan's steps. Shuji turned Nyaan down just as Lalah refused Machu's hand. Can Machu really save Lalah without saving herself first? This isn’t so different from Revolutionary Girl Utena, where Utena could not save Anthy without seeing her as a person instead of a thing. Yet Utena and Anthy were given space throughout the series to become their own people. Machu and Lalah do not have that luxury, because GQuuuuuuX has a mere twelve episodes to work with, one and a half of which are an extended flashback.

The episode ends when Machu finds a buried relic deep under the waters of Earth. This is the Rose of Sharon, which Shuji alluded to in an earlier episode. (In reality, it is the prototype mechanical armor Elmeth.) Inside it is Lalah: not the Lalah of GQuuuuuuX that we know, but some other Lalah, perhaps even the one from the original Mobile Suit Gundam. No matter what world she is in, Lalah will always be a tool, an object of narrative convenience. A woman standing between two opposing forces.

Just like Lalah, the cast of GQuuuuuuX are stuck in place. They follow the path set for them by those who came before, like Challia. When they defy that path, like Nyaan and Machu, they spiral out and break everything around them. What might freedom look like for them, if not Earth? It’s up to the staff to provide a satisfying answer. They have just three more episodes to do so, which isn’t a whole lot of time.

lalah sits on a chair looking at the evening sky, her back to the audience.

This week’s addendum

This Week’s Moment of Violence: Lalah’s maids didn’t have to burn the mansion, but they did. Good for them!

The Robot Corner: The GQuuuuuuX reveals in this episode the power to hug Machu inside the cockpit. Honorable mention: shrink-wrapped Haro, which is very funny.

Comoli City: We haven’t seen much of Challia’s aide Comoli in this series, but I liked the scene here where she reveals Machu’s prison clothes are in fact her own donated clothes. “Be grateful!”

Book Club: Aside from Secret Rendezvous, I’ve heard a number of folks recommend Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle as essential reading to understand what this show is doing. FLCL famously snuck in a reference to Paul Linebarger’s novel Atomsk so I wouldn’t be surprised by genre fiction deep cuts.

Friends of Gundam: Here is some more Gundam fanart.

Bookmarks

If you’d like a quick introduction to the original Mobile Suit Gundam, the film trilogy is streaming once again for a limited time on YouTube.

Yatta-Tachi is running a series of reviews for LGBTQ+ manga for Pride Month, starting with Go For It, Nakamura! (In the spirit of transparency, I helped edit some of these reviews!)

CheeseGX did a video about American musicians who have contributed to the anime industry.

For Anime Herald, Seth Burn interviewed voice actors Abby Trott, AJ Beckles, and Aleks Le from the English dub of Dandadan.

After being down for a few days, you can now read Lynzee Loveridge’s interview with manga artist Sumiko Arai (of The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy at All) on Anime News Network once again.