Suletta Mercury, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury
Part and parcel of being a Gundam protagonist is a certain level of horrifying trauma brought on by the conflicts around them and the fact that they pilot a war crime for a living, but Suletta’s relative innocence—at least, in what we’ve seen of Witch From Mercury so far, there’s plenty of time for it to do as Gundam often wonts to do—has made her one of the endearing, iconic new heroes of the year. Her compassion for everyone around her, her earnest desire to help and live the life of a normal teenager transferring to a new school, the fact that when her back is against the wall she can and will get into her walking war crime sister and savage the shit out of you, she’s a revitalizing jolt to the franchise’s usual approach to protagonists, for many more reasons beyond her status as Gundam’s first primary female heroine. We could never forgetta Suletta. – James Whitbrook
