How does the Witch from Mercury scene stealer fit those pink poofs in a mecha pilot’s helmet?

The current anime season is packed with big-name productions, but Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury is doing a lot to stand out. It’s the first Gundam series with a female mecha pilot protagonist, but supporting cast member Chuatury Panlunch has also been getting a lot of attention from fans, thanks to her brash personality and bold character design.

Even by anime standards, that’s a pretty outlandish hairstyle. What’s even more shocking, though, is that Chuchu, as she’s also known, somehow manages to fit a pilot’s helmet over her head.

▼ Same person

So what’s happening to those prodigious pink poofs? Fans have speculated that maybe Chuchu pops them off like plastic model parts…

…or that maybe they can detach on their own and fly around like the helper battle pods called funnels within the Gundam franchise.

But the mystery has finally been solved, thanks to the release of an official design sheet for Chuchu by the Witch from Mercury Twitter account, which reveals that…

…she scrunches those poofs down with a swim cap-style head covering that attaches under her chin, as diagramed in the 1-2-3 sequence at the sheet’s top left.

Chuchu has been seen wearing the cap prior to the design sheet’s release, but the official artwork lets us know that she doesn’t untie the poofs or do anything else to straighten the bunches out prior to just slinging the cap across the top of her head.

▼ Preview for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury

Of course, the design sheet implies that there’s some seriously powerful, potentially cranium-crushing compression going on, and some online commenters aren’t 100-percent buying the official explanation. Maybe we’ll eventually find out that the ability to wrap the cap so tightly is the latest case of Gundam’s recurring theme of new powers awakening in people as part of the next stage of human evolution.

Source: Twitter/@G_Witch_M via Jin
Top image: YouTube/ガンダムチャンネル
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!