Bandai Namco raked over the coals for downplaying lesbian marriage in hit Gundam anime

gamesradar.com:

Bandai Namco has put itself in the crosshairs of the anime community by downplaying the relationship between the openly married female leads of last season's hit series Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. 

This backlash started over the weekend after the official Witch From Mercury and Gundam Twitter accounts shared a statement addressing comments in a new issue of Japan's Monthly Gundam Ace magazine. To put it simply, voice actor Kana Ichinose discussed the marriage between series leads Suletta and Miorine, only for Bandai Namco to have mention of marriage removed from the final issue and rush out a statement insisting that their relationship is up to interpretation. 

The key bit of the accompanying statement (machine translated from Japanese) reads: "We would like to leave it up to each and every one of you who have seen the main story to understand and interpret it, and we would like you to enjoy the work." 

There are a few reasons that Bandai itself is in the hot seat. The name is often associated with Bandai Namco Entertainment specifically, the video game publisher behind the likes of Armored Core 6, Elden Ring, the Tales games, and many more franchises. But the company consists of multiple subsidiaries including production and publishing arms well beyond video games. 

The Witch From Mercury was made by Bandai Namco Filmworks/Sunrise, and Bandai holds the rights to Gundam in general; it recently announced the impending shutdown of the Overwatch-like game Gundam Evolution, for example. 

Monthly Gundam Ace is technically overseen by Kadokawa, which Bandai has worked with for well over a decade. However, the explainer published after fans noticed discrepancies in the magazine's physical and digital issues is