https://shinseiki.blog/2025/04/17/enokido-gqux-1/
Side 6 is basically a normal, everyday world, somewhat resembling present day Japan. But there’s an area inside the colony where immigrants —both legal and illegal— and refugees live, people who are relatively discriminated against within the colony. Even in a society with such a dark side, Machu doesn’t hold any prejudice towards the refugees and the illegal immigrants there. Whether that’s because she fundamentally lacks the concept of prejudice, or because she simply doesn’t want to acknowledge it, even I am not totally sure.
If a normal girl were to come in contact with a smuggler of illegal Installer Keys like Nyaan, she’d probably report her to the police immediately. But not Machu, she’d just go ask for the “compensation for her broken smartphone” or something. This is to say, Machu basically considers Nyaan to be her equal. In this sense, inside that Side 6, she’s certainly a peculiar girl.
It’s exactly because Machu sees Nyaan as her equal that the moment she notices the bruise on Nyaan’s face left by the military police, she feels so angry inside. She’s thinking, “Why is the police beating up a girl about the same age as me!?”. And then, she gets even angrier at Nyaan’s attitude of it being only natural that they’re being violent against someone like her. Machu’s inner anger reached its limit when the military police Mobile Suits started to arbitrarily destroy the buildings in the refugee settlements, with the excuse that “they’re illegal anyways”. It’s at that point that she decides to sneak in the Mobile Suit —it was a manifestation of all the anger she was bottling up deep inside herself.
Actually, it’s very similar to the anger Amuro felt in the first episode, when he saw Fraw Bow’s family getting bombed. That’s why I believe I was able to get Machu to step into the Mobile Suit in the proper, traditional way of a Gundam protagonist.
