After being delayed a year due to the Pandemic, the latest offering from the Gundam franchise arrives at last. Acting as the second project for the UC NexT 0100 event (which will cover the next century of Gundam’s parent timeline, the Universal Century), Gundam Hathaway is also being adapted from a three part novel series written by Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino himself. The movie is the closest to UC0100 as we’ve ever been (seriously did nothing substantial happen at the big century marker itself?) and an opening banner reveals that UC NexT wont ignore Gundam F91 or Victory Gundam as established cannon. So this is a chance to start filling in those missing years before F91’s UC0123 setting while also setting up a new launch point for newcomers to the Gundam franchise. It only partly succeeds at one while not quite landing the other. There’s a lot of hype and pressure behind Gundam Hathaway but can it step up and match it?
Gundam Hathaway acts as a sequel to Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack and Hathaway’s connection to those events and his relationship with his father, legendary Captain and Gundam mainstay Bright Noa, is constantly being brought up…like a lot. I get that this is meant to fill in those who haven’t seen Char’s Counterattack but the movie is tied so tightly to it, you might need to give it a watch before stepping in. Hathaway himself is better than he was back during Char’s rebellion but he’s still a mixed bag as a character. I can understand his wish to stand against the Federation since theyre making life on Earth for Spacenoids a living hell for no reason other than theyre not from Earth. But Hathaway’s deeper motivations were always going to be a hard sell if you’d seen Char’s Counterattack and knew he was fawning over one of the worst female characters in all of Gundam. If this is all for Quess, a girl who betrayed him at the drop of a hat and clearly wanted nothing to do with Hathaway after she traded up for Char, then dude…no, just…no.
Complicating Hathaway’s life is Gigi, who is drawn gorgeously (and the movie never misses the chance to show her off in a sexy pose), but the girl is so all over the map with her behavior. Ethereal one moment, naieve the next, deadly serious a second later, it’s hard to pin her character down beyond the fact that she’s clearly a Newtype. Somehow, beyond her good looks, Gigi’s clear reminder of Quess to Hathaway causes him to act stupidly while his own plan unfolds and almost gets him killed. Is Gigi the reincarnated soul of Quess or someone playing Hathaway to their own ends? Then there’s Kenneth, the new Federation commander who has lots of good scenes with Hathaway. He’s clearly set up as Hathaway’s main rival for this new trilogy and much like the old Star Trek adage goes, “In another lifetime, I could’ve called you friend.” These two have good comradere, even some fun banter over who gets to go after Gigi romantically. Kenneth also has a darker, Titans side of handling things as he beats one of Hathaway’s subordinates with a chair during interrogation. Clearly not everyone here is what they seem and that’ll definitely be a running theme throughout the trilogy.
Most of Gundam Hathaway is dedicated to the interplay between the three leads: Hathaway, Gigi and Kenneth. We spend a lot of time with them and get both too little and yet not enough info about them. After an intense opening scene, the movie’s pace slows to a crawl and remains fairly slow. It’s is so slow that for a while I was wondering if we were going to get any Mobile Suit action at all, much less anything to do with a Gundam. When the action does kick in, we get probably one of the most realistic, Earth based Mobile Suit battles since 08th MS Team. Seeing debris, bullet casings and sparks from energy beams rain down all over a city, you forget just how much collateral damage is involved in these battles amongst towering metal giants. The Battle of Davao is easily the most visually amazing sequence in the entire movie, yes even dwarfing the finale when we finally get to some action involving Gundams. I think we could have used less Hathaway’s confused introspection and Gigi’s whimsy and had more action to really get things going.
What helps save Gundam Hathaway from being mostly boring is the introduction of Hathaway’s resistance group. You wouldn’t believe the kid was command material like his Dad until you see him interacting with this motely crew. And they like him, they really like him and it’s clear he cares an awful lot about them too. Five minutes of time watching Hathaway walk through his hidden base, talking with mechanics, pilots and other rebels and I wish we’d spent the whole of the movie here and less with Gigi and Hathaway in an amazing hotel room trying to figure each other out. Truth is, we don’t spend as much time with Hathaway’s Mafty crew as we should. The biggest problem with the movie lies here: it’s mostly just set up for the other two films in this proposed trilogy. Many of the bigger moments don’t occur til either the Battle of Davao almost an hour in and the last twenty minutes. Everything else is just recapping Hathaway’s lineage and Char’s Counterattack connections endlessly while Gigi tries to either sleep with him or shun Hathaway depending on that roll of the dice. To the films credit, I want to see more of the Hathaway rebellion, heck I want a movie about how they all came together in the first place.
On the technical side of things, Gundam Hathaway doesn’t quite measure up to the visual marvels of the last few Gundam OVAs like Gundam Unicorn and The Origin. The CG Mecha is still better than most in the genre. However,here are times where the character animations switch out, seemingly for stylistic purposes, which makes some important moments feel inconsistent, presentation wise. As for Gundams, we have two: the Penelope for the Federation and the Xi for Mafty. They both kind of looked the same to be: two hulking behemoths reminiscent of Metal Gear than Gundams. We also only seem to see these Gundams during night battles so there isn’t a good chance to see them clearly, something the production thinks about for the next films. That said, the opening shuttle hijacking that Hathaway foils and the aforementioned Battle of Davao are awesome feats, both intense and fun to watch. Also, Hiroyuki Sowano returns to the composers chair after scoring Gundam Unicorn and Gundam Narrative. As always, he brings his epic musical and bopping battles tunes to the mix, proving why Sowano has been the go to composer for most Gundam projects in the last decade.
Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway gets the ball rolling on a new trilogy of Gundam films but it takes a while to build momentum. The story’s got a hard enough time making Hathaway likeable, considering how much of an insufferable brat he was in Char’s Counterattack, but manages to succeed in the films last act as we see him interact with his resistance movement. Gigi could be a problem character but Kenneth has more promise as a rival for Hathaway. Now if only we could make the animation a bit more consistent and get a good glimpse of the titular Mobile Suit Gundams and we’d be in better shape. As it stands, Hathaway is mostly set up and recapping prior events before bigger things happen before the close. As a start up, it should have been better but I’m not writing it off just yet. As a life long Gundam fan though, I expect more, especially when it’s a major stepping stone for the mythology of one the franchise’s most enduring timelines.
5/10
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