Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe

Universal Century 0105.  It is a time of turmoil as the terrorist group known as Mafty plots a strike against a prominent Earth Federation conference.  But they’re up against impossible odds as the power of Kenneth Sleg’s Circe unit grows, cutting off avenues of attack and approach.  As for Mafty’s secret leader, Hathaway Noa, he’s still deeply shaken by his encounter with Gigi Andalusia, the girl who could either destroy him or guide him to his ultimate destiny.  Against doubts and guilt, Hathaway must settle these feelings to become the leader he is meant to be before his revolution fails.

It’s been a long 5 year wait for the next chapter of the proposed Gundam Hathaway Trilogy.  I was split on the first film with it’s visuals being amazing and action some of the best Real Robot action I’ve ever seen in the franchise.  But making the story, based on the Hathaway’s Flash novels, work was always going to be up to your tolerance for Hathaway himself and I’m not really a Hathaways fan after Char’s Counterattack.  Still, Part 1’s final act showed promising potential by introducing more of Hathaway’s crew and I was at least curious to see how that progressed.  Unfortunatley, it feels like much of that 5 year wait time was spent on the animation and not so much anything else because The Sorcery of Nymph Circe is a boring middle chapter that’s happier to spin it’s wheels, pontificate and show off it’s poster girl while not doing anything else exciting until way too late in the run time. 
 
The middle part of a trilogy can be tough to pull off since it doesn’t exactly have a proper beginning or ending.  It can be done though hence we have classics like The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Empire Strikes Back.  Circe is neither of those two.  Rather than progress anything, most of the film is heavy on dialogue that mostly revolves around planning for a major operation that will probably be the centerpiece of the final chapter.  I still don’t understand much about the Mafty Organization’s motivations besides “The Earth Federation is corrupt” cliché that’s old hat in Gundam at this point.  There’s no major event to center this film around like The Battle of Helm’s Deep or Luke Skywalker’s showdown with Darth Vader on Cloud City.  Instead it’s just going from place to place, having very long expository conversations about battle plans and then a fancy CG shot of Mobile Suits flying around with a sprinkle of seconds long action scenes until the end of the movie.  It almost begs the question why this was even turned into a Film Trilogy when they had no idea what to do with the middle chapter besides waste nearly two hours of screentime.
 
It doesn’t help that we don’t get to learn much about some of those promising faces we saw at Part 1’s conclusion.  It’s clear there’s a lot of history between them and Hathaway that’s made them close.  But instead of showing us this, the movie would rather wear out the viewer with endless scenes of conversation that feel like they started off screen and never get a satisfactory finish.  Nowhere is this more glaring than with Hathaway and his…Ex Girlfriend (?) Kelia.  We’ll get to Hathaways himself in a bit but as for Kelia, it’s clear she loves Hathaway and is only part of Mafty for him but…why?  We get a montage of their relationship throughout the years but it lacks any emotional weight cause we haven’t gotten a chance to properly know the poor girl Hathaway is ignoring in favor of a revolution I don’t even think he knows why he’s even begun.  Kenneth Sleg still has charm but is mostly just fawning over Gigi as his prized good luck charm and the wasted potential of pilot Lain Aim continues as they only use him for action scenes rather than giving him a proper character arc.  I’m with how frustrated the guy is over why anyone is doing what theyre doing cause nothing in this movie makes sense unless you’ve watched Part 1 several times and really, really, really pay attention to Part 2’s plot.  (PS please let Lain survive Part 3 so he can get his own series or movie cause he deserves a shot at leading man status).
Sadly, everyone’s character progression is shelved and ignored in favor of them just being there to have a standardized large Gundam cast…cause this isnt their story, nor is it really Hathaways.  Gigi Andalusia is a character Gundam fans are split on due to her portrayal in the Hathaway Movies.  She started out with potential as an ethereal like guide for Hathaway only to quickly reveal she’s a bit all over the place and enjoys playing potential lovers against each other.  If you didn’t like her in Part 1, tough cause a good third of Circe is Gigi going from place to place with her endless luggage and wardrobe options and modeling her way through the plot.  We get snippets of her disturbing past relationship with “The Count”, just enough to make us cringe at what some dirty old man is doing with a girl more than half his age.  Who is this guy?  Why was Gigi in his employ?  Is she a Cyber Newtype or a Natural Newtype?  Oh nevermind, time to watch Gigi model in various outfits and decorate an apartment before running to Kenneth and teasing him about how much she wants to jump Hathaways bones.  Gigi is supposed to be a dangerous, unpredictable wild card but she’s portrayed more as a spoiled brat who always gets her way and always looks good doing so.  At least with Lalah and Quess there was a tragedy about their choices that led to their tragic demises in Mobile Suit Gundam and Char’s Counterattack.  Gigi is neither of those two and I’m not a Quess fan either so you know it’s bad when I’m favoring Quess over Gigi.
 
And then there’s Hathaway.  This kid is in way too deep to his little revolution he cant even see the surface.  Him freaking out when the Xi Gundam goes underwater is an apt metaphor for this.  He seems confident and in charge and no ones really asking questions cause he’s the boss.  But again, why is he doing this?  We never get any real insight besides mental images of Quess popping up here and there to terrorize him (and by terrorize I mean sit there not even looking menacing and Hathaway flips out).  The only time we ever get decent incite into Hathaway’s true inner turmoil is during the films finale which is also the best part of the whole movie.  It features those heavily advertised scenes of the Nu Gundam and flashbacks to the events of Char’s Counterattack.  Honestly, it’s too little too late to make any sense of Hathaway but the sequence itself utilizes a lot of touched up animation from the 1988 film and it looks amazing, a more smoother visual update that could have been what Zeta Gundam’s New Translation Trilogy turned out to be.  It makes me more excited for the recently announced Mobile Suit Gundam Remastered Project for the franchises 50^th Anniversary…which is more than anything I can say about The Sorcery of Nymph Circe.
 
As for the animation, it’s fine.  The problem is that there isnt anything that interesting about it.  Again, Part 1 had that amazing battle at it’s mid point that showed off how truly destrucitive and catastrophic Mobile Suit combat could be for civilians on the ground (tons of falling shell casings, beam debris melting buildings).  There are only two sequences that rival that scene: the very beginning with a very Cloverfield inspired live cam experience of a Mobile Suit massacre and the aforementioned Char’s Counterattack flashbacks.  Everything else is just again: people standing in various spots talking or Gigi looking sexy doing literally anything.  You can only make people just standing around talking look visually for so long.  And the action?  Once again, the bulk of it is at night and very difficult to make out.  What is the Director’s problem with having Mobile Suit battles in broad daylight, it’s like he’s afraid of it.  It also doesn’t help that the final showdown between Hathaway’s Xi Gundam and Lain’s Alzeyus (which does hide a nice surprise), we do get to see them fighting at sunrise…but they just look like two blocks of digitized sprites that you cant tell apart brawling with each other, no different from a lot of fight scenes in Michael Bay’s Transformers movies.  What, were they so focused on making Gigi look like a Goddess in every shot they forgot how to make colorful and well lit action scenes with Mobile Suits?
 
Five years of wait time and this is the result?    Want a Gundam sequel movie that took even longer to come out and delivered all the goods and more, watch Gundam SEED Freedom cause Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe isnt a good movie.  It’s heavy on talking and not explaining.  It practically demands you’ve lived in the world with these characters for longer than they’ve been on screen to understand anything.  It makes you feel left out and worse yet: bored.  Hathaway’s not a compelling lead.  Gigi is just there to flirt and look hot.  And the action is hiding behind a dark tint as if it’s ashamed of itself.  No doubt I’ll probably see Gundam Hathway 3 whenever it comes out but my expectations are at an all time low now.  They clearly weren’t in a rush to get this movie out and I’m in no rush to see how it all wraps up.
 

2/10