In 2021, Bandai Namco Filmworks and Sunrise dispatched the gundam mechs with the launch of the Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway film trilogy. It’s just one part of Japan’s sprawling Gundam franchise, which dates back to 1979 and spans movies, series, and more.
Adapted from the 1989 YA title Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway’s Flash, these three films chronicle the adventures of Hathaway Noa, a freedom fighter in an insurgent unit that’s determined to prevent the Earth Federation from privatizing the Earth to the 1%. Noa shares protagonist duties with Gigi Andalucia, a mysterious young mistress to an elderly millionaire with a strong perceptiveness that people think foretells the future. Hathaway and Gigi establish a strong connection that alters the game of the bubbling war.
Both heroes are back in the second installment, Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe, now playing in theaters with a Netflix release to follow in July. The preceding film had a troubled production, which pushed its release date from 2020 to 2021. Nymph Circe picks up where its predecessor left off, focusing less on gigantic weaponized mech battles and more on the political espionage of war, as well as studying the psyche’s of its dual protagonists.
Gold Derby spoke with longtime Gundam franchise director-animator Shūkō Murase about this film’s unique story structure, visual look, and use of a killer Guns N’ Roses classic.
Gold Derby: Tell us about your choice to focus on the tactical aspects of this war as well as exploring Hathaway and Gigi’s psyche.
Shūkō Murase: The actual structure of the story was very difficult. In the second chapter, the opposing sides don’t make a lot of huge moves. They’re kind of reading each other’s next moves so the second part has the least amount of plot movement. And then in the meantime, Hathaway is busy worrying about a whole different issue. How to separate these two things and deliver the information was definitely something that I struggled with. I felt like I could have interpreted it a little bit differently, so that’s one of the things I continue to think about.
Concerning the visual look, how did you mix the hyperrealistic set décor with the scale and scope of the Gundams?
When we thought about the mobile suits being these huge things that don’t exist in real life, [we thought]: “How do we portray those to be as realistic as possible?” That meant not just focusing on the mobile suits themselves, but what’s around them. There’s these huge humanoid looking weapons that people are using, and in order to have that kind of weapon, we would have to have the kind of infrastructure to support them. So that’s where we started, and we built the set decor around that. In doing the animation, we used CG and created the set in a very detailed way, and in that way Hathaway does something that the other Gundam titles don’t.
Your team at Sunrise throws a lot of visual splendor and different art techniques in the big finale that amplifies the intensity of the action as well as dissecting Hathaway’s trauma. What conversations did you and your animation team have in balancing the action and the character drama?
That’s a difficult question to answer. Honestly, I don’t think that our expression is anything that’s brand new or unique. It’s based on the expression that Gundam has used in the past, and then we kind of modernized it. I spoke with people from each division, and showed them footage from past works, telling them: “This is what we want to go with and modernize it.”
What was the inspiration behind using SZA’s “Snooze” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” in the movie?
As far as “Sweet Child of Mine,” it was something I had in mind when I was imagining the last scene of the second chapter. I really thought about how I could communicate this image to the viewers and the song’s lyrics — in addition to this instability that Guns N’ Roses brings to the music — really depicted Hathaway’s mental status at the end of the second movie. When I imagined the last battle, I thought about that song.
It was the same thing with “Snooze.” It synchronized really well with the image of the Gundams sinking into the water. When I create these images, I use music as a base to visualize things. I thought it would be impossible to get both songs, but I thought: “Why not just ask?” The production committee worked really hard, and we were able to get permission to use both songs. That was a happy surprise for me. Even now when I look at the movie with that music, I think it’s a really good match. So I’m very grateful that it happened.
