Last month, I attended a US screening of the second movie in the Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway trilogy, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe. It was actually my second time seeing it, having catched it during a trip to Japan. I had originally planned to write about it after that first viewing, but I came away confused about a few things that I felt would benefit from a repeat viewing.

Prior to the release of the first film in 2021, the Hathaway’s Flash novel was always something of a mystery to me—a work I merely read about in dedicated online forums or guides for Gundam crossover games. It’s wild to think about how by the time all this wraps up, it’ll be 2031 and an entire decade will have elapsed, alone the 30 years since I learned about the novel.

In the first Hathaway movie, we were introduced to Hathaway Noa as a full-grown adult, years removed from the child and teenager we saw in previous works like Zeta Gundam and Char’s Counterattack. While he’d previously been best known as the son of Bright Noa, commander of the famed White Base from the original Gundam, here we discovered that Hathaway is now the head and namesake of a militant anti-government organization called Mafty. While living his double identity, he encountered a mysterious female Newtype named Gigi Andalucia, who reminded him of Quess Paraya—the girl he loved and whom he saw die in combat after having defected to Char Aznable’s Neo-Zeon.

After a big battle, the first film ended by introducing a ton of new faces as Hathaway reunites with the other members Mafty. The Sorcery of Nymph Circe continues from there, and I have to admit that I originally got a little lost keeping track of everyone, trying to remember if I even saw them last time, all while they threw names and places around. By the second viewing, though, I came to understand that Mafty was trying to coordinate an attack on a gathering of Federation leadership, all while Hathaway struggles with his relationships towards women and his sense of guilt/responsibility as leader. All the while, Gigi contends with the fact that she has been sheltered and showered with every luxury imaginable due to being both such a powerful Newtype and the favored mistress of one of the richest people in the world.

Hathaway is surrounded by gorgeous women, many of whom have feelings for him, and the film really wants to make that clear. Watching in the moment, the frequent indulgent shots can feel gratuitous, but the film eventually reveals that there’s a greater point being expressed beyond cheesecake: Hathaway suffers from PTSD brought about by his involvement both direct and indirect in the death of women from his past. He angrily and desperately chides himself for feeling sexual desire when he’s supposed to be fighting for loftier goals, as Char Aznable did. In this light, our protagonist becomes something of a pathetic James Bond, whose pain and determination become a form of charisma that attracts women and acts as both a curse and a blessing. In other words, the fanservice is portrayed in a distracting manner because it is meant to show how distracting it is for Hathaway himself, and I find having such patheticness in a main character to be pretty interesting.

Now, whether that approach works is a more complicated question. It’s not the main driving force of the movie (which would be the whole “attempting to overthrow the Federation” thing, but that turmoil does reveal itself to be the foundation of Hathaway’s character and the thing that undergirds his actions. In the moment, however, the T&A can feel excessive and gratuitous, and like an attempt to get some horny fans. 

A similar issue exists with Gigi. There are many scenes of her basically playing fashion model and home designer in ultra-wealthy settings, and they’re ultimately meant to show how Gigi is trapped in a gilded cage. She has her position and privilege because she’s desired by a very powerful man who values Gigi for both her psychic gifts and her body, and this gives her access to more than most can even dream of. In this context, all the opulence feels like an attempt to exercise some form of autonomy, and the limitations of this are what attract Gigi to the mess that is Hathaway Noa. However, the sheer amount of expensive outfits, furniture, and decorations portrayed—not to mention Gigi’s statuesque beauty that is very rare in Universal Century Gundam even among its most beautiful characters—can also come across as trying to appeal to people with similar tastes, or perhaps those obsessed with luxury goods.

The movie also can sometimes just be visually hard to follow. In addition to not always being clear who’s on what side, there’s a particular problem that stems from Hathaway’s Mobile Suit, the Xi Gundam. It is a chunky hunk of metal that almost feels like a very burly and pointy linebacker, and between that, the night battles, and the amount of weapons being fired, sometimes action scenes can be a huge blur. Rather than being able to follow the “choreography” so to speak, I found myself enjoying it more when I let the chaos wash over me and lived in Hathaway’s head. There’s also a big moment that really delves into his psyche, and the world portrayed there ironically shows how much more clarity these battles could have had.

I’ve given some criticisms, but I ultimately did like The Sorcery of Nymph Circe. It feels both mainstream and experimental, and I do like that Hathaway Noa is such an unusual protagonist whose internal struggles oddly seem more relevant than ever with how the male libido has become a weird battleground in culture. He is an imperfect hero whose attempts to become more ideal are filled with pitfalls.

As the credits finished during that first viewing I watched while in Japan, there was a girl behind me who was crying. Talking to another girl next to her, she simply commented that it was really good, all while drying her tears. If a film can move someone that much, I feel like it’s gotta be doing something right.