It's nuts to me to think that other mecha shows like Evangelion have gotten bigger than Gundam in the west despite Eva being popular almost entirely for things Gundam did first and better. "Oh but we see why you shouldn't make teenagers fight in these machines and it's the perfect glimpse into the creators depression he got while writing." I'm sorry but Victory Gundam checks off both those boxes and predates it by three years. Maybe I just don't understand the appeal, if anyone would like to explain in the comments or message me about why I'm wrong about Eva I am open to a friendly and civil debate or to hear you explain it. I think a similar way about how weird it is shows delegated to Sunrise's lower teams deemed as lesser priorities than (insert Gundam series being produced around whatever time) like Cowboy Bebop, Inuyasha, Love Live!, Code Gaess, etc. have gone on to become bigger hits in the west than Gundam, but I suppose not everybody can stomach an actual dark and serious franchise like this one. When they announced the newest Gundam movie was being released in the west as a Netflix exclusive I thought "this is perfect, it's just there on the biggest streaming platform for everyone to watch, they can easily check out this cool standalone story and maybe feel inclined to look into or watch other things in the Gundam franchise." I was one of many people who had a blind excitement for Gundam Hathaway because it seemed like more high quality animated content taking place in the UC, but my thoughts on why it would only help the franchise gain more exposure went up in flames when I remembered the source material in more detail.
Hathaway is newcomer friendly, sure, but it's also not a story with appeal to the typical anime viewer To understand Gundam Hathaway is to understand it's history too. Series creator Yoshiyuki Tomino typically never wrote supplementary canon because whenever he wrote something it was usually with the intent to make it into an anime or to publish as an alternate version of pre-existing work. An example of this is the novel Char's Counterattack Beltorchika's Children, which was based on his original script for Char's Counterattack before Sunrise demanded something more closely following the events of the High-Streamer novel, making it the third novel of the story following High-Streamer and the official novelization of the film. Tomino envisioned a sequel to Char's Counterattack, but knew the dark story he had in mind would be turned down by Sunrise for not being a beginner friendly clean slate like they wanted the next Gundam project to be, So Tomino in 1989 wrote his sequel as a series of novels. These novels were 3 books in a series called "Hathaway's Flash". "Hathaway's Flash" was notable for being the only original supplementary material Tomino himself wrote barring High-Streamer. Tomino had gone on record saying that adapting Hathaway's Flash was impossible. The novel wasn't canon, its story would be tricky to fit into the canon, and it was instead a sequel to Beltorchika's Children, which in his mind when he wrote "Hathaway's Flash" was the real version of Char's Counterattack, even if Sunrise officially said it's not canon because only animated stuff is concrete and confirmed as canon. However when announcing Narrative Sunrise teased more content taking place in the late UC, much to the excitement of fans, both hardcore Gundam fans who love the UC and fans who never explored the UC beyond Unicorn. Then later at the Gundam 40th anniversary expo we were presented with the news of a full on adaptation, three movies, each focusing primarily on one novel's series of events. My reaction was happiness and surprise. I couldn't believe they were adapting the popular novels Tomino said were impossible to adapt, and on the other hand I thought "Why didn't they adapt Hathaway's Flash sooner? If they want to make all Gundam fans happy adapting one of the last fleshed out stories by Tomino to have not been brought to screens would be perfect." Regardless I was happy to have seen the announcement.
Covers to the novels, illustrated by Haruhiko Mikimoto
The plot of Gundam Hathaway (I'll only cover the first movie/novel here and I'll just review the other two films when they come out) takes place in UC 0105, twelve years after Char's Counterattack and seven years after Narrative. The conflict over the independence of people in space and over newtypes is over. by UC 100 The Earth Federation has adopted Zeon as a governing force in space, but grew distrusting of people from space over time. (To be fair every major conflict in the UC barring the Laplace Incident (which wasn't even a thing in any media when the novels were written) was initiated by someone from space, so it's not an unreasonable line of logic.) The Earth Federation government becomes increasingly more corrupt and begins to deport poor people and people they deem undesirable to space so that they can turn the Earth into a rich man paradise. To prevent another war drastic measures are taken, with a new organization called "The Man Hunters" who hunt down and deport anyone on earth who dare speak out against the government and deport whoever they are ordered too. Hathaway Noa (son of famed battleship commander Bright Noa, who captained the protagonist battleship in every major Gundam anime from the original series up until Char's Counterattack) reflects on his actions in the second Neo Zeon war (the conflict from the Char's Counterattack film) and the trauma that haunts him in the aftermath. After reflecting on both sides of the war and their leaders Amuro and Char, he adopts the philosophies of both, using Char's belief that Humanity must be purged from the earth so it can heal, and Amuro's belief that humanity can change for the better. With this philosophy he joins up with a group of terrorists who fight for freedom from the oppression of The Earth Federation. Hathaway under the alias of Mafty Navue Erin unites people to join his cause and fight for his goals, with the hope of causing humanity to leave the earth and for The Earth Federation to crumble.
Now first I want to cover some differences between the novel and the film like I did with Narrative, because there was naturally some things that needed to be changed in order for the movies to be made to fit the trilogy. The first major change was obviously Hathaway's involvement in the second Neo Zeon War. In the film he had to face the girl he loved on the battlefield, having seen her choose the Neo Zeon's side messing him up inside a bit. In Beltorchika's Children he was forced to kill her and never got over it. In the novel Hathaway stole the Ξ Gundam (pronounced "Xi Gundam") from Anaheim Electronics while they were transporting it to earth, while in the film Anaheim sold it to Mafty so they could make a greater profit from the conflict. All media based on the novel portray the main antagonist Kenneth Sleg as a white guy where as in the film he is black and got a complete redesign. I don't think that's a good or a bad thing, it's just a change so I am mentioning it. They actually did the same thing with Emerelda Zubin, who they also redesigned completely. They also redesigned Gigi Anadulcia, who they also redesigned to look hot, but her design isn't too distant from her original design. Actually while we're on the topic of complete character redesigns. I want to bring up some of the change in visual style. No I'm not just talking about race-swapping Kenneth and Emerelda. The novel didn't get much visually aside from a few striking black and white illustrations that make damn good use of shading and look great, albeit simplistic. The character designs in the original novel that would be used in Gundam games for the next several years before the adaptation were supplied by Haruhiko Mikimoto. Mikimoto was considered one of the best character designers of his time and worked as a character designer on many acclaimed works such as Macross, Megazone 23, Gunbuster, Record of Lodoss War and after the first novel's publishing he would go on to be the character designer for the first Gundam OVA "Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket" in 1989. (Excellent OVA by the way, one of the best Gundam things out there) In addition to this he had previously collaborated with Tomino on the Beltorchika's Children novel a year prior to Hathaway's flash, where he did the illustrations there too. His designs followed a style that was visually similar to Yoshikazu Yashuko's work on Zeta and especially similar to Hiroyuki Kitazume's character designs from ZZ and Char's Counterattack. His original character designs weren't used, and those that were just served as the basis for redesigns.
Character design this time was done by Pablo Uchida, Naoyuki Onda and Shigeki Kuhara. Now I checked thoroughly to see what else they worked on, and I didn't find much, suggesting that they are newcomers. For Uchida the best I could find was that before working on the Hathaway film trilogy he had been making promotional art based around Gundam Unicorn for Sunrise, and his art looks nice, I can see a clear influence from Yoshikazu Yasuhiko's style in his Gundam art and in his original artwork. Also of note is he hand painted a couple promo posters for the Gundam Hathaway film. Naoyuki Onda had previously done some work on Berserk, (popular manga I know nothing about) but I couldn't find anything else beyond that. Lastly was Shigeki Kuhara, who I couldn't find much on. They did some promo art for One Piece and Space Battleship Yamato, and I read one source saying they worked on an anime called Soultaker, but I couldn't find anything beyond that. I couldn't find much, but aside from Pablo's Gundam Unicorn promo art none of them have had any major work on a Gundam project before. The character design is something I liked and didn't like. Hathaway's Flash is one of the darkest stories in the Universal Century, and with Mikimoto's style following Kitazume's, the character designs were kind of cute and followed that very old school Gundam kind of design, so I understand thinking his designs wouldn't fit the dark and gritty story of Hathaway's Flash as adapted on the big screen. Mikimoto's style would really only shine in Gundam on War in the Pocket where the cute character design contrasted with the dark story showed to the viewer in a child's perspective. However Hathaway is a dark story about revolution with much more serious themes than just war. So I understand changing the designs to be more modern, more serious looking and to attract a more mature audience that might not be into all the "Gundam Build Fighters" spin offs and the new Witch From Mercury series airing on TV now as of writing this. I have no quarrel with changing Gigi to look like some kind of sexy mistress, she is the mistress of a politician so it fits, and I am fine with changing Kenneth and Emerelda's designs completely because the novel is obscure and their designs were very much like a lot of standard character designs in UC media around that time. I don't think anyone's going to have a conniption that they are both black and have new hair colors unless they are looking for things to complain about about, because we barely saw them outside of one or two sparse monochrome two-tone illustrations. Same goes for redesigning Gawman, it's really such a small thing. The only two characters to look the same are Hathaway Noa and Lane Aime. Hathaway's design was changed to generally look a bit more tough and angular and it looks to fit more into the kind of character design seen in Unicorn. Lane looks basically the same, they just tweaked minor elements of it to fit more with the type of character design seen in Unicorn because Ban-Dai and Sunrise have made it clear by this point that Unicorn is what the UC looks like now from the moment they announced the UC NexT 100 project.
Mechanical designs were by Yasuhiro Moriki, who in my research has not gone on to do much other mecha stuff or any more work in Gundam, but he did some mechanical and weapon design for other shows like Akame Ga Kill, Hunter X Hunter, Ninja Robots and some Saint Seiya OVAs, and he has also done character design for Case Closed, Lupin III and Cardfight Vanguard. He's been a lot of places in the industry involved in some big name shows. He was actually brought on as an animation director for the film, which is nice because he was involved with the original novels, so it gives this more credibility as an adaptation. However four mechanical designers were brought on to do the design work for the film, including adapting Moriki's designs. The first is Hajime Katoki who has been a prominent mechanical designer for Gundam Victory, Gundam Wing and 0083 Stardust Memory and he did additional designs for Mobile Fighter G Gundam. so his name here adds a lot of weight to this project, and shows we're in good hands. With him is Nobuhiko Genma, who was a mechanical designer, key animation and a storyboard artist for many projects like the End of Evangellion and many Gundam ones like Unicorn, Thunderbolt and Reconguista in G. Then Kimitoshi Yamane who previously got his start working on Mobile Fighter G Gundam before moving on to 08th MS Team, MS Igloo, basically every Gundam Seed thing ever made, Gundam the Origin and Reconguista in G. Lastly is Seiichi Nakatani who worked as a mechanical designer and/or animation on Turn A Gundam, Gundam 00, Gundam Seed, Seed Destiny, Gundam Thunderbolt, Gundam Unicorn, Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans, Gundam Witch From Mercury, Gundam Wing and 08th MS Team, all this meaning he has worked heavily on the series from the 90s to this very day. Thankfully mechanical design is in good hands.
Moriki's Gundam designs were carried over pretty faithfully for better and for worse. Generally they made the designs look more in-line with the style seen in Unicorn and many other late era UC works, toning them down a bit. They look great with the additional detail and all the added line-work helps call back to F91, where Kunio Okawara was asked to put as many panel lines as he could on mobile suits because they would look better on the big screen with the added detail and movie level budget, and considering we are only 18 years away from F91's events it makes sense. My only problem with both designs is that they are very busy designs, and the added detail and more angular look only amplifies that problem by a lot. They look good, but also busy and kind of messy. The Penelope Gundam suffers more because of this. with a lot of the curvature lost and the design made to be a bit more compact (the original took up a lot of real-estate) now looks messy and a bit impractical, however I understand these changes because the original aside from the head doesn't even look too much like a Gundam, however a big part of that was that the Penelope was actually a model known as the Odysseus Gundam just with many next generation mobile suit parts built onto it, explaining the weird and excessive design in comparison to its rival Gundam which has all that built in. Of other notable designs we have the Messer, which was developed from the Geara Doga, with some aesthetics taken from the Jagd Doga. My issue with it is the same as the Penelope, it looks a bit weird and not like what you'd see in the UC. The movie's redesign is an undeniable upgrade, changing small things subtly to look more like what you would see in the UC. The last notable mechanical design seen is the Galcezon, which was designed as a flight support unit for the Messer, and based on the base jabber. It looks cool and like an upgrade of the base jabber. The movie version gave it a more rectangular design to make it look less like a turtle, and I think it does look better. Overall mechanical design was hit and miss. A lot of the designs were improved in the jump to film, but the originals were strange, and weird. On the other hand changing some introduced their own issues that weren't present with the originals.
Some of the characters saw fundamental changes too. Gigi's personality now fits more into the "rich girl" trope, while still retaining her observant and invasive personality from the novel. Gawman is a lot more of rough and tumble kind of guy in this version, Hathaway is a bit more quiet and collected in the film than in the novel. However the story is mostly a faithful adaptation, with the film ending shortly after Hathaway obtains his Gundam and has his first battle in it. There are some things I really want to praise this film for, the first being the animation, which is jaw-droppingly good. The film looks gorgeous and the added detail to the mecha designs seriously look so good with this high quality animation. The film is beautiful looking and worth watching for the animation alone. In addition to this, the action is great too. The overall direction in the film is really well done. The soundtrack done by Hiroyuki Sawano is excellent. Sawano has been involved in most UC related projects as a composer ever since Unicorn, which is warranted because his soundtrack was unironically one of the best parts of Unicorn and Narrative. Other returning staff from Unicorn are that OVA's editor Daisuke Imai, and writer Yasuyuki Moto who had written all the Build Divers shows since doing Unicorn. Directing it is Shuko Murase, who was a key animator on Stardust Memory and an animation director F91 and Victory, in addition to that he was the character designer for Gundam Wing and directed an episode of Gundam Evolution as well as two of his own shows with Eroge Proxy and Witch Hunter Robin, further showing we are in good hands. All the returning crew from Unicorn are sure to make many Gundam fans who haven't explored the UC beyond Unicorn and maybe Narrative happy, as well as other fans of the Universal Century happy. (no hard feelings, just me making a bit of fun of some of those people who don't want to check out the rest of the UC) In all fairness Unicorn is a really high quality OVA where the theatrical budget and scale really show in the best way, and Hathaway is no different. All the talent surrounding this work shows in the quality of the film itself, and it's a great film.
Now I'm going to talk about some criticism with the film and the bad stuff about it as well. This first problem isn't exactly a problem with the film as much as it is the Hathaway's Flash story entirely. It works as a series of three novels you read back to back because a slow burn is accepted in that format, however the story isn't big enough for a proper OVA. The entire story takes place over the course of a small period of time. This means in faithfully adapting the first novel that also means the movie is a lot of set-up with the only pay off being the fight at the end and setting up for the next film. It just ends with everyone cutting their losses and planning their next move, which is kind of a weird way to end, but it does set up the next one and make you want to watch it, so a mission accomplished on that front. This issue will probably be remedied when the others are out and people can just watch all three of them back to back. I would actually say it's a bit too faithful to Tomino's original novel, because the things they changed were so minor, and they didn't change anything that would actually make it flow better as a film. On top of this in the Beltorchika's children novel Hathaway was forced to kill his love interest because he came to the realization she would kill important people if she didn't and he was faced with a life or death situation. The aftermath of it really messed him up, but he understood it had to be done. In the movie's version of events he had a freak out after losing his chance to try and reason with her to stop and just went absolutely berserk in a blind rage, leading to some fans finding him a pretty despicable person in the aftermath, and this movie isn't really going to make anyone who felt that way change their minds. A lot of people say the designs of the two Gundams are horrible, ridiculous or absurd. However (and I'm not making this up) there is a lore reason for it. It was the fact that mobile suit designs were getting increasingly complex and bigger that helped lead to the idea of making smaller mobile suits. Anaheim's first commission like this didn't meet expectations and so The Earth Federation's own mobile suit development think tank SNRI began designing their own mobile suits. The Penelope having a difficult time maneuvering with all that cumbersome gear and equipment built onto its basis is supposed to represent the problems with overwhelming force of the Federation's increasingly oppressive rule, as opposed to the Ξ Gundam's design. Though to be fair this does make their confrontation one big cliché metaphor. Another critique I see is that it has no impact. Firstly I must say that the reason is kind of obvious, that being that it's in a time frame we don't see hardly at all in Gundam media. The novel's events and the film does help show why The Earth Federation is weak by the events of F91 and Victory, and in Tomino's own far future Gundam novel Gia Gear its main character is directly pitted against The Earth Federation's Manhunters organization. My last complaint is the CGI. I mentioned before that the animation is beautiful and some of the best I've seen in recent memory, but that strictly applies to the 2D animation. I mentioned in the previous Blogspot post on this subject why I don't like CGI in Gundam, but I'm still okay with it overall to an extent. However the CGI here being the way it is next to beautiful 2D animation makes the awkward or lesser aspects of it stand out much more.
Overall I loved it and am very pleased and happy with the overall work. the changes made to the film to make it fit within canon remove some of the things in the novel that added to and built up the story a bit, such as changing Hathaway's involvement in the second Neo Zeon war and how it affected him leading into the events into the story twelve years later. However the blemishes and issues with this film do little to take away from the film. It's adapting one of the best novels in Gundam's 40+ year history, and it's one of Tomino's darkest Gundam stories. It seemed to work in getting new Gundam fans and old Gundam fans, grossing more than twice that of the previously highest grossing Gundam film at the box office with more than 2 billion yen, and helped revitalize interest in the franchise to people who had lost interests or not checked it out before, of course this is in Japan. Overall they made it decently newcomer friendly. It's only real connection to the rest of the UC is Char's Counterattack, and even then they show you flashbacks of some of the important scenes that really shaped Hathaway during that film anyways, so it's not a big deal. It's nothing like Narrative where having seen the first three Gundam shows and Unicorn was paramount to fully understanding and enjoying film (I don't care what Fukui says Narrative does not fully work if you haven't seen some prior UC works). As it stands the novels couldn't be taken as canon at all because it's a sequel to Beltorchika's Children, but the first film being very faithful adaptation means you probably won't have to worry about missing out on anything from the other two volumes of the novel in the next two films even with the changes made to slot it into canon. The first film is largely just a character study of the main character and sees him coming to terms with his actions and what he is going to do, making the story pretty self contained for the most part though I won't spoil if that changes later on. As it stands I give the first film an 8.5/10 which will definitely turn into a 9 or a 9.5 if the other two films are as good if not better and pay off well what this film set up.
I intended to talk about more stuff here, but I just had so much to say about F91 (probably gonna split that into two articles, one about F91 and another about its sequel) and I have been busy this week. Hopefully next week I'll get to cover it, if I don't have enough time I have a back up post ready to go. If you gained new insight on the Hathaway movie I'm glad, if you disagree with my thoughts on the film or what I said and wish to start a civil discussion than by all means leave a comment or reach out to me and I'd love to start a civilized discussion or debate over it.
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