Spoiler warning: This article covers the entire first Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway film and roughly the early-to-middle portion of The Sorcery of Nymph Circe. It intentionally avoids later developments.
About forty minutes into the second film, a strange fact becomes hard to ignore.
Has the Gundam actually done much fighting yet?
Xi Gundam exists. It briefly appears in transit, almost like a machine passing through with a soft “fooon…” presence. Yet a movie with “Mobile Suit Gundam” in the title is currently dominated by politics, trauma, medicine, relationships, a fake Mafty faction, massacres, a half-naked ship captain, and a mechanic who likes revealing clothes.
Gun…dam…?
And yet it is not boring.
As of September 2, 2026, Filmarks lists the first film at 3.8 and The Sorcery of Nymph Circe at 4.1, with roughly sixteen thousand reviews for the sequel. A tempting hypothesis is that the sequel scores higher because it contains more Gundam action. The first forty minutes make that hypothesis look increasingly fragile.
So what is carrying the film?
Hathaway himself becomes the battlefield before the Gundam does.
1. The real question is not “When will the robot fight?” but “When will Hathaway split?”
Official promotion describes the second film as an unusually dense human drama centered on Hathaway, Gigi, and Kenneth.
More importantly, voice actor Kensho Ono has explained that director Shukou Murase told him from the beginning that Hathaway is “broken.” Ono did not play that condition in an obvious, theatrical way. He tried to accumulate small moments that make the audience think, “Huh?” until the larger pattern becomes visible.
That changes how the early film reads.
A reply feels slightly off. His hesitation has a strange shape. Kelia worries about his condition and medicine. Gigi shakes loose old memories. He has not lost his discomfort with one-sided killing. Yet as the leader of Mafty, he still has to move forward.
Each detail alone is small.
Together they point in one direction:
Is the public figure called Mafty drifting away from the person called Hathaway Noa?
That is where the film becomes frightening.
2. Civilian: “Stop!” / Mobile suit: “I am literally just walking.”
One of the strongest ideas in the first film is how terrifying a mobile suit looks from ground level.
From the sky, the battle can look elegant. From the street, beams, heat, debris, fire, and collapsing structures fall onto people. A giant weapon does not even need to fire to be frightening. A moving mobile suit is already like an armed high-rise building walking through town.
Civilian: “Stop!”
Mobile suit: “I am just walking, though?”
Once that viewpoint takes hold, it becomes harder to watch Gundam only as “cool robot 😁.”
Hathaway himself does not treat killing as clean heroic pleasure either. Mafty opposes the Earth Federation’s coercion and corruption, but its method includes assassinating senior government officials. The official setting describes those methods as severe rather than morally clean.
Two thoughts therefore live inside Hathaway at once:
“This world has to change.”
and
“Does that mean I am allowed to kill people one-sidedly?”
His ideal is firm. His sensitivity to the means has not died.
That combination grinds him down.
3. Why is Hathaway elevated into a symbol? Because he actually does what he says
The reason Hathaway can become a leader is simple.
He does not only say how the world should be. He accepts personal risk, pilots Xi Gundam, and stands at the center of the operation. His official profile identifies him as Mafty’s leader and the pilot of the advanced mobile suit central to the Adelaide operation.
State an ideal.
Act on it.
Pay the cost yourself.
People follow.
Then a role larger than the individual appears: “Mafty should behave like this.”
That is dangerous.
As a person, Hathaway can start answering with something like, “Maybe. Perhaps that would be better,” allowing other people’s words to move him. But to the organization he is a symbol. Trauma, exhaustion, doubt, or illness do not make it easy to say, “I am not the leader today.”
He is elevated because he acts, and once elevated, he becomes harder to remove from the role.
The same force that turns an ideal into action can also close the exit.
4. Does Kelia want Quess to remain? Romance alone is not enough to explain it
Kelia Dace is the woman who helped lead Hathaway into Mafty, and the official character page says Gigi’s arrival begins to change their relationship.
She is also voiced by Saori Hayami.
Of course the understanding character is voiced by Saori Hayami again.
The medicine scene matters, but the exact drug is not identified in the official material. It would be too strong to label it specifically as an antidepressant or anti-anxiety drug. The safer point is that Kelia watches Hathaway closely and knows he is carrying an abnormal psychological burden.
Then comes the fear that Gigi may displace Quess.
Reading this as merely “Do not forget your old girl” is too shallow.
For Hathaway, Quess is tied not only to affection but also to trauma, guilt, and a fixation on the past. An official post-release video explicitly focuses on his conflict between past trauma, “Hathaway Noa,” and the self he performs as Mafty.
If Gigi rewrites that place inside him, Hathaway the individual might be healed.
But the fuel that has driven him, and even his identity as Mafty, may also change.
From Kelia’s perspective, the problem becomes:
“This girl may rewrite the part of Hathaway that even I could not reach.”
That is romantic loss, concern for a damaged friend, and risk to the organization’s leader at the same time.
The “understanding Hayami character” is not merely tracking his feelings. She is practically tracking organizational continuity.
An interview about the insert song “ENDROLL” also describes Hathaway as already drawn to Gigi while Kelia is the one still holding onto her feelings.
5. Fabio and Kimberley destroy the easy “good rebels vs evil Federation” map
Another burden on the viewer’s working memory is the Oenbelli force led by Fabio Rivera.
They oppose the Earth Federation but are not Mafty. They falsely call themselves Mafty’s First Army. The hijackers who attacked Haunzen Flight 356 in the first film were connected to them and were trying to secure money.
So they are not simply innocent victims.
But Federation officer Kimberley Heyman is worse in another direction. His official profile states that, before Kenneth arrived, he attacked Oenbelli in an attempt to raise his own value and massacred people regardless of age or sex.
Now the moral map breaks.
Anti-government does not automatically mean good.
Government forces do not automatically mean order.
The fake Mafty faction commits dangerous acts.
A Federation commander massacres civilians for self-preservation.
The real Mafty assassinates officials.
Hathaway is trapped in the middle, forced to ask not only what is right, but what a person becomes when he acts on what he believes is right.
Once again, the humans are scarier than the mobile suits.
6. The second movie of a trilogy is a normal attack on working memory
The second installment of a trilogy often does this:
Time passes.
The story assumes you remember the previous cast.
The location changes.
New characters arrive.
New factions arrive too.
“Which side was this person on?” becomes a recurring question.
The Sorcery of Nymph Circe is no exception.
Trying to memorize every name is expensive. Compressing people by role is easier:
- Hathaway: Mafty’s leader; his role and self are drifting apart.
- Kenneth: Federation side; hunting Mafty.
- Gigi: destabilizes the judgment and emotions of both men.
- Kelia: understands Hathaway’s past and present.
- Oenbelli: anti-Federation, but not the real Mafty.
That is enough to keep the central structure loaded.
Then the film adds a different kind of information: Brinks Wedge, the half-naked captain, and Julia Suga, the talented Xi Gundam mechanic whose official profile says she likes revealing clothing.
Your head is already full of politics, trauma, massacres, and organizational conflict.
Then:
Half-naked captain.
Near-bare-overalls mechanic.
Mafty may have strict revolutionary goals, but its dress code appears extremely liberal.
7. “The sequel is rated higher because it has more Gundam” is nearly dead by minute forty
Filmarks currently gives the first film 3.8 and the sequel 4.1.
That invites an obvious hypothesis:
“The sequel must have more Gundam action.”
But by around forty minutes, Xi has mostly offered a brief transit appearance rather than a major combat showcase.
In the meantime we have received:
Politics.
Trauma.
Medicine.
Gigi.
Kelia.
Fake Mafty.
Massacre.
Half-naked captain.
Xi Gundam: “Fwooon…”
The hypothesis is in trouble.
The official marketing called this a dense human drama for a reason. Its reception cannot be explained simply by “more robot time.”
If a Gundam film can postpone the major Gundam action and still hold attention, the human side has already won.
8. Break the title apart and only “Hathaway” has perfect attendance
Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway.
Around the forty-minute mark:
Mobile Suit: present, occasionally.
Gundam: present. Fwooon…
Flash: where?
Hathaway: always present, always suffering.
The most reliable noun in the title is Hathaway.
Internet culture makes the joke even stronger. The first film’s theme song “Senkou” and Mafty lines spawned fast, chaotic edits and memes that often look more literally “flashy” than the film itself.
The movie is dark, quiet, and full of conversation while the protagonist slowly fractures.
The internet version flashes, spins, dances, and explodes.
Perhaps the internet was subcontracted to provide the “flash.”
9. The pleasure of a carefully made film is that later scenes pay off earlier discomfort
A viewer notices strange things:
Why is there medicine?
Why does that answer sound strangely passive?
Why does he keep leading if killing bothers him?
Why is Kelia so alert to Gigi and Quess?
In a sloppy film, thinking harder can become punishment.
The script needed it. End of explanation.
In this film, however, the production explanation itself says the performance was designed to accumulate small moments of “Huh?” around Hathaway.
The discomfort is not a bug. It is a function.
Medicine, trauma, Gigi, Kelia, disgust at killing, the burden of being a symbol, and oddly yielding responses begin to align around one idea:
Hathaway Noa and the personality demanded of “Mafty” are separating.
At that point, watching the film changes from receiving information to detecting abnormalities and assembling a structure.
A carefully made film does not waste the viewer’s “Huh?”
10. Conclusion: a Gundam movie can work even if “Gundam is so cool 😁” never appears in your notes
There is nothing wrong with reaching this point without having much to say about the machine designs.
You can see a mobile suit less as a cool robot and more as a giant weapon that terrifies civilians simply by walking through their city.
You can watch changes in Hathaway’s replies more closely than the shape of Xi Gundam.
You can care more about a leader being consumed by his role than about the next battle.
Then the main battlefield of The Sorcery of Nymph Circe moves outside the cockpit.
Hold an ideal.
Act on it.
People follow.
Become a symbol.
Lose the ability to step away.
Keep your conscience and your past anyway.
The person and the role begin to separate.
While Xi Gundam briefly passes by with a “fwooon…,” the protagonist has been fighting internally the entire time.
That is why the film can survive without rushing into Gundam combat.
Its most dangerous machine may be Hathaway himself, forcing the role called “Mafty Navue Erin” to keep running long after the human inside has begun to crack.
