u/MechaUlfraed

Big Boss is the monster? What, so all the outer ops done in Peace Walker, all the weapons research done was some kind of gift to the world? Kaz was broken from the start, and the only good thing he did was train Solid Snake, but that alone isn’t exactly enough to redeem him from the lives and nations torn by the war MSF and Diamond Dogs waged, now does it?

He lost everything? Aww, I'm sorry, did he lose his precious war profiteering military company that has no ideology or morals or values?

"We built that!" Built what, an apparatus that sells war outcomes to the highest bidder, which implies to the side depraved and corrupt and rich enough. Boo hoo.

"Played us like a damn fiddle!" Dude played himself. Even if they didn’t get destroyed by XOF, their idiotic venture was doomed from the start. Even assuming the world doesn’t take kindly to upstart military regimes with no loyalty or indication where it would apply power, there was always gonna be a force of revenge by the victims of MSF they didn’t even want to consider, hiding in the background until the time became ripe to strike, and all the while Kaz thought he could profit off this misery without even the slightest consideration of MSF's victims, without consideration of the inevitable ideologies of the people who hired MSF to fight for them and the ideologies of the people they fight against. So suddenly it all comes crashing down after years of business being good and somehow, SOMEHOW Kaz is supposed to be a victim in all this?

Nah, fuck all that. To use his words, he was only in it for the business angle.

He got what was coming to him.

Novels: Opens fire on the colony at Side 7 instead of Gene. Escapes when Gene is killed. Is shot down outside Side 7 when he leaves his IFF on and is quickly targeted by the RX-78-2.

OG 0079: Backs Gene up when Gene opens fire on Side 7. Charges at RX-78-2 when Gene is killed. Vaporized by beam saber into the cockpit.

GQX 0079: Is seen backing up Char on Side 7. Has a rough time combating the Federation's Guncannon but is neither confirmed nor denied shot down. Is not seen afterward in Char's crew in the operation to capture Solomon.

What do you think happened?

I know what the point of her character was, but if I wanted a character that blows their entire life over a stupid quest for a revenge duel I'd just rewatch "The Duellists", least then Ridley Scott isn't gonna try to make me feel bad for someone who saw a rake and deliberately went out of their way to step on it.

Entire review contains spoilers. This is a dialogue for those that have already seen the film.

Gundam Hathaway is a movie that does not care if you are up to speed or not. It's a true sequel to the main UC series (0079, Zeta, ZZ, and CCA) that delves into the psychology of a man traumatized by the events of CCA.

Char and Amuro were traumatized by the OYW most profoundly by Lalah Sune's death, and while Amuro was able to move past that, Char was trapped in the past and sought revenge, co-opting the Sweetwater colony's palpable hate against an Earth Federation plutocracy that does nothing, ignores the needs of colony citizens, and whose ministers exist only to play a cynical game of politics, as pawns in a final game with Amuro. Char becomes a symbol of resistance, and upon the failure to drop Axis onto Earth, is seen as a defeated would-be mass murderer.

Hathaway, traumatized by Quess Paraya's death during Char's Rebellion, is a child of a middle-upper class upbringing, who learns of the frustrations against the Earth Federation, from the Earth's ecological decay, to the conditions of utter poverty the world lives in. Knowing this, he, through the sponsorship and connections of the elusive "Quack Salver", forms the organization known as "Mafty", and takes up the mantle as the titular leader, "Mafty Navue Erin".

On the surface he knows he must act as a responsible and solid leader, and while his seriousness and competence earns admiration and respect from those within the organization, internally he is fighting a battle within himself to grasp the meaning of his actions. He knows the odds of success are low in a world in which the game is stacked against real change for the better, but his desire to find meaning in Quess Paraya's death and an earnest frustration in the way the world drives him forward anyway. Trauma, loss, and grief, no matter how much western media disrespectfully portrays it as a plot device, is not an affliction conducive to narrative catharsis. Hathaway lost Quess Paraya to Char, a man who to Hathaway was just a man with a righteous cause, and seeks to become the kind of man that Quess fled to. Unbeknownst to Hathaway, Char's actions of his rebellion were only done as the result of his own trauma and insecurities as a human being. So, by adopting the name of Mafty Navue Erin, Hathaway unknowingly adopts the traumatization of Char as well and becomes his true successor. Because of this, he pushes away his girlfriend, Kelia Dace, who represented the future Hathaway could have had in the private sector. Yet, Hathaway chases her anyway, because he knows the time he spent with her was real and good, and the future he could have had with her also was. However hard he runs in the rain, Hathaway cannot run from the choice to become Mafty, and to do so kills a part of himself.

He meets a Newtype known as Gigi Andalucia aboard the Haunzen, a luxury Earth-Space liner, brought into a world in which the only value placed on her as a human being is her looks. She has her own opulent sponsor, Count Baundenwooden, but after meeting Kenneth Sleg and Hathaway Noa, finds herself caught in a tug of war between three men she loves for different reasons. In the Count she finds a figure with the private sector with which her entire financial support system rests on, and her world-class interior design talents can be brought to the forefront. She sees him very rarely, but in the few instances in which she does, finds a man agonized at the end of the road of private sector pursuits, a man with all the material and financial wealth in the world but spiritually bankrupt, bereft of the warmth of family, whose only solace is Gigi's genuine feelings of affection and empathy. In Federation officer Kenneth Sleg, she sees a man in the public sector, someone who embodies the necessary mechanics of society. While she's aware that to personally damn the society that has produced unjust outcomes is no small hypocrisy from the fortunes she herself has been the recipient of as a result of her relationship with the Count, she regardless knows that the mechanisms of this society continue to drive itself into a self-consuming death spiral. Sleg's redeeming quality, however, is his ability to balance his maturity, charm, and masculine aggression, a veteran too wisened to naively put faith in the systems he himself perpetuates, yet too young to allow jadedness and disillusionment bitter his demeanor and kill his charm. In Hathaway, however, Gigi finds someone completely removed from the private and public sector, a rebel who despite his blunt and harsh personality, has the worldview that she herself most aligns with. Tomino understands that the quintessence of a love triangle is that the person in the center must choose between people who have strengths in one area and weaknesses in another. Gigi cannot have a man who has the Count's financial stability, Kenneth's personality and Hathaway's outlook. She must ultimately choose one. In the end of Sorcery of Nymph Circe, she chooses to abandon the stability both the Count and Kenneth could provide, and choose the one with which she is most spiritually aligned, someone who sees the world for what it is and decides to make action to change it.

Hathaway and Hathaway: Nymph Circe are character dramas, sequels to both the preceding UC stories and a sequel to itself, all having genuine and frank conversations about how we as individuals must both wish to challenge society's immovable momentum towards its own destruction, yet live in it all the same. It takes the setting of a post-Char's Rebellion world in the UC and grounds it as tangibly and as unforgivingly realistic as possible. Haunted by traumas, pulled between unimaginable extremes, Hathaway's sequel is a beautifully animated, beautifully scored, beautifully acted tragedy with which the tortured cries that scream for change and revolution itself become yet another gear of society that, like the rest of human society, can only spin in circles.

Because of this strong focus on the dialogue it wishes to have on and with its characters, one might think that the sparse action might disengage viewers, however, to do so would serve only to judge a horse for being a horse. The function of mecha action in Hathaway serves a different purpose. SEED Freedom's mecha action serves clear hero and villain distinctions, surface level representations of clashes of worldviews their settings have little interest in exploring deeper implications and consequences. Gundam Hathaway, despite its minimal mecha action, gives the action greater weight as a RESULT of the exploration of the developed worldviews of both sides. It deftly uses the setting of the UC not as a mechanism to continuously repeat the same patterns, same tropes ad nauseam. Its subtleties are the antithesis of current western blockbuster filmmaking that points a finger at itself and goes "remember this from a thing you knew from earlier?" The only exception is the climax of the final battle, with which Hathaway engages in a dialogue with Amuro Ray's worldview, which while obvious to people who've delved into Hathaway and Char's parallels, is so much more subtle than western blockbusters would ever dare hope to approach.

Having read the novel translation, I went into Nymph Circe hoping that Bandai-Sunrise wouldn't water the second book's meditations down to a lowest-common-denominator drench that insults the viewer's intelligence and attention span, that they would continue to preserve the first film's refusal to water itself down. I walked out elated that Nymph Circe stayed the course. Nymph Circe is not a film that tries to be a crowd pleaser. Nymph Circe isn't Gundam 101 and doesn't try to be. This is the 500 class uninterested in getting its audience back up to speed. It spits in the face of streaming show productions that overexplain, overexposit, and overexposes itself out of fear that the audience wouldn't get it.

Hathaway and Nymph Circe is a reminder that film is a medium that is meant to be engaged with, becoming its OWN Mafty that rebels against mainstream cinema that only knows how to jingle keys in a cynical self-referencing branding exercise.

And by god, do I love it. 10/10.

That's how you write a review, u/evilbutters. Next time, pay attention in the theater.

Kit: MG EX-S 1.5

Paints used:

1. Gaianotes Sea Blue
2. Mr. Color EX Susie Blue
3. AOK Blue 05
4. Gaianotes Cobalt Blue

Music used: https://youtu.be/NeTWUfKvwDY