Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe ✅ 5/5 (10/10 on MAL scale) Moved beyond words. Waited so long for more Gigi and I got more than I could’ve ever asked for here. Saw so many different sides of her that solidified her as one of my fave and most complex characters in the franchise. The split narrative with she and Hathaway worked so well. Both felt like caged birds yearning for each other throughout culminating in that beautiful ending set to Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N freaking roses, hello? In many ways, this was Hathaway finally putting the ghosts of thepast to rest and overcoming his trauma from CCA. Felt like we got a very good amount of character development, big fan of characters bucking the trend and going their own way.

To expand on the Gigi part, I already loved her from the first film, but seeing her so vulnerable and learning about her past in this one made her feel much more human whereas in the first film she feels like this mystical femme fatale. This girl’s been through so much, let her be happy, please! I kinda felt bad for the whole Kelia x Hathaway thing, but we’re team Gigi this way. The staff definitely love her too because all the different outfits she had in this were crazy. She ate up like 20 different concepts. That slap scene in Kenneth’s office is going to be so rent free in my head.

The fights didn’t do as much for me as the first film, but tbh they didn’t need to. The emphasis was on Hathaway and Gigi’s personal struggles. Sadly, that leads me into the big issue I had with the film. The CGI. Look, CGI mecha fights are unavoidable in this day and age. They save time and also allow animators to do more with the mobile suits than you can with 2D. When it’s done well, it looks amazing too as we saw with Gquuuuuux and the Eva rebuilds. Problem is, it looks so bad here, like comically bad at times. The scene of Xi coming out the water at the start was so jarring. The final fight also didn’t look good at all to me, but the symbolism, new mobile suit and storytelling there took some of the sting away. The 2D scenes in the film look amazing and the backgrounds are so realistic at times, feels like they used real life environments which was a nice touch! The dogfights themselves still feel realistic, love the emphasis on the cockpit experience. The VFX in Dolby atmos was incredible. Direction is still top notch just like the first.

Overall, one of the best directed anime films I’ve seen, great character development for our leads, another banger Sawano soundtrack and a great ending that expands on the books, setting us up for the third film. I just hope they fix up the CGI and boost the lighting because my god some of those fights were so hard to follow along. Will be rewatching this when it gets a North American release too.