The Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway’s Flash film enjoyed a successful opening day in Japan, grossing over 190 million yen, marking a 337% increase from Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative’s debut.
A stage greeting for the feature was held at Marunouchi Piccadilly Dolby Cinema, attended by star Kensho Ono, director Shukou Murase, and producer Naohiro Ogata to discuss the production of Sunrise’s latest Gundam blockbuster. After the screening of the film, Ono gave his opening speech to the audience saying, “I’m very sorry to have made you wait so long, but I think it was the wait that made the film such a big hit. I was preparing in a waiting room nearby, but when I heard the sound of the film being screened, I finally realized that the film had been released.”
Director Murase expressed enthusiasm for the next entries in his trilogy, “I tried many things while making this movie, so I would like to make the second and third films while sorting those things out.”
Producer Ogata then gave his own update on the second part of the Hathaway’s Flash film trilogy, “I’ve been asked by many people when the next part will be, (laughs) but I’m going to work hard on it and hope to deliver it to you soon. We did a lot of location scouting in Davao for the first part, so we would need to go to Australia to do location scouting for part two. It’s not easy to travel there now because of the [Covid-19]situation, but I hope that the day will come soon when we can do location scouting freely.” However, Ogata mentioned using Google as a resource as well as asking help from locals. This was the first time the producer talked about the production status of the second film.
With a great start, the team behind Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway Flash confidently aims for the film to surpass Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space as the highest grossing in the Gundam franchise, exceeding 2 billion yen.
After nearly a year of COVID-19 related delays, Hathaway’s Flash finally released to Japanese theaters June 11, 2021. Thursday, streaming giant Netflix announced they were exclusively releasing the Hathaway film internationally during their “Geeked Week” event.
First in a trilogy of anime films helmed by Shukou Murase, Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway’s Flash or Hathaway is the official sequel to the 1988 Mobile Suit Gundam Char’s Counterattack movie. The project was announced in November 2018 to celebrate the Gundam 40th anniversary, adapting the Yoshiyuki Tomino-penned novel series of the same name. The novels were originally released from 1989 to 1990, as a follow-up to Tomino’s Char’s Counterattack: Beltorchika’s Children novel, published by Kadokawa’s Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko imprint.
Story
The year is U.C. 0105. Twelve years have passed since the end of the second Neo Zeon War (Char’s Rebellion). Even after “the Axis Shock,” which seemed to indicate the future of humanity and the Universal Century, the world is still in a chaotic situation where intermittent military conflicts continue to break out. The Earth Federation government is more corrupt than ever, and its leadership has not only accelerated Earth’s pollution, but also implemented an inhuman “Man Hunting” policy in which civilians are forcibly exiled to outer space.
The anti-Federation government organization “Mafty,” led by someone called “Mafty Navue Erin,” has taken a stand against the corruption of the Earth Sphere. Mafty carries out fierce acts of terrorism, assassinating high officials of the Federation government one after another, but it gains a certain level of support from the populace who are growing more opposed to the Federation government.
The person who calls himself “Mafty” and leads this organization is Hathaway Noa, the son of Bright Noa, an officer of the Earth Federation Forces who once participated in the One Year War. Hathaway himself joined the forces trying to stop Char’s Rebellion. With firsthand knowledge of the ideals and ideologies of Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, he has become a warrior following in their footsteps, and plans to clear a path forward through armed resistance. His destiny, however, is drastically altered as he encounters the Federation Forces officer Kenneth Sleg and a mysterious young beauty named Gigi Andalucia.
Cast
- Kensho Ono as Hathaway Noa
- Junichi Suwabe as Kenneth Sleg
- Reina Ueda as Gigi Andalucia
- Soma Saito as Lane Aime
- Toru Furuya as Amuro Ray
- Nozomu Sasaki as Gass H. Huguest
- Kenjiro Tsuda as Gawman Nobile
- Yuki Ishikawa as Emeralda Zubin
- Fukushi Ochiai as Raymond Cain
- Shunsuke Takeuchi as Iram Masam
- Misato Matsuoka as Mihessia Hence
- Chiharu Sawashiro as Kenji Mitsuda
- Atsumi Tanezaki as Mace Flower
- Koichi Yamadera as Hundley Yeoksan
Ergo Proxy and Genocidal Organ’s Shukou Murase is directing the film project, with scripts by Yasuyuki Mutou. Pablo Uchida, Shigeki Kuhara, and Naoyuki Onda serve as the character designers for the films. Hiroyuki Sawano returns from Mobile Suit Gundam entries Unicorn and Narrative as music composer, with rock-band [Alexandros] performing its theme song “Senkou”. The films’ mechanical design team consists of Hajime Katoki, Kimitoshi Yamane, Nobuhiko Genba, and Seiichi Nakatani.
Sources: Official Hathaway’s Flash Website, Movie Walker, Oricon News
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