Anime director and animator, Shuko Murase.

Bandai Namco Filmworks

With Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery Of Nymph Circe released theatrically in the US on May 15, I caught up with its director, Shuko Murase, to talk about the film.

Murase also directed the first Gundam Hathaway movie, and I wanted to know what challenges he faced adapting it from the original novels.

“When it came to the first Gundam Hathaway movie, in visualizing this novel that was created by this titan of visualization, Yoshiyuki Tomino, and having someone else realize that vision, with me being the person to do that, it was a really big question and challenge. In terms of “am I allowed to do that?”, but I accepted the job and the challenge, so I have to do it. Then I thought about the philosophy or what direction to go in when it came to creating the visuals. Getting to the point where I could decide what form it would take was the part that really took a lot of thought. Am I going to go with visuals that Tomino would create, or would I go with my own style? After thinking about this a lot, even if I were going to imitate Tomino’s style, it probably wouldn't go well. So I went with my own original style. In terms of creating this film, I don't know if I was able to clear that challenge, but that was the hardest part.

“How we worked on the first film and the second film was actually very different. In that, we used CG as the basis a lot more for the second film. I think that made the layout very different from any other work that we’ve done and made it a lot deeper.

“As for the fact that these movies can be quite dark in places, this is something I’ve been asked before. For example, in the daytime, if there's sunlight and there's an area that's in the shade, you're not able to see what's in there. So if a person appears from the darkness, that's one form of expression. I think that it's important to have areas that can't be seen, and this is something I think is important in the movie. Not drawing every single thing, and having some things that cannot be seen, with just a silhouette of a character, or not being able to see a character's facial expression. This allows people to imagine how these characters are feeling or the expression on their faces. This means that because things are in the dark, it increases the amount of imagination that people have to use, and that was intentional.”

One of the most striking aspects of the original novels was the strange and unique mecha designs for the Xi Gundam and Penelope by Moriki Yasuhiro. As these are atypical mobile suit designs for Gundam, I wanted to know how Murase tackled their unique aspects in anime form.

“Moriki Yasuhiro’s mecha designs were in the original novels around 30 years ago. In addition, Hajime Katoki also created models and arranged these designs after that. That means the designs that Katoki makes are what Gundam fans are already familiar with, but this time, Katoki really insisted on creating an image that is really close to what Moriki had originally done. Naturally, I had questions about this. Even the 3D modeling for any mobile suit is really hard to make actionable, but Moriki's designs make that even harder. I also thought it was a little far removed from what the image of Gundam was. That meant I had really long discussions with Katoki, and I don't know why, but he really insisted on getting the image closer to what Moriki had done.

“We discussed how we are going to fix this, and we got as close as possible to the original designs Moriki had done. There was also a mecha-specific animator, Nobuhiko Genma, and we got his opinion as well. Both Genma and Katoki came from different angles to try to make this work. Even though it is 3D and as close as we could get to Moriki's drawings, it was an intense process that took a lot of time, but I think we definitely achieved something. When you look at the final movie, the action of the mobile suits was achieved due to the time that was spent on these discussions. In addition, Katoki also designed the new TX-ff104 Alyzeus.”

While this was likely a bit silly of me, I also wanted to know why Bright Noa didn’t have a beard in the new movie, despite being depicted that way in the original novels.

“Originally, Bright Noa did have a beard in the movie, but I thought that aging him through having a beard was just too easy. I don’t mean to criticize the original designs, or anything like that, but I just thought that the beard would make Bright not Bright. I do feel bad that I put a burden on the designers, but I wanted him to age with that face, and the beard just did not match his image.”

Finishing up, I was curious as to the reasoning behind the additional elements referencing Char’s Counterattack and Amuro Ray at the end of this new movie.

“There are various versions of Char's Counterattack, with Tomino creating the movie as well as novels. Tomino also rewrote the first novel a second time, into Beltorchika's Children, and this segment at the end of the second Gundam Hathaway movie is a continuation of Tomino's second novel rewrite. This means that the crime Hathaway commits is different from the first version, and so in order to correct that timeline in the second movie, we had to depict that onscreen. In order to do that, we needed Amuro to come out in the last battle. So that's why it differs greatly from the end of the Gundam Hathaway novel.”

Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery Of Nymph Circe is released across theaters in the US on May 15.

Follow me on X, Facebook and YouTube. I also manage Mecha Damashii and am currently writing regular columns in Japanese about mecha games and mecha anime for both Game*Spark and Automaton.