The Sorcery of Nymph Circe might be the best Gundam movie in years

Mecha anime existed long before Mobile Suit Gundam, but few series before or since have captured the intricate nuances of politics and militaristic might quite like it. Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) set the stage for what would become one of the most recognized franchises on the planet. In a distant future known as the Universal Century (UC), an ideological war between the Earth Federation and the Zeon space colonists threatens to consume all of humanity. Decades later, that unresolved tension comes to pass in Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway.

It’s been five years since Hathaway, and the long-awaited sequel, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe, is finally in our orbit. Shukou Murase returns as director, with Sunrise Animation Studios producing. As the second entry in a planned trilogy, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe raises the stakes to an impeccable degree, putting to animation political subplots that echo real-world dynamics and some of the most thrilling aerial Gundam combat seen in years.

The story picks up almost exactly where things left off, flowing into haunted revolutionary Hathaway Noa’s new role as Mafty, which serves as both his alias and the name of the anti-Federation organization he leads. Where the first film centers on Hathaway coming to grips with his newfound identity, the sequel tracks his transformation into the Mafty ideal, further becoming the very symbol of rebellion over merely participating in it. The Sorcery of Nymph Circe shows what it costs to fully inhabit that concept.

Much like the first film, Murase refuses to frame the story in terms of heroes and villains, instead situating it in a space where intention and consequence constantly blur. The war between Mafty’s insurgency and the Earth Federation unfolds as a clash of unstable ideologies, with neither side offering a clear moral center. Hathaway’s campaign of targeted terrorism is portrayed as politically motivated yet deeply volatile, while the Federation’s corruption and rigidity make it feel just as broken as the revolution it seeks to suppress.

The sequel pushes that ambiguity into something more immediate and uncomfortable. If the first film questioned whether systemic injustice can be changed through violence, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe is concerned with what comes after that choice and whether anyone can live with its consequences. Murase tests these questions with returning characters like Kenneth Sleg (a fierce Federation officer hunting Mafty) and Gigi Andalucia (a mysterious woman with special precognitive abilities).

Gigi and Hathaway’s complicated romantic feelings are a major throughline, expressed best in how Hathaway consistently wonders about her throughout the film. The thousands of miles of separation eat away at him, and despite that distance, she still serves as a mirror he can’t avoid. Murase does a great job of twisting Gigi’s role in Nymph Circe. In the first movie she saw right through Hathaway, but in the sequel she’s a reflection of that gap between who Hathaway thinks he is and what his actions actually mean.

Pulling that distinction even further is Bright Noa, Hathaway’s father and a veteran Earth Federation officer, who has spent his life trying to uphold a system he knows is flawed. He makes a brief yet very necessary cameo in Nymph Circe. Last seen in 2018’s Mobile Suit Gundam Narrative, Bright not only serves as a way to humanize the Federation but also challenges Hathaway’s entire arc. Like Hathaway, Bright saw the same atrocities at play in Char’s Counterattack (1988), yet chose instead to work within the system rather than burn it to the ground.

All of these elements coalesce and collide in the most poetically Gundam ways. Like the previous film, Nymph Circe is still a raw political thriller masked as a Gundam movie, but Murase takes things up a notch, further emphasizing elements within the Universal Century like Minovsky particles, bureaucratized warfare, and institutional continuity in the Federation. He inevitably builds to this crescendo of thrilling Mobile Suit dogfighting, pitting Hathaway Noa and his Xi Gundam against the Federation’s Lane Aim piloting the RX-104FF Penelope, with reckless abandon on both sides.

Image: Bandai Namco/Sunrise

Detractors might bemoan the fact that Nymph Circe takes its time, waiting over an hour before showing off some of the franchise’s most slick action in years. But Gundam was never really about Mobile Suits fighting. The politics and characters within the systems underpinning the mech suits are what the franchise has always been about, and Nymph Circe doesn’t lean into the spectacle. This works in its favor, because those culminating scenes are truly incredible.

The animation quality has also dramatically improved. Gundam Hathaway already looked visually striking, but Sunrise pushes the visual language further with an even more refined photorealistic approach. Murase leans into that realism by deliberately placing characters in environments that feel too tangible, almost like they don’t fully belong in them. A perfect example is the Federation broadcast at the very beginning of the film, showcasing a Mafty Gundam killing civilians and stomping through the streets, turning a towering mobile suit into something unnerving. It’s a subtle stylistic choice that recalls his earlier work on Ergo Proxy and Genocidal Organ, where atmosphere and dissonance often mattered as much as narrative itself.

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe balances a lot, but delivers with a gut punch that longtime Gundam fans will feel in their core. The final minutes have me ecstatic for the sequel, even though the wait will be dreadfully long. Murase understands exactly when to hold back and when to let everything collide: ideology, consequences, and steel in the sky. The final stretch not only sets up what comes next but sharpens the anticipation for it, leaving fans both exhilarated and uneasy as the wait for the conclusion begins.

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe releases in theaters on May 15.