How about a James Bond movie for shy men? 2021's Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway (機動戦士ガンダム 閃光のハサウェイ) might fit the bill. It features a handsome, mild mannered terrorist for whom flirtation and action seem to occur nearby while he remains passive or defends himself. This guy's so milquetoast, it's kind of hilarious. But the film has some fantastic animation and a really sexy female lead.
I've never been especially interested in Gundam, despite my appetite for anime otherwise. I love Evangelion, which is kind of a subversion of Gundam. And oddly enough, even now, the original 1990s Evangelion series feels like a subversion of this 2021 film. I guess it's no surprise since it's based on a novel series from the late '80s. I wouldn't have watched the film except my coworker was so insistent that I should.
The first scene is pretty impressive but not especially ingenious. It features a terrorist hijacking of a commercial spacecraft and my coworker told me the director took influence from 2001: A Space Odyssey to portray the passengers in zero gravity. But the scene is much more reminiscent of a very similar scene in Cowboy Bebop, which was also produced by Sunrise. The leader of the terrorists even wears a jack'o'lantern mask, recalling Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door.
Among the passengers are three of the film's lead characters: Hathaway Noa (Kensho Ono), Kenneth Sleg (Jun'ichi Suwabe), and Gigi Andalucia (Reina Ueda). It's the loving attention animators give to Gigi's floating blonde hair that shows just how much was invested in the film.
Hathaway is the main protagonist. He's the real leader of the terrorist group, Mafty, and the hijackers are only pretenders, part of a conspiracy to give Mafty a bad name. Somehow, Gigi seems to know everything, which Hathaway comes to know when she's aggressively flirting with him. After Hathaway's thwarted the attack and the ship lands, he finds that she's booked them both in the same lavish hotel suite, He spends a lot of time sitting around, looking chaste and pensive while she flashes skin at him.
Kenneth is the other side of the coin, even bragging to a stewardess about how he's comfortable talking to beautiful women. Naturally, he turns out to be the villain.
Maybe you're asking at this point, what is it, exactly, that makes Mafty a terrorist group, apart from the fact that everyone says they are? It's never clear, which may be intentional. Mafty may be a victim of propaganda. They do, though, have giant fighting robots which finally show up more than halfway through the film.
Hathaway is given the opportunity to shield Gigi in his arms while she panics beneath the giant metal figures. So the manliness of Gundam combat finally undoes the confidence of the beautiful seductress. Not that such impure thoughts would ever occur to Hathaway. So the viewer can have his cake and refrain from publicly acknowledging he'd eat it, too.
The animation is pretty good and detailed but the story remains lightweight.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway is available on Netflix.
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