by Adrian Nguyen
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jun'ichi Suwabe, Kenshô Ono, Soma Saito, Reina Ueda
Intro:
Devotees of Mobile Suit Gundam will be pleased by the results, but for anyone new to the franchise, it would be better to understand the assignment first.
A follow up to 2021’s Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway, with Shûkô Murase returning as director, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe starts where the previous film left off with Hathaway Noa, the son of Bright Noa, who was one of the main heroes of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise, reuniting with Mafty, a revolutionary group that he founded, going against The Earth Federation’s corruption, and getting his gundam. The film builds towards the Adelaide conference, where Mafty would be plotting an air raid against the Federation forces, led by Kenneth Sleg.
It shares many of the strengths, as well as some of the weaknesses of its predecessor. The animation is much clearer and crisper, especially in the aerial fights, which is par for the course of the mecha sub-genre (the film’s crescendo is set right near Uluru). But like Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway, The Sorcery of Nymph Circe pays way too much attention to the many characters it introduces, and reintroduces, like the Circe pilot Lane Aim or the Criminal Police’s Hundley Yeoskan, resulting in its staggered pacing, especially for those who are new to the franchise. Still, for Murase, it pays off with the gundam fights.
Walk in blind to this movie, and it is dense with fanservice and Easter Eggs from other Gundam films, namely Char’s Counterattack, where the atrocities play a significant role in shaping the protagonist’s psyche and the first Mobile Suit Gundam from 1979, where it established the entire franchise by bringing this ideological conflict in the first place.
Both Hathaway and The Sorcery of Nymph Circe share the leanings of a political thriller that has been the bread and butter of the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. But, the latter’s mysterious romance, stemming from Gigi Adalusia, who is infatuated with Hathaway, despite being a foil for the Federation Colonel Sleg, which makes Nymph Circe intriguing. From the first instalment, Gigi sees Hathaway as being a plant of the Mafty, but it becomes clearer that Gigi and Hathaway are two sides of the same coin, fighting against the same enemy.
Devotees of Mobile Suit Gundam will be pleased by the results, but for anyone new to the franchise, it would be better to understand the assignment first.
