Spoiler warning: This article covers the first film, Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway, up to its ending. It does not describe the story of the second film.
A high school student draws Gundam machines with colored pencils, builds Gunpla kits, and says, "I like the Zaku."
Someone listening hears a different line in their head right away:
"That's a mass-produced weapon made to kill people."
But what they actually say is:
"Oh, nice 😊"
This is not just about who knows Gundam and who doesn't. Two people look at the same object, but the first thing they judge it by is different.
One person notices the single eye, the shoulder shape, the power pipes, the curved armor, the pose, the paint and how it goes together.
The other person notices which army uses it, how deadly it is, the harm to ordinary people, mass production, transport, the chain of command and the safety systems.
One person is looking at panel lines. The other has already started a disaster-response meeting.
Hathaway makes this gap easy to see.
1. The short answer: people look at the "shape" and the "use" separately
Say you hear "I like the Zaku" and think "but it's weak," "it gets shot down all the time," or "it's a military weapon." Then you are judging it by performance and purpose.
A mecha fan may not care about its battle record at all. They may like the rough, practical look of a mass-produced machine, the uneven shoulders, the one-eyed head, the power pipes, the green color and the outline when it stands up. These are enough to enjoy by themselves.
Studies of product design say that good looks change how much people value a product, and that "pleasure" and "interest" in beauty are not the same kind of reaction. [1][2] These studies are not about Gunpla. But they show that people can feel rewarded by a shape before they think about what the object is for.
So answering a Zaku fan with "but isn't it weak?" can miss the point, like asking someone who loves a painting, "but you can't commute on it, can you?"
2. It's not only "I want to be Char": the building itself is a big reward
Do all Gunpla builders think, "Char is cool, I want to be like Char"?
No, not at all.
BANDAI SPIRITS surveyed 1,000 people aged 18 to 59 who use plastic model kits and figures at the end of 2023. The most common reason for starting to buy plastic models was "I became interested in a character from an anime or manga I like." But when asked how they enjoy the hobby, the top answer among the 500 plastic model users was "the process of building." More than half of the kits bought in 2023 were from the Gundam series, and people aged 18 to 29 spent 4.1 hours a week on plastic models on average. [3]
The way in may be a story, but the reward moves to the craft.
"I like the character" → "I like the machine" → "it feels great when this part clicks in"
At that point you don't need to be the pilot. You are running a model factory.
3. A high school student in 2026 liking a Zaku from 1979 is not time travel
It is natural to wonder how a student today knows the Zaku from the first Gundam, which aired in 1979.
But we must not make up numbers. We found no reliable national statistics on what percentage of high school students like the Zaku. So we cannot say that "the Zaku is popular with high schoolers today."
What we can say is that the makers are working to bring young people to the old Universal Century timeline. Bandai Namco said in 2025 that, with Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, it wants to bring the story of the Universal Century, where Gundam began, to younger viewers. [4]
For a high school student today, the Zaku is not an antique you have to dig up from an anime made 47 years ago. It keeps coming back into the present through new shows, games, videos, social media and the Gunpla shelf at the store.
It is like a long-running series where older characters still appear in the current season.
4. People who draw with colored pencils look at lines, surfaces and shadows more than battle records
For someone who draws machines with colored pencils, looking at shape may matter even more.
The Zaku has a lot to draw: the round head, the single eye, the shoulder shield with spikes, the chest surface, the thick legs, the power pipes and the shadows on the armor. There is plenty to work on, whether it is strong or weak.
That is why this exchange goes nowhere:
Viewer A: "The roundness of the Zaku's shoulder looks great with shading."
Viewer B: "What's its combat record?"
A is in an art room. B is in a battle review meeting.
5. Are they firing beams in their heads? Three modes: self-insert, director and model craftsperson
Do Gunpla fans fight battles in their heads once the kit is done?
It depends on the person. It helps to split them into three types.
The self-insert type enjoys thinking, "What if I piloted this machine?" With Char's custom machine, admiration for the pilot comes in too.
The director type does not become Char. They set up the fight on the desk: "The enemy comes from this angle, and it takes aim here." They are not the pilot. They are the film director.
The model craftsperson type doesn't care much about the fight. They are happy with clean seams, smooth surfaces, paint, moving joints and how solid it looks when finished.
Two people can buy the same box and play very different games in their heads.
6. But the standard Zaku II carries a machine gun, not a beam weapon
There is one fun trap in the question "are they firing beams in their heads?"
At least for the standard Zaku II, it isn't a beam weapon at all.
The official product description for Char's custom Zaku II lists the Zaku Machine Gun and the Heat Hawk as its weapons. [5] The Zaku Bazooka is also well known.
So the picture many non-fans have, "robot fan = firing beams in their head, pew pew!", fails the weapons check from the very first step.
Before you doubt their imaginary battles, you need to fix your imaginary weapons list.
7. What do people see when "it's a weapon that kills people" comes first?
This does not mean they have no imagination or can't see beauty.
It simply means that, for them, purpose and result are linked automatically when they look at something.
They see a robot.
Before "how do the joints work?", they think "Who operates it? What does it shoot? What happens to people below?"
They see a space colony.
In a few seconds, "what a huge structure" becomes "if this can be dropped on Earth, safety devices to stop that must come first."
They look at the Universal Century timeline and think, "Isn't the population falling faster than it grows?"
Every time a giant structure moves, a safety committee meets in their head.
You do not have to say that beauty and ethics can never be separated. A simpler way to see it is that information about function, operation and social systems enters the sense of beauty very early.
8. What happens in Hathaway: you see the organization, the hostages and ordinary people before the Gundam
Watch the first Hathaway film this way, and it hardly matters that the main machine, the Xi Gundam, does not fully appear until the end.
The people are more interesting.
Hathaway is the son of Bright Noa, a famous captain of the Earth Federation forces, yet he leads Mafty, a movement against the Earth Federation government. The official site states this double identity. [6][7]
His subordinate Gauman is caught by the Federation. He is led past Mafty himself and only glances at him, without giving away who he is. In the official profile, Gauman is a veteran pilot who fought in many wars. [7]
Put in everyday terms:
Police: "We caught a member of the organization."
The organization's boss: "That's too bad."
The captured member: "...the boss is right there."
Hathaway also talks easily with Kenneth, who is on the enemy side. Before the Gundam, the thing to watch is "when will this double life blow up?"
The city battle works the same way. Seen from above, it is a cool mobile suit fight. Seen from the ground, it is a disaster with pieces of giant weapons and streaks of fire falling down. Beautiful beams. People on the ground: the worst night of their lives.
9. Receiving the Xi Gundam and the fall rescue are about logistics and physics, not mecha love
Near the end, the Xi Gundam finally arrives.
According to the official profile, the Xi Gundam is a fifth-generation mobile suit with a head height of more than 26 meters, and its arms are bigger than those of a standard mobile suit. [8] It is delivered as cargo from space, and with nothing to compare it to on a space screen, you may think, "Isn't that box small?" It is a scale illusion.
Emeralda, the woman with red hair, is also a member of Mafty and belongs to its mobile suit unit. [7] So that pickup is not a mysterious woman's walk in space. It is an anti-government group receiving a new 26-meter weapon like a home delivery.
On the enemy side, young Lane is a Federation lieutenant and a development pilot for the Penelope. [7] In the air scene around Gauman, a person is moved from one place to another with surprising ease.
In real physics, what matters is not height but relative speed. If a falling person and the machine catching them stop against something hard while their speeds are very different, it is dangerous. For this to work, the Xi side must have matched speed very closely.
On screen you might think, "Wait, is this space?" But it is over the sea, inside the atmosphere. Even a veteran pilot does not have fall-damage resistance as a separate skill.
Then, as Hathaway faces death, the voice he hears in his head is Amuro's. The cast list for the first film also includes Toru Furuya as Amuro Ray. [9]
10. This is a theatrical trilogy, not a TV series, and the internet's "Senkou" became something else
Hathaway is not a TV series. It is being released as a trilogy of theatrical anime films.
The first film came out in 2021. The second, The Sorcery of Circe, opened on January 30, 2026. [10] As of September 2, 2026, no release date for the third film has been announced. In a March 2026 interview, director Shukou Murase said that the script and basic structure of the third film are ready, while an official event report said it may still take more time. [11][12]
So the timeline looks like this:
2021 → 2026 → ???
Even viewers who watched in real time need patience.
The theme song of the first film is "Senkou" by [Alexandros], released on May 5, 2021. [9] However, the pumpkin-head dance and the chaotic screen that became famous online are not the film's actual end-credit animation.
If you learn the meme first and then watch the film, you think:
"The famous chaos is coming any minute now."
→ plain credits roll
→ "It never came!"
The internet has been showing a second, imaginary movie in people's heads.
11. Buying Gunpla and putting it in a closet: you can buy a ticket to the scene, but not the hobby itself
When many people around you love Gundam or model kits, you might think, "I'll buy one too."
So you buy it.
You don't open the box.
It goes into storage.
It stays there.
That is not exactly a failure. It can also be a way of finding out where the hobby's reward lies.
A builder looks at the runners and feels, "This is where it starts to take shape." For someone who finds no reward in that, it looks like "hours of work turning plastic into a finished shape."
You can buy a ticket to join the culture to fit in with the people around you. The hobby itself does not install automatically.
The unopened box quietly shows it.
12. Conclusion: one person sees panel lines, the other sees a disaster-response meeting
Gunpla fans love the Zaku not always because they love war, want to beat enemies with weapons or want to be Char.
Love of the story, the machine design, the building, the painting, collecting, photos, posing and imagined battles are all separate ways in. [3]
A person who sees the use of a weapon first, on the other hand, looks at a robot and thinks less about the engineering and more about operation, organization, logistics, damage, ethics and preventing it from happening again.
So in the same Hathaway:
Mecha fan: "The Xi Gundam is huge, strange and cool."
Use-first viewer: "Don't fire a 26-meter weapon in the middle of a city."
Both are watching the same screen.
They just see different problems.
And if your head says "that's a weapon that kills people" while you smile and say "Oh, nice 😊," then at least your way of dealing with people is working fine.
You may not care much about machines, but you can't stop being curious about people and how things are run. Some people watch Gundam and end up talking about how organizations are governed instead of robot engineering.
That is one more way to watch Gundam.
References (12)
- Shi, Huo & Hou, "Effects of Design Aesthetics on the Perceived Value of a Product," Frontiers in Psychology, 2021 frontiersin.org
- Graf & Landwehr, "Aesthetic Pleasure versus Aesthetic Interest: The Two Routes to Aesthetic Liking," Frontiers in Psychology, 2017 frontiersin.org
- BANDAI SPIRITS, 1st "BANDAI SPIRITS Adult Survey": survey of plastic model and figure users, 2024-02-20 bandaispirits.co.jp
- Bandai Namco Holdings, Integrated Report 2025, "Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: opening new value bandainamco.co.jp
- GUNDAM.INFO, PG MS-06S Zaku II gundam.info
- Official site of Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Circe, STORY gundam-official.com
- Official site of Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Circe, CHARACTER (Hathaway, Gauman, Lane, Emeralda and others) gundam-official.com
- Official site of Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Circe, Xi Gundam gundam-official.com
- [Alexandros] official site, "Senkou," 2021-05-05 (includes the cast of the first film) alexandros.jp
- Official site of Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Circe, release news of 2026-01-30 gundam-official.com
- Official site of Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Circe, official report of "THE SOUND OF U.C.0105" (mentions that chapter 3 may take time), 2026 gundam-official.com
- MANTANWEB, interview with director Shukou Murase, "What will happen in chapter 3?", 2026-03 mantan-web.jp
