The re-release of Hathaway’s Flash novels has made some modifications here and there, some minor corrections to kanji, some proofreading, and a couple of new lines. The odd downside to these has been the omission of the internal artwork. It seems, though, that some of the diehard Tomino otaku are having some grumblings over the anime adaptation of this series. Let’s dive in!

The movie’s advance screenings/YouTube previews have pretty much turned them off to the prospect of buying the film on Blu-ray when it comes out. Many people feel that the impression the novel left on them, the portrayal of people, was vastly different from the one that Sunrise was trying to portray (aka it’s a clear cut ‘we’re here to sell models’ movie).

On that note, Beltorchika’s Children is a novel with a motif that disavows mobile suits, which is permissible because it’s a novel written by one person. They feel that it shouldn’t be turned into a production work that recoups its production costs by selling plastic models through mecha action. Oh boy. I think some people missed the memo when it came to just what Gundam is. Nonetheless, Hathaway’s Flash, at its core, is a novel that depicts the human drama that lies beyond mobile suits being disavowed. In a sense, I’m guessing that they’re complaining about how a novel like this is the only way mobile suits can be secondary and not the focus of the story.

We all heard the argument from Ogata when he said that the use of 3D CG made it possible to animate the complex action of the mobile suits. A lot of them feel this wasn’t the case with the novel. It was more of the “feeling” they got when reading the story, which you can’t really replicate in a theatrical setting and not the mobile suits.

If you take a long hard look at dogfights and whatnot in the air, Macross Plus, Blue Sub 6, Macross Zero, Bebop, Yukikaze, etc., all did this with no problem. Heck, even A New Translation slapped on some animated shading to a CAD model. I don’t think the issues lie with the Xi and the Penelope. It’s not that they couldn’t do it. It’s just that they didn’t want to do it. We did have MS IGLOO give us a full CG experience with little to no (yikes?!) issues.

You also have the future of Gunpla to consider here as well. I’m pretty sure the OYW has been milked to death, and now Sunrise is looking for a new cash cow. Unicorn is probably starting to run a little thin too, so why not bring something out from 30+ years ago? But then we have the issue of incorrect credits. Yes. They’re grumbling about credits! Quite a few people have pointed out the fact that it says “Original Story by Yoshiyuki Tomino & Hajime Yatate.” The Sunrise pseudonym wasn’t involved with the novel, so why are “they” tacked on to the “Original Story” credit? Well, I guess he’s just a component in a Gundam project with no individual credit allowed anymore.

Many fans also feel that the NexT 100 project is a bit of a “day late and a dollar short” venture for the company. Since Ogata wants Fukui to start penning something that shows the dismantling of the Republic of Zeon in U.C.0100, it seems kind of foolish for them to have animated something that takes place five years after that. Are we meant to flip-flop back and forth between the years?

Many of the novel fans feel that it’s a hard-boiled novel, one where it’s not about disavowing mobile suits, not about the mecha action, but about the conversational atmosphere. I sort of agree with this, mainly because it’s been a pain in the arse to translate half the time. It’s not just Tomino, it’s the actual structure of the novel itself!

But I suppose the preview has left a lot of people turned off. The whole first part of the novel was setting up dialogue among the characters. The subtleties of their conversations. Hathaway ordering his drink (joking about ordering warm milk before getting a Wild Turkey on the rocks), Kenneth having a conversation with himself in the bathroom, interacting with all the EFG cabinet members… And then you have Gigi. Some people aren’t happy that they’ve basically washed away everything about her character. She’s no longer insightful, and she doesn’t come off all that classy or careful. Instead, she mentions how Kenneth is military and divorced too. This gives a very different impression of her.

The dirty thoughts of the politicians (their thirst for Gigi and the cold relationship they have with their wives) are curbed considerably. The novels never really implicated any of the cabinet members in any sort of specific corruption either. The entire cabin scene is a patchwork of things from the original work, so the entire atmosphere comes off quite stilted. Nuance be damned, apparently.

Then there’s the hijacking scene. In the novel, a true sense of danger is depicted. The anime? Not so much. It’s more of a “let’s dump the hijackers and jet off.” Then there’s the whole “let’s have a gunfight inside the ship!” scene. Hollywood action sequence much? I mean, the novel had them fearing death if there was a gunfight inside the craft, and now suddenly we’re firing off machine guns with no issues?

If you look at what the director did in the past, I’m honestly quite surprised. Witch Hunter Robin, Genocidal Organ, and even Red Garden had a lot of conversation versus action (Genocidal Organ probably isn’t the best reference, but I digress…). It makes me wonder if the love triangle is going to be mangled too. Is Sunrise just trying to make an easy-to-understand anti-terrorist war action movie?