Japanese Rock Band [Alexandros] Chosen to Compose Gundam: Hathaway’s Flash Theme Music

Japanese rock band [Alexandros] has been chosen to compose the theme music for the upcoming Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway’s Flash movie. Set for release on July 23rd of this year, Hathaway’s Flash is shaping up to be a classic Gundam experience for new and old audiences alike. 

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathway is the culmination of the Gundam franchise’s 40th anniversary. It was first announced as a trilogy series during the Gundam 40th Anniversary press conference in 2018—ahead of the actual 40th anniversary in 2019.

Based on the novel released some 30 years ago, the story is set twelve years after The Second Neo Zeon War (Char’s Counterattack). It focuses on Bright Noa’s son Hathaway. Hathaway sets forth as an ambitious warrior—guided by the philosophies of Amuro Ray and Char Aznable—to assassinate the leaders of the devastatingly corrupt Earth Federation government whose actions have accelerated environmental pollution and have adopted a policy of man-hunting (where “unwanted” people are forced into space). 

Acting under the alias Maftyi Navue Erin, Hathaway takes his role as leader of the anti-Earth Federation terrorist organization Mafty. His flash is the hope of humanity.

The novel was adapted into a screenplay by Yasuyuki Muto who also wrote the screenplay for the Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn anime. The planning and production for Hathaway’s Flash are being conducted by Sunrise with direction by Shukou Murase who did the character design and key animation for New Mobile Report Gundam as well as the main character design for Final Fantasy IX. The full staff is listed below

• Director: Shukou Murase
• Screenplay: Yasuyuki Muto
• Character Design: Pablo Uchida, Naoyuki Onda, Shigeki Kuhara 
• Original Character Design: Haruhiko Mikimoto
• Mechanical Design: Hajime Katoki, Kimitoshi Yamane, Seiichi Nakatani, Nobuhiko Genma 
• Original Mechanical Design: Yasuhiro Moriki 
• Art Director: Gouki Nakamura 
• Color Design: Takako Suzuki 
• Director of Photography: Kentaro Waki 
• CG Director: Takayuki Masuo, Tomohiro Fujie 
• Editor: Daisuke Imai 
• Sound Director: Hiroshi Kasamatsu 
• Recording Director: Eriko Kimura 
• Music: Hiroyuki Sawano

The theme song announcement was made during the GUNDAM FAN GATHERING -”Flashing Hathaway” Heirs to GUNDAM- on March 24th at Zepp DiverCity Tokyo in Odaiba, steps away from the famous Life-Sized Unicorn Gundam Statue.

The members of [Alexandros]—vocalist Yoohei Kawakami, bassist Hiroyuki Isobe, and guitarist Masaki Shirai—made a surprise appearance at the event, sitting down to discuss their previous works, touring, creative process, and the project itself. The members each expressed their delight at being asked to write the music for such a legendary franchise and how honored they feel.

A subsequent teaser trailer was released with English subtitles on the GundamInfo YouTube channel with [Alexandros] listed prominently in the credits.

The main voice actors were also announced during the event. Kensho Ono will lead the voice cast as Hathaway Noa. Rena Ueda will voice Gigi Andalucia and Junichi Suwabe will voice Henneth Sleg. The cast is a complete change from previously released materials—where Nozomu Sasaki famously voiced Hathaway in the 1988 film Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack.

If you were unable to attend the actual gathering (as it was, unfortunately, canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak) and missed the live-stream, a full recording of the event is available on the official GUNDAM Channel YouTube channel. [Alexandros] is revealed as the theme music’s composer approximately 1 hour and 48 minutes into the livestream with clips from their most recent performances as well as the music video for their chart-topping song Philosophy, released earlier this year.

The film’s producer Naohiro Ogata explained that his reason for choosing the band was because “Gundam is very popular overseas” and, he continued, “it would be nice to have a Japanese artist that can go abroad with this work.”

This is not the first time their work has been selected as the theme music for a film. [Alexandros], who recently celebrated their 10th anniversary, made big waves last year when their solemn rock ballad Pray was used as the theme song for the Japan version of the movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters. They even released a special webspot version of the song on their YouTube channel, featuring footage from the movie.

Prior to that, their song Mosquito Bite was used as the main theme song for the BLEACH live-action film adaptation released in July of 2018. A special theme video was released on the Warner Bros. Japan official YouTube channel to announce the collaboration with [Alexandros].

A second [Alexandros] song, MILK, can be heard in the BLEACH battle teaser released by Warner Bros. Japan. The movie version of this song, MILK – BLEACH version, is featured on the Mosquito Bite EP.

If watching those clips made you a bit nostalgic for the best-selling series by Tite Kubo, we recently looked back at Bleach’s glory moments.

The theme song for Mobile Suit Gundam: Hathaway’s Flash is currently in production. More details will be announced soon. Keep up-to-date by checking OTAQUEST and the official Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway website.

In the meantime, you can keep up with [Alexandros] on their official website, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube channel. Or listen to their music on Spotify and iTunes.