Gundam and Roses.

With Japanese animation having become a very big business, the promotional blitz for theatrical anime　regularly includes hyping up the movie’s ending theme. It’ll play in the background of the trailer and TV commercials, and the recording artist will usually release a statement saying how excited they were to be approached for the project, and often wax poetic about how much they’ve been enjoying the franchise or reminisce on how important anime was to them growing up.

But in the case of Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway: The Sorcery of Nymph Circe, the producers didn’t say a peep about its ending theme prior to the movie’s release day on January 30. It was an unusual move, seeing as how it’s the newest big-budget release in Japan’s most prestigious mecha franchise, but it turned out that the producers had wanted to hide the surprise that the ending theme is…

…“Sweet Child o’ Mine,” the 1987 hit from American rock band Guns N’ Roses.

The selection of a nearly 40-year-old song as the ending theme for the newest of all Gundam anime might seem like an odd choice, but Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway, also known as Hathaway’s Flash, is adapted from a series of novels written by Mobile Suit Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino that were published in 1989 and 1990, when “Sweet Child o’ Mine” was a more recent release. Hathaway’s Flash is also a follow-up to the 1988 anime movie Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack, in which the Hathaway character plays a major role and goes through experiences that shape him into the person he is in Hathaway’s Flash, so there’s a temporal connection or two to be made.

Thematically, “Sweet Child o’ Mine’s” bittersweet lyrics about the fragility of youthful innocence also fit with Hathaway’s character arc of going from the newborn baby of two other Gundam characters to heavy-hearted terrorist leader. Then there’s just the fact that “Sweet Child o’ Mine” has one of the most famous and catchy guitar intros in all of popular music, something that many people can recognize even if they don’t know the name of the song or the band who performed it.

Still, the song suddenly reappearing in a Gundam anime made it hit with a lot of impact, and interest in “Sweet Child o’ Mine” has massively spiked since The Sorcery of Nymph Circe’s release. On the week following the movie’s opening, downloads of “Sweet Child o’ Mine” rose by 12,166 percent on the iTunes Store, bringing it up to number 18 on the single-song chart. Sales of Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses’ debut album which includes the “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” also surged, pushing it up to 16th place in the album chart.

“Sweet Child o’ Mine” isn’t The Sorcery of Nymph Circe’s only collaboration with American musicians either, as the movie’s opening theme, which was revealed prior to its release, is SZA’s 2021 hit “Snooze.”

With one Hathaway’s Flash novel still left to adapt, there’s going to be at least one more anime movie to come, which means at least one more chance for the producers to get eclectic with the soundtrack.

Source: Rolling Stone Japan via Livedoor News via Hachima Kiko
Top image: YouTube/ガンダムチャンネル
Insert image: PR Times
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