Lieutenant General Gundam

Greener223224 said:
32 episodes into Seed. Looks like the show's production was actively collapsing, since that last episode was majority recycled footage and nothing happened. And in this episode, mostly nothing happened until Totally Not the Defense of Jaburo began. Kira had been just sitting in Lacus's house doing nothing for several episodes until he told her "I've thought up a new philosophy to fighting", and apparently that's enough for her to let him go and take their newest MS with him, which she says isn't a Gundam despite how the Freedom's onboard computer says otherwise.

I really miss when this show felt character-driven.
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If I remember that scene correctly, it's more that as far as Lacus is aware that particular prototype MS is called the Freedom and she's not really an engineer or pilot so she's straight up not aware it runs a Gundam OS. Kira can tell at a glance because it's obviously very similar to the MS he spent weeks piloting.

So more or less Kira saw a panther and called it a "feline" and Lacus, who doesn't know anything about zoology, just frowned and said "I heard people call it panther though".

No I don't know why I latched this hard to that particular moment, memory is weird.
 
Facepalmer said:
Astray manga(the original one, seriealized in magazines) actually ran concurrent with the show, unlike the other tie-ins for the franchise. Hell it actually started serialize just a bit before the show aired.

They were always planned to be companion pieces that spread the information around, you watch the cartoon and then if you want to know something more(and you KNOW there will be more, because there were a bunch of various promos, interviews etc that talk about the tie-in media), you can go buy some comic magazine a few days later.
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The main thing is those all feel like things you can probably safely leave to a sidestory, but like, they don't take the time to fill in any of the actual major plot holes.
 
Patak said:
If I remember that scene correctly, it's more that as far as Lacus is aware that particular prototype MS is called the Freedom and she's not really an engineer or pilot so she's straight up not aware it runs a Gundam OS. Kira can tell at a glance because it's obviously very similar to the MS he spent weeks piloting.

So more or less Kira saw a panther and called it a "feline" and Lacus, who doesn't know anything about zoology, just frowned and said "I heard people call it panther though".

No I don't know why I latched this hard to that particular moment, memory is weird.
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It's that "Gundam" is an acronym Kira made up from what shows up on the boot screen. Literally no one else calls it that.
 
HamHamJ said:
It's that "Gundam" is an acronym Kira made up from what shows up on the boot screen. Literally no one else calls it that.
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I'm pretty sure the Gundam acronym shows up by itself on the boot screen. But yeah you're mostly right, pretty much only people who actually piloted or were deeply familiar with them would know what the fuck Kira was on about.

I think Athrun goes "It's a Gundam!" too at the beginning of GSD, but I may be misremembering.
 
Patak said:
I'm pretty sure the Gundam acronym shows up by itself on the boot screen. But yeah you're mostly right, pretty much only people who actually piloted or were deeply familiar with them would know what the fuck Kira was on about.

I think Athrun goes "It's a Gundam!" too at the beginning of GSD, but I may be misremembering.
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The remaster is on the official channel on YouTube so I checked ep 2 and it is not. It says all the full words and Kira just reads the first letters top to bottom for whatever reason. A bunch of other stuff flashes on screen as well so really he could called it a MOS or OMNI as well but I guess GUNDAM sounded the coolest.
 
To be fair, there have been moments where they just private entire series, regardless of audio, on rotation.
 
tankdrop24 said:
Like, this sort of thing is just a bad habit with SEED's writers, my personal peeve being Cagali somehow getting to Africa before the Archangel and becoming some kind of war hero there. It's like they'll write some event in a plot outline, but just never elaborate on it at all.
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Shrug. The Archangel pretty much took the long way to get back to Earth apparently. They managed to make it to Earth somewhere around three weeks or so of time. I am sure the refugees pulled from Heliopolis Lifeboats would be back at Earth or something like that around a week or so after the battle and collapse of Heliopolis. Then in all the chaos from this, Cagalli just silently slipped away for some strange reason and goes to Africa to help Desert Dawn.

My own headcanon has Cagalli had already spent time with the Desert Dawn sometime before then as she was pretty chum with the leaders and everything. She had heard about their situation from Kisaka once he became her bodyguard, therefore, started to do something to help them, at first using her own personal funds to support them, as Sahib had called her their Goddess of Victory during their introduction to the Archangel, and then arrives to personally help them a few months before the start of the series. Then around the start of Cosmic Era 71, she gets distracted from this when she stumbles onto the G-Weapon Project, during one of the times she is back in Orb, and viola she goes to Heliopolis to investigate it leaving Kisaka behind at Tassil to further help the Desert Dawn.
 
deathzealotzero said:
Shrug. The Archangel pretty much took the long way to get back to Earth apparently. They managed to make it to Earth somewhere around three weeks or so of time. I am sure the refugees pulled from Heliopolis Lifeboats would be back at Earth or something like that around a week or so after the battle and collapse of Heliopolis. Then in all the chaos from this, Cagalli just silently slipped away for some strange reason and goes to Africa to help Desert Dawn.

My own headcanon has Cagalli had already spent time with the Desert Dawn sometime before then as she was pretty chum with the leaders and everything. She had heard about their situation from Kisaka once he became her bodyguard, therefore, started to do something to help them, at first using her own personal funds to support them, as Sahib had called her their Goddess of Victory during their introduction to the Archangel, and then arrives to personally help them a few months before the start of the series. Then around the start of Cosmic Era 71, she gets distracted from this when she stumbles onto the G-Weapon Project, during one of the times she is back in Orb, and viola she goes to Heliopolis to investigate it leaving Kisaka behind at Tassil to further help the Desert Dawn.
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That's a fair explanation, but it's still a lot of heavy lifting to do for what's ultimately a chronic habit of the writing to underexplain what's happening.
 
tankdrop24 said:
That's a fair explanation, but it's still a lot of heavy lifting to do for what's ultimately a chronic habit of the writing to underexplain what's happening.
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Yeah, true. They could have explained things a bit better but in all honesty, Gundam SEED is still my favorite Gundam series even with these little bits of things going on.
 
SEED's just a good entry series. It basically refines what was in older Gundam shows and tried to update them for the new audience in the 2000s, pumping in a ton of melodrama and character tension to fit the zeitgeist. That audience included a large chunk of people in Asia and the world getting it telecast to their television at the same time. Its no surprise why there's hate and love with no inbetween.

I binged SEED and SEED Destiny across Feburary this year (after binging Unicorn) and frankly whatever problems a lot of people have didn't really stand out. Complaints about it being recycled kind of fall flat to an audience whose first taste of Gundam is SEED, and a lot of the character dynamics help paper over some of the overdramatic moments and writing. Its not like, groundbreaking, but its a good enough series that ties up well. It also has some of its own original ideas, and while the plot is less technical or political heavy as, UC shows, it definitely tries doing its own thing even if it ends up cutting too much to fit the character moments.

SEED Destiny has its own share of problems, but (at least with the HD Remaster) I forgive it on the terms that I can see what's its trying to pull, and that it partially succeeded.

I assume most of y'all haven't watched Freedom yet so I won't say much about that one.
 
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TranscientLurker said:
SEED Destiny has its own share of problems, but (at least with the HD Remaster) I forgive it on the terms that I can see what's its trying to pull, and that it partially succeeded.
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This is literally the only positive statement I've ever seen about Destiny as a holistic show (as opposed to specific parts like the soundtrack or a specific character.)
 
"35" episodes in. At this rate I'm sure I'm really at episode 37 of 50.
Kira descends from the heavens in his new overdesigned MS, immediately triggers Seed Mode, and starts rainbow beamspamming everybody so their mechs are trashed but they still manage to live as he broadcasts "Run away or you'll be killed!" to everyone on the battlefield. Yep, His reputation precedes Him. I've been convinced to hold off until Destiny to start the nicknames, though.
The Defense of Jaburo turns into Zeta's Trap of Jaburo with an invisible I Can't Believe It's Not A Nuke, and also a bit of Zeon's Secret Mine with that random soldier Kira talks to after the Cyclops goes off, and the Archangel crew decide to follow Kira's lead and turn against both sides. Honestly I wish this turn could've come sooner, it would've meant getting less wrapped up in Alliance politics and maybe allowed more screentime and characterization for the Archangel crew. Because in the current framing it just feels like the Kira Show and everyone else is just his groupies, especially when he gives Sai a lecture like "There's tons of stuff you can do that I can't" when we've seen nothing of the sort and all Sai has done this whole show is be Flay's scorned ex. He and the rest of the Heliopolis kids are interchangable bridge bunnies who could disappear from the show and impact nothing. And now that problem will only get worse as Mu gets himself the Strike and boring-ass Dearka's bound to retake the battlefield as a good guy.
Lacus and her dad turn rogue against ZAFT and she convinces Athrun to also go rogue in his own overdesigned MS with improper buildup. The guy's been "Kira Kira Kira, how could you kill Nicol he loved Lacus's songs!" these last several episodes, and then it's Lacus going "You'd shoot your own fiance?" that gets him to turn.
Then it's an episode of gratuitous violence at Panama where Yzak hypocritically states "What's so fun about killing helpless targets?".
Man, the 3 new Gundams named in the current OP haven't even shown up yet. Apart from the MC mechs, the only new mecha we've seen these past several episodes are these GMs. What's been happening in production to stall this for so long?
 
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Nerdorama said:
This is literally the only positive statement I've ever seen about Destiny as a holistic show (as opposed to specific parts like the soundtrack or a specific character.)
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If you've been through the gauntlet of dumpster anime sci-fi and original mecha shows of the 2010s, you sort of get a sense for whether a show 'achieves its objectives or not', aka having some sort of emotional or thematic payoff for what its been doing. Given how many of those shows I've seen (Aldnoah; Zero, Guilty Crown, Psycho-Pass 2, and just recently, Metallic Rouge), Destiny isn't even that bad, even considering the troubled production that it went through. A lot of its characters have their arcs capped off nicely, the show's idea of potential vs destiny does come through somewhat, and that already satisfies what I've wanted, barring just enjoying it.

There's many things we can consider here, but for instance, let's take Shinn. There are problems with the plot's treatment of him and I don't disagree, but overall, his arc made a lot of sense because it was a very interesting character development for him as Durandal's cats paw. Its not that his problems aren't fixable, or that he's in the right; its just that he's been put in a position where his troubles can't be resolved, because Durandal wants his own super special ace pilot. And because of that extremely long leash, it ends up being overly destructive in ways that hurt a few too many people. That ties up Rey's arc also adds to that, because with regards to his trauma as a telemore-shortened clone and his inherited frustrations from Rau, its understandable why he's constantly gaslighting Shinn and himself to try and buy into the Destiny Plan. Him being able to free himself from that with Kira's encouragment is, again, pretty good payoff.

Kira on the other hand...as I mentioned, explaining him means basically 1-to-1 reciting the plot of Freedom, but if you know, you know.

I'm not saying Destiny had no problems per se, you can definitely see a lot of the troubles, especially with regards to the middle, some of the plotlines, and other aspects. I'm not even saying its a particularly 'good' show (whatever that means). But because it ties itself up (with a generous amount of help from Freedom, it must be said), I think my statement is justified.
Greener223224 said:
How many Gundams have you watched? Or is this just based on the sheer amount of time you've dedicated to making fanfics about Seed?
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People can like shows for whatever reason they have, they don't need your approval to do so.

Also, are you seriously trying to gatekeep someone who extensively writes about something they liked?
 
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Greener223224 said:
How many Gundams have you watched? Or is this just based on the sheer amount of time you've dedicated to making fanfics about Seed?
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Ummm... All of them, bar Gundam X as that one is hard to pin down to actually watch entirely. And for your information, IBO and Zeta are tied for my second favorite Gundam Series. The reason that SEED is my favorite Gundam Series is quite simple, it was the one that got me into not only Gundam, and the Real Robot type of anime, but anime in general. Before I watched anime but I didn't know they were anime or anything like that really if that makes sense. And that is reason I like trying to create fanfiction for it.
 
TranscientLurker said:
If you've been through the gauntlet of dumpster anime sci-fi and original mecha shows of the 2010s, you sort of get a sense for whether a show 'achieves its objectives or not', aka having some sort of emotional or thematic payoff for what its been doing. Given how many of those shows I've seen (Aldnoah; Zero, Guilty Crown, Psycho-Pass 2, and just recently, Metallic Rouge), Destiny isn't even that bad, even considering the troubled production that it went through. A lot of its characters have their arcs capped off nicely, the show's idea of potential vs destiny does come through somewhat, and that already satisfies what I've wanted, barring just enjoying it.
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Oh well if your point of comparison is Aldnoah Zero yeah, Destiny is hardly the bottom of the barrel. That's just where it is for Gundam, and really, we're getting into "damning with faint praise" territory here.

I do want to know which characters have their arcs capped off nicely though.
 
Honestly I'd put Gunpla Builders Beginning G at rock bottom with AGE and Destiny fighting it out for 2nd worst
 
SEED and Destiny are also my favorite series. Because they are fun and deliver the epic shounen turnabout moment better than any other Gundam series that I've seen I think. I have rewatched the the launching of the Freedom and ep 33 more than a couple times. Or the launch of the Strike Freedom from Destiny. Whenever Meteor kicks in it is instantly hype as hell.
 
More than most things about it, I just never liked Seed's mecha lineup. Like, the ginn line's okay and the doggo mechs are a hoot, but the rest of it... I've noted it before but the basic gundam design just really doesn't do it for me, and my memory of seed was a pretty heavy emphasis on exactly that.

Story et al never really caught me, either, to the point I just stopped trying to keep up with it. I'd been watching gundam on cartoon network for years by the time SEED showed up, though, so there wasn't any novelty or anything to hook me with, and without that, well...

Not even getting into destiny. I can't even remember if I watched much of it. It was definitely on TV back when I still actually watched TV, but whatever was in the first few episodes definitely didn't convince me to watch any more, after I had already given up on its predecessor, heh. The zaku's there but they somehow managed to make it look worse than the zaku 2, which is, just... sod off with that nonsense, blech.
 
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