Dare to be stupid!: Gundam Seed and Seed Destiny - CAGALLI IS CRYING EDITION!!!!!!

There are other people in the picture, but all you need to know is spiky mcbrown hair is Kira Yamato.

Well it's time to talk about Gundam Seed. When I was your age, we didn't have Seed, just Zeta Gundam, and some old episodes of ZZ on 3rd generation vhs with no subtitles. And we liked it! All kidding aside, I grew up with Gundam Wing, Gundam, G Gundam, 08th M.S. Team, and Gundam X. It took me til 2003 I believe to watch Seed. Intially I watched the first 10 or so episodes on Toonami, before plunking down $50 for the Hong Kong bootlegs of the series. The subs were iffy at best, though the Japanese voices were leagues ahead of the Dub. I loved Gundam Seed, and still do.

In the future, and of course in space, there's a war. This time it's between Coordinators (people really good at interior decorating) and Naturals, who have a poor sense of style. I'm kidding, Coordinators are genetically enhanced people- faster, smarter, stronger, more resistant to pain and diseases, and naturals- these are basically you and me. There's a war of course, and some robots known as Gundams of course. What sets Gundam Seed apart from other Gundams is the drama, and human relations. The lead Kira ends up piloting a Gundam, against his best friend Athrun, who's a member of ZAFT- the Coordinators. Kira is a Coordinator as well, but fights with the Naturals to protect his friends. What unfolds is a drama about friendship, love,family, fighting for what's right, revenge,forgiveness, musical numbers, and flashback, Oh the Flashbacks. Awesome robots too, since it is a Gundam Series. The first half of Seed mirrors the original Gundam, while the second half kind of heads into uncharted Territory.

Now Seed Destiny . . . that's a tough thing to talk about. . .

More angst than any other Gundam.

Gundam Seed Destiny takes place two years after the end of Gundam Seed. This time Zaft has robots stolen from them, instead of Zaft stealing them from the Naturals! What a twist! The pilots are a bunch of drugged up Naturals to compete with the coordinators. The lead in this series is Shinn Asuka, a pilot in the ZAFT military. Shinn's whole family was killed during the events of Gundam Seed, plus he has red eyes, so you know the man has issues. Seed Destiny starts off well enough, with more action than Seed, and Shinn being trained as a pilot means he has no qualms about fighting, unlike Kira. The series follows a pretty solid path til episode 13- the return of Kira, and his stupidly powerful Freedom. What follows is a complete mess. Shinn is the good guy, unless Kira is there, then he's bad. Kira basically shows up in very battle, owns everyone, and flies off into the sunset. Athrun rejoins ZAFT, and does nothing but bitch out Shinn, and get hit on by every female save for Lacus. The writers did their best to portray Shinn has an unlikeable asshole, supposedly because he angered the head writer. They burned through the budget early on- so I hope you like stock footage, and flashbacks! That's basically the second half of the series.

You think what I said above is bad ? It gets worse. Shinn is in love with a crazy half retarded chick called Stellar (or Stella, your choice) who tries to kill him multiple times, but he can't stop loving her. Kira in an unemotional perfect man, always doing the right thing, and winning every battle save one- and that was to just get him into a new suit. Athrun is lost the whole series until Zaft decided to kill him- then it's off to join team Kira. Cagalli is just there, she really doesn't do anything noteworthy other than give Kira a flimsy reason to fight. Shinn becomes a generic henchman around episode 36? Whenever he tries to kill Athrun, blindly following ZAFT's orders, and having no thoughts of his own. In the final battle Athrun and Kira single handely save the day, without a scratch on them. The war ends, everyone becomes friends, and Zaft is now lead by Lacus. Yep, sounds like a bad fanfic.

These basically sum up Seed Destiny:

This basically says Shinn is evil, and Kira and Lacus can do no wrong. To this day Kira is still topping Newtype popularity polls, despite there being nothing with him in it since the Seed Destiny special editions. Japan is fucking crazy.

So my final words are this Seed- awesome and you should totally watch it!
Seed Destiny- it is to be endured, rather than enjoyed. The openings aside from the last one are top notch, and the specials are a great alternative to wallowing in the filth known as the tv series. That said I fucking love the Strike Freedom from it! Beautiful!