When I describe the television series "Gundam SEED" to people I usually tell them it's a well executed but deeply flawed show that tried to remake a pop cultural icon for a new generation of teens. Most of its narrative flaws stem from its desire to be An Important Show About Important Things Like Racism despite its central conflict actually being a matter of class divisions. Our hot young teens thwart a nasty Nihilist and since they're nice people we can assume the world will become a better place going forward.
When I describe the sequel television series "Gundam SEED Destiny" to people I usually tell them it's a story about The Night Of Long Knives which wants you to cheer when the faction led by charismatic moderate Adolf Hitler wins.
Perhaps the kindest thing I can say about the movie "Gundam SEED Freedom" is that it's too cowardly to show what's meant to come after that. It's been 19 years since that show aired and despite this script being written in 2008 it's content to just repeat Destiny with some new faces.
Let's tuck in and consume some Product, gang!
The film "Mobile Suit Gundam F91" has one of the greatest opening scenes in war film history. A squad of killer robots breaks into an O'Neil Cylinder with a civilian population and starts opening fire on the local garrison. A surprise attack on unprepared soldiers is bad enough but there's more than just rockets, beams and ammo explosions creating problems here. Buildings are crushed underfoot. Damaged robots land on crowds of panicked, fleeing people. Discharged 100mm machine gun cartridges crush parents and children. This is a sealed, limited space. There's no width of terrain to evade the collateral damage. It's claustrophobic, intimate, intense. It's closer to a scene from the original "Godzilla" than the disco-backed camp of the original "Mobile Suit Gundam".
"Gundam SEED Freedom" also opens with robot warfare near civillians. There's plenty of bodies but there's not really people. Innocent lives are props to reminds you how brave, mighty and heroic Kira Yamato and his subordinates (and this film loves to put the SUB in subordinate here) are. All the enemy robots on display are the earliest models used by factions from the original show. We're pulling the nostalgia strings while also reminding you how much cooler, more advanced and utterly superior The Good Team is. A T.M. Revolution song blares over all the action to leave you excited and a mood to party. The gang is back! All will be well. Victory shall be as eternal as that pink warship we're all waiting to see.
This is a perfect film. This is different to a good film. What I mean is that its execution of its goals is immaculate. Action is constant, fast, thrilling. The frame is filled with incredible motion to an extent some may have thought impossible for the current day Japanese animation industry. The backgrounds, a dying skillset since the studio system collapsed are truly breathtaking throughout. It's more than just a visual feast though. "Gundam SEED Freedom" uses its breakneck editing pace to play a game of Three Card Monte. If it keeps throwing out names, acronyms, characters, locations, classes of battleship and command centres you won't have time to focus on what it wants to say or do.
Take our villains. As explicit successors to Durandal from "SEED Destiny" they're aiming to reform global society into a dictatorship with all positions determined by their own Eugenicist definitions. This is horrifying enough but their lead mouthpieces give speeches before this moment. Speeches that call for economic equality and social reforms free from discrimination. This is before our lead male villain performs mind control on our beloved leader Lacus Clyne. You see, anyone espousing the idea of an equitable society is secretly conniving and insincere. Power is all that matters. Power is also what defeats them in the end.
Well, our heroes don't say they believe in power solving everything even as they eagerly develop their own new weapons. Kira Yamato is as incapable of articulating an ideology as always but he's just the blunt force executor of Lacus' will anyway. Lacus espouses incredibly milquetoast views on what society should be. People should be allowed to choose what they can become! People should be able to love their romantic partner! That's... about it, really. There is a desire to see no more war, no more conflict. There is no vision as to how such a society would function or how to achieve it. This film opens with stop-gap military interference and it will presumably continue on with this method into perpetuity. It's good to be nice but being more specific than that would be conniving after all.
We know our good guys are good because they are nice and friendly and give a nice speech at the end. This means it's okay when one of the gang sexually harasses a fellow squadmate. This should not be confused with the sexual assault our lead villain performs on dear leader Lacus Clyne. That is bad because as we have established he is bad. Mitsuo Fukuda has a rather poor track record with misogyny ("Gundam SEED" has endless shots of heaving breasts flying around battleship bridges, Cross Ange delights in prolonged sequences of women whipping other women for the delight of the presumably male viewer, Lunamaria Hawke is a renowned sniper who botches a nearly point-blank shot against an immobile target) but this is one of the more sinister tricks he's pulled. Did I mention the new woman in the Good Guys who switches sides to get some dick? Bitches be craaaaaazy yo!
Fukuda still clearly wishes Sailor Moon was his girlfriend and also his mother but at least her character is given a fucking seatbelt on the ship bridges this time. She still loses most of her clothes at one point.
As an entertainment product cashing in on nostalgia, I respect that "Gundam SEED Freedom" maintains the interpretation of Shinn Asukja that "SEED Destiny" presented as text in the second half of that show. Shinn is not the main character. He's not even that important. He's just some random dweeb to fill space. He's room meat. This is taken to some hilarious extremes (a match cut of women carried in the arms of their male lovers presents Shinn as the woman in his relationship, his attempt to break up a fight between Kira and Athrun is immediately thwarted by everyone else in the room). They're little reminders of how Mitsuo Fukuda's issues as a director are entirely ideological rather than technical. He once headed "Cyber Formula GPX" and "Gear Fighter Dendoh" after all.
What saddened me the most about this movie was less the content of the film itself though. It's a perfect execution of what another Cosmic Era Gundam entry would be. Fascism and exploiting nostalgia are the setting's bread and butter. The pain came from thinking about what it meant for other projects to allow this vision to execute so perfectly. "Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury" is a show that has a vision for what a better world could be. A world which actively abolishes both harmful tools and the very materials which cause greater harm to society and the planet. A world where the exploitation of workers can be ended through collaborate force. A world where the rich, powerful and privileged are subject to justice. A world where you can be fucking gay.
"The Witch From Mercury" was allocated half the episode count of the original "Gundam SEED". This caused pacing issues as important story beats needed more time for characters to process events and properly escalate viewer tension. The production was so understaffed and stretched thin that it had to fill several weeks with recap episodes to buy time to get back on schedule. Some of its greatest cuts of animation were only achieved by workers assigned to "Gundam Hathaway" sneaking in overtime when management wasn't looking. To date it is the only Gundam television story to receive that treatment. Even the financial flop which was "Gundam AGE" had the full episode count.
Studio Sunrise has had a long legacy of challenging authority, questioning corporate interests and struggling to maintain an identity long after pre-Namco-merger Bandi bought them out. In 2022 it appeared that Namco Bandai was fully committed to abolishing the name and structure entirely and integrating works like Gundam into the broader "Namco Bandai Filmworks" umbrella. While the unexpected success of a couple of funny lesbians has stalled that initiative, "Gundam SEED Freedom" is the flagship of what that future will look like. Cruel, atomised but easy on the eyes.
We're not talking about anime. We're talking about real life.
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