"I miss Mashmyre Cello." - Hayley
"I can't believe they've dropped the ball this quickly." - Hayley on episode 2.
"Well at least Arthur's a fan of Murrue's huge naturals... and Talia's large coordinators." - Hayley on the best character.
"You could replace most of Athrun's lines with the Tim Allen grunt." - Hayley
"Glad the Heavyarms stock footage is getting work again."- Hayley on the DESTROY.
"Gundam SEED really loves killing women huh." - Hayley on ED3.
"I'm too gay to watch any more of this tonight." - Hayley after two or three episodes per session.
A sovereign nation is under fire from a global power who has decided its space launch infrastructure is easier to pilfer than those currently held by an actual military rival. The evacuation of civilians has gone roughly, with families still desperately running by foot from active combat zones. A 15 year old is separated from his family when he ducks down a ravine to grab his sister's dropped mobile phone. By sheer coincidence, stray fire from ZGMF-X10A Freedom grazes the area, taking the lad's family and leaving him relatively unscathed. The apotheosis of Kira Yamato is a myth. He's a teenager with too much firepower. For all his vaunted perfect, ethical aimbot targeting he's as capable of unforeseen collateral damage and ruining lives as any other soldier.
Mobile Suit Gundam ended with a hopeful note that human empathy can grow and expand in a way that will bend society towards something kinder than thought possible. Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam mercilessly tore the idea apart with example after example of empathy exploited for military conquest, state violence and personal isolation and greed. With its first five minutes, Gundam SEED Destiny maintains this approach by taking a sledgehammer to the heroics of its predecessor's third act.
Unfortunately this introduction is followed up with, well, Gundam SEED Destiny.
This is the worst Gundam television show ever made. Even with the structural improvements the HD Remaster does to the climax, watching this show is an ordeal. If the rate I put these posts out indicates anything, it's that Hayley and I have been blazing through this franchise at a rate of 4-7 episodes an evening, most evenings. She's had a horrible work year and losing herself in a science fiction franchise has kind of been what she's needed. The Cosmic Era is the first time watching Gundam has felt like a chore to her. We've had to call the sessions off early to watch, well, anything else. In the time it's taken to wade through 100 episodes of Mitsuo Fukuda and Chiaki Morosawa's piss forest we have also watched the whole of:- Frieren
- Delicious in Dungeon
- No.6
- Planet With
- Bocchi the Rock
- We also watched the film Wild Zero one evening.
Much like the preceding show, SEED Destiny is just not very good television on a basic watchable level. Storylines stop and start, characters often have perplexing motivations and the structure of episodes is constantly interrupted with flashbacks treating the viewer with contempt. If you were tired of cuts back to the Strike/Aegis double KO last show, then its use in Destiny is maddening. There's a truism that goes around Fukuda's shows that at least the music is good. If you listen to the soundtrack on its own or in a computer game then sure yeah, that's fine. When part of the show itself, the music selections are often quite jarring and offputting. Moments meant to be tense blare heroic brass sections. Acts of cruelty have weird synth rock anthems. When the sad piano arrangements of the opening and ending themes are the strongest contributions to a scene's emotions, your soundtrack is bad.
Some lessons have been learned. The crew of the Minerva has far more personality than the garbage we were offered last time. It's still the Cosmic Era so this means attributes like "enthusiastic young guy" or "women who like shopping and want to date Athrun Zala" but that is still a huge improvement. The standout is the ship's XO, Arthur Trine. He's a ridiculous, idiotic goofball who can't stop putting his foot in his mouth. He works as a comedic foil as well as for demonstrating the main point of this crew: while on paper everyone's competent, they're all people selected to ultimately be useful stooges for Gilbert Durandal's nefarious schemes. The exception here is ship captain Talia Gladys who is instead a nepotism hire. She's actually quite good at her job but as her sudden appointment to the special forces partway through makes obvious, she's here because she's the chairman's ex. The White Base Archangel sees an improvement in its crew's personality as well. The solution Destiny uses is to simply replace most of the old crew with a rotating roster of more important characters, filling in the positions when they've got nothing else to do in the show.
Mechanical designs have for the most part taken a huge step backward. We're no longer reimagining the original show's robots. We're just using those originals and slapping the Strike's flight pack on their back when on Earth. It's so damn depressing to have gone from the 20th anniversary show pranking the viewer for expecting nostalgia hits to seeing a flood of Zakus, Goufs (complete with the Ramba Ral quote) and Doms (complete with the Black Tri-Stars quote) all over the screen. At least the Federation suits still use an Industrial Light & Magic blaster sound for some reason? Shit man, I'm trying to be optimistic here and this show isn't making things easy.
Let's try summarising the events of this show before I continue. It's one year after Gundam SEED. There's a ceasefire but no formal treaty between the Atlantic Federation and the PLANTs. Cagalli is now the head state for ORB. Athrun's her bodyguard as the two launch a diplomatic tour of a ZAFT military base in the colonies. During a conversation between the two and new PLANT chairman Gilbert Durandal, some Federation special forces hijack three new mobile suits with G.U.N.D.A.M OS (yes we're still doing this) and bust out of the colony. ZAFT's new special forces warship The Minerva quickly launches in pursuit, with Cagalli, Athrun and Gilbert on board. The special forces have several more drug-addled supersoldiers, now with heavy alterations to their memories. This includes their commanding officer, the mysterious Neo Roanoke. He's the obligatory masked guy for this show. Mid pursuit, a group of ex-ZAFT troops loyal to Patrick Zala rig a space colony to drop on Earth. The Minerva's demolition attempt is partially successful, resulting in a meteorite storm across a lot of the surface instead of a single Sydney-killing sized blast. After obtaining footage of ZAFT suits present during the drop, a (((shadowy cabal))) tied to Blue Cosmis and thus the Atlantic Federation order an immediate end to the ceasefire and try to launch like a billion nuclear missiles at the PLANTs. After this is thwarted, ZAFT is redeployed with the stated aim of operating only in self defence. Meanwhile, a squad of Coordinator commandos attempt to assassinate Lacus Clyne who's been hanging out in ORB this whole time. Cagalli returns to ORB and is politically wedged by a Federation-leaning faction in her cabinet into signing a treaty with with the Feds. This nearly results in the Minerva (who had dropped off the ORB reps on board) getting gunned down by a pincer of both Federation and ORB forces. The Minerva then farts around the Pacific Ocean for a while. Athrun goes to have a chat with Chairman Gilbert and winds up returning to ZAFT as a special forces agent. He also meets a woman named Meer Campbell, a professional singer who's been hired by Chairman Gilbert to impersonate the missing Lacus Clyne. Cagalli is pressured into a political marriage but is abducted by her brother Kira and the rest of the White Base Archangel crew before it can be legally binding. They then hide at the bottom of the ocean near Scandinavia (the only other legally recognised non-Federation of PLANT nation) trying to find the show's plot. Athrun is then posted to the Minerva and helps them dispatch various cartoon villain schemes the Federation is attempting. The White Base Archangel crew stage several botched armed interventions between Federation/ORB combined forces, often making those situations worse. A cool guy named Heine is posted to the Minerva then dies in combat two episodes later. Shinn, the Minerva's ace pilot happens to meet and befriend one of that Federation special forces squad's pilots. She winds up extremely unwell aboard the Minerva so Shinn hands her back so she can receive medical attention (more drugs). Having lost her previous stolen mobile suit with the G.U.N.D.A.M. operating system she's put in a much larger and more evil mobile suit with the newer, more evil G.U.N.D.A.M. operating system and levels like four civilian cities somewhere in Russia. The Minerva and an intervening White Base Archangel take this thing down, with Kira ultimately dealing the fatal blow which kills the pilot Shinn liked in the process. Neo Roanoke is separated from his Fedaration command and is picked up by the White Base Archangel because he sure looks and sounds and matches the genetic profile of Mwu la Flaga, the cool guy from the previous show who died in space from a gigantic positron cannon blast. Shortly after this, Chairman Durandal orders that the White Base Archangel be shot down due to its ongoing terrorism. The White Base Archangel is severely crippled and Shinn shoots down Kira and the ZGMF-X10A Freedom. Despite it being one of the few suits in the Cosmic Era to have a nuclear reactor with a nuclear explosion, Kira survives the blast and is picked up by the White Base Archangel as it again goes incognito and slinks back to its secret hangar in ORB. Athrun has a crisis of conscience, made worse when Chairman Gilbert brings up some eugenics talk in conversation. Athrun decides to leave before he's arrested on trumped up dissidence charges. Meer refuses to run with him. His attempted escape is thwarted by Shinn and fellow copilot Rey za Burrel (who's another clone of Mwu's dad like Rau le Creuset was). He survives the blast and is picked up by the White Base Archangel as it again goes incognito and slinks back to its secret hangar in ORB. Chairman Gilbert makes some speeches arguing that the Federation keeps pushing for war because it's run by a (((secret cabal))) of weapons manufacturers who need to be arrested or killed immediately. This speech kind of incites a broader people's revolution and the remaining members of this conglomerate all hide in a specific Federation fortress. Chairman Gilbert arranges a combined Federation+ZAFT offensive against the fort, but the cabal's leader Lord Djibril escapes to his sympathisers in the ORB cabinet. This gives Gilbert casus belli to attack ORB with the goal of finding public enemy #1. Lunamaria, third best pilot on the Minerva, fails to shoot down the space shuttle Djibril is on. Cagalli returns to ORB in a secret shiny gold mobile suit her dad left for her in secret and reclaims command of ORB proper. Djibril activates a space laser on the moon to try killing all the PLANTs. The Minerva rushes to space and blows up its control centre. The White Base Archangel crew + Athrun + Lunamaria's sister Meyrin who helped him escape to the White Base Archangel in the first place all reckon Chairman Gilbert is no good. This is proven right when he announces that with the Federation in shambles and the (((secret cabal))) thwarted that it's time to do a global eugenics program. The real Lacus Clyne broadcasts a speech criticising this. Chairman Gilbert then rebuilds the space laser's control system and tries to wipe out ORB with it. This gives the White Base Archangel a reason to fly to space and try to blow both it and Chairman Gilbert up. On the way they meet Meer Campbell who takes a bullet for Lacus and dies. At the same time Chairman Gilbert has also rebuilt the other giant space laser from Gundam SEED. The crew of the White Base Archangel thwart both giant space lasers. Kira has a wonky argument at gunpoint with Chairman Gilbert, and this conversation convinces Rey za Burrel not to kill Kira. As the evil space laser fortress collapses, Captain Talia Gladys of the Minerva runs in to hug Chairman Gilbert as they and Rey explode together. Lacus Clyne accepts some nebulously defined leadership position in the PLANTs.
What makes Gundam SEED Destiny such a unique, frustrating watch is that it's like 60-70% of the way to being a unique and clever show. There's more geopolitical maneuvering than usual for the franchise up to this point. There's explorations of the difficulty of leadership in a way only a sequel can do. The ways Chairman Gilbert and Rey gaslight and groom the fuck out of Shinn to make him their private attack dog is some of the most compelling material in the show. When the dipshit Federation sympathiser in Cagalli's cabinet gets punched in the face and tackled by like seven guys only for Cagalli to also punch him in the face is the most beautiful physical violence since Loran beat a centuries old jacked samurai in less than ten seconds. The problem is the remaining 30-40% of what this show does overpowers everything else, redirects its meaning and is so goddamn stupid that the show starts off feeling strangely off kilter and ends up feeling gross as hell.
Let's get to the most stupid things first: if you're a popular character in the Cosmic Era you are impervious to lethal explosions. Kira Yamato's survived being in the centre of two exploding suits, one of which was a nuclear blast like the one that killed Gavanne Goony two shows ago. Athrun survies his GOUF's destruction in the middle of the ocean. Mwu la Flaga survived a positron cannon blast which very clearly tore the Strike to pieces last show and his helmet was clearly shown torn off his head while his corpse was in open vacuum. He's as dead as they can get but nope, his body is perfectly intact and able to get picked up by some Federation scientists to pump him full of Evil Guy Juice. This is given a woefully stupid reversal of the previous show's climax when he once again jumps in front of a positron cannon blast, but is in a suit completely impervious to the things and just shrugs it off. This show could have used someone else from the cast's past as the brainwashed guy in a mask and done something interesting but instead we spend every scene wondering why this guy is even here in the first place.
The introduction of Meer Campbell feels all wrong. A better television show would introduce her before confirming Lacus is alive to spark some intrigue in the viewer. Why has Lacus seemingly adjusted her political position? Is this the real Lacus? Why is the state funding a fake one? What's the real Lacus doing right now and why isn't she responding to this? Instead, not only have we already seen what Lacus is doing (playing with orphans on an island) but the commercial break eyecatch reminds us every episode exactly what the real one looks like and just how much she loves playing catch with Kira. This television show is so damn bad at creating hooks that will make you interested in a show and instead relies on you tuning in with the hope it'll do something right.
Lacus Clyne is a bewildering character as well. In Gundam SEED she's an objector to the war, part of an ongoing dissident political movement who intially plays the part of a ditzy pop star to build up enough popularity that she'll be listened to when shit really hits the fan. Her trajectory throughout the show is steadily rising to the call of becoming a major player in building the future of both the PLANTs and the Earth sphere in general. Yet, at the start of SEED Destiny she's just kinda farting around in an orphanage. We don't know why. It seems counter to her character to be happy with this when there's so much reconstruction to do. Not once does a character talk to her about these things. It's made all the weirder when halfway through the show she slips up back into space and resumes interfacing with her political faction. She doesn't just have a secret spy network and agents; she has a private militia loyal to her specifically! They have an entire weapons factory! When I've joked before that this is a show about fascist infighting with the more media-friendly faction winning, this is why. Lacus' motivations only really make sense if she was preparing to launch a coup of her own down the track. Even so, she genuinely doesn't know what Chairman Gilbert's motivations were until like episode 40! Is she just accruing a private army with the only nuclear-powered mobile suits around as a hobby she forgot about for a year?!?
At least the show things Lacus is always morally correct and worth listening to. The same can't be said for poor Cagalli. On paper (or three paragraphs ago) her character arc is that of a young leader who initially folds under pressure, only to return with stronger convictions and having learned from her mistakes. She starts out hesitant but ends as a confident field commander great in times of crisis. Except that's not really what goes on. Mostly she stammers, cries and gets outmaneuvered by everyone around her. She only does anything late in the show because her wise superior brother Kira tells her to. Even after her big character moment and demonstration of strengths, she just hands her special gold mobile suit over to a guy who died last season. Hell, there's an implication that she hands her boyfriend over too! For a character whose real introduction was driving jeeps, firing rocket launchers and luring mobile suits into IED-laden traps, it's one of the most bewildering bits of writing out there. Put a pin in this character assassination, we'll be returning to it next time.
Her ongoing boyfriend/fiance(?) Athrun almost has it as bad. The show is toying around with having three contrasting leads (Kira is confident but doesn't have all the facts to justify his actions, Shinn as confident but misled and Athrun is navigating the dialectic between them) but the end result is this guy is the dumbest motherfucker around. He's incapable of clearing up confusion around Meer, refuses to discuss his closed romantic relationship with the various other women hitting on him and spends entire episodes saying nothing but "Huh? Whuh?"over and over. This guy's a war hero who defected over ideological arguments with his politician father but cannot articulate a single idea in 50 episodes. I said his actor Akira Ishida was phoning it in before, but I don't blame him now. This script is impossible to act well. Athrun Zala is an even faker person than his pseudonym Alex Dino.
Much like the previous show, the actions of ZAFT as a military and political force are almost entirely correct. After the colony drop they're shown doing far more humanitarian aid than the Federation. They genuinely only act in self defense up until the ORB invasion. They consistently avoid WMDs while the Federation constantly grinds civilians into paste. The Federation engages in literal slavery and multiple attempts at genocide while ZAFT sue for peace at every point. The only reasons not to trust Chairman Gilbert for most of this show are that he's voiced by Shuichi Ikeda (Char Aznable) and that every time he speaks it's in harshly lit rooms with dark shadows around his face and ominous music. He looks like a villain every time he speaks so clearly his desire for peace is fake.
Chairman Gilbert's motivations also suck. Well, as far as we can even tell what they are. There's supposed to be an entire episode dedicated to exploring his history and motivations but almost all of its runtime is replaying scenes of Kira and Lacus from Gundam SEED. Yes, really. Thus all we can glean is that he's a guy who stumbled late into some of the wackier genetics programs (cloning Mwu's father, Kira Yamato's immaculate conception) and befriended Rau le Creuset. At the same time he was dating Gladia Talys, but she wanted children and thus had to submit to the Coordinator eugenics program and leave him. Thus, having witnessed the strange cruelties of these eugenics programs on both others and himself he... enters politics to enact another one? It's the sort of arc that can only work by being so ambiguous as to not actually make his history clear. It's also one written more with the goal of wanting to make everything he says bad in retrospect. There's no way you can actually de-escalate a conflict because those guys are sneaky and deceitful and must also have some other secret agenda. He's like how the bad guy in The Incredibles wants to even out society so everyone has some form of access to fantastic abilities like those born with them, but the director Brad Bird believes it's good for some people to be inherently superior so the villain has to also be a war profiteer to sour the more equitable social ideas. It's slimy stuff.
Gundam has had issues with women in various ways over its first 26 years but the Cosmic Era shows feel particularly gross. With the exception of Lacus (the most perfect and pure woman to ever exist), women are almost always portrayed as stupid, selfish or deceitful in some way. That or they're mowed down for drama. Flay was a lying racist who misled Kira and thus had to die. The original Astra pilots are all obliterated in the end of SEED. Natarle's allowed to turn her back on Blue Cosmos but only in a way which costs her life. Even Murrue, one of the few genuinely human characters in both shows still has to show the audience her bouncing breasts with every shock to the ship. The new characters fare no better. Talia Gladys spends the entire show arguing with her ex about his strategy even as he keeps obviously promoting her to get back in her pants, only to run in and join him in death at the last second. Lunamaria and Meyrin spend a large chunk of the show either talking about shopping or trying to seduce Athrun. There's a scene where Lunamaria's trying to hit on Athrun while he's in the Saviour's cockpit. In the broadcast version, it's a perfectly normal shot but in the HD remaster she's now pulled her skirt way up to show off her underwear. It's meant to show what a lewd flirtatious slut she is but it's completely baffling because it's only the audience who sees this, not Athrun himself. Stella is an obvious continuation of the cyber newtype tradition but this show forgets that characters like Four Murasame and Elpe Ple actually had motivations and personalities of their own. Stella's brain has been so melted that she's just a lamp for Shinn to hold onto then feel sad about when she dies. At least the Shrike Team back in Victory got to die heroic deaths y'know?
Kira Yamato is the driest piece of white bread in the franchise. Those opening five minutes are ignored in order to reassert that he's always correct, always moral and always perfectly hits away from others' cockpits. The Freedom is such a perfect mobile suit that after it blows up he's simply given a second one with golden caps and even more guns to lock onto everything with. This guy can't articulate a thought deeper than "I don't like what that guy said" but it's always framed as something profound. He's a nice guy and reactionary as fuck. His body didn't die when the Aegis took down the Strike, but his soul did.
Hey, remember how I liked it when the common people took matters into their own hands and shot Patrick Zala last time? Like I mentioned before, when people on Earth do the same to (((Logos))) this time it's framed more like Chairman Gilbert is inciting stochastic terrorism rather than a noble action. Yet more vile manipulations from the grand chessmaster. Not to worry, we've cleaned things up in the climax this time. It's entirely the good boys firing more beams and swinging more beam sabres than ever before! Not one but two evil space lasers are dispatched and the villain's castle collapses on top of him. Shinn realises he was a bad boy and needs to hang out with the best boy if he wants to become the best boy and all will be well. Look forward to the sequel in 2008 2024 everybody!
Fucking hell.
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