So, I had always been confused as to why the Mobile Suits of Gundam SEED had seemed so natural in their movement despite being giant machines with joysticks and buttons. Then, recently, it hit me. The answer had been staring me in the face from practically day one! The Mobile Suits of the Cosmic Era basically have a form of Psycommu system in the form of Neuro-Links. It says so right in the Operating System of the Strike and its brothers! This also explains how the Moebius Zero that Mu pilots utilizes its Gunbarrel pods and why so few people have the ability to use them effectively until ZAFT develops the Quantum computer for its later MS that use remote weapons!
Early on, when on the Archangel Lacus gets out of her locked cabin. Why? Because apparently her Haro "hates that" and likes going on walks. She says it in such a sweet voice you overlook it however, Haro is a robot. Why can he unlock electronic doors? Well, as the daughter of a politically powerful and wealthy man, Lacus would have naturally been a target for kidnappers. Having her favourite Haro have the capability to get her out of a jam makes sense; she might even have programmed Haro to do so herself!
When given command of the Dominion, Natarle displays an incredible level of tactical acumen, being able to plan strategies well in advance while rattling off a long series of complex commands before the battle even starts, impressing even Azrael, who had been inclined to see her just as a pair of tits and ass. This blindsides Murrue when the two captains eventually come to blows, as Murrue isn't a bad captain, but has mostly a reactive command style of dodging and firing back. Then you realize that of course Natarle's the better captain; when the show starts, Murrue is an engineering officer while Natarle reports to senior naval staff. The latter was basically groomed for this role. Murrue was only captain of the Archangel because she was the ranking Alliance officer when they left Heliopolis.
It's more accurate to say that Natarle is the better combat leader. She's definitely the better strategist, but her hardass Sergeant Rock tendencies contrast sharply with Murrue's more empathetic Mildly Military leadership style, and she probably wouldn't have carried the Archangel and its motley crew successfully through the first half of the series the way that Murrue did - and in fact, up until the actual battle Natarle is almost completely subordinate to Muruta Azrael, a civilian, in a way that we can be reasonably sure Murrue would not have tolerated.
The Coordinators' infertility may seem like a moot point until realizing their lack of genetic diversity from small population and reduction of genetic variation in the name of perfection might have been the cause of it.
Although Lacus' status as Idol Singer maybe ironic for someone who has political clout, it should be noted that she and her father knew Father Malchio who may as well tutored Lacus on politics and pacifist values in his time as neutral mediator.
With the advent of social media and its effects on politics, both good and bad, suddenly an Idol Singer with incredible clout in the eyes of the public and in politics doesn't seem so strange anymore. Plenty of politicians are taking advantage of social media and the good ones use it to communicate with their people and spread their message in a way that people respond to in a way that they don't in other circumstances.
The names of the second batch of major Gundams (Freedom, Justice, Providence) are a dead ringer for the core values of their pilots.
Kira decides to completely embody the ideal of Freedom, since he fights to end war, and does not feel beholden to a specific country or faction.
After the second half of the series, Athrun decides to do "what's right", embodying an ideal of Justice, rather than what is required of him; The distinction between him and Kira is shown time and again, especially in Destiny, where he also gets to pilot the Savior. As a soldier, Athrun seems to need to be under the Justice of one faction, or to be a Savior, justifying how easily he was sweet talked into coming back to ZAFT.
Rau Le Creuset gets to pilot the Providence. It is very fitting, since he fancies himself as the inevitable, inescapable guiding principle or law that governs and guides humans. He orchestrated all the events and conflict escalation so that both Naturals and Coordinators will rush to their own extinction.
Shinn Asuka is seen by Durandal as The Brute, i.e an individual who is at his destined place as a convenient warrior for him to use in his plans. Therefore, Durandal enables him in his worst traits, letting him be a slave to his more violent "Impulses", and guided by the "Destiny" he sees in his DNA. Illustraing his Character Development after seeing the error of his ways, come the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom movie? He actually pilots the Justice, finally embodying a worthy ideal.
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, Kira nearly losing himself to becoming a ruthless killer and was willing to kill his best friend while in the Strike Gundam, now picture Kira giving up his pacifist ideals in the Freedom...Old King would be proud, and given the extremely Crapsack World that SEED presented itself in, Kira was a Nightmare Retardant for what is a dark entry into AU gundam.
In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny the crew of the Minerva discover a hidden facility of Blue Cosmos where they condition children to artificial coordinators, how long do you think it was abandoned, a few days, weeks, or months? How about the children who were in them, where they still alive or dead for how long? And how about the method they used to make them into artificial coordinators seeing how they tend to get excruciating headaches, and freak out, what methods did they use which result to that?
The ending of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny has Cagalli resuming control of Orb, becoming one of, if not the de-facto, leader of earth. Meanwhile, Lacus has become ruler of the PLANTs. While this is all well and good, this means that if Kira and Lacus marry, and with them it seems the question isn't "if" , that would put the whole Earth Sphere under the control of a single family. Not only have we seen in the past where that could go, but there's the fact that if it were revealed the Cagalli isn't the biological daughter the Orb royal family and is Kira's twin sister the whole thing would fall apart. Our heroes have to lie to the whole of humanity for the rest of their lives.
Actually, that's not true - since as far as we know, the Orb royal family didn't have any biological kids, meaning that Cagalli is still the de-facto heir unless some previously unknown relative stepped forwards. Plus, considering how much Orb trusts her already, that's the type of thing that they'd probably understand her keeping from them if it was revealed.
Third Generation Coordinators are having a drop in population due to reproductive organs failing. This means nothing to Kira, who is a first generation perfect coordinator... But the same can't be said about most of the other main coordinator cast; such as Lacus, Athrun, etc...
Though there might be hope on whether Natural-Coordinator intermarriage (Cagali and Athrun being one of the noted possibilities, along with Xist Elwes who is half-Coordinator half-Natural) might alleviate the issue, which was not widespread due to possible Maligned Mixed Marriage stemming from Fantastic Racism and racialsupremacy ideals from both sides. Consider that the issue of infertility arose from lack of genetic input from Naturals, and not to mention that PLANTs was runned by noted Coordinator supremacist like Patrick Zala who would find that solution abhorrent.
Kira's technical pacifism counts. Yes, few outright die on screen, but imagine those whose completely disabled mobile suits fell from the sky with nothing to slow the fall, or those who are stranded in space with no means to reach safety, except for the unlikely rescue (space is huge and with little resistance things don't exactly stop at where they were blown apart). That's real noble of you, Kira.
Recovery of Pilots is always possible. Even T.I.E fighters have that, so I don't see why not here.
Simple: because due to the aforementioned momentum, and the fact that large-scale skirmishes are going on, it's almost certain that many of those disabled suits have either drifted far beyond the boundaries of said battles or been hit by stray beams/missiles/explosions. Meaning that Kira's still managed to give many of the pilots he's spared an extended death sentence.
Though Phase 34's situation might be survivable since the two mobile suits are within the reach of PLANTS where they are disabled.
Special mention goes to Operation Spitbreak. Whoever wasn't lucky enough to escape the radius of the Cyclops System because their suits were disabled while they were close to JOSH-A have Kira to "thank". You meant well Kira, but it didn't quite work out.
Kira's, as well as Lacus', philosophy during battle is pretty much what Batman says to Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins: "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you". If they could, they'd likely go out of their way to prevent pilot deaths, but since they're in the middle of battle, they can't. It'd be stupid to do so. As seen when everyone is escaping the Cyclops, Kira does try to rescue a GINN that falls from flight (even if the pilot dies in his arms when they've made it to safety), but otherwise, they take a more pragmatic approach to their pacifism, even if it does result in putting the "spared" pilot in no less danger.
The first step of Flay's plan to get Kira killed in battle is to decide to stay on the Archangel to encourage him to stay, and the rest of Kira's friends join in too. While this worked out in the end because it ensured that Kira would be there to stop Rau's plan to wipe out humanity, Flay is indirectly responsible for a lot more damage besides Kira's emotional state than she realizes:
Yzak shoots down the civilian shuttle because he got angry that it interrupted his battle with the Strike. Had Kira and the rest of his friends been aboard the shuttle instead of participating in the battle, Yzak would not have been given a reason to destroy the shuttle because there would have been no personal battle for it to interrupt.
Various ZAFT soldiers died in battle fighting Kira, including Aisha and Nicol.
The reason Kira grabs the Jerkass Ball and lashes out at Sai is because of Flay's manipulation, causing Sai emotional pain too.
Tolle dies in action trying to protect Kira, which causes Miri's Freak Out.
While Flay would have died regardless because GENESIS would have wiped out life on earth in the scenario where Kira decided to leave the Archangel, that's not to say that she didn't set up the circumstances for her own death in the scenario that really did happen.
If Clotho, Shani and Orga's drugs only last two hours before crippling pain sets in with fatal withdrawal symptoms, how can they sleep? Or are they engineered to just run non-stop after their first taste of the drug until they completely burn out?
It's possible they could sleep if they were hooked up to machinery that could administer the drugs in two-hour intervals. Even though nothing's shown, it's highly unlikely they go without sleep entirely. Alternatively, Shani is seen resting/sleeping while wearing an eye mask in one episode, so it's also possible they simply nap frequently, for less than two hours at a time.
