It's a Gundam thread!

Seriously, the more I look the more threads I can't help but pull. These are so old, they're pretty much self-sustaining.

In looking for Fraw Bow = Clara Bow evidence, I mostly found things referencing TV Tropes... then I found a Tumblr by Harotype from 2015 arguing that she's a reference.

Honestly, that's pretty damning to me. If there isn't enough reference that the Tumblr is that defensive (Also if you don’t think they based Frau Bow (who has “round cheeks” and “perfect teeth”, in the novel) on her after the first couple of frames, I don’t know what to tell you... as though "perfect teeth" narrows anything down, and the round cheeks are apparent from the animation), then I think it's safe to say it's a fan drawing their own conclusions. The comparison between the two is also heavily tied into Fraw Bow being a Ms. Fanservice which... no she isn't? Sayla and Mirai both get bath scenes, and they get a beach scene too.

They also reference the same movie with Amuro, claiming his nickname is "White Shooting Star" and that's a reference to Wings (1927).

Except Amuro's nickname is most commonly the White Devil, along with the Gundam. White Shooting Star came way after the fact in supplementary materials.

Edited by Larkmarn on Apr 24th 2024 at 1:25:35 PM

Attempting some clean up of my own.

For Rau's entries,

• Beauty Equals Goodness: In SEED Destiny, the less-deteriorating and war-and-pain-crazed version of Rau also saves kids from hell...and without the mask, he's probably the most handsome character in the entire series. This is how Rey sees him at the very end.

Is this really the correct trope? At best, his 'handsome' looks contrasting his actions would make this a subversion but that's not how the entry reads at all. Rey never equates Rau with goodness either. He shares Durandal's opinion of Rau, in that his actions were wrong even if they all agree that humanity is doomed if nothing is done.

• Dehumanization: He's physically, mentally, and emotionally suffering from the consequences of the war as well as his own body breaking down — the scene where he needs his pills after Mendel makes him seem more animal than human — and in the end claims not to believe people will ever stop trying to kill each other. He also loathes Kira for several reasons, two major being getting to live without any comparable consequences and also that Kira's true existence IS likely to set off waves of greed and violence, just like George Glenn's — not to mention the dehumanizing and philosophically horrifying ramifications of being born "exactly how someone else wants you to be". It takes Lacus's countering kindness to keep Rau's initial Breaking Speech to Kira from sticking.

That's a whole lot of stuff that has nothing to do with the trope. The only relevant bit is how Al da Flaga treated him and denied Rau an identity.

• Establishing Character Moment: He's a complex guy so he gets a few.
  • Then there's the point where he talks about Athrun returning sobbing with Lacus's dead body at the beginning of SEED. Not only does it flash his dark side, Athrun ended up doing exactly this in the sequel, with Meer, who certainly counts as "Lacus's" body — Rau tends to be right about a lot of things...

While the first bit is true as it does portray his dark side, the bit about Meer is irrelevant for this entry.

• He's also somewhat more interested in Athrun's fiancee than Athrun is.

• Morality Pet: Lacus. He praises her effusively without an obvious reason, remembers words she said months later, and she's the only one he's ever shown to listen to, even when she does it by playing dirty and threatening a This Is Unforgivable! in front of his whole command. Her status to him as a sort of Barrier Maiden means he still tries to kill her to usher in the apocalypse, but even while in a manic state of homicidal rage, he also says he enjoyed her songs (even loved, if you go by the original Japanese).

How the hell is Lacus a Morality Pet for Rau? The one time he listens to her is very early on in the show where he's still playing the part of loyal ZAFT commander and she's applying political pressure on him to comply. That's not behaviour based in morality at all.

• Parental Substitute: Downplayed with Athrun in SEED, but he's still a more reasonable alternative to Patrick. Played straight and invoked on him by Flay, who claims he has her father's voice at their Rescue Introduction. He ends up protecting her and looking after her for quite a while, before subverting this by using her as a courier of chaos and finally killing her at the end.
• Promotion to Parent: Given how Rau found Rey, rescued him, reassured him, seemingly gave him a Significant Wardrobe Shift to a Nice Suit, and is shown hand-in-hand with him, sitting with him, taking him to visit Durandal, and letting him play the piano, he was apparently this to his sibling. It also explains his Parental Substitute tendencies in SEED with characters like Athrun and Flay.

Rau never shows any sort parental behaviour towards Athrun or Flay. He's always playing the cold but rational role towards Athrun and their interactions are formal. That's notable compared to how Patrick Zala enforces a strictly formal relationship with Athrun. If Athrun's interactions with Rau were less formal, then you'd be one to something but they're still just as formal. With Flay, her mistaking his voice for her father's voice is a production joke as Rau and George Alster share voice actors but this never comes up again.

Edited by RangerJackWalker on Apr 24th 2024 at 10:33:29 AM

Those come across as forced, like the Foe Romance Subtext that was cut between Rau and Lacus.

What I find in common is that many of these are pretty convincing in a vacuum but in the actual context they are often stretches. Like the Fllay VA father thing. There definitely is a realm where Rau sharing the voice actor with her father could be setting up a Parental Substitute. But he's just... not. If you look at his actions completely stripped to the bones (he does provide her with a place to stay, and he does give her lectures, and he's an older man) but that just misrepresents the show by omission.

Athrun has even less of a leg to stand on, unless Parental Substitute literally just means "older authority figure."

Lacus' writeup comes across as at most a Worthy Opponent, but even that overplays their connection, in my opinion.

Edited by Larkmarn on Apr 24th 2024 at 3:07:57 PM

That Foe Romance Subtext thing between Rau and Lacus makes no sense. Like, seriously, just no.

Good thing it was cut.

Edited by G2BattleConvoy on Apr 24th 2024 at 6:51:16 PM

If no one objects in three days, I'm removing all the dubious references I've mentioned here. I've sent Harotype a PM to come chat so hopefully he can clear some up.

Edited by Larkmarn on Apr 24th 2024 at 3:39:49 PM

So I'm up through episode 30 of Destiny. There's too much to cover episode by episode, but here's some general thoughts:

The arc where Cagalli tries and fails to keep Orb neutral doesn't really work because the show never bothers to actually explain the political situation. Yuna et al want to join the Earth Alliance but Cagalli, the Chief Representative, does not. So... can she just block it by herself? Do they have to convince her to let it go through? Or can they just outvote her and approve it over her objection? Can they vote her out of her position entirely, and remove her as Chief Representative? Is she popular with Orb's citizens — can she appeal to them directly to pressure Yuna et al? I have no idea! None of that is addressed at all! It's just Yuna bullying her and her eventually going along with it.

Yuna is actually a pretty decent antagonist at first. He's legitimately menacing without ever having to be physically dangerous. I wish they'd made him less of a bully and more of a manipulator, though — Cagalli knows how to deal with straightforward opposition. But if he was pretending to be her friend, pretending to care about her, pretending that he just wants the best for her and for the rest of Orb? That I'm not sure she could handle well. Unfortunately, they make him just try to force her to do what she wants... and she goes along with it?? Even when Kira rescues her from the wedding, she's pissed about it, which makes it feel worse. If she'd gone "haha, fuck all y'all!" and jumped into the cockpit with both middle fingers out, that'd be one thing. But that's not how it goes down and it's incredibly frustrating. They also ruin Yuna with that scene by making it clear that he's a dirty coward — he runs and abandons Cagalli to face the Freedom alone, rather than standing in front of her, or trying to take her with him, or anything. The show conspires to make sure he never has any dignity after that — whether it's showing him getting seasick aboard the warship he's ostensibly in charge of, or alternatively getting shamelessly buttered up and completely ripped a new one by Neo. This makes it impossible to take him seriously as a threat, even though he's still a major antagonist.

Which is a running theme in general. All of Destiny's antagonists are pathetic and ineffectual. Mooks exist solely to die in droves, and unless you're Shinn or Kira, you can't actually accomplish anything even if you're allowed to shoot down zillions of mooks. There was one fight where Neo, Chaos, and thirty (yes, 30, explicitly confirmed in dialogue) fight Shinn and Athrun by themselves. It's not presented as an easy fight, but Shinn and Athrun take out all 30 Windams and drive off Neo and Sting without taking any serious damage or otherwise getting into trouble. Meanwhile, in the same fight, Auel in the Abyss effortlessly slaughters an entire team of ZAFT amphibious suits, before being stopped dead by Rey and Luna, who just jumped into the water in their ZAKUs. Because the amphibious Gundam can take out other amphibious MS piloted by mooks no problem, but against characters with names he can't win, even though they're in general-purpose suits in an aquatic environment.

Destiny has a much looser grasp on geography than Seed did, and Seed had some problems with that. During most of the middle part of the show, the Minerva is trying to get to ZAFT's Gibraltar base, but is opposed by a major OMNI force operating out of Suez. First we're told that the Suez force is going to attack a ZAFT base on the north coast of the Persian Gulf before they proceed to Gibraltar — the problem there being that the Persian Gulf is a thousand miles in the opposite direction from Gibraltar. Then the Minerva somehow ends up in the Black Sea, and I'm not sure if I missed a transition there or what.

Shinn's interaction with Stella were always a little confused, but after rewatching, I'm definitely on the side that he considers her something like his little sister more than a love interest. He realizes pretty quickly that she's clearly traumatized and adjusts his behavior around her accordingly. It does make the whole "sitting naked around the campfire while our clothes dry" thing a whole lot more awkward, though. Also interesting to note that, because Shinn is Shinn, he doesn't show any empathy to any of the other Extended, even after learning Stella is the pilot of the Gaia and seeing all the fucked up shit at the Extended lab and getting some idea of what they went through. He still kills Auel without a second thought, even though he explicitly recognizes him from when he gave Stella back to him and Sting after their first meeting. Why is Stella worth saving but they're not? I dunno, Shinn just doesn't think about it.

Archangel's interventions in the war feel better than I remember them being. They're not random or haphazard — they're very specifically targeting Orb's involvement, because Cagalli is still trying to keep Orb out of it even after they've formally joined the Earth Alliance. It works decently well, too? The first time they keep the Orb fleet from being wiped out by Minerva's positron cannon, and the second time they convince a bunch of people to defect to the Archangel. The frustrating thing is that basically every Orb soldier's response to Cagalli is just to say "but I have to follow orders", when it was a major theme of the first show that following orders isn't good enough, and everyone in Orb's military also seems to agree that Yuna is an asshole and betraying Orb's ideals by joining the Earth Alliance is a bad thing. I do wish they'd let Cagalli actually fight (either against OMNI instead of Orb, or just in self-defense), but ultimately I think this comes off alright.

The big conversation between Athrun and Kira/Cagalli is better than I remember it too. It's a great portrayal of people disagreeing because they have different perspectives and priorities, rather than because they disagree on anything in particular. Athrun wants to stop the fighting by stopping the bad guys (OMNI, in his view) while Kira wants to end the war by any means possible and doesn't particularly care if OMNI is punished for their actions, and Cagalli's main priority is keeping Orb safe, with the rest of the war being a distant second. For some reason I had thought that Kira doesn't actually mention the spec ops team that tried to kill Lacus just before Meer's public debut — actually, he does, Athrun is just more willing to give Durandal the benefit of the doubt than Kira is. Which is understandable, and Athrun does say that he wants to look into it, he's just not willing to immediately blame Durandal while Kira isn't willing to trust him. Ultimately, everyone involved is acting pretty reasonably, even though they end up at odds with each other.

A few random bits and pieces of things I noticed and thought was noteworthy. Shinn at one point mentions that his parents were also Coordinators, but they emigrated to Orb rather than the PLANTs specifically because they thought it was important for Naturals and Coordinators to live together. Rey's reaction to the Extended lab, and his later helping Shinn return Stella to OMNI when it's clear that she'll die if they don't, are some of my favorite things about him — kid was literally a science experiment himself, he's got a lot more empathy for the Extended than anyone else. During a flashback to Talia and Gil, she mentions that she wants to have a child, so she has to leave him in order to comply with PLANT regulations. Which suggests some really fucked up laws about who's allowed to have kids with who — something that doesn't make much sense, since when it's brought up elsewhere, it's said that one of the problems in the PLANTs is not enough people are having kids in general. So why would you make it illegal for a particular couple to have kids if they wanted to???

Anyway, this post is already really long, so I'll wrap it up by saying that Destiny has been both better and worse than I remembered. The way the show absolutely doesn't give a shit about anything in fights except how much of a main character you are is bad, and the political arc with Cagalli in Orb is also pretty terrible. But the character dynamic on the Minerva is solid (most of the crew thinks Shinn is an ass even if they acknowledge that he's also a fantastic pilot, and watching Athrun trying to herd cats with middling success is fun), and the stuff with the Archangel is generally better than I remembered. Destiny is definitely weaker than Seed and frustrating in a lot of ways, but mostly because it's easy to imagine it being better, not because it's just that terrible.

Edited by NativeJovian on Apr 26th 2024 at 2:12:27 PM

I suppose you could argue that the extended fates are tied back into your earlier point

Omni don’t get thrown a bone at all

So unlike dearka or yzak

Sting auel and Stella aren’t getting the same mercy

Given Gundam's record with cyber newtypes and their various analogues, it's not much of a surprise that there's no happy ending in store for the Extended. The thing that's weird is that Stella gets treated as a tragic figure but Auel and Sting don't, even though they're all in identical circumstances.

The cynical view is that Stella is cute so gets the benefit of the doubt, but the other two aren't so they get no sympathy. It's not like the show itself offers any other explanation.

Nah, if your character in terrible circumstances on the wrong end of the morality scale has boobs then they're tragic, sympathetic, and should be given a chance for redemption. If they don't, they're irredeemable monsters who need to die because they're beyond hope.

This is a trend I have noticed in media. And you cannot even say it's the writers' fault, necessarily, because I've seen fans do this irrespective of how the characters are portrayed in the actual media.

Edited by DarkHunter on Apr 27th 2024 at 2:15:31 AM

Females Are More Innocent. It's common enough there's a trope for that.

YMMV.Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom

• Just Here for Godzilla: Surprisingly, many fans and detractors alike are here for Shinn, one of the most contested characters in all of Gundam. After seeing potential versions of him getting the emotional support he needs in games like Super Robot Wars, many were excited and glad to see it finally brought into reality and bring Shinn's character arc full circle. This also extends to Super Robot Wars series producer Takanobu Terada, as the series has done this for Shinn several times before.

I believe it is safe to say Shinn was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap given all the positive things I've seen about it, correct?

The one argument I can think against is he was no longer considered so disliked by then due to adaptations improving his reception. So thoughts on Character Perception Evolution applying instead/as well (due to the Special Editions/adaptations helping to sell he was a decent character just mishandled, greater awareness of mental health issues and his mitigating circumstances, and Freedom giving him a satisfying payoff for it)?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Apr 27th 2024 at 10:04:23 AM

Finished Destiny through episode 40.

You can pinpoint pretty much the exact point that Shinn becomes an insufferable little shit — and it's when Durandal has all charges against him dropped after Talia throws him in the brig for disobeying orders and returning Stella to OMNI. Before this point he has an attitude but can be reasoned with, if you rub his face in something hard enough. After that, he's convinced that he can do no wrong and everyone else just needs to get out of his way.

Of course, this is swiftly proven to be an obviously terrible decision, because as soon as Neo gets her back, he shoves Stella into the Destroy and starts burning down Europe. This part of the conflict is weird because all of the fighting in Europe and the Middle East have been explained as being OMNI cracking down on dissidents and rebels, but the Destroy is only ever shown fighting ZAFT. Which, like... putting down organic home-grown secession movements is one thing. Fighting against enemy troops operating in your territory in support of supposed secessionists is a very different thing. Even if the secessionists are a pre-existing movement with legitimate beef against the government, once a foreign nation is deploying armies in your territory, that's an invasion.

Anyway, Stella dies, Sting dies too but the show doesn't expect us to care, and Durandal announces the existence of Logos to the world. I fucking hate the fact that Logos is actually real. It would be perfect if Durandal invented them in order to justify his new world order — but we know for a fact that they do actually exist and really are secretly pulling the strings to keep the world at war — despite how completely fucking stupid this is. Worst of all, everyone on the planet apparently just... accepts this? Durandal broadcasts the names and faces of a dozen dudes and says "these are bad guys!" and soon thereafter most of them have been killed by angry mobs. Because of course people would just take the leader of the nation that's currently invading them at his word. He's right and we know it, after all, so why shouldn't people believe something so massively self-serving with absolutely no proof whatsoever?

Despite everything, Freedom vs Impulse is still a great fight. It really nails the feeling that Shinn isn't necessarily a better pilot than Kira, or Impulse a better mobile suit than the Freedom, but Shinn is just dialed in perfectly to counter Kira so he's able to win the fight anyway. Pity that the last few shots are a confusing mess. Could have done without all the Jesus Yamato memes.

Next up: Athrun finally leaves ZAFT. I'd forgotten that what actually finally gets him to bail is that Durandal tries to have him arrested for being insufficiently loyal. Athrun refuses to simply shut up and follow orders, so Durandal has to have him removed. Athrun sums it up pretty well — at that point it doesn't matter if Durandal's intentions are legitimately good or not. Someone who refuses to tolerate anything less than blind, unquestioning obedience is someone who cannot be trusted. Shinn starts getting the full cultist experience from Rey at this point — Rey convinces him to take down Athrun (and Meyrin) by declaring them enemies and insisting that all enemies must be destroyed without mercy.

Immediately after this, Shinn x Luna becomes a thing. It wasn't a thing before now! Like, at all! Luna straight up said that she recognized Shinn's skill as a pilot but thought he was kind of shitty as a human being. Next thing we know, she's crying in his arms. At least the show seems to be aware of how fucked up this actually is — before the attack on Heaven's Base, Luna goes in for a kiss but they both just end up crying instead. Clearly a healthy relationship.

Heaven's Base is a big ol' meh. They do the same thing here that they did in Alaska and Panama in Seed — everyone says it's going to be a rough fight, then OMNI has a couple aces up its sleeve that catch ZAFT off guard and give them an advantage, then ZAFT just says "lol, lmao" and wins easily anyway. The fact that they refuse to let their antagonists actually be threatening continues to be the single biggest problem with Seed and Destiny. They also brought back Sting (who died in the first Destroy battle) just so Shinn can kill him again, which makes me wonder why they even bothered. After the battle, Djibril escapes to Orb, which ZAFT somehow finds out about, and issues Orb an ultimatum. Yuna (yet another utterly unthreatening antagonist) announces that Djbiril isn't even in Orb. Absolutely everyone treats this as an utterly ridiculous and completely transparent lie. I have no idea why it's supposed to be so obviously a lie, when Durandal's announcement about Logos was fully accepted instantly with the same amount of proof (that is, none at all), but ZAFT ignores Yuna and launches its attack on Orb.

At this point the weakness of Destiny's writing is becoming more apparent and a lot of things are basically happening just because the script says so. There's still some great sequences (like Freedom vs Impulse, and Athrun's defection) but overall things aren't really coming together. And we haven't even gotten the grand reveal about Durandal's Destiny Plan yet, though we've gotten a couple of references hinting at it.

I'm going to be out of town most of the week so I won't be able to watch any more until I get back, but I should finish things up next weekend. Which is right on time — the movie is in theaters on the Tuesday after that, so I'll have time to finish Destiny, probably watch Stargazer for the hell of it, then give myself a day or two as a palate cleanser before watching the movie.

Edited by NativeJovian on Apr 28th 2024 at 1:00:02 PM

I too saw Stargazer while in my SEED and SEED Destiny rewatch. You will not regret your experience with Stargazer, I assure you.

But are they actually real? As in, are they actually the military industrial complex seeking to start wars so they can profit? Djibril is motivated by nothing else but bigotry. Under his leadership, LOGOS is directly attempting a complete genocide that wouldn’t make much profit. I suppose the intention could be that LOGOS itself has been taken over Blue Cosmos, which is ironic but that’s never really something that the show focuses on. The only possible hint is that Djibril was Azrael’s successor as the leader of Blue Cosmos and Azrael was the Director of the National Defense Industry Association. I don’t recall any other members of LOGOS expressing anywhere near the same level of hatred for coordinators that Djibril does.

Edited by RangerJackWalker on May 2nd 2024 at 5:22:35 AM

It's real insofar as that's how the series and side material portrays it and does nothing to clearly intentionally contradict it. Artistic License – Economics is a thing.

Djibril being short sighted as to kill off a lucrative source of conflict wouldn't be OOC for him, but as for why no one in LOGOS objected... Well, the series had more visible characterization problems.

Realized that episode 35 Destiny was the equivalent point for 30 of SEED (Kira being "killed" in a dramatic turning point), that might explain the problems in the series by then as it had to rush to catch up leaving things half-baked.

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Apr 29th 2024 at 5:27:07 AM

I cut all the dubious references I brought up. I messaged harotype who I know added at least some of them and he responded but declined to discuss them.

EDIT: Okay, Characters.Mobile Suit Gundam might need some cleanup due to Shipping Goggles. I previously mention Fraw Bow being Ms. Fanservice as dubious, but does anyone think that the original Gundam starts off with an Act of True Love? Or that Fraw is a Trope Codifier for Patient Childhood Love Interest?

Edited by Larkmarn on Apr 30th 2024 at 10:40:51 AM

It's actually interesting because neither Djbril nor his minions act like the war profiteers Durandal paints them as (Djbril just wants Coordinators wiped out, period) nor do they ever mention the word "Logos" as far as I recall. When Durandal makes his Logos speech Djbril just says something like "Durandal using you you idiots" as the angry mobs form which also isn't the words of someone who had an evil scheme that was just unraveled. It really does give the view that while Djbril and his gang are corrupt businessmen and genocidal racists backing Blue Cosmos, they aren't the Logos war conspiracy that just wants war forever like Durandal claims and the whole thing really does come off as him just making up this boogyman group that nobody could possibly ever side with that he can paint any one of his enemies as belonging to. After all all he's accusing someone of is being powerful and influential. And it's not like he doesn't lump people in with Logos both he and the audience know isn't really part of them as part of his schemes. Athrun doesn't want to work for him anymore? He's a Logos spy and threatens everything kill him. Kira and Lacus are still around and opposing him? They're obviously Logos loyalists wanting to avenge Djbril. Etc.

The only issue is that Data Books I'm pretty sure have confirmed Logos was real after all despite the show leaving interpretation that Durandal made them all up.

I, too, don’t recall any member of LOGOS referring to themselves as LOGOS. It’s also interesting that there doesn’t seem to be any member that is citizen of the colonies. That makes sense from their actions in the show but if they really were this Illuminati-esque group seeking to start wars for profit, then it’s odd that they exclusively from the Earth.

Edited by RangerJackWalker on May 2nd 2024 at 5:27:34 AM

It kinda makes me wonder if the Data Books are accidental in-universe propaganda.

It definitely feels like Djibril is more motivated by hatred of Coordinators than sheer profiteering, but I don't think that's necessarily true of the rest of Logos. They're frequently skeptical of his plans, but eventually agree to go along with them — either because he's he most powerful of the group, or because he's done right by them in the past and earned their trust, it's not entirely clear. Of course, in the show itself he's nothing but a colossal failure, and abandons the rest of Logos without a second thought the moment it's convenient, so their trust is misplaced regardless.

Eh, they're a group of shadowy businessmen who secretly control world politics, and do so for their own benefit rather than out of any attempt to make the world a better place. We see them agree to let the Junius 7 drop happen because it will be easier to manipulate the survivors afterwards. We see Djibril expressly dictating policy decisions to the President of the United States Atlantic Federation. Regardless of whether Durandal is accurate on the details (they call themselves Logos, they're exclusively weapons manufacturers profiting off of war, they've been active for centuries) he's close enough that it doesn't make much difference. Certainly these people aren't just like, the 12 richest guys on the planet that Durandal just decided to scapegoat.

So, I finished Destiny. The last ten episodes are a lot of frantic tying up of loose ends, and then the final battle is actually, surprisingly, really damn good... with the extremely notable exception of the throne room scene. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After Djibril flees to Orb, in fairly rapid succession and with little fanfare, the show kills off 1) Yuna, 2) the entire Seiran clan, 3) a bunch of PLANTs, 4) Djibril, 5) Meer. That's a lot! Almost like the writer realized that the end of the series was coming up and they needed to deal with all of that so just decided "whatever, they get killed" was the quickest way to wrap up those plot threads. Most of it feels largely pointless as a result — it's not adding anything to the plot or the show's overall themes, it's just checking off boxes.

Cagalli gets her last hurrah before vanishing from the plot completely. She gets the Akatsuki in time to participate in the defense of Orb, fight Shinn for a bit, and then hand it over to Mu so she can do politicking full time. They don't even let her be particularly badass fighting Shinn. There's no reason they couldn't have let her go seed mode and drive him off, or at least fight him to a standstill — but instead she takes some damage and then Kira shows up in the Strike Freedom to take over for her. She tries to broadcast a response to ZAFT's attack, but the signal gets hijacked by Durandal so that he can have Meer repeat his talking points, but Lacus re-hijacks it to reveal that Meer is a fake. Cagalli never actually gets to say her bit. After that, the plot returns to space but Cagalli stays behind in Orb. Bye, Cagalli. You deserved better.

Then Djibril blows up some PLANTs with his giant moon laser. I actually kinda like Requiem as a plot device? It feels like a reasonable consequence for ZAFT focusing all its attention on Earth and not dealing with the OMNI bases on the moon, which are a much better position to threaten the PLANTs. Of course, after it gets off one shot, the entire base falls to the Minerva, the Destiny, Legend, and Impulse by themselves. Because OMNI can never do anything except die. Djibril finally actually gets killed, having failed to present a real threat even after finally managing to destroy some of the PLANTs.

Meer dies. She gets two whole episodes devoted to her — one a flashback episode about her past after she's already dead. Why the show things Meer is interesting enough to merit two entire episodes when the show had barely any time left, I have no idea.

Durandal goes full supervillain, publicly announces the Destiny Plan, and the final battle is on. Like I mentioned, the final battle itself is actually really good? They do a great job of setting up interesting situations with clear stakes and objectives on both sides beyond just "beat the other guys". The new Remaster dub does some fantastic work here, it really sells some of the dialogue. When Shinn completely loses it and attacks Luna to get at Athrun, Athrun screams "ARE YOU FREAKING INSANE?!" and I legitimately wish they'd let him drop an actual f-bomb just that once.

The throne room scene is just bizarre, though. The battle is won — Requiem destroyed, the Minerva out of the fight, and Durandal's doom fortress is falling apart. So Kira flies into the collapsing fortress, gets out of his Gundam, hikes up to the throne room, so he can... point a gun at Durandal. Then Rey shows up. Then Talia shows up. Then, new in the Remaster, Athrun shows up too. Rey ends up shooting Durandal, having realized at the 11th hour that his shit is bonkers, thanks to combat therapy with Kira. Then Talia and Rey stay with a dying Durandal to explode together, while Kira and Athrun leave.

Why does this scene exist at all? Let Durandal die when the fortress explodes. Rey leaves ZAFT to live the remainder of his life on his own terms. Talia returns to the PLANTs to raise her son. You didn't need a face-to-face confrontation at all! But if you did decide to do that, then it absolutely should have been Talia that pulled the trigger. Rey was too loyal — he would have wanted to save Durandal, even from himself. Talia is cynical enough to actually take the shot, but sentimental enough to stay behind with Durandal as penance. She should have told Rey to go and survive, though. In the show, she asks Kira to pass along a message about her son to Murrue. Give that message to Rey instead. Between Rau and Durandal, Rey understands the importance of family, he'd do it. Having Rey die just feels like they couldn't figure out anything else to do with him.

Finally: the epilogue. I actually think it's mostly good! It's Shinn burying the hatchet with... basically everybody. It reinforces the fact that Shinn isn't a bad person, he was just manipulated by people who didn't have his best interests in mind. The fact that Shinn agrees to work with Kira for the good of the world is a hugely important moment for his character. Without it, our last impression of him would have been completely broken and crying on the surface of the moon. Knowing that he got through things without either giving up entirely or tripling down on his hatred of Kira and Orb is a big deal. The one glaring problem with the epilogue is where the hell is Cagalli. Shinn had beef with her, too! The scene takes place in Orb! Cagalli being there would have been perfect! Why the hell isn't she?? Oh, and Meyrin is paired up with Athrun since Cagalli isn't there. What the hell? Meyrin's relationship with Athrun was always one-sided, a mix of hero worship and a crush. You can't pull this shit in literally the epilogue!

Oh, and I couldn't figure out where else to mention this, but Shinn and Luna's relationship is deeply weird. It pretty much springs up out of nowhere after Shinn appears to kill Meyrin in the process of shooting down Athrun. Prior to that, she respects him as a pilot, but also makes it clear that she thinks he's kind of an asshole. But then he kills her sister and she ends up falling into his arms? At least the show seems to realize how weird this. There's a couple scenes where stuff happens like Luna starting to kiss him, but they both end up crying instead. But towards the end of the series, Luna keeps trying to talk to Shinn and keeps getting rebuffed (mostly by Rey, but sometimes put off by Shinn himself). I'm not entirely clear what she wanted to talk about. This is after they've discovered that Athrun is alive, so does she want to talk to Shinn about whether Meyrin survived too? Or does she want to talk to him about the reservations she has about Durandal, since she knows that his Lacus is the fake one after overhearing Athrun talking to Kira in the middle of the series? Or is she just trying to establish something like a normal relationship with him, now that they're a couple? I don't know, since she never manages to actually talk to him. I'll be interested to see if they're still together in the movie. I wouldn't normally expect an off-screen breakup, but they did it with Miri and Dearka, so who knows?

Tomorrow I'll watch Stargazer and then give my thoughts on that and then CE as a whole. Then the day after that is the movie! They're showing the movie subtitled on Tuesday and then dubbed on Wednesday, and I'm actually planning to see both showings, so I hope it's good enough to justify watching twice. Otherwise I'll have an opportunity to get extra mad about it, I guess.

Rey choosing to die alongside Talia and Durandal does kind of show that even Kira's ability to convince people to change for the better has limits. He was able to convince Rey to decide for himself whether or not the Destiny Plan was a good idea, but that was it. Rey was still too emotionally dependent on Durandal to live on without him.

Convincing people to change their minds by talking to them has never been Kira's thing — that's Lacus's job. Rey's entire arc is terrible rushed so it's hard to follow what's going on in his head there, but the idea seems to be that Rey has bought into Durandal's idea that your genes are your destiny, which means that Rey is destined to the same fate as Rau. But when Kira yells at him that his life is his own — possibly the first time that literally anyone has said that to him — he realizes that that's wrong, he doesn't have to share Rau's fate, and by extension the entire Destiny Plan is wrong. So he goes to stop Durandal from making a terrible mistake. All of that works pretty well.

The problem with the throne room scene is that it feels completely unnecessary. At this point, both of Durandal's superweapons have been destroyed. The fortress he's in is collapsing. He's lost the battle — and with it, likely the war. The political situation was a standoff, with most of the world not supporting the Destiny Plan but unsure about publicly opposing ZAFT. Requiem was meant to force their compliance by demonstrating that resistance would just get you hit with an orbital beam strike. Instead it demonstrated that ZAFT can be defeated, as well as removing the threat of those orbital superweapons. So even if Durandal has survived, it's unlikely that the Destiny Plan would have been enforced on the world. So why kill him?

Compare this to the situation where Patrick Zala was killed. Even though the battle outside was going against ZAFT, Patrick Zala died in his command center, trying to fire his superweapon at Earth, surrounded by ZAFT officers actively directing the battle. He was an active threat and killing him was the only reasonable way to end that threat. He was losing but he hadn't lost yet, and he could still do a lot of damage in the meantime. Durandal? Durandal had lost. He was in no position to do anything except run away. Which doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't make sense for someone like Kira — who's never met him, and sees him only as an enemy — to kill him. But Rey? Or Talia? That doesn't fly, imo. It's just pure, unnecessary melodrama, but it doesn't work because they didn't build up to it.

TBF, both Kira and Durandal had each other at gunpoint.

Rey was in a position to save one or the other, and he chose to save Kira.

So, I watched Stargazer. The first two episodes are fantastic. They feel like a direct response to Destiny, addressing things that Destiny glossed over. The first episode is about people just trying to survive the Junius 7 drop. It's dark and dirty in a way that Seed and Destiny rarely were, and the one fight scene is miserable and ugly rather than the glorious heroism that the main show prefers, even if it is ultimately a heroic act, sacrificing themselves to stop the GINN from attacking the city. Also, points for literally the only time in CE that tanks are allowed to do a damn thing.

Episode two is about Sven. It's much more invested in him as a whole person than Seed or Destiny ever was with their Extended. It shows not just the horrors of the conditioning process he went through (in more and more interesting detail, focusing on its effect on him personally rather than just making it clear how evil OMNI is), but also his life before any of that, which is something that neither Seed nor Destiny cared about at all. It also shows the war from his perspective — not a grand clash of ideals, but meaningless snippets of combat where he does terrible things and has terrible things happen to him without ever knowing more about it than what his immediate handlers tell him.

Episode three... kinda loses steam. Sven's unit attacks the Stargazer research station. They do lots of damage but are ultimately repelled, allowing the project to survive, but the Stargazer is blasted out into deep space in the process. Selene rescues Sven and uses the Stargazer's light sail to return to Earth, but they have 27 days of life support and the epilogue shows them being picked up a bit less than 28 days later without revealing if they survived or not. Which feels like they were trying to make it ~artistic~ without actually figuring out how to make it fit the themes. There's multiple ways to interpret things, but all of them have problems. It's just a bit of a mess overall.

Anyway, final tldr thoughts on Seed and Destiny after binging both of them in a month:

Seed — Pretty good on the whole, most of its problems are more like missed opportunities than mistakes. I feel like it would have benefited for ditching the Mobile Suit Gundam outline earlier — like when they first landed on Earth, say. I really feel like forcing all the characters to reassess their place in the war and eventually strike out into a separate faction of their own, Gundam Seed gets to do a lot more interesting character work without being weighed down by archetypes of who's a "good guy" and who's a "bad guy". The only beef I have with how Seed uses its characters are Cagalli and Flay — Flay basically has nothing to do after Kira's "death" mid-series, but they keep her around anyway, and Cagalli is ultimately a secondary character who exists to help bridge the gap between Kira and Athrun, but they give her main character level screentime anyway. They needed to either make her an actual main character, with more to do in the plot (definitely my preference), or else make her a smaller role so that it's not as frustrating when she keeps getting sidelined. Other than that, my biggest complaint with Seed is how very dismissive it is of Naturals in general, when it would have fit the themes perfectly for them to emphasize how little difference there really is between Naturals and Coordinators.

Destiny — I can't honestly say it's good, but I still like it anyway. The core of a good story is there, but it has so many problems on so many levels that it's like fractal badness. The single overarching problem is that Destiny refuses to allow its villains to be threatening — they're all sad, pathetic man-children, which makes them terrible antagonists. I kinda get why they did it — because if you make your bad guys at all cool then someone will like them no matter how evil they obviously are — but it definitely makes the story worse. Because at the same time, Destiny makes mooks completely and utterly pathetic, so OMNI is basically never allowed to be an effective antagonist — even though they're the main antagonists for like 80% of the show. And that's without getting into the problems of making OMNI the baddies for that long, enough though they're as much victims of Logos as anyone else, and they spend the whole war losing miserably while receiving absolute no sympathy from the narrative whatsoever.

All of that said, the reason I still like Destiny at the end of the day is that, despite all the problems, it's still got some fantastic moments. The Freedom being shot down, Athrun finally leaving ZAFT, the final battle on the moon (minus the throne room scene...), they're all flipping great even if the stuff surrounding it doesn't measure up. I don't blame anyone for checking out and failing to get invested because of all the problems it has, but when it works, it really works.

I'm seeing the movie tomorrow night, so that will round out the CE extravaganza.

Good luck. You won't regret it.