I Feel Like Another Problem SEED Has In Regards To Its Gundams Is That Theres A Lot Of Them Around, And

I feel like another problem SEED has in regards to its Gundam’s is that there’s a lot of them around, and how they’re classified is an absolute *mess*.

SEED has a lot of gundams, and the classification for them is that they have an advanced operating system that forms the acronym GUNDAM. There are however, roughly six different systems this applies to, so what a Gundam is is still somewhat inexact. I seem to recall the original series making a heroic effort to sell phase shift armour (the fancy anti-ballistic armour) as the gundam’s main selling point but this gets abandoned partway through.

It feels like a lot of the reasons as to why there are other gundams in seed work in a vacuum, but then they went and chose all of them:

Five original units, four were stolen, one remains (Duel, Blitz, Buster, Aegis and Strike).

One unit, with multiple equipment packs (Strike).

Upgrades/Dark reflections of the original three unit types (Calamity, Raider and Forbidden).

Big fancy upgrades to the main two units using new tech (Freedom and Justice).

Suit Built by/for the Main Antagonist (Providence).

Duplicate unit of the main Gundam assembled from spare parts (Strike Rouge).

Like, any one or two of those would probably have worked just fine, but they chose all of them. So it just becomes this arms race of “who’s Gundam is the most Gundam” without any real point of reference.

Thing is, Freedom and Justice are actually a step up from the rest, since they’re fitted with Neutron-Jammer cancellers, allowing them to mount nuclear reactors, and by extension achieve much better performance. It’s just that by the time they’re introduced there’s no real way to accurately *show* that, since every other gundam’s already regularly shown taking out scores of foes.

I’m under the impression that the reason as to why SEED has so many Gundams (from an out-of-universe perspective) is because they sell better than the non-Gundam models, so Seed had a lot of them right out of the gate.

To expand further on the thought “does introducing more gundam’s in a spin-off cheapen the original?” I’d have to say…… kinda?

Honestly I’ve read enough side materials that I’m used to it at this point, and Gundams are attractive prospects, both in-universe and out, but it does evoke some pondering. But they can be contrasts with the mainline characters, and they can further expand the world and show

I tend to look on it on a case-by-case basis. Generally it’s down to if I can squint and see it make sense in universe. Sort of like a “well, I guess I can see that”. Some of the examples I’m gonna talk about here also benefit from being implicitly or explicitly weaker than the “main” Gundam’s.

First up, Gundam 00f. Concerning the actions of Celestial Being’s support team, fereshte during the actions of the series.

Adding a total of five new Gundam’s to the series, not counting the “black” variants (since they’re explicitly hollow reproductions) (Astraea, Sadalsuud, Aubhool, Plutone and Raisel)

Generally, I think it works well, since the aforementioned gundams are prototypes of the ones seen in series, being weaker than the ones used by the main characters. They show progression from the 0 Gundam and shed more light on Celestial Being as an organisation. The gundams used by Fereshte are only as effective as they are due to the pilot’s experience and the fact that they don’t draw as much attention to themselves.

New mobile report Gundam Wing G-Unit (sometimes called Gundam: the last outpost). About the Space Colony M-OV and it’s mobile suit development during the main series.

Adding a total of seven new gundams to the series (Geminass 1&2, LO Booster, Aescelpius, Burnlapius, Hydra and Greipe)

Though I do love it……. Seven Gundams is too much, even if you be charitable and don’t count the LO booster. I’m willing to overlook the Geninass units (they look like Gundams and are made of Gundanium alloy, but in-universe it’s either coincidental or the creator had inside knowledge on Operation Meteor) and the Hydra (it’s presented as an answer of sorts to the Epyon, and it’s pilot absolutely strikes me as the sort of person who would build a Gundam to spite Treize), but the other three just feel excessive, considering the amount of time and resources it would take to build them (even including the fact that they’re quite modular).

While it is a nice expansion, I can’t say it adds much to the world of Wing other than the existence of a colony somewhere and maybe a look at how OZ manipulated the colonies.

(I’m also ignoring the retelling that’s supposed to be coming out, since I know nothing about it other than it adds two more Gundams)

Gundam X Astray. A Gundam SEED sidestory and continuation of Gundam Astray.

Astray is a weird side series to me. It feels like the reason why it’s about Astray units is that they realised they had too many Gundam’s and needed something different.

Anyway, this sidestory adds 4 new Gundams (Hyperion Gundam unit 1-3 (though only 1&2 show up) and the Dreadnought Gundam (or the X Astray)).

Honestly, I think this one uses the Gundam’s really, really well. Spoilers follow regarding the mobile suits and their pilots.

The Hyperion Gundam (Piloted by Canard Pars) is a Gundam built by the Eurasian Federation of the Earth Alliance in order to break the Atlantic Federation’s monopoly on mobile suit technology which they gained from the G-Weapons in the original series. I love this, because it shows the Earth Alliance as not being a monolith. It’s shows their individual members jockeying for power, how they engage in realpolitik against other members, and generally helps the Earth alliance come across as a lot more varied than in the show (all the good people die, then all the racists take over). But the Eurasian Federation isn’t actually that good at making mobile suits - they can make something roughly equal to the G-weapons on paper, but they add the umbrella of Artemis tech to it, since that’s really what they are good at. As a result, it’s a very powerful unit- for all of five minutes before the power runs out.

The Hyperion Gundam (the one with the big red cross on its back) is the prototype unit that was a proof-of-concept for the Freedom and Justice. And it’s piloted by a pacifist, Prayer Reverie. But what does he want to do with this colossal weapon? He wants to take it to Earth, and use the tech inside (N-Jammer Canceller) to end the energy crisis. Hey, an actual peaceful use for a weapon of war, that’s pretty good. Also, Prayer isn’t that good of a pilot - but the Dreadnought’s so strong, he doesn’t really need to be. It illustrates how big of a deal the N-Jammer Canceller tech on a mobile suit is (Notwithstanding the fact that the dreadnought can just fly there, it doesn’t need a ship or anything).

I unfortunately haven’t read enough of IBO Gekko to weigh in on Argi and the Astaroth specifically, but I think that Iron-Blooded Orphans handled this really well too. As you said, without the Alaya-Vijyana Gundam frames aren’t really that monstrous, but they are still generally a cut above regular mobile suits due to the twin reactors. However, they’re very, very limited in-universe. There were only ever 72 made, and I believe it’s stated somewhere that only ~30 of them survived? It’s a nice solid limit on how many there are and where they can show up, and that’s not even considering the fact that Gjallarhorn must control a few of them through the Seven Stars (doesn’t remove them, but it limits where they can be). By explicitly calling them out as being a finite thing, it really sells them as being special. But since it happens right at the start, we already know, it doesn’t get sprung on you later. In addition, since we know that they fought in and, more to the point, survived something like the Calamity War already sells them as powerful things in the right hands. They have pedigree, they have mystique and they’re rare enough for those to matter. Lastly, it’s made pretty clear by how Akihiro and Shino fight that a good part of the reason why Barbatos is so effective is because of Mikazuki. The spin-off units are still effective, but Barbatos is an absolute demon. It really sells Rustal using Dainsleif’s on them as even more pragmatic than it was originally.

@gremoria411​ - hope you don’t mind, I’m going to pull out the response to your comment as a post since I’m not sure I can answer in the word limit!

Would you mind expanding on how you believe Wing and Iron Blooded Orphans effectively managed multiple Gundams in a single show?

It’s not a fully-formed idea, but what I mean is something like this:

In Gundam Wing, the Gundams retain their special status right the way through to the end of Endless Waltz. They’re unique, deadly, practically indestructible and it’s a really big deal that Wing Zero and Epyon even exist, because it’s well established you can’t easily build more of them. Dumb as the word is, the idea behind gundanium is pretty smart. These things are never going to be mass-produced and they’re not going to be equaled in battle, either, because the reason they can blast through hundreds upon hundreds of mobile dolls is literally built into them at the conceptual level.

Iron-Blooded Orphans plays with the same kind of thing regarding these machines being a cut above everything else, but ultimately establishes the opposite situation: Gundams weren’t originally ‘rare’ (72 'suits is a very high number by IBO standards), they’re palpably not exceptionally resistant to harm, and in most people’s hands, they don’t perform that much better than the machines they’re fighting. The thing that turns them into kill-everything monsters is gate-kept behind very severe conditions, so it never feels like battles will become trivial by simply having more of them in play.

That last point is why I felt it worth mentioning. What struck me about SEED is that by the time you have Calamity, Raider and Forbidden on screen, it is very hard to take them seriously. They’re Gundams (implicitly, I know the term is not actually used widely in SEED) and unique (not mass-production models like the Astrays), so they should feel like a big deal. But they don’t. They get their backsides handed to them *repeatedly*, because the narrative has to pile on the specialness of Freedom and Justice so they stand out in a swarm of similarly ‘main-character-coded’ ‘suits. It’s trying to have its cake and eat it in terms of how significant Gundams are.

It’s interesting to consider how the different shows chose to handle that, with the extreme ‘only a single Gundam’ model from the 79 series and Turn A at one pole and G Fighter’s complete genericising of the term at the other.

(There’s probably another axis to this thought which is ‘does introducing more Gundams in a spin-off cheapen the original?’ For Wing, the answer is obviously ‘yes’, because of the aforementioned rarity and the colonies not being able to roll them out by the hundreds. For IBO, it’s ‘no’, because the uniqueness is offset on to the pilots. Argi Mirage rolling around in Astaroth isn’t a big deal because Argi is so far below Mika’s level, it’s almost funny. A SEED spin-off could introduce as many Gundams as it liked [and I believe they did] to no effect because the term is already relatively diluted.)

Alright so Tumblr’s apparently putting recommended posts in my following feed now.

I know they’ve been doing this a while, but my feed’s suddenly like 70% recommended posts.

Which’d be fine, if it wasn’t repeating the same posts, so I’m just staring at the same post about a cat repeatedly and when I refresh my feed, it’s still there with all the other duplicate posts.

(Like yeah, I can dismiss the ones I don’t like, but some of them are good, it’s just I only need to read them once)

Hm weird thought.

So Al Da Flaga in Gundam SEED.

(Right is the best picture we have of him, but left is more representative in my opinion)

He commissions multiple clones of himself from Dr Hibiki in order to inherit his wealth and power, and the way Rau puts it, in order to achieve a form of immortality.

Thing is, how many clones does he commission?

Because we know that Rau le Creuset(Top Right) is his clone, who eventually ended up killing him and from who we know most of our information about him (Rau is in the middle of his Big Villain Speech when he says most of this, but he’s essentially recounting his origin so I trust what he says here). Rey Za Burrel (bottom left) is also a clone and was made later, most likely as a replacement for Rau once Al found out he was a flawed clone. Thing is, Al was dead before he had much of a chance to impact Rey’s development (Mu doesn’t remember Rau, so Rau must have murdered Al and burnt down the estate when they were both quite young), so it’s implied that Rau and Durandal were the primary influences on Rey’s life, as shown in this image:

Mu La Flaga (top left) is, by all accounts, Al’s biological son, who he hated because he believed that Mu’s mother had tainted him in some way (though I’ll be honest, I’ve accidentally read Mu as the successful clone multiple times prior).

And then, finally, there’s Prayer (bottom right), who’s a “clone of an EA pilot with excellent spatial awareness”. Which sounds to me like the EA found a Al clone and accidentally read it as a clone of his son Mu (which would imply that disinheriting Mu was pointless, since he’s already a really close genetic match). I mean, that makes more sense to me than the EA commissioning a one-off clone, something they despise on the same level of coordinators, just to reproduce a single good pilot. However, I can’t find anything that explicitly states this, so it’s just weird.

But apparently Rey was just one of multiple clones? So prayer could have been part of the same “Batch”? And/or there could be a bunch more Al Da Flaga clones running around, this turning them into an expy of Puru?

There are a lotta flaws with Gundam SEED Destiny.

However it’s ability to accurately convey a character’s personality through their design is commendable. You don’t even have to watch the series to know what a detestable asshat this guy is.

Alrighty so, Gundam the Witch from Mercury episode 20. Kinda hits rather hard. Another one to add to the list.

*Slight Spoilers follow for witch from Mercury episode 21*

NO, LAUDA BUDDY, DON’T DO IT

JUST TALK TO SOMEONE I’M BEGGING YOU