You Just Gave This Franchise Its Best Fiscal Year Girl.

You just gave this franchise its best fiscal year girl.

Oh, the reason why OZ dress like that is to evoke the look of the nobility and colonial powers who colonised much of the real world, further signifying their relationship with the Space colonies and presenting Operation Meteor as a fight for Colonial Independence from their oppressors.

I just got that. Neat.

While I do agree with your points about suletta and miorine, particularly their contrasting arcs at the minute, I must confess I’m somewhat lost on your last point.

Maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen Gundam Wing in quite a while, but while Char and Zechs are quite different:

In Aesthetics

In personal connection to the main villains - Zechs and Treize being old friends vs. Char haveing been gunning for the Zabi family since essentially day one.

In the precise details of their nobility - Char being concerned primarily with revenge for the death of his father, whereas Zechs seems to have ambitions to restore the Sanc Kingdom to its former glory, he just thinks that he really isn’t the right guy for the job.

In their arcs- Char goes from Rival to Friend to Villain, whereas Zechs goes Rival to Villain to Friend.

They’re generally pretty similar other than that (A young man heir to a kingdom joins the military in disguise in order to avenge the deaths of his family, rivalling the Gundam pilot and meeting someone else he comes to truly care about in the process).

There’s probably a comparison to be made about Char taking control of Neo Zeon and perpetrating the axis drop, versus Zechs/Milliardo leading White Fang and heading up Barge, but for the life of me I can’t remember why Milliardo does that.

My point is, while Char and Zechs are different enough that the change is noticeable, I’m not really sure how the differences between them apply to Prospera.

I just don’t see what Zechs brings to the table that Char doesn’t.

(I should probably mention that when I talk about Char here, it’s primarily a mix of the cunning manipulator presented in the Original Series and the Origin, and the World-weary charisma machine from Char’s counterattack. While I do very much like Quattro Bajeena, I just don’t think he’s relevant here).

I’ve been wondering just who or what was going to be the Caliban of this show. It’ll be interesting to see just what will happen to Suletta now that she has to rely on her own skills as a pilot, and all the stress it entails. Permet scores and all.

It’s also in character for her to come to terms with who and what she is after all that has transpired. Which is a relieve because I would hate to see it dragged out. Miorine, on the other hand, needs her tanuki, ASAP. And a tomato in these trying times.

Prospera going full steam ahead on crimes is strangely artful. That whole scene with her activating Quiet Zero and annihilating the Assembly fleet gave me chills, and also reminded me of later parts of Gundam Wing. Forget Char, she’s more like Zechs.

Uncredited 1976 cover art to ‘Mindbridge,’ by Joe Haldeman

No thoughts,only bride.

Huh. I’d never actually clocked SEED Destiny screwing over every Female character as a thing but now I think about it, yeah it does kinda do that.

With the exception of Murrue Ramius and Lacus, who come out looking pretty positive, they all display a lack of agency - Cagalli’s just the most obvious since her personality shifts drastically from the Original Series.

Gladys, while amazing, is unable to enforce discipline on her ship, not least due to Supreme Chancellor Durandal favouring her pilots with special treatment. Speaking of Durandal, they’re established pretty early on to be having an affair (I’m genuinely unsure if she’s still married or not, we never see a husband except in a flashback) which, while not lessening her achievements, does throw into question the possibility that Durandal had a hand in them. She’s a much better commander than Murrue Ramius was at the start of the original series, but consequently she has less room to grow. I’m really iffy about her ending, because other than wanting to be with Durandal, I’m not really sure why she was there. Maybe if her and Rey had some scenes together earlier it would’ve worked better?

Lunamaria’s established early on as the Lancer to Shinn’s hero - she shoots, he fights up close. Problem is, her battle records very poor, granted due to the use of stick footage, but barring her early duel with the Gaia she only ever seems to miss shots and take hits. It’s established early on that’s she’s a poor shot (due to coordinator-related genetic mishaps), but then why would she be a Ranged specialist? She displays some excellent skills early on, such as spying on Athrun and looks like she’ll see through Durendal’s Destiny plan. However when Athrun deserts with Meyrin and Shinn (supposedly) shoots them down, this all goes out the window. Yes, she’s under a lot of stress because she thinks her sister’s dead, but she just fights alongside Shinn at the battle of Messiah, where Athrun has to save her from Shinn. Does it effectively communicate how far Shinn’s gone? Yes. Is it an example of what war does to people? Yes. Does that make it any less batshit that Shinn was ready to cut through her to get to Athrun? No, no it does not.

Meyrin Hawke, then. Y’know what, I actually think she makes it out of this pretty well. She’s kinda in the background for most of the show, but she successfully distracts soldiers away from Athrun during his defection and effectively helps him escape to the mobile suit hangar. Yes, Athrun has to get them out afterward, but of the two he’s the better pilot and she knows it, so I’ll let that slide. I only wish we’d seen more of her.

Stella Loussier next. Honestly, I have less of a problem with her because a) she’s a Four Murasame Expy, she was never getting out of the series alive and b) most of the Extended’s deaths are played as tragic, hers just has the most focus. Though “never shoot the cockpits” Kira killing her is a detail worth criticising. Since Kira last series (and in this series too) took so much care not to shoot to kill, so much so that Shinn and Rey use it as a strategy to bring down the Freedom some time later, so it feels especially jarring that he’d kill Stella, and even more so that he just…… wouldn’t care about it. Stella’s lack of agency is part of the tragedy of her character, showing how war dehumanises those who fight it, and possibly showing what might have happened to Shinn after orb has he not had someone looking out for him. I will admit (slight sidenote) it is frustrating to me that Neo Roanoke just sorta…. Never had any sort of consequences for his actions, because he was actually an amnesiac Mu all along, and that makes it ok. Like yeah, he wasn’t in his right mind and Neo’s essentially dead……. It just feels like there should be *something*.

Meer follows Durandal’s orders for the entire series, then when she’s no longer useful, she’s used as bait for Lacus then killed to motivate the Archangel crew. I don’t even have much to say on this one. It’s just tragic.

Cagalli……. Where to even start with Cagalli. Cagalli feels the worst case out of the entire cast because a) she was a competent (if stubborn and hotheaded) fighter in the original series, being a member of desert dawn and putting Kira in his place more than once. Then Orb Happens, and she has to watch her homeland and father burn in front of her because their key principles failed them. This is a genuinely harrowing moment for her, but she pushes through and resolves to prevent further bloodshed. She Fights at the Second Battle of Jachin Due in the Strike Rouge and ENTERS SEED MODE, one of only five characters able to do so. She gives an excellent account of herself considering her lack of experience, only really being stymied because there’s a lot of good pilots at Jachin Due.

How does she fare in Destiny? Well, she starts off as a diplomat with Plant, then accidentally outs Athrun to the entire Minerva, which likely contributed to his later decision to rejoin the ZAFT. She is manipulated into accepting a political marriage to Yuna (see: asshat), and is only bailed out by Kira at the last minute. She later deploys in the Strike Rouge in order to try and keep out of the conflict during the battle of Dardanelles, only to be stonewalled by Yuna. She finally regains control of Orb prior to operation fury, when she takes command from Yuna. She then fights in the Akatsuki in Defence of Orb during operation fury, which it must be said is an excellent mobile suit. It promptly loses a fight to the Destiny Gundam. Once Orb is liberated, she remains there, while the Three Ships alliance taking the Akatsuki with them. And throughout this, she continually despairs at the state of Orb - quite rightly, since it is actively heading down the same path as it did prior, and she fears it being devastated again. It’s entirely possible that she has PTSD in the wake of its initial destruction in the first war. The issue is that the plot seems to bend over backwards in order to screw Cagalli over and leave her without agency. She has to be bailed out of her wedding by Kira, because she’s too swamped by the Seirans’ to get out of it herself. She is unable to stop Orb from entering the conflict, even though it’s obvious to everyone that’s what she’s trying to do, with Yuna stopping her. She’s only able to retake and defend Orb with the backing of Kira and Athrun, and even with the cutting-edge Akatsuki, she has to be bailed out of a losing fight with Shinn.

Like, taken individually it’s not really a problem, but when you look at them all together you start noticing how widespread the problem is.

Eh. Maybe if/when that Seed Movie finally comes out things’ll be a little better.

OK, I have two overall things to say about Gundam SEED: Destiny (I’ve been sick, binging this nominally staved off extreme boredom; spoilers to follow).

Number 1: Arthur Trine is doing his best, damnit, and I hope he got a cup of tea and a sit down once everything was other.

Number 2: what an incredibly frustrating show.

In many ways it is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor, freed from literally repeating the same set-pieces of the original Gundam to tell a story that, honestly, has something approaching a meaningful point. Chairman Durandal is a compelling antagonist and the way he and Teen!Le Cookset gradually break the series’ pseudo-protagonist to their perspective is narratively interesting. The underlying message in what he does – about how those in power pick out enemies that will best serve their ends and present themselves as the reasonable ones – is definitely worth exploring. And the show even manages to address the Gundam-overload issues from SEED, by more clearly delineating the point of each machine and staggering them a bit more competently.

However. It inherits the problem of its length exceeding its content, leading to more stock-footage abuse and, far less forgivably, *three* clips shows, only one of which (the last, focused on Meer) has any actual merit. It also continues SEED’s determination to screw over every single female character who isn’t Lacus. For the record, I *like* Lacus: she’s a nice execution of someone having a ‘typical’ presentation wrapped around a core of stainless steel conviction, which is something I always enjoy in fiction. However, Cagalli in particular is an utter waste of potential, not being allowed to mature, gain focus, or make a single bloody decision without Kira or Athrun’s input, to the point where it’s actively aggravating to watch.

This is where we hit the limits of the genre and demographic, of course, and once again makes me appreciate literally every female character in IBO because Gundam generally is so very *not good* at this. (Obviously G-Witch is ahead again on the score, thankfully, but IBO is probably the best-case scenario within the ‘fiction aimed at boys’ problems that plague its predecessors.)

Shinn is similarly annoying. It’s not a bad thing he’s abrasive and the endpoint was always going to be him winding up a broken, weeping wreck because he’s too stupid to recognise anything beyond his own feelings. But his trauma flashbacks hit parodic very early and he’s far too irritating to be worth sitting through his screen-time. Like Kira, only the problem is the presence of personality rather than its total fucking absence.

My biggest complaint, however, is reserved for the variety of ways SEED:Destiny buggers up its good ideas. I’d have liked it a lot more if ‘Logos’ hadn’t actually been a thing. ‘Shadowy conspiracy doing [bad thing] from the shadows in the name of profit’ is the kind of message that gets slung around a lot in real life with no justification whatsoever and it really doesn’t help counter the people who do that if you hinge your plot on ‘no the Illuminati actually do have a giant laser on the moon.’ The cleverer and more cutting twist would have been to reveal there was no actual group called Logos and while the people Durandal named might have had interests in common, he was really just lumping them together for his own convenience.

You know. As scapegoats. Like the way this goes in reality, with the matters that this show is sticking its oar in and trying to Say Something about.

But no, because once more, this is a story interested in emotional reactions and personal epiphanies over any sort of systemic question because, well … that’s typical, isn’t it? Frustrating but not unexpected. Eureka Seven does nearly everything SEED/SEED:Destiny attempts better and that is hardly the first case of that happening with a Gundam show. Possibly this is just galling me more than usual because there are so many [swerves around the obvious pun] traces of a more interesting story here.

Oh well. Mu steadily getting his memories back was fun and I shall be taking the final epilogue to mean he, Murrue and Andrew settled down to a life of coffee-fueled polyamory. Yzak yeeting himself on to the right side of the final battle through sheer indignation was actually kind of funny. And I will give it credit, this did feel like one of the more meaningful ‘final battles to destroy a giant super-weapon’ out of the many, many times Gundam has done that (including in SEED, for gods’ sake). If nothing else, I appreciate the chutzpah of having Durandal rock up in an off-brand Death Star, right down to a recoloured Emperor’s chair.

Whatdyouknow. I actually did have something to say about this one. I think that just leaves Victory for main series I haven’t watched (I finished G Fighter; it was joyfully ridiculous). That probably won’t be changing any time soon. Ranking wise … SEED:Destiny probably sits around equal with 00 for me.