Gremoria411 - Side 5 Galleries

The Argonath by Jef Murray

Me playing GBO2: Alright, that’s a good amount of recycle tickets with more coming in next week, I reckon I can sit on this for a while until something good comes along in the recycle shop.

The Recycle shop: Oh hey, nice pile of tickets you’re saving up there pal, shame if we happened to stock the FA-010A FAZZ today, a rad-ass mobile suit that’s an absolute bitch to get now, from the similarly rad-ass Gundam Sentinel.

(Honestly why do I do this to myself)

(I don’t even play the game anymore, I just use it as a virtual suit gallery)

(And it’s not like I’m ever gonna use the damn thing, it’s been power-creeped out of existence and the gun takes forever to charge)

(And it’s technically inaccurate because it’s got a hyper beam saber)

(But if I’m being honest that’s an improvement)

It’s a sci-fi holiday in these Ed Emshwiller cover illustrations for Christmas issues of Galaxy magazine, 1951 to 1960. Please note that Santa Claus appears in each one, always with four arms.

SEED Destiny, while not in itself a bad show, has the tendency to magnify a lot of SEED’s flaws as a whole, so stuff that was infrequent enough in the original series (like the stock footage) can become a lot more noticeable in hindsight. In addition, Destiny affects the ending of the original in such a way that it can lead the original series to feel less satisfying overall (particularly since Destiny’s ending is - very broadly - quite similar to the original’s).

SEED is also very character-driven (the line I hear a lot is that it was basically written as a soap opera), which is something of a two-sided sword. If the characters work for you, then all the better, but if they don’t then it can be difficult to summon the enthusiasm. It can also lead to the feeling that the series comprises of “The Protagonist and his Allies” and “everyone else”, so Gundam’s vaunted grey-and-grey morality becomes less so. I’m given to understand that SEED’s character focus is a big reason of *why* it was so popular when it came out, but it wasn’t expected to become THE big AU, at least domestically. SEED Destiny was greenlit shortly after the first with a view towards being to the original what Zeta was to 0079, but this meant that the creators then had to them unpick the (pretty damn good) ending of the original, so Destiny has a difficult time reconciling that.

I also see a great deal of criticism aimed at the character dynamic of Kira and Lacus (which again, becomes more pronounced in Destiny). Lacus is an ardent pacifist with strong personal convictions and a lot of influence (soft power, if you will), Kira is, by the end of the original series, an ace pilot par excellence, who can shoot down enemy mobile suits without killing the pilots. So it creates the dynamic of Lacus,being the character who hopes and dreams for a world free of conflict, and Kira, who’s the biggest beatstick in the Cosmic Era. Kira also spends much of the series trying to find a solution to the cycle of conflict perpetuated in the series, and the numerous deaths weigh heavily on his conscience. Becoming a pilot so good that he can non-lethally carve his way through entire fleets isn’t really an actual solution to that problem, it just enables Kira to be a one-man army.

Lastly (and this is likely just my personal bugaboo), the existence of coordinators in the cosmic era is a massive thing that spurs many practical and philosophical questions, and there’s a lot of emphasis put on it throughout the original series. But all SEED seems interested in answering is “Genocide: how much is too much?”

In a nutshell, SEED is fine by itself, but Destiny, while not particularly bad, has a tendency to accentuate its flaws.

Okay now that I’m like, 7 episodes from the end of SEED, can someone explain to me why exactly it’s so insanely maligned among English-speaking circles? Because it’s pretty good/okay, so either Destiny royally fucks things, or you all are filthy liars.