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Literature Text
By Dakota Wiegand
I’m going to take this review a little bit differently, so heads up! I started watching Mobile Suit Gundam Seed knowing that it is not one of the better series in the franchise. However, the animation seemed good and the mobile suit fights seemed entertaining, so I was cautiously optimistic. Well, that optimism went out the window really quickly. Let’s see why.
Gundam Seed premiered in October of 2002, wrapping up its 50 episodes in September of 2003. The show was very well received in Japan, winning numerous awards and has the distinct honor of being the first gundam franchise to sell over 100,000 DVDs of the show. On top of that, Bandai sold the most gundpla models from this series, which is probably why you see so many of the damn things on gundamplanet.com. With all of that, even critics gave the show praise for being original and incorporating political turmoil and twists throughout the series, as well as fleshing out the show’s characters. But, I don’t understand this. We saw political turmoil and twists in Gundam Wing and the characters of Zeta Gundam were very well fleshed out and relatable. So, did I miss something or did the critics just forget about the shows of the past?
Gundam Seed takes place in the Cosmic Era, or CE for short, where the Earth and its colonies are split between Naturals and Coordinators, or naturally born peoples and genetically engineered people. Okay, this sounds compelling because I can see this being an issue in the future if genetic engineering becomes more mainstream and affordable while still being a little taboo. The problem is, the Coordinators, who reside mainly in the Space Colonies, collectively made a government, called ZAFT, for themselves and declared themselves the next stage in human evolution and that all naturals should submit to them. Without the show’s knowledge, they essentially became another Zeon entity all the way down to having some repeat characters. The show also sets up the Natural forces of the Earth as having a more Earth Federation vibe to it and resurrects the White Base under the name of Arch Angel. So, maybe this wasn’t an accident for having these themes repeat.
In this show, the Coordinators are essentially an army of Newtypes. They do not have psychic powers, but they can process information faster than Naturals. This means that the Coordinators can react faster to situations. So, they can see faster, react faster, and execute more efficiently than anyone else.
Usually I will talk about the characters around this point. However, I wanted to get some plot points out of the way so you can see where I am going with this review. Just let me know if you think this sounds familiar.
The show opens up with the usual exposition dump that we get from many gundam franchises. The show’s first episode takes place on a neutral colony, which allows safe harbor for both Coordinator and Natural forces. However, the Naturals have been developing new high-tech weaponry on this colony unbeknown to the citizens of the colony. This makes the colony a target for the Coordinators, where they infiltrate the colony to capture or destroy the new enemy weapons. These weapons consist of 5 gundams and the Archangel mobile base. However, during this conflict, we are introduced to Kira Yamato, who is secretly a Coordinator that does not want to get sucked up in the war. However, when the fighting starts, he winds up in the seat of a gundam with the ability to pilot it without any formal training. The battle rages in the colony, which eventually leads to a large portion of the colony’s citizens taking refuge in the Arch Angel, whose Captain and higher command has been killed in the initial attack, leaving the command in charge by a Lieutenant and Ensign. The colony ends up being destroyed and it’s up to the Arch Angel, Kira’s friends, and Kira to defend themselves and the refugees aboard from attack by the Coordinators as they make their way back to friendly space and Earth.
Hmmm… It’s like I’ve heard this before. Wait a second! This is exactly the same as the first episodes of the Mobile Suit Gundam! No joke, this is near plagiarism. Amuro Ray and Kira Yamato are nearly the same character. Both find their neutral colony in the middle of the war because the good guys decided to build and test weapons on that colony. They both end up getting into the pilot seat of their respective gundams and fight off the enemy attack, buying the White Base/Archangel time to leave the colony before it is ultimately destroyed by ZAFT forces. They both also don’t recognize that they killed someone until they reach space and kill off a few more enemy forces in order to protect the White Base/Archangel while reciting that they are not a soldier and don’t want any part of this war.
Not only that, Capt. Bright Noa started off in Mobile Suit Gundam as just an Ensign. He takes over the White Base when the rest of the crew, including the White Base’s Captain, dies from the initial Zeon attack. The Archangel is left to Lieutenant Murrue Ramius to Captain the ship from the colony back to Earth. She is also accompanied by Ensign Natarle Badgiruel, who takes command of the ship’s defenses. The two butt heads together frequently in the show, mainly when Ensign Badgiruel undermines Lt. Ramius in situations where the Lt. is not comfortable in. I couldn’t help but think that a Bright would have just slapped the person undermining him a few times and the situation would have rectified itself.
This attack on the colony is led by the masked man of the show: Rau Le Creuset. I cannot help but think of him as Zechs Merquise 2.0 or Char Aznable 3.0. I am dead serious when I say it is the same character. Though he only gets into a mobile suit infrequently in the first few episodes, he commands the ZAFT forces in such a way where you go, “Oh, that’s a Red Comet move right there” or “Zechs would have done it in a similar way, too.” On top of that, we do find out that he has some psychic powers that are passed down from his father, who Rau Le Creuset is a clone of! He might as well have been a clone of Char/Zechs! Tallgeeeeeeeese…
The show also rips off the key start to the One Year War with the Bloody Valentine Massacre. If you remember in Mobile Suit Gundam, the start of the One Year War was a battle for a colony that wiped out nearly half of both force’s resources in the one day battle. Well, that’s pretty much the same thing that happened here. The Bloody Valentine Massacre was a battle that saw the destruction of a colony of Coordinators and both sides lost a huge chunk of their forces. The battle was so big that the debris of the battle was declared a massive grave site and it continues to orbit the Earth as a reminder of what occurred.
The show does introduce a few new things to the mix. For one, Kira’s childhood friend and fellow Coordinator, Athrun Zala, is a Mobile Suit Pilot for the ZAFT forces and was one of the pilots that captured a gundam on the colony. This brings an interesting conflict between the two sides, since they have a relationship with each other and ultimately don’t want to kill each other, though are forced to fight in the war. On top of that we are introduced to the character of Flay Allster, who is the daughter of the Vice Foreign Minister of the Atlantic Federation, or the Natural’s Government. He is killed by ZAFT Forces after a rendezvous goes wrong between the Naturals and the Archangel. She then manipulates and forces Kira to keep fighting ZAFT to extract her revenge on them. She completely nuts and the audience clearly see her manipulating Kira, along with some of the crew of the Archangel. She uses her body and her mind to have Kira stand firmer against ZAFT, even forcing him to fight his friend Athrun. She’s completely nuts, but in all honesty, she’s not even remotely fun to watch as she pulls the strings. Not only that, she just becomes a piece to a love triangle between herself, Kira, and Athrun’s fiancé, Lacus Clyne, who is the daughter of the President of ZAFT and hit pop singer of the Coordinators. She’s god awful annoying and I absolutely hate her. However, she is a pivotal character in the series and helps give the iconic Freedom Gundam to Kira later on in the series.
So, yes, I feel the show does a great job ripping off the story from Mobile Suit Gundam while contributing very little in return. However, we have the gundams to talk about! I think, due to the limited interest in this series, I am just going to talk about the three that Kira pilots.
The GAT-X105 Strike Gundam was one of 5 gundams developed by the Naturals in the war against the Coordinators. The gundam comes equipped with two Igelstellung 75mm Multi-barrel Anti Air CIWS, two anti-mobile suit combat knives, a beam rile and shield. The Strike is also capable of being hooked up to various backpack units to allow it to become and anti-star ship weapon, a long range sniper, or an air-to-land mobile suit. The suit also is equipped with Phase Shift Armor that shuts down most of the combat functions whenever the unit is in a non-combat situation. This is clearly seen when the Strike Gundam is in gray tones and then becomes the standard white and blue gundam. Personally, if you are using the gundam, wouldn’t it almost always be needed in a combat situation? This Phase Shift Armor is more to have a plot point in some episodes where the gundam cannot come out of it and attack/defend. I think it’s silly, but whatever.
The Strike is eventually passed down the pilot que of the Archangel to allow Kira to pilot the ZAFT designed ZGMF-X10A Freedom Gundam. This is the first main gundam that features the non-white and blue look. The design has a large chunk of black in it, using the white, red, and blue as highlights. The Freedom Gundam comes to play with 2 Vulcan cannons, twin beam sabers, twin hip mounted rail guns, a beam rifle and shield. This model also can be hooked up to various backpacks to make it a more diverse weapon. Also, this unit does have Phase Shift Armor, but I won’t get into that again…
Let’s talk about the animation and character design of the show. The animation, when it comes to the combat, is very fluid and entertaining. The animation for the characters of the show, when they are talking and moving the plot along in actual dialogue is off. For one, all the characters look perpetually wet. Their hair is always so glossy, like they stepped out of the show. Their eyes are also weird, like both the male and female character decided to go heavy on the eye liner and mascara. But, these may be me nitpicking. However, no one can argue that the animation for the mouth movements is very wrong. There is absolutely no natural motion in anyone’s mouths when they talk. It’s almost always a square and doesn’t seem like it syncs up quite well with the English voice actors. In fact, I doubt it would sync up well with the Japanese voice actors.
The character design is okay. Kira dresses like he had his outfit thrown into a blender and only had small belts to sew the shirt back together with. Meanwhile, the Mobile Suit Pilot’s helmets look off. To me, they look too blocky and creature like at the same time, as if they have a dinosaur on their head or something. However, the gundams and other mobile suits do look cool and I think the highlight of the show is the different gundam units.
This show frustrated me. I was expecting something unique and original like what we got with Turn A Gundam that came before this show. What we got was a reboot of sorts to the original series that started this franchise. I guess with it being the first show after the millennium that Sunrise and Bandai wanted to try to see what they can do to the original source material. It worked well in Japan, their main target audience, so that’s all that matters. To me, and what seems like most American Gundam fans, we wanted to keep it fresh, original and innovated. What we got was a show that we already fell in love with felt cheated of a new chapter of in the Gundam franchise. Granted, by the time this was debuting in Japan, American audiences were being introduced to Mobile Suit Gundam Wing on Toonami. However, I remembered seeing this premier of Toonami as well and not enjoying it as a kid. There’s just something very off about the show.
In all honesty, this show frustrated me so much that I didn’t even watch 20 episodes of it before moving on to a different show. The whole series left such a bad taste in my mouth that I couldn’t bring myself to finish watching it. I also decided to skip Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny because I couldn’t see myself watching season 2 of this show, especially since I cannot get through season 1. For those readers who enjoyed this show, I am totally fine with you enjoying it. For me personally, it felt hollow and a way to get more gunpla on the market. Maybe I missed something? Maybe this franchise isn’t supposed to be marathoned for this reason? Or maybe my reaction to this show is shared by the vast majority of the Gundam fans out there. I am not sure, but I would like to think I am not alone in my thoughts in this review. Maybe if they had a ripped off Capt. Bright I would have watched just to see the guy hit everyone on his ship. Either way, if you’re interested, check it out. As for me, I’m putting this one next to After War Gundam X on the shelf.
Show Rating: D
Thank you guys for reading! I started watching Mobile Suit Gundam 00 recently as well as The Real Ghostbusters, so look out for those reviews soon.
Watch what I was talking about!
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed www.toonget.net/gundam-seed
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny ww1.gogoanime.io/gundam-seed-d…
