Hogan Reviews

It’s time once again to do an overall look at a Gundam show for the sake of consistency and now it’s SEED Destiny’s turn, a rare sequel to an alternate universe series. While some will tell you the series is the worst Gundam show ever or something along those lines (they clearly haven’t watched Victory Gundam all the way the through like I did a few years ago…) and while the show isn’t without its problems, especially with its central protagonist, it’s far from bad, just not particularly stand out and feels like it’s on a holding pattern. Interested? Don’t want to read my four previous episode batch reviews? Well, read on!

The central plot of the show isn’t a bad one in terms of a sequel to a series that clearly wasn’t planned to have one, as the fragile peace between Earth and the Plants (space colonies) is shattered not by one side attacking the other but a rogue terrorist group trying to wipe out the Earth as revenge for actions in the previous war by sending the ruins of a colony towards the planet. The act is mostly stopped but it reignites old feuds and sadly a powerful group of wealthy racists called Logos pushes to “retaliate” against them by launching nukes at the Plants, and while this plan is halted that’s all it takes for the war to be back on. Unusually for the Gundam series most of the show takes place on Earth, despite the main focus being on a group of ZAFT soldiers (the military of the Plants) but it’s fine. There’s also the weird fact that a lot of the newly designed ZAFT mobile suits are actually Zeon mobile suits from the original Gundam series, so you get Zakus and Goufs flying around with more modern (at the time) designs. Very odd!

“Has anyone do the Char Aznable joke yet?” “Yes, in the first review.” “Oh…. Damn.”

As for the characters? Oh well, it’s a mixed bag. Our new protagonist is Shinn Asuka, a young man who was traumatized by seeing his parents and little sister exploded by a rogue missile during the Orb invasion from the previous series, scenes of him staring at his own sister’s severed arm and screaming is repeated quite a lot to really drive this point home. It’s actually a good start as he is single-minded in his hatred for Earth and for his own home country of Orb as they claimed to be neutral but let him and his family down by bringing war there anyway. He joined up with ZAFT and during an attack on his base ends up in the pilot seat of new prototype Gundam Impulse (then later the Destiny), showing natural skills as a pilot. The idea would be that he’d slowly see that no side is right in a war and that the leader of ZAFT Chairman Durandal is actually manipulating him emotionally in order to use his skills to achieve his plan. Sadly this doesn’t happen, instead Shinn gets stuck in loyal follower mode as previous series protagonists Kira and Athrun take up the mantel of lead characters for the latter third of the series. It makes for an unsatisfactory end of the show, and definitely the weakest aspect of the series.

Lunamaria takes a look at Athrun’s cock… … … … pit.

Second place to weakest aspect would have to go to the previously mentioned Kira and Athrun. Kira spends the whole show exactly the same as in SEED, happily in a relationship with singer / politician / extremely nice person Lacus Clyne and wanting to stay out of war though ending up in it anyway, but due to his super Coordinator skills he can take down everyone pretty much instantly without damaging their cockpit. That’s fine, he earned all that through the previous show, but it doesn’t make for a very interesting character. Athrun is the opposite, in the previous show he learned that no side is right, killing someone in revenge only makes someone close to the person you killed want revenge against you and thus creating an endless cycle, and his relationship with Orb leader Cagalli did wonders for his stiff personality. Sadly a few episodes into Destiny and after the attack on the Plants Athrun re-joins ZAFT in order to fight against the Earth and immediately trusts Chairman Durandal completely, even belittling Kira and Lacus for even suggesting he might not be on the up-and-up, even after they pointed out Durandal had hired a Lacus lookalike and tried to have the real one killed. It’s not until two thirds of the show goes by that he re-learns what he already learned about the futility of war and joins back up with Cagalli and Kira, then his character once again stays the same as it was at the end of SEED. You really get the feeling that the writers had no idea they’d be getting a Season 2 and so had no idea how to further develop either of these characters so kept one the same and regressed the other.

A dramatic retelling of one of the great Zeta storylines. A rare good reuse of an idea for this show…

As for other characters? Well, our lead in-suit antagonist is Neo Roanoke, a man with such a stupid backstory that this second watch through killed all his scenes because that’s all I could see when I saw him (more on that in the spoiler section!), with him is three more Cyber-Newtypes, or rather “Extended” pilots in the cockpits of three Gundams again, though this time they take one pilot, Stella, and re-do the Kamile/Four storyline from Zeta Gundam, where she is mentally broken but Shinn falls for her anyway, finds out she’s an enemy and then is forced to see her die on the battlefield. At least it’s a new storyline for the SEED universe, which is better than a lot of the storylines present. Shinn gets two friends for the series in Lunamaria, who ends up his love interest, and Rey, who very quickly goes from side character to major antagonist towards the end of the series. They both play their roles well, to be fair. The Logos leader Djibril has zero personality, to the point where he’s actually stroking a white cat on his lap in several scenes, just to over-emphasize how generic a villain he is. Thankfully Chairman Durandal is far more interesting in his motivation and the way he goes about it, even if trying to believe he’s not a villain during the show is extremely difficult.

On the plus side there are some good large-scale battles and some fun drama between some of the characters, often both at the same time. I do enjoy a lot of the SEED era suit designs as well. A lot of the annoying nonsense was wiped away by some of this fun action, at least while the action is going on anyway.

Overall Thoughts:

Hey, it’s a Gundam! Again, I do like a lot of the suit designs from this series. Character designs? Not so much…

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny is an odd one, it really feels like it was written in a hurry by a writing team that had no intention of creating it. The idea of a sequel series so foreign to them that most of the returning characters are held in stasis personality-wise, or regressed so they can redo their previous development, while new lead protagonist Shinn starts off interesting but stalls and then eventually gets dropped in humiliating fashion. At least some of the actual mobile suit designs and action scenes are fun, it’s no Victory Gundam that’s for sure, but it’s not worth sitting in front of for 50 episodes unless you’re really in love with the Cosmic Era…

I mentioned Neo Roanoke so I’m going to rant about this one more time: Neo is revealed to be Mu La Flaga, the man who sacrificed himself heroically in the finale of SEED. His suit exploded in the vacuum of space yet he somehow lived, found his way to Earth and was brainwashed into being a villain. He does eventually get his real memories back and resumes being the boyfriend of Kira and co. ship pilot Ramius, giving her a happy ending that wasn’t earned at all and erasing the great moment from the previous series completely. Clearly just a response to fan backlash, and it’s stupid…

No this isn’t a screenshot from the finale of SEED, the suits are clearly…. a little different.

The end sees a big deadly weapon in space wielded by Durandal as he attempts to initiate his “Destiny plan” to have people’s genes tested at birth and their fate decided for them then and there, thus ending all motivation and thus ending all war (hmm, not sure that’s how it would work, but whatever…) which all leads to Kira and Athrun mobilising to stop him, and stop him they do! Rey is revealed to be a failed clone exactly like previous series antagonist Rau Le Creuset and does battle with Kira while Athrun… *sigh*… calls Shinn an idiot, disables his Gundam suit and then leaves him crying in the arms of Lunamaria. As mentioned, no character development for him here, instead Kira and Athrun confront Durandal and its Rey of all people who overcomes his brainwashing to shoot the Chairman, not Shinn, who isn’t involved in this final showdown at all and is left crying. It’s one of the weirdest and most-blatant character assassinations I’ve seen, frankly. This leads to a standard “what they did afterwards” sequence. It’s a fine ending action-wise, even if “attack the deadly space weapon” is as generic a Gundam ending as you can get, just storyline wise it makes you wonder why you spent 40-odd episodes following Shinn if he ends up never actually breaking out of his shell and standing up for himself.

The heroic force at the end of the show, or in reality: what it should’ve been like for the whole show (well, minus La Flaga anyway…)

That’s it for Destiny, but I have one more Cosmic Era review to go up before I close the book on this particular AU timeline… (well, unless the long-rumoured SEED movie actually happens, anyway…)