Gundam Seed: Death

[branchandroot]

A lot of characters die in GSeed. It being a story about war and turmoil, this is not surprising. What did surprise me a bit, though happily, was how few of those deaths were gratuitous. That is, although nameless characters die frequently just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time (Rule One for any Gundam Universe: never board a civilian shuttle going anywhere), most of the named character deaths, which might be expected to engage our sympathies more deeply, served specific purposes within the plot.

Fathers, of course, die on every side. This is very much in line, though, with one of the basic themes of Seed. The last generation screwed up too badly to retrieve, and killed themselves off. The next generation, their children, are left to chose again and try to save themselves.

Two characters struck me as dying purely for the sake of pathos: Moore and Aisha. This could be an extension of the theme mentioned above. Even the adults who get their ducks in a row can't manage to survive to have a good, whole life. I'm more inclined, though, to call these two deaths the ones that really are fairly gratuitous, and arranged only to drive home the tragedy everyone is involved in as heart-twistingly as possible.

Touru and Nichol die exceedingly parallel deaths that highlight two things. The one that's stated, of course, is just how far revenge will drive people, and what an unending circle it makes. As soon as someone's friend dies, the fight becomes personal, and the desire to extract revenge is merely passed back and forth until it becomes a standing wave called war. What is not explicitly stated, but what the progression of the story shows clearly, is that Touru and Nichol died to show that it's possible to stop. First Kira and then Athrun manage to stop, to step out of the cycle of revenge, despite having both lost close friends.

Two characters die what I would call soldiers' deaths. They live and die by the rules of organized warfare, with no, or few, regrets. One is Natal and the other is Andy. The striking difference, of course, is that Andy actually survives, and returns with a new view of where the lines of enemy and opponent should be drawn. Natal gives her life quite permanently to stop, in the end, the same ultimate enemy Andy recognizes. The difference implies, structurally speaking, that Azrael's very presence is deadly.

Which, of course, it is, deadly and toxic, which is why I was cheering like a madwoman when he finally died. It's very rare for me to actually hate an anime character; the theme of "everyone has reasons" is too strong in most anime storylines. Azrael I hate, very passionately. He was, of course, designed to be hated. The visuals paint him as rabid, while at the same time he seems coherent and logical--that is, not excusably insane. He knows what he's doing. His views of what the world is and how it works are simply so wrong that I found myself incapable of reacting with anything less than utter revulsion. Azrael hits just about every negative archetype of the past century or two dead on. He is insular and xenophobic in the most destructive possible way; he is cheerfully homicidal; he is irresponsible in the manner of someone who doesn't think he will have to answer for any of his actions to anyone; he is ruthless in the way of big business at its worst; he considers every person who is not himself a thing, a resource to be used. The three Earth Alliance pilots are a good example, and again we see the toxicity of Azrael's influence. In the end, their deaths were something close to mercy, considering how badly damaged they were. His arrogance is, in the most classical way, his undoing, as he drives even Natal to ignore her bred in the bone respect for the chain of command. With pointed poetic justice, she binds him by the rules of the position he usurps, and locks him in to accompany her down with the ship. I grinned like a loon.

By comparison, I felt only relief when Raoul was killed. He, contrary to Azrael, is presented as quite insane. I was actually impressed; I hadn't thought Koyasu could do such a convincing "strung so high he's snapping" voice. Then, too, Raoul is not presented to us as entirely wrong. The drive to annihilation that he cites is clearly demonstrated by the other characters. This does not make what Raoul does any more palatable; he attempts to arrange the extinction of his species (and, for that matter, all the other terrestrial species, too) because of his personal sense of injury by humankind's latest biotechnological contretemps. But, while the extent he takes it to is insane, Raoul's views are not wholly baseless. Despair is killed, in the end, by hope (that is, Kira), but it is only hope, not assurance, that this story ends with.

Frey's death looked to me like a sympathy bid. More precisely, it was the only exoneration possible, at that point. She fucked up too comprehensively to straighten it out without being a far stronger character than she was, or had the means or opportunity to become. She could only be redeemed by dying, so she was killed off. Personally, I thought she got off too easily, and should have been made to confront the cruelty and pettiness of sexually manipulating someone as lonely, adrift and stressed as Kira solely to assuage her personal fear and blind, unthinking bile toward Coordinators.

The vast majority of these deaths, then, serve actual plot purposes beyond merely overwhelming the viewer with the body count. I was impressed.