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You know, there's "don't change a winning formula", and then there's overkill. By my tastes, Seed Destiny straddles the line between those two.

There is the repetition in a good cause, such as Shin's rage at losing his family, which echoes Athrun's but also points out that, no, this isn't an issue that's just going to go away, after all. Or the fact that ZAFT's new suits, produced in the same cause that was validated in Seed, when Uzumi Assa espoused it, are stolen just like Orb's were; in this case, it points out the limits of the "enough power to be neutral" policy.

Then there's the overkill, such as Rei and Neo having precisely the same telepathic zzztz between them that Moore and Rau did.

I am, however, willing to overlook the overkill, because they got Suwabe Junichi to do the voice of Sting Oakley, and that makes up for quite a lot in my book.

or

Why I like GSeed better than GWing

Which I do, so deal with it or hit that back button now and spare yourself the trauma.

...

Still here? All right, then.

1. GSeed has both a complex story and good ink. GWing had good ink, to be sure, but its attempt at a complex story ran sadly aground on the reefs of No Plot and the shoals of Shoddily Unmotivated Writers. GSeed still has holes in its backstory, but at least they only fit a truck rather than five Gundams abreast.

2. The morals in GSeed are applied with, say, a standard hammer rather than a sledge suitable for breaking boulders with one swing. This puts it one up on just about all the major Gundam series that came before it. Along the same lines, exposition is sparingly used to explain history, not employed wholesale to cram character motivation down the viewers' throats.

3. The unstable obsessive, the stroppy and idealistic fighter, and the savvy political leader are divided into three girls, rather than piling the entire characterization and plot onus onto a single girl and collapsing her character into total incoherence. Frey, Cagali and Lux manage their parts far better than poor Relena was ever given the opportunity to.

4. Redemption is limited, and handed out on a logical basis, rather than a free pass handed to everyone left standing at the end.

5. There is explicit romance and romantic resolution. Which won't make everyone happy, but does at least put some roadblock in the path of a total free-for-all with attendant psychotic breaks on the part of the fandom.

6. GSeed almost actually, kind of, justifies the whole MS concept. Nothing can really justify it, since articulation equals vulnerability and breakage points, and generalist engineering is the most inefficient possible way to go. But GSeed at least attempts to address real engineering considerations such as maneuverability.

GSeed is so very shoujo that it brought a warm glow to my heart. The original Gundam series (or two) was distinctly shounen--sufficiently so that it annoyed me, in fact, because true shounen stories invariably denigrate and diminish any and all female characters. GWing tried to be both, with... shall we say, variable results. Seed is where the Gundam franchise writers finally gave in to the inevitable and admitted who their fanbase really is. The signs of their capitulation are many.

Let me count the ways.

At the most basic level, we have the high coloring of the characters. Everyone has the bright hair and vivid eye colors that appear more often in shoujo series than anywhere else. The Oooo, pretty! factor.

At the plot level, we see nearly all the female characters kicking butt, each in her own way. Lux, when she finally gets Athrun to meet with her, provokes him rather harshly to think about what he's fighting for, and never mind that he's holding a gun on her. She takes command of a warship with the cool that would do a seasoned officer proud. Cagali shows just as much ability the first time she gets in a suit as Kira shows on his first time (though she does get rather shortchanged after that *grumps*). Maryu deals magnificently with Moore's playboy flirting, accepting him as a lover but on her own terms. She also shows real moral courage in taking responsibility for the decision to go rogue and not participate blindly in the headlong rush to war. Natal shows her own measure of that, first by choosing to stay with the military and commanders she believes in. And, when it's finally shown that the chain of command is in the wrong, she cuts the head off the snake with her own hands--locks herself in with a madman with a gun so that she can ensure his death. Mirialia forgives Dyaka, freeing him from the cycle of revenge; but she doesn't just let him off the hook for his past actions. Her forgiveness is informed, not blind, and as such it has a real impact.

Frey is the only useless frill, and, well, that's kind of her job in the plot. The contrast does make the other women's strength even more clear.

Also, romance actually exists, in this one! Not only are there the delightfully reasonable, and matter-of-fact, adult couples like Maryu and Moore, or Andy and Aisha. Not only is there the equally age-typical high-school dating drama of Frey dumping Sai to go mess with Kira's head. But we also have two very sweet young couples that we get to see develop from ground zero: Lux and Kira, and Athrun and Cagali. Each of these couples has it's own stamp, it's own distinct dynamic. Each also has humor and balance between the characters: Maryu's wry authority with Moore's cheerful randiness; Andy's sharpness and charisma with Aisha's sense of humor and loyalty; the thoughtful Athrun with the brash Cagali; intuitive and earnest Kira with calculating and unmoveably determined Lux.

I would also note that the Seedlings fall into pairs along the lines of what unlocks the Seed in them. Lux and Kira have a universal will to protect--to protect almost in the abstract. Athrun and Cagali, on the other hand, act to protect individuals--to protect what is concrete.

It's all wonderfully coherent and resolved. Which makes the deaths of Moore and Aisha hit all the harder. Which, in turn, gives the viewers even more reason to be happy for the young couples who survive.

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.

Seed presents us with some very clear distinctions between the different ways different people fight. And while war is consistently shown to be horrible, stupid and useless--both genocidal and suicidal, in the final analysis--fighting itself is presented as both necessary and effective.

At least, some kinds of fighting.

Example Pairs

One pair that demonstrates different methods is Maryu and Natal. We might characterize this as tech vs. line. Maryu thinks a lot, and, in combat, she often thinks too much. Her hesitation to commit immediately to violence puts her ship at risk more than once. Natal is a far better war-leader. Natal does that, though, by being devoted to an extremely simplified world-view of enemy=target=fire. In an ill-defined, free floating operation such as the Archangel finds itself muddling through Natal would be a catastrophically poor ship-master, as she does not have the flexibility to act as independently as Maryu does.

Together they make an excellent command team, and I think they realize it. They may not agree until the fatal end, but they respect each other's strengths.

Another pair is, of course, Kira and Athrun, demonstrating civilian versus military mindset. Kira is invincibly (and I use that word advisedly) civilian. He does not fit into the military system, and the whole concept of military discipline rather shocks him. He consistently acts on his own, without or against orders--returning Lux to an Orb ship is a good example. And even as he returns to the Archangel from that errand, he denounces any connection to the military. Kira is very much the grit in the military gears. Athrun, however, has been through military training. He has assimilated the idea that the other side is the enemy, and the enemy is out to kill you, and therefore you must kill them first. To be sure, his mother's death lends some personal credence to that idea. Kira showing up on the other side shows that this equation is not always true, but it still takes Athrun a while to shake off his conditioning.

Useful Fighting

This brings us to what types of fighting GSeed shows to be useful.

Military style fighting, with its order of enemy, objectives and chain of command, is demonstrated not only to not work but to be actively counter-productive to the avowed goals of the fight--to protect. Everyone who attempts to fight within the military system finds themselves on course for self-destruction and own-side-destruction, as Natal demonstrates.

What does work is fighting for one's personal convictions, and with friends. This is where Kira starts, and where Athrun joins him, followed eventually by both Dyaka and Issac. Letting someone else make your choices for you, the story tells us, is deadly; that is the trap that all of our characters must deal with, and the responsibility that the successful ones take on.

Note that successful does not necessarily equal living, at the end.

Nor is successful fighting a matter of One Against The World. Individuals band together according to their common moral convictions. One of which, on the successful side, is that war, and the xenophobia that thinks only of what color someone's uniform is before shooting, are both hideous and monumentally brainless. Another of which is that those who can fight must protect non-combatants on all sides as best they can.

While war is clearly stupid, short-sighted and wrong GSeed never devalues fighting itself.

Orb holds out by having superior firepower. The Seedlings are successful because they have better equipment and an extra level of ability to call on--ability arising from what amounts to bio-weapons research. The war is halted, and the threat of mutual annihilation averted, by fighting.

I would also observe, however, that the mover behind it all, the organizer and agitator, the one who sees what's happening and takes action--that is, Lux--is not primarily a physical fighter. Her greatest weapon is her perception, and her most abiding advantage is her status as an idol. She can speak and be listened to, and speak she does. And only because she holds the center can the fighters in the suits be effective.

Welcome to my pages on Gundam Seed, I hope you enjoy your stay. Please note that this is an analytical site, and there are spoilers scattered all over the place.

Let's be clear right from the outset that I am arrogant, high-handed and opinionated, in these pages. If you are likely to have a problem with that, you know where the back-button is. While I enjoy a good debate on textual exegesis, those who write purely to throw a fit because my opinion does not match theirs will earn nothing but my undying contempt and a personal mention in my email trash-filter.

The following is all based on the subs, as anyone who frequents any of my pages could probably guess.

Now, let the enjoyment of GSeed commence.

Fangirling

First, the squeeing, just to get things off on a good note. I love this show; I love the characters, barring the ones I hate; I love the visuals and the pretty colors; I really, really love the casting, and getting Ishida Akira for Athrun was a brilliant move. This is my favorite Gundam story, hands down. Good ink, good story, good seiyuu, just all around good.

This is not to say there weren't a few things I could have enjoyed more done a different way, but this is an imperfect world. The overabundance of flashbacks annoyed the daylights out of me, and I'd have loved more development of Lux's and Cagali's seeds. Ah, well.

Names

A quick note on how I gloss some of the names.

See, the official transliterations weirded me out so thoroughly that I went and looked up the katakana, and came up with my own transliterations, drawing on documented actual names where possible. I just couldn't stand the gratuitous double Ls.

Incidentally, I'm interested by the fact that Kira Yamato, a thoroughly Japanese name, is written with katakana, implying that it is not Japanese. Given the general mixing of nationality in these names, and the usual deployment of the different forms of writing, I take this to mean that the Seed writers are assuming that the people of this future speak some manner of amalgamated language. Something that is not entirely any language currently spoken. Hence, Kira Yamato isn't precisely a Japanese name, here, despite that language being its source.

It's possible, of course, that the bizarre Romanizations were done deliberately for the same reason. To make the famililar strange. Unfortunately, what they make the familiar, to me this time, is snigger-worthy. So I'll stick with these.

Kira Yamato; this was nice and straightforward.

Cagali Yura Assa; ka-ga-ri yu-ra a-su-ha, the last name being my personal shot in the dark. Her father's name, Uzumi Nara Assa (u-zu-mi na-ra a-su-ha), inclines me to think that the middle name is supposed to be one of those son-of/daughter-of indicators.

Lux Kline; ra-ku-su ku-ra-i-n, one of those meaningful names (lux-light).

Athrun Zara; a-su-ra-n za-ra, which I take at pretty close to official value since a) it is a viable name and b) all the other possibilities seem about equal.

Maryu Ramias; my best guess for ma-ri-yuu ra-mi-a-su.

Frey Alstar; fu-re-i a-ru-su-taa, a first name appropriate to someone who manipulates with sex, although Flay does have a certain possible applicability, also.

Moore la Flaga; mu-u ra fu-ra-ga. That extended vowel thing is not an uncommon way for Japanese to deal with oo plus l or r. Consider Wolfwood. Besides, calling the poor guy Mu (or, worse, Moo) makes me laugh too hard to type.

Mirialia Howe; mi-ri-a-ri-a ha-u, going with r for the first ri and l for the second, because that's the common pattern in Romance and Germanic languages.

Natal Bajirul; na-ta-ru ba-ji-ruu-ru.

Touru Kuunihi; tou-ru kuu-ni-hi, again a pretty traditional-sounding Japanese name.

Sai Argyle; sa-i aa-ga-i-ru, not really sure on that first name, so I'm going with the simplest rendering.

Issac Jule; i-zaa-ku juu-ru, though I do wonder whether his last name shouldn't be Jewel to do justice to the dear boy's ego.

Dyaka Ellsman; this one was a pain because I wasn't entirely familiar with the notation involved-- de(i)-a-(tsu)ka e-ru-su-ma-n. Finally went with a Russian derivation.

Nichol Amalphi; ni-ko-ru a-ma-ru-fi, the last name being a total shot in the dark.

Andrew Bartfeldt; a-n-do-ryu ba-ru-to-fe-ru-do, nice and simple.

Raoul le Cruz; ra-u ru ku-ruu-ze, again with assuming an l after the u, both because of common transliteration practice and because calling him Raw makes me helpless with laughter. I go with le for the ru in the middle, because I can't imagine what else it might be.

Mort Azrael; mu-ru-ta a-zu-ra-e-ru, because if you're going to beat people over the head with a villainous name, you might as well go all the way.

The Basics

Now, then, on with the more thoughtful reactions.

One of the things that most delighted me about Seed is its complexity. (Marketing imperatives or not, these writers made it work as a story.) Sai is an excellent example of this. He's an intelligent young man, fast on the uptake if his reaction to Marya's arrest of he and his classmates is any indication. He's mature and responsible, witness the work he puts into his position on the Archangel and the way he deals with Frey before and after she shafts him. He breaks out foolishly exactly twice: once when he comes after Kira, and again when he tries to operate Strike. Considering the stress he's under, this is really quite remarkable.

Yet, he's not perfect. He has his unthinking prejudices. Hearing Lux sing, he says that she has a beautiful voice. And then casually remarks that, of course, that's due to genetic manipulation, implying that her singing is lovely through no virtue or effort of her own. He makes this remark to Kira, not considering that it might hurt him, despite the fact that they've just been discussing how unreasonable it is to hold Kira's genes against him.

Sai is our clearest example of the conflict invoked, even in a thoughtful and intelligent person, by the Coordinator/Natural division. Despite probably having some inkling that Frey is using Kira, it hurts Sai to be cast aside because Kira is more capable. Even as he tells Kira that he is happy Kira is still alive, he asks why he can never match Kira. The Seed universe obviously has a long, hard row yet to hoe, and no magic insta-fixes are forthcoming. I very much liked that about it.

Onward

In depth reflections continue on the other pages. The Good Fight talks about how war and fighting are dealt with and differentiated between. Death deals with major character deaths. Shoujo revels in the wonderful shoujo-ness of the story, which delighted my heart. Comparative should be avoided by those dedicated to GWing above all else.

Links

I have yet to encounter any particularly reflective Seed sites. If you're willing to comb LJ for thoughtful moments, you could try starting with the gundamseed comm.

If you need basic information, like ages, seiyuu or episode lists, both The Gundam Encyclopedia and Gundam Seed Net have reasonably complete records.

If you want pictures, I recommend the Anime Fan Network.