Thread 23578502

>Gundam SEED is a smash hit in Japan and finally made Gundam popular there again
>Make a sequel
>It's so fucking horrible that all that goodwill it generated was long gone
>Move onto making Gundam 00
>Takes 20 whole years for the Gundam SEED movie to come out when it should have came out in 2006
Idk what happened with SEED

>>23578502 (OP)
SEED isn't bad but it isn't a good show either.

>>23578502 (OP)
>It's so fucking horrible that all that goodwill it generated was long gone

SEED Destiny was still a big enough success for more, the issue was the production hell with Fukuda and his wife, who for some reason was much more controlling over SD's writing than SEED's.

It's pretty telling the SEED movie's production finally moved forward after she was dead.

>>23578502 (OP)
I don't know if you're being too obtuse or are genuinely dumb, but... depression does things to people. We're lucky that it turned Fukuda to unhinged uncle who just wants to be cool.

>>23578571
This.
Morosawa's ill health is the reason why we didn't get Freedom back then, nothing else.

And remember, we were suppose to get Freedom after they did the HD remasters, but then nothing happened.

>>23578575
>And remember, we were suppose to get Freedom after they did the HD remasters, but then nothing happened.
to be completely fair, gotta give Fukuda the time to grieve.

SEED is great and Seed Destiny is "ok". I don't think it's as bad as people say but holy hell does it meander (but that's kinda common for Gundam). Shinn is a fun protagonist for a good 70-80% of the run and desu his anger is WELL deserved.

>>23578502 (OP)
>Movie makes over 5 Billion Yen, breaking every record set by Gundam.
>Gets an encore theater re-run with new scenes at the end.
>Gets brand new SEED animation signed in decades; starting with a Movie Prequel, Freedom Zero.
>Bandai declares SEED their 2nd strongest series after UC, with the possibility of more.
>Brings back old fans while making a ton of new fans interested in SEED.

>>23578608
SEED hate has always been overblown in the west and I've never figured out why. Was it 10/10? No but SEED was 8/10.
My only assumption is it was one of the first digitally animated anime that many western fans saw, and they pushed their feelings on the drawing style change into criticism of the actual series instead of just its art style. Then it just being a repeat of "SEED bad" for decades.

>>23578502 (OP)
SEED fanbase is strong as ever mate, fujos would buy anything with tube fuckboy and pink barbie (self insert) on it.

>>23578613
SEED is unoriginal and shit, it relies completely on hirai girl aimed designs. If you like SEED you're probably a closeted trans because no hetero male would like the corny plot, the lack of originality and the crappy okawara suits because he just gave up.

jesus fucking christ, seed haters are unhinged

>>23578625
Most Gundam is unoriginal and more original series are usually more disliked. People like UC and AUs that are UC like.
I've never even considered pretending to be a woman and trannies make me actively sick to look at. Also the suit design is one of the genuinely good parts of SEED as they have a very different style that is kept through most of the suits. They wouldn't work in any other Gundam, but since all of them are over the top it works.

Aile Strike is such a cool design

>>23578602
I'm watching it now and if not for Judau I'd easily give Shinn the worst Gundam protag award. Haven't gotten to his "redemption" (doubtful) yet, but so far he's just been a one dimensional living-in-a-single-moment seething confrontational retard that then transitioned into a smug asshole incapable of thought that just eats up whatever someone feeds him as long as it sounds nice. All while trying to bang people with the mental capacity of a 3 year old
As for the show itself, it's not as horrendous as I'd expected after hearing nothing positive the last 20 years, but would not call it good either. It does FAR too much of the copout shit where instead of an actual conversation people instead just stare and say eachother's names with an ellipses at the end until the scene transitions away, leaving all misunderstandings intact. I swear that's a good third of the "dialogue" in the show

>>23578502 (OP)
Pretty sure Japan liked Destiny just fine, because it gave them exactly what they wanted, more Kira and Lacus. Enough for them to forgive the dumpster fire production.

Are there any recordings of the original Seed Destiny, complete with episode 41 being a clip show instead of an actual episode?

>>23578729
what the bloody fuck are you on about? I do agree with you on the second piece though. you're not going to get his redemption in destiny though, it's in freedom.

>>23578613
Speaking purely for myself. As a literal 12 year old kid in 2004 when they were running it in the US, I just flat didn't like Kira. That was my primary problem as a kid. In retrospect, I kind of get it. Our protagonists up to that point had been Heero who set his own broken leg, Domon who was basically a martial arts super hero. The OVA leads who were mostly adults. Finally, we had Amuro whose series got interrupted by 9/11. At least we got to see him as an adult in CCA eventually though.
It was never the digipaint or the character designs. There's just something about the characters in seed, Kira particularly, that turned me off to the series.

From a macro perspective trying to figure out what went wrong for SEED, and assuming the obvious that everyone didn't have my problem. I think Gundam was already fucked in the US by that point. The most recent Gundam series to air in the USA was G unless you count SD Gundam Force. The initial wing boom was long over. The UC push got derailed after 9/11. 0083 (adult swim) and 0080 ( toonami midnight run) aired at night. We never made it to Zeta on TV. G got the franchise going for a bit, but bandai fucked that up with the G toy line horribly. Another factor worth mentioning, toonami went from a weekday block to a Saturday night block. Gundam TV series, before SEED, aired daily. SEED aired weekly. I don't know how much that hurt it, but I can generally assume it didn't help it. With the toy line fumbled after G and SEED being the first weekly Gundam in the US, I'm not sure if there was ever a real shot for it here.

>>23578754
Go to Animegg

>>23578631
>people like UC-like
SEED is the original MSG if it was completely devoid of nuance or complexity and instead ran on deus ex machina and fanservice. It's the fast food slop of Gundam.

>>23578926
Are there any surviving recordings of the censored version of SEED that ran on Cartoon network? I've seen these images posted for overa decade now, but never any footage.

>>23578613
the digital art is awkward as is hirai's same-face, but it's the writing that makes it miserable. everything is such a shameless rehash of 0079, much more than zeta or G or even wing ever were. but it's written as fujo-shit, like a bad fan fiction from a girl who only cares which characters are fucking. basic details of the setting are so ridiculously stupid it's impossible to take the show seriously, especially when you can compare it to much better worldbuilding in the rest of the series. destiny gets especially stupid but you still see it in seed. fllay, cagalli, kira and athrun are all stuck in soap opera romance melodrama, and when the characters get in a robot they're rewriting the OS while fighting off genetically-engineered superhumans or tanking nuclear explosions unscathed.

I love how the schizos cant even keep the story straight on if GSD was a flop or not

>>23578631
>as they have a very different style that is kept through most of the suits
Destiny literally just dropped the Rick Dom unchanged into the show.

>>23578975
Thanks.
>watching Seed Destiny's REAL last episode
>Jesus Machine and Infinite Justice take no damage, not even using METEORs against Shinn, Rey or Luna
>So much fucking clip show bullshit and cutting to Lacus and Cagalli's faces for no reason several times
>Lunamaria fucking turns coat and sides with Athrun over Shinn because Athrun said "YOU'RE KILLING THE FUTURE WITH YOUR ACTIONS!"
>Infinite Justice shoots off a booster that slices through the Minerva like tissue paper
>Messiah fires and just misses all the good guys, only killing Durandal's own forces
>That really stupid scene where Shinn sees Stella's ghost still happens
>There's a shot where Lunamaria looks like she's not wearing a helmet on the moon
>Durandal's eyes aren't drawn when he turns his throne to Kira
>No denouement, just the Three Ships Alliance pilots getting face cut-ins and Shinn and Luna watch the Messiah crash and explode
>Even the end credits are a clip show
Wow, this was fucking awful. With that last clip of the good guys's faces and how Kira and Athrun didn't even bring in the METEORs until after the battle was pretty clearly won, no wonder people call this "FLAWLESS VICTORY".

>>23578926
I think the super graveyard 2-4am whatever it was timeslot actually increased my love for SEED. Was still of the age where
>thing :|
>thing late at night :O
I miss those days

>>23579014
>Everything is a shameless rehash of 0079
Did I blink and miss Amuro having a best friend over in Zeon? And are we supposed to take the rest of these vapid generalities seriously?
>>23578729
Fuck you, both are cool.

Japan has shit taste in anime. So do weebs. Gundam Seed is no exception.
If they didn't then we wouldn't go through decades of slop that doesn't appeal to anybody but the worst of their worst like endless isekai and cute-girls-doing-cute-things.
That very brief turn of the millennium period of "cartoons but mature for mature kids like myself" is never coming back.
I'll go yell at clouds now like the old man I am.

>>23579119
>unchanged
nigga get your eyes checked, next you'll fucking say the GQuuuuuuX shit fits into regular UC

>>23578575
>>23578576

And Fukuda had to prove to the suits he was competent. Remember regardless of the actual reception and sales of Destiny he nearly fucked the production and they one episode that wasn't completely colored when it aired, and then they almost had nothing at all to air the week after, hence the episode 41 clipshow. And Fukuda also took some of their money to take Morosawa out on the town one time. There's a reason when Cross Ange happened Fukuda was given a unique consultant position where he had creative story control but the actual money and production process was handled by other people. Sunrise didn't trust him with those bits.

>>23579605
I will say I think Shinn's mental breakdown VA work was better in the original airing
he sounded legit deranged.
Writing for the breakdown is better in the second cut though

>>23580024
>pakis, afgans and jeets explaining how different they are

>>23580726
Nooooooo saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar, we very different saaaaaar

>>23578602
IIRC Morosawa really only wanted to tell a story that was about 12 to 15 episodes long. That's why the writing is so tight and well thought out during the first 25% of Destiny.

But Fukuda didn't want to do an OVA or shorter Seed TV series. He wanted the full 50 episodes and pushed his wife to extend the story. Morosawa did it reluctant.

>>23580715
I can't really discern performance in subs. I don't speak Japanese.

>>23578729
A good chunk of the drama in both Destiny and Freedom could've been avoided if the characters were actually capable of communicating with each other.

>>23580938
It's my #1 indicator of absolute hack writing. I rewatched SEED just a few months ago and it was not really an issue there. The worst it probably got were those Athrun recruitment pitches to Kira those rare times they were face to face, but those were at least actual exchanges.
Now I'm watching Destiny and the non-conversations despite being face to face are half the fucking show and you can tell it's entirely intentional. Simply infuriating how much shit could be resolved with a real 1 minute back and forth that just never ever happens.
Valvrave will probably forever be the worst to ever do it but Destiny is up there

>>23580986
I love the fact in SRW all Dearka had to do in order to completely derail Destiny is tell Shinn "Athrun may be too attached to him, but Kira is a good guy," causing Shinn to tell Kira why he's trying to save the Destroy's pilot.

>>23580763
Morosawa didn't want to do it at all, but Fukuda pushed because he wanted to have his wife hanging around the office. After 12 episodes she just kind of gave up with any kind of decent ideas because she was that apathetic to it that she couldn't think of anything. That's why they took the lazy obvious route of Durandal just being evil after all and Kira and Lacus jumping into take the protag spots again. She just couldn't think of anything better to do with the story.

>>23581094
Well I think the bigger help was the original badguys carpet bombing the Orb fleet a split second before Kira was about to intervene on Minerva, making the whole incident where he made himself look antagonistic to them and got Heine killed never happen.

>>23581100
Durandal was always evil.
Kira and Lacus were always the protags.

ngl, SEED's presentation of certain scenes were top notch.
The full launch sequences were really well done and extremely cinematic.
Freedom dropped the bomb with the launch sequences, and they didn't even do the iconic launch display boards.

>>23581277
>Kira and Lacus were always the protags.

They don't even show up until several episodes in and don't have more than brief cameos until 12 episodes in

I wish we knew how much Destiny's production was being dictated by corporate decisions. It sucks how we know basically nothing about production aside from the renaming of Super Freedom, Knight Justice and Sin Providence.

>>23581280
>Freedom dropped the bomb with the launch sequences, and they didn't even do the iconic launch display boards.
The way I see it its just Fukuda moving on from his Cyber Formula roots.

>>23581280
>they didn't even do the iconic launch display boards.

They did they just did it only with Murasame's Gelgoogs and the Destiny. None of Kira's launches got them for some reason

>>23581528
>dictated by corporate decisions
Wasn't that apparently how Wings of Words ended up as the fourth OP despite Vestige being right there?

>>23582159
You act like other shows haven't been tied up in deals like that.
Plus Meteor never got its own OP either. Vestige getting an OP cut in rereleases might've just been a DVD bonus.

>>23578926
This

I was too young for SEED when it originally aired. I grew up with 00 and Iron-Blooded Orphans. I would die on the hill to defend 00 and IBO over SEED.

Kira was insufferable. I disliked Athrun but I did appreciate him defecting to Archangel. But there really isn't anything to defend about it. Even the mecha designs were just redesigns of Mobile Suit Gundam and even Metal Armor Dragonar (which was sorta a reimagination of Mobile Suit Gundam).

>>23583171
How can you hate Kira and like Setsuna? 00 easily has the worst protagonist of any Gundam show.

>>23583232
Because of the end of 00 Season 1 when Celestial Being was on the run and they went into hiding.

Setsuna is a parody of Heero Yuy; Kira is a fucking Mary Sue. I fucking called bullshit when he didn't get killed when Athrun detonated Aegis.

00 and IBO are very flawed but I can tolerate them way more than SEED. I couldn't even finish Destiny.

>>23583171
>I grew up with shows that have decent first seasons and absolutely shit themselves in the second
FTFY.

>>23583301
Yeah both 00 and IBO pissed me off with the way their 2nd halves were. IBO's ending in particular made me rage.

But I'd still prefer that over SEED's shit.

>>23583305
>>23583301
Has Gundam had a series since Turn A that had a good second half? I'm mostly counting Destiny as the second half of SEED.

>>23583283
For as much flak as the Aegis explosion thing gets, by the end of Destiny I think it's only #5 on the list of total bullshit cockpit/mech explosion survivals
Makes me mad they never gave Natarle a handwave-revival

>>23578613
Not him, duh, butI hate Kira way more then setsuna. Setsuna I was always fine with the autistic terrorist. If you're making me worst profag in gundam I'm picking Mika. I never cared if he lived or died, and that's way worse in my opinion then SEED making me hate Kira.

>>23578502 (OP)
There were a lot of production problems with Destiny

>>23583364
The first Build Fighters is basically the extent of that list.

>>23583364
>>23584048
Build Divers Re:Rise's 2nd half was much better than the first, which was mosly very slow set up. The plot really only advances in the 2nd half, but since there was all that set up before it doesn't feel rushed either.

>>23584069
I thought Rerise season 2 sucked. It just became a cameofest and I didn't like it.

How the FUCK did this tranny version of Seiran (Seitranny?) get to be in the position he was in? Elected official I could maybe see but as the leader of the evil jew masterminds of the world, the dude was beyond fucking inept.
I was fully expecting there to be a Durandal exposition explaining how he was in fact a plant and how he got to his position, probably with gene manipulation/Extended shenanigans to explain how Djibril did everything Durandal wanted unknowingly.
>hyuk hyuk hyuk I have a 100% foolproof plan *pets cat evilly*
>30% of the Alliance fleet gets taken out as a result
>repeat 3x
>shows up in Orb JUST as Durandal is looking for an excuse to attack them now that the Alliance is all but dead outside of their moon base
>flees the wreckage of Orb to said base with its shiny new colony laser
>conveniently misses his actual target but does take out 2 of the plants
>Durandal does the just as keikaku smirk and now has an excuse to take them out and go full steam ahead on his dumbass plan

>>23578613
>No but SEED was 8/10.
I wish I was this easily impressed and thought practically everything was good. No Gundam is a 8/10, let alone SEED of all things.

>>23584584
I ranked Turn A and IBO season 2 an 8. Might probably end up lowering IBO's rank eventually.

Seed's a 5, and the version of Seed Destiny I watched was 6. Rau and Flay carry Seed hard, while Destiny has a bunch of good dub performances inflating it and the villain factions aging bizarrely well.

>>23584703
>Flay carry Seed hard
she's one of the most insufferable characters ever written

>>23584584
You really need to watch more bad shows/anime if you think SEED is below a 7.

>>23584720
You need to watch more shows if you think Gundam is good.

>>23584711
When was the last time you watched Gundam Seed

>>23584720
I've seen worse shows/anime than SEED. How many shows/anime you've watched? Personally, it's a 4/10 relative to other anime and even lower overall. I dunno, you gotta learn more about the art of narrative writing and cinematography or whatever the fuck else.
>>23584731
This is a pretty extreme opinion on a mecha anime discussion board, but I think it's valid. Do you think any Gundam approaches being good?

>>23584735
2020
she's a spoiled thot

>>23584749
>This is a pretty extreme opinion on a mecha anime discussion board, but I think it's valid
That tone unnerves me.

0080, X and Turn A are the only Gundams I can feel secure in calling objectively good. I also like Wing, IBO, The Origin and parts of ZZ, but those are too much of a mess in the details for me to feel secure calling good.

>>23584830
should've thrown a Witch in there for maximum effect

>>23584735
I’m watching it right now for the first time, just finished episode 43, and he’s right. Flay is a complete retard whose presence I dread on screen, she is one rolling Woman Moment until Rau takes her hostage and she shuts the hell up. Rau himself is just Great Value brand Char, far less entertaining than the real thing. At least Mu, the Sleggar clone of the series, has got to stay around for way longer, which is nice.

>>23584830
Are you even the same person I was replying to? If so, you're contradicting yourself. If I'm mistaken, I'm surprised someone can simultaneously hold a "harsh" evaluation of Gundam as whole while also calling X objectively good. X is conceptually interesting, particularly in a meta sense, but the show was such a letdown to me. Not offensively terrible but flat throughout.
>>23584901
He's trolling?

I swear people can't understand anymore that some series just try to be fun and that you don't need your brain to watch. Is it good to only watch those series? No, but watching everything with a critical eye misses the point.

>>23584964
imagine if it was fun and good

>>23584510
Yeah Djbril is absolutely the worst part of Destiny. Unlike Azrael he's just this incompetent moron who somehow has complete and total control of the entire Earth government somehow. He's literally introduced with him and his evil cabal and everyone else there tells him restarting the war is a bad idea but he says "Nah we're doing it." and that's that. Literally everyone obeys his every whim no matter how stupid and counter productive they are, culminated in him using Destroy to raze his own cities because they weren't anti Coordinator enough which ends up sinking his whole group. And yeah he basically always does exactly what Durandal needs to accelerate his plan and is always exactly where he needs to be for Durandal's next stage of attack and the second Durandal has everything ready to Destiny Plan Djbril is immediately killed off. Azrael had this weird total authority too (like when everyone but him wanted to use the NJC's to fix their energy problem but somehow he alone wanting nukes meant they had no choice but to do the nuke attack) but at least he had some justification as this big businessman and arms dealer. Djbril literally was just a Bond villain in his bunker the entire show and it didn't seem like anyone outside his circle even knew he existed until Durandal outed him.

I remember people speculating for the longest time LOGOS wasn't real and was just some BS Durandal made up as a boogyman scapegoat for anything he wanted to do, because nobody ever talks about LOGOS but him and Djbril's group never identifies themselves as such nor do they seem to want what Durandal accuses them of (he accuses them of wanting the war to last forever to profit, while Djbril very much wants to kill all Coordinators and end it decisively) and when exposed rather than go "Oh shit they found us out" Djbril and friends talk as if Durandal is running a con. But Freedom confirmed they were real so it was just Destiny's god awful writing that made it all that way.

>>23584964
The problem is SEED and Destiny didn't seem to be made as "Turn off your brain and watch the explosions" kind of show based on Fukuda's many many interviews where he talks like he and Morosawa made this very deep and introspective show that you are supposed to take dead seriously. It's not like Cross Ange, which clearly wasn't taking itself remotely seriously and Fukuda wondered why anyone even cared how Tusk survived when it was just the obvious heroic thing to happen

>>23584915
I'm not trolling. Maybe I should re-evaluate X, but I don't know why I should when apart from dumb stretches I really enjoyed it. I would go into more detail, but if I'm going to be labeled a troll for saying "I like Gundam X", then fuck you.

>>23585091
>using Destroy to raze his own cities because they weren't anti Coordinator enough
Blue Cosmos sicced the Destroy Gundam on Eastern Europe because they were resisting the Alliance. If this happened in Unicorn or Hathaway's Flash you'd never find it unbelievable.

>>23578625
You're 40+ years old and alone with only your image board cred as a seed rager, a fate worse than any trannoid

This little mofo has always been my favorite MA so when rewatching SEED recently I made an effort to keep track of its many many accomplishments, and it bummed me out. I glossed over the first episode but from 2 on it did not register a single kill despite a hundred instances of perfectly clean shots on grunt units. The best it managed was taking out a GINN's gun and I think maybe a leg once, and was basically just the designated annoyance for the Buster so it didn't snipe the Archangel's bridge
I don't know how they'd have done it since they were on the run until its retirement, but those gunbarrels needed a goddamn upgrade. The Exus showed what could/should have been when it took out like 5 units in 3 seconds in its one and only appearance

>>23585629
They were always at best just something that could with great difficulty take out a Ginn solo as opposed to needing several tag teaming to take out one. And completely useless against the GAT-X series because none of it's weapons were beams.

>>23585344
I wasn't saying that. That guy was implying you were a troll because you picked the most divisive Gundam series around here at the end so adding Witch would have a bigger effect. I was just momentarily confused.

Personally, I haven't seen X, 0080, Turn, ZZ and Wing in over a decade, so I have no real detailed critiques to shit out and have only memory of my purely subjective impressions. IBO was so bad I didn't even finish the second season. I recently re-watched G-Reco, though, and I think it's actually better than every Gundam series that isn't the original at the moment. I definitely didn't think that when I watched it as it was airing. The motivation to rewatch X is low due to memory of it being so dully written and nothing about its visuals, sound or direction of either standing out. I do like the OPs, though.

>>23583283
>Mary Sue.
You don't know what that word means.

>>23588793
Sure I do. It means a character I don't like

>>23584510
He and the other old men were just war merchants who wanted the wars to continue because that's how they make money. Sponsoring Blue Cosmos was the easiest path to keeping the war going.
It would be like if Lockheed Martin's CEO turned out to be in a global cabal with other major CEOs of companies that produce weapons and armor and all of them were deliberately instigating or prolonging conflicts around the world because it made their bottom lines bigger.
Durandal called him and the others out, claiming that they're the ones responsible for continuing the war, and that they need to be eliminated. Cue several of those CEOs being hunted down, while the rest retreat to a secret base that they funded and manipulated Blue Cosmos into taking over.
So now Djibril has lost most of his companies and financing sources, and attempts to make the war personal with Requiem. Unfortunately, he sucks as a leader and dies a dog's death.

>>23578613
It's just an extremely shallow AU whose design philosophies for both main factions I just plain don't like. I think the mech designs are poor, or uninteresting, and I think the story entirely revolving a very small cast of people who aren't really interesting to me makes it unappealing.

It also doesn't help that the actual interesting major characters like Cagalli and Shinn inevitably get phased out and shunted to the sidelines so everything can keep being about Kira, Athrun and Lacus, who have the personality and charisma of a black hole.

>>23589883
The problem is they also wanted to genocide Coordinators down to the last baby, which would be the end of their huge profitable war. Yeah they might be able to start something later on between humans but why if they had something going so good were they that desperate to end it so decisively?