#ESPECIALLY in Gundam

[scarletlotus182]

I think what a lot of destiel fans forget is that outside the spn bubble most of us dislike Supernatural and anything related and have mostly heard of it against our will.

The whole destiel news meme is largely because of circumstances surrounding it and not because people were genuinely interested in what was going on in the show.

I promise you when it comes to cultural impact, Gundam, a series thats been around since '79 and it's most recent series which focused on a gay relationship ending in marriage in a country where gay marriage is not yet legal has had the bigger impact.

Everyone is begging you to step outside of your western-centric bubble

[smokestarrules]

babe wake up they’re soulmates 

(Original post here.)

[rainywoof]

May I please share with you blorbo from my show suletta mercury ??

[ajihaew]

she is a witch

[sulemio-week-official]

Miorine (on the phone): Can you preheat the apartment? I'm on the way home.

Suletta: You sound like you're banana bread

Miorine:

Miorine: Be very careful with what you say next

[kaxtwenty]

The further I get into season 2, the more it becomes apparent to me that Mikazuki has some self-worth issues.

Insane ramblings and heavy spoilers for IBO under the cut, be warned.

He seems like the type of person who’s self-worth is defined by how useful he feels to those he cares about. His dream is to become a farmer, but despite his repeated attempts, his crops mostly just wither and die. He tries to educate himself, but he struggles more with reading and writing than other other kids. And when people point out how he’s improved, he downplays his progress. It feels like he’s kinda given up on his dream of becoming a farmer and being anything other than Tekkadan’s (Orga’s) strongest soldier.

Mika still wants to become a farmer, but he doesn’t seem to think that it’s truly feasible for him. So he leans harder into what he’s already good at: fighting. This adds an interesting element to his relationship with Kudelia. As her life’s goal is to create a world where children aren’t exploited for conflict and wars are prevented. Mika doesn’t know how he’s supposed to exist in Kudelia’s world, cause he is a direct product of the current world, where wars happen and children are raised to fight them. In Kudelia’s world, people like Mikazuki don’t exist, which leaves him in an awkward spot—at least from his pessimistic perspective.

So all of this just leads him back to Orga. His relationship with Orga is wrought with some serious codependency issues, but it’s where he feels the most useful, as he’s been Orga’s muscle for as long as they’ve known each other. Orga’s always ending up in a fight with someone too big for him and Mika’s always gonna take that person down regardless of the consequences to himself. This is their cycle and eventually it’s gonna hurt Mika in a way that will make his dream harder to achieve. But like I said, it’s where he’s the most useful and he considers himself a lost cause anyway.

I just think it’s…sad how everyone, including Orga, seems to have more faith in Mikazuki’s dream than he does.

[vhalesa]

It's Akko birthday!!!!!!

For Akko's birthday they get to be our favorite suffering witches in space, isn't that nice

[carnelianwings]

Something I find really funny is how for all the rumors that Seed’s staff/writers don’t like Cagalli, Orb under her leadership just keeps ending up in a better (political) position with each addition - Seed Destiny ends with Logos wiped out, Blue Cosmos severely hampered, and the entire Seiran family wiped out, including Yuna. This leaves Cagalli with almost no political opposition in Orb (since the second Battle of Orb would’ve flushed out a majority of the Blue Cosmos/Logos sympathizers within the government/military), along with giving her a boost in popular and military support thanks to her actions and field leadership during the battle.

(Cutting for me just rambling on a bit about the in-universe politics after Seed Freedom)

You can tell with how much she’s managed to get done in the years between Seed Destiny and Seed Freedom - in that short year and a half to two years, she was able to propose and found COMPASS, secret away and upgrade the Impulse, Destiny, Strike Freedom, and Infinite Justice, arrange for ties between Orb and Terminal to investigate/exchange intel (Athrun and Meyrin), and put into place all the evacuation/defensive protocols in case of another attack on Orb (as seen vs Foundation and Requiem, even if she needed Kira to pull an “I lived, bitch” to Aura 😅).

And it doesn’t end there - thanks to Foundation, Cagalli arguably has an easier time internationally now, because the Eurasian Federation leadership also got hit and the Eurasian Federation, while not necessarily Blue Cosmos sympathizers like the Atlantic Federation, was very staunchly anti-PLANT, which I think would’ve caused some problems for Cagalli, especially post Seed Destiny with Lacus joining her for that broadcast.

I actually think Orb probably has fairly decent diplomatic relations with PLANT (I think Chairman Lament mostly cut off that call after everything went south in Eldore because of the whole nuke situation), especially since Lacus is COMPASS’s inaugural president, plus the time both Dearka and Waltfeld (I’m not sure if he’s in Orb or PLANT as of Seed Freedom since his silent cameo has him helping to stop the coup in PLANT in Seed Freedom) spent there. And we have a very prominent all-Coordinator team with the Yamato Team - truth be told I actually wonder how much the Earth Alliance invested into COMPASS because everything we see on screen is either contributed by Orb (Archangel, Murrue and crew, Kira, Mu, and the Murasame Kais), PLANT/ZAFT (Millenium, Konoe and crew, Heinlein, Shinn, Lunamaria, Agnes, Gelgoog, and Gyan), or arguably both (namely, Rising Freedom and Immortal Justice). Unless I missed a minor crew member along the way. Which is possible.

Also pure speculation on my part on this - but the fact Seed Freedom has Athrun going into intelligence with Terminal (which we first see as having a presence in the PLANTS) from the Orb side and Yzak and Dearka going into intelligence from the PLANT side can’t be a coincidence. I want to think the three of them decided on it together because being in intelligence/covert ops gives them the chance to work together without having to force anyone to change their current loyalties - I don’t think Athrun can be truly loyal to anyone except Cagalli after Seed Destiny, and Yzak was always loyal to PLANT, and if Dearka hadn’t been captured and made to realize how extreme PLANT had become under Patrick Zala he wouldn’t have switched sides to Orb/Three Ships Alliance during Seed either. Which also indirectly feeds into Orb and PLANT having better political relations than Orb and Earth Alliance.

Which brings me to my final point - I would be very surprised if Orb isn’t the primary target for the antagonists in a Seed Freedom sequel. At this point Orb’s capable of doing too much with the limited resources it has as a small nation with too much military strength at its command. And there is room for a sequel (setting-wise) because while Earth Alliance took another major hit with during the Foundation Conflict, the ideologies that led to the First and Second Earth Alliance-PLANT wars still exist - even if Blue Cosmos lost another leader, even if the believers of Coordinator Supremacy lost another leader (in Jagannath) those ideologies still fundamentally exist. All the Foundation Conflict did was serve to take down the military leadership of those ideologies - even if the public on both sides see those views negatively it doesn’t make them go away.

[c0rpsedemon]

the thing about the queer media tournament that really gets me is that last i checked there wasn't a single mxtx work on it. like not even the untamed made it in and don't get me wrong the og mo dao zu shi books are huge but cql is def more popular among tumblr circles. idk it just really rubs me the wrong way how every single piece of western media that ppl have ever gotten a lil bit aggressive abt shipping with is there and then for east asian media there's utena and madoka magica and the handmaiden and last i checked that was pretty much it. and then for the rest of the world there's next to/nothing but idk enough to really make judgements there.

[wordsandrobots]

You know, watching play-throughs of the Iron-Blooded Orphans DLC for Super Robot Wars, I am struck by how slightly *off* the characterisation is. I suspect that's a natural consequence something like this, throwing so many characters into the mix that you can't help render them down a bit (and then there's translation on top of that), but it feels very weird to have Shino saying:

Shino: When you're as smart and skilled as me, you can get used to anything. Akihiro: "Smart and skilled", my ass. First thing you did was try to steal some food, and I had to save you from an angry mob. Shino: Shush, you! That was just, uh...a bit of a blooper. Happens to the best of us.

This reads to me more like something written for Eugene (in fact, this whole exchange feels like something you'd see between Eugene and *Shino*, not Shino and Akihiro). It's one of those quirks that I have perhaps spent too long dwelling on, but in the anime, Shino's boasting is almost exclusively about Tekkadan as a group and rarely if ever about himself. If anything, he tends to own being a goof more readily, laughing off his own missteps (with a couple of amusing exceptions) despite an obvious ego regarding his fighting skills and a preoccupation with not appearing 'lame'.

(I do think Shino would be 100% down for stealing food if necessary, although given his in-canon attention to stocking his mobile suit with ration bars, it's just a generally weird situation to gesture at.)

That said, the flirting with Gundam Victory's all-women mobile suit squad feels on-point. Possibly that's just because this is the only official-ish example we have of what Shino is *actually* like when he's flirting. It all happens off-screen otherwise, so it's fun to see someone attempt to portray the kind of crashing and burning that got Lafter calling him a 'pierced idiot'.

Shino: ...So what I'm saying is, we should all go downtown and have some fun! Kite: Only if it's your treat. Shino: Yeah, sure, it's all on me! But ALL of you Shrikes gotta come! Come on? Pretty please? Peggy: You seriously can't take a hint, can you? Helen: I mean, he definitely can't, but... c'mon, free drinks! Franny: Let's just make this clear: you're just a walking wallet to us. Shino: Y'know what? I'm okay with that. Shino: Love is a journey, and it's gotta start somewhere. Ain't that right, Junko? Junko: Hah! You've got guts, I'll give you that. Keep it up, Shino. Shino: Yeah, baby! I can hear the door to your heart unlocking! Miliera: He's actually going after Junko? He's either very brave, or very, very dumb. Mahalia: He'll have to go through all of us before he gets anywhere near her. Shino: ALL of you? Whoa, mama! Cony: Wow, he really can't take a hint. It's kind of impressive, really. Juca: Honestly? I don't mind it. It means he's fitting in well with the team.

(I still haven't seen Victory but I know what happens to these ladies, so there is a layer at which this is . . . a choice in terms of character match-ups. Seems like that's half the fun of these games, though.)

But yeah. Given that this feeling of it not being quite on the money with characterisation extends to what I've seen of both Lelouch and Char too, I do think it's kind of inevitable with what this thing is -- broad-strokes and all that. The only bit that genuinely annoyed me was the site of Biscuit's death being changed; they have Orga reacting as if Biscuit was killed at Edmonton and saying he never expected to be back there, which is really bad example of cludging a whole heap of different stuff together for the sake of a condensed emotional beat.

Still, I can't deny it's highly amusing to have McGillis rocking up to get advice from his peers in scheming bastardry while Orga is sitting in the corner wondering why this is his life now. And Akihiro and Shino engaging in one-up-manship with the Ultramen is fun (even if I do not get along with that anime AT ALL).

[gremoria411]

Alright so, new Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance 5-minute clip, looking to be the opening of episode 1. This’ll probably be my last post on the series until it actually comes out, so I’m gonna talk about the clip itself and predictions for the series in general (and maybe a few other things).

Yeah, it looks pretty good overall.

The Good

The mobile suit animation’s nice and smooth, the visuals are gorgeous (I particularly like the redesigned GAW and Dopp aircraft). I really like the look of the rest of the Red Wolves squad’s Zaku’s, and the score sounds nice. We still haven’t seen anything of the plot or any non-Zeon characters, so it’ll be interesting to see how they play this (they seem to be building up the Gundam as this horrifying monster, which is a neat take). We know the team is operating in Romania on November 6, which puts them very close to the Battle of Odessa on November 7th. It’s unlikely that they’ll be directly involved in the battle (otherwise we probably would’ve seen it in the trailers), but it seems likely that they’ll be involved in the fallout as the Federation begins to get its act together. This is also fun as Odessa is the Federation’s first deployment of their GM units (specifically GM Ground Types), which Zeon has no experience against. The existence of a Gundam on top of that is essentially the worst-case scenario for any Zeon Force, so suddenly Iria’s look of horror has some nice context to it. There’s obviously a lot of influence from Gundam Igloo, so it’ll be nice to see that too. I’m personally really hoping we see some space combat, but I won’t be too disappointed if that isn’t the case.

The Bad

Voice acting and lip-synch are looking kinda rough - buuut we kinda already knew that from the previous trailers (like that pink-haired soldier). And honestly, I don’t think it’s really an all-over problem, just a few specific performances - a lot of the bit soldiers were pretty good and, though maybe this is just me, it’s probably going to have a Japanese dub track, so if the voice acting’s flat enough then I’ve no issue watching it subbed (not that that’s a solution I’d suggest for everyone, obviously). It’s also possible that the actors were given poor direction with what the scene was going to be, hence their performances feeling disconnected.

I do feel like it’s suffering a bit with it needing to “set-up” Gundam a bit - the two soldiers conversing where one says “yeah, I’m looking forward to going back to my girlfriend, in space” then gets shot shortly after. Like, if he had been shot by a mobile suit than I would’ve said that was Gundam in its bare essentials, but it does feel like there’s an….. obligation? Towards it? Sorta like “yeah yeah, war is hell and all that, oh gotta mention that we’re a sci-fi property too, that’s important….”. I don’t know, it’s just I can quote multiple scenes that have done a better job of establishing stakes and tone like that off the top of my head, so Requiem for Vengeance’s take just feels pretty flat. Also - and this is very nitpicky - the individual space colonies in the sides have names, like Tigerbaum or Achilles, so the soldier could’ve just said “my girlfriend in the Achilles space colony” or something. Yeah, it’s still a bit hackneyed but it would’ve made more sense. Dang, if only we’d solved Gundam’s need for set up back in 1979, isn’t it a shame we can’t take 20-30 second to be like “Oh hey, Zeon declared Independence and now there’s a war on *shot of operation british*. It’s not going well though”. C’mon guys we already cracked this, what’s the issue?

The character animation’s rather lacking too - I don’t know much about Unreal Engine, so it’s possible that it’s rather tricky to animate convincingly using it and they wanted to use those resources on the Mobile Suits, but several of the Zeon and Federation Soldiers just look like tap-dancing deer in headlights in the opening scenes. The Tanks….. I’m probably remembering IGLOO’s animation as better than it was, but they feel so cumbersome here, and the way that the Federation tanks just line up behind each other when attacking feels kind of lazy - especially since they outnumber the Zeon tanks nine-to-four.

Other stuff

There’s been basically nothing on the characters as yet, so there isn’t really anything to go on in terms of personality. Honestly, it could go either way with them, though I fully expect at least one of Iria’s wingmates to be killed (likely by the enemy Gundam, but it might be thematically interesting if an enemy tank gets them). Furthermore, it looks like one of the tank commanders seen in the clip is going to be a recurring character, which’ll be interesting. It’s unclear as to whether Newtypes will feature - Iria has an explanation on what they are but it’s unclear if this is just scene-setting or not. I’m not really sure how they’d fit into the plot, so I guess it’ll be a wait-and-see affair. I’m also still interested in seeing if we’ll get anymore kits out of this - I can’t imagine there’s any reason we wouldn’t see some more Zaku’s or the new GM, since most of the design work is already done. I’ve noted previously that the “new” Gouf Custom design appears to be so it will require the minimum amount of work to turn into a kit, since it’ll most likely be a variant of the existing one.

Apologies if this posts a good deal more scattershot than usual. It was partially to collect my general thoughts on the new clip in general, and also because I wanted to interrogate my own thoughts a little bit. This is because my immediate thought at the end of the clip was: “Man, Code: Fairy was crap”And I have absolutely no idea what brought that on.

[amplexadversary]

Honestly, I think if Rain Mikamura's issues were explored more rather than sanded down by both the show and fandom when they aren't convenient for a joke, she might have had a chance at being one of my all-time favorite characters.

I've alluded to the idea that bringing her jealousy issues to the forefront would thematically strengthen the back end of the show, and tackling her communication problems on the same level as Domon's would have made them work much better as a pairing.

(they have polar opposite issues where Domon needs to be told "hey, people would like to know this, so say it," while Rain expects people to read her mind) (I'd still ship her with Schwarz though tbh)

Also, she owns multiple guns and threw a wrench at Domon's head at one point. This woman is violent and repressing it.

FInally, there's the fact that Rain seems to think that she can, and is expected to, control the behavior of other people. Her meltdown over her father's actions where she concludes that she is equally responsible kind of suggests this, and she spends a lot of time trying to control Domon's behavior even when he's not doing something reckless. I would have really liked if the final arc had some kind of element of the inherent horror in taking that to it's logical conclusion, since we know the DG can literally control people.

I really think my biggest gripe about her is that most people follow the writers in pretending that the flaws they gave her don't exist, and without them, Rain is kind of a boring, can-do-no-wrong type that I really cannot stand, so as a result I can go between really liking her and avoiding the hell out of her.

[asterizmz]

honestly a little betrayed by the gwitch fanart scene. the shippy art is alright. yes. but suletta is literally like made to be one of those characters fanartists draw like shes being displayed in the sistine chapel through like 3 layers of symbolism. do you hear me. the red:birthmark ed was my 9/11.

[bagea]

i realized i need to take more photos of my gunpla

[ikuzeminna]

Gundam Seed Freedom was… something

I'm not exactly a Seed fan. Yes, I own the gunpla, yes, Cagalli, Athrun and Badgiruel are my favorite characters, yes, I enjoy the series up until Kira gets the Freedom, but I will still mock it mercilessly, groan at every lack of bra or brain cell and by heavens, I want to smash every single one of Lacus' Haros to pieces.

And I only watched Destiny once because I couldn't stomach Cagalli's character assassination a second time. Or Gladys', literally, in the very last second. Like, ma'am, you have a kid. What are you doing dying on an exploding asteroid? :/

So you can imagine I wasn't exactly refreshing Gogoanime every two seconds to see if the movie had dropped. Eventually, it did and I got around to watching it, and although I had already spoiled myself with plot summaries and recorded scenes, this movie somehow managed to miss even my wacky expectations. I was promised wtf scenes, and I got them, but at x1.2 speed which just left me confused and checking my speed settings all the time.

So, let's get into this, with spoilers and all.

Though honestly, what's there to spoil? It's just the last episodes of Destiny all over again, which itself was recycling Seed's finale. If you have seen Destiny, imagine reading a retelling of its finale on Wattpad with a five-year-old and a fourteen-year-old collaborating. The five-year-old handled the plot while the fourteen-year-old handled the romances. That's Seed Freedom in a nutshell.

To be a little more specific, the plot is basically a new bunch of bad guys, Accords, who are super Coordinators able to read and manipulate minds, wanting to implement the Destiny Plan because... reasons. They were all grown by Walmart Mariemaia who Benjamin Button'd herself because... Tuesday. And she's the queen of a kingdom now, somehow, which has the brilliant name of "Foundation."

"Kingdom of Foundation." Why don't you have it run by Prime Minister CEO while you're at it? Seriously, this physically hurts if you speak English. -_-

Anyway, the Earth Alliance and ZAFT are still trying to kill each other because it's Seed and while people can genetically manipulate their offspring to be superior and even reverse age now, they still haven't figured out how to grow brains yet, which is why Cagalli launched Seed's version of the Preventers, called Compass, which is basically Kira beam spamming everyone into submission like he always does because it's forbidden by law to put the words "Seed" and "originality" in the same sentence. The Accords use the conflict to make it seem as though the Earth Alliance blew up their Kingdom of Stupid Name via nuke so that they can then retaliate with Requiem because, again, originality is not allowed in this movie. Oh, and the Accords are also racist, because duh, everyone is.

Does this all serve a grander scheme? Why, of course! Do you think it's so that they can stage a successful coup on the PLANTs to gain more allies?

Actually no, that just happens to coincide.

The far grander scheme is to pinch Kira's girlfriend!! -_- I kid you not, as soon as they fire those nukes on themselves, they pull a Lady Une and make a dramatic escape with Lacus straight to space within 5 minutes tops, just so that Orphee, the leader of the Affronts To My Intelligence and a visual cross between Athrun and Cagalli, can repeatedly get rejected by Lacus since Baby Queen Abysmal Eye Shadow hardcoded being horny for Lacus into his DNA, but her love for Kira overrides her own genetic coding finding Orphee attractive (since Lacus was apparently also created by Queen Baklava For Brains while her mom wasn't looking?), so Orphee just ends up growing Shinji levels of sexually frustrated with Lacus, which, given how Lacus' (and every female's, honestly) lip fillers make her look like a blowup doll in various scenes, especially when she forms an "oh" with her mouth, I can almost understand why hearing her say no is unexpected. Too crass? That's what you get for making me watch a zoom-in on Lacus' giant butt in a cat suit in the finale.

It doesn't culminate in him choking her out, but Orphee does try to force himself on her and the fact that Lacus doesn't knee him in the balls right then and there makes the whole scene pointless. It's very reminiscent of a fourteen-year-old fanfic writer thinking a woman talking her almost-rapist out of his action is the height of female empowerment. It's not. And this wasn't written by a fourteen-year-old. Fukuda says there were over a hundred drafts for this movie. And they settled for this? Lacus should have used that unearned Seed mode and gone Corin on Orphee's nuts.

(Go watch Turn A if you have no idea what I'm talking about. It's Seed but better. Which is an embarrassment, since Seed came out right after it.)

At this point it's pretty clear that our fourteen-year-old has infiltrated the plot with her romances, because we can't have a mere final battle with giant robots and pink explosions, it has to mean something!

And in this case, that meaning is a battle for Lacus' love!

Same, Cagalli. -_-

So it's time now to look at the romance side of this movie, just so that you can understand why my brain started dripping out of my nose by the 1 hour mark already.

Every single character arc in this movie is relationship drama. Every. Single. One. From Kira to Lacus to Orphee to Ingrid to Agnes to even Luna and Shinn. If characters interact, it's always in the context of the same freaking love triangle. No variation.

So let's go through the list. First, we have Orphee, who we've established wants to get into Lacus' pants. Ingrid, the blue-haired Accord chick, is saddened by this because she wants him to get into hers instead, which, given how this Village Of The Darned refer to Mini Me as their mother, is... Freudian to say the least. Baklava For Brains either didn't code her right or is a sadist, I guess. Next, we have Kira, who is in Lacus' pants, but thinks Lacus prefers Orphee and starts whining about it because the movie can't make up its mind on how it wants to portray their relationship. It's clearly established that them living together alone and acting like husband and wife is anything but platonic, but when Lacus and Orphee have their shoujo sparkle moments of intense, sexual attraction, Kira acts as though he isn't her boyfriend, when it's abundantly clear that he's seen her naked on the daily for the past year or so. The movie adds the new character, Agnes, to the mix here, who looks like a pink Misa Misa (alas, without the hidden intellect) and has the hots for her commander, Kira, taking every opportunity to hit on him, even going so far as to try to plant one on him while Lacus is "hiding" around the corner.

....She's not even trying.

And you know, you just know a fourteen-year-old wrote this because we hear nothing of the 152 regulations that hitting on your superior officer go against, never mind any consequences, because... brilliant writing. That they dare to give Agnes Flay's voice is such an insult to me, considering how her writing was freaking Mark Twain level compared to this Post-It note version we're getting here.

Kira ultimately rejects her and Agnes, who previously mocked Luna for settling for whatever came along (which had me laughing real loud because where is the lie?), falls into Walmart Yzak's arms a mere two seconds later because he told her she's pretty and proceeds to spend the rest of the movie as a bad guy because that's what happens to a woman scorned: both self-esteem and the IQ start hitting the negatives.

There are also Murrue and Mwu, and while they don't have drama, they are pretty much reduced to their relationship to each other. You think you were gonna get any personality out of the veteran captain of the Archangel? Pfff, not with Becky writing. Have Murrue jumping, straddling and kissing Mwu on the bridge in front of everyone instead.

The only girls who aren't strangled by a relationship are Meyrin, who barely says three lines but gets to be a pilot now for some reason, Cagalli, who is, weirdly, the best character in the movie, and Ehehe. (You will know exactly who I mean once you watch it.)

Out of those three, Cagalli is the only one actually in a relationship and, lo and behold, her and Athrun are unexpectedly handled well! They even use that they are dating in their fight against Walmart Yzak, which leads to that famous lewd Cagalli fantasy of Athrun's. Cagalli even gets to react to that! (She's not pleased. lol)

The funniest part is that we didn't even know Walmart Yzak is allergic to girl cooties, what with hitting on Agnes previously, so this was Athrun full-on trolling him with Seed's version of the Sexy Jutsu. Look at Athrun having a sense of humor. Look at Cagalli consistently making every scene she is in better. :)

I'm honestly surprised that the best characters in this movie end up being Athrun and Cagalli, with the former being the most badass and the latter the most relatable and best-written, complete with personality and crowning moments of awesome, given how they had been handled in Destiny.

Took them 20 years, but they finally made up for it. Now, if only the rest didn't suck so bad. :/

Because the rest is pretty much Kira and Lacus angsting over not deserving each other for almost two hours because they apparently never sat down and talked about their feelings and relationship, so the merest hint of rejection or competition sends them spiraling into a depression that becomes a galactic conflict for reasons beyond intelligence. Like, picture Shinji and Asuka in a stable relationship act like Shinji and Asuka in Eva, without any depth and in dumb. That's the level of Huh???? the relationship was written with. It makes no sense at all.

Why are you two so insecure? Why is all it takes one comment from random people to make you question your year-long relationship??

Agnes, Ingrid and Orphee are there to provide an external source of conflict because the relationship itself is full of gaping holes so we can't focus on that, and because Becky is fourteen, the best she can manage is contrasting Kira's and Lacus' lip service pure love with evil horniness. Even though it's heavily implied that they've boinked, too.

Okay, I'm being mean to my fictional Becky here. I have actually seen digital manhwa that have this exact same love story, so it's not like you can't write them as an adult and make money with them. I just had irrational expectations, I guess, after Flay hopped over that low bar.

The cherry on top of this sad puddle of melted brain matter is Fukuda saying in an interview that he viewed Kira as having an obsession with Lacus in Destiny, so this was his attempt to fix that. Sir? You catapulted their relationship right past toxic and straight to the acid pit from MK II, Erich Fromm quote or not. Lacus blathering about needing someone because you love them (mature love) rather than loving someone because you need them (immature love) is nothing but lip service in this fetishistic nightmare Lacan would balk at.

I had to sit through two hours of "Gundam Seed - Get All These Drama Queens Freaking Therapy, But Not For War Trauma, But For Their Psychotic Relationship And Self-Esteem Issues."

Because not being in a relationship with the person you want in this movie results in emo exits to the left (seriously, count them), incessant temper tantrums and desperate clutching from heartbreak. We also get to wade through Kira's emo episode as the movie's emotional turning point, whining that Lacus doesn't love him because he can't make her happy and that he's good for nothing, which Athrun thankfully beats out of him quickly in good ol' Beavis and Butt-Head fashion, lest they have to go through Kira's character development in Seed again, too. And no, Kira still hasn't learned how to throw a punch properly. Athrun destroys him.

I read in a lot of reviews that people cheered at this scene, but I had to check my speed settings because the movements were all so fast. The pacing is really abysmal in this movie and I don't mean in a plot kind of way, but in a "my cat hits my keyboard and keeps fast-forwarding scenes until I stop it" kind of way. There are so many scenes that feel like I've accidentally hit increase speed, especially in fight scenes, and I'm utterly confused because letting a scene breathe was never an issue in Seed. We all remember Kira bawling his eyes out every five minutes and either muting the audio or dying from laughter because the VA just sounded severely constipated. Here we get sequences like Kira's Freedom getting destroyed, Shinn's Justice getting wrecked, a nuke going off, the Archangel being blown to pieces, and if any of it was supposed to make me emotional then it utterly failed because not even the characters react to these events with how fast we have to get to the next scene. Never mind people practically teleporting from one location to another, except for Kira who takes longer than Goku to get somewhere.

Seed Freedom is a very weird mix of dragging and speed-running and I don't get why. You had 20 years, man. In fact, even the movie knows it's paced awfully, which is why it keeps giving you the location every time, to increasingly ridiculous degrees.

Anyway, back to the plot and romance. So, Athrun snaps Kira out of his funk with a good walloping. What's next? The rescue mission, of course, which is supposed to be the scene that fixes Kira's and Lacus' relationship by proclamation of their true love for each other! Yay, emotional payoff for this relationship I was totally invested in and not groaning through.

Well, truth be told, I can't stand kumbaya Kira and Lacus in Destiny, so this movie not making me want to scream at my screen whenever I saw them is a feat. Too bad Becky heard me, because she presents us with the following, which somehow manages to be the most mind-bendingly dumb exchange in the entire movie, which honestly requires a superpower at this point to pull off.

Kira, if she slits Lacus' throat, her vocal chords are gonna be the least of your worries. Why is the only one with a functioning brain in there Kisaka? Who, by the way, owns super Coordinator mind reader like it's nothing, despite being a Natural, because ovaries.

Just, ugh.

So after Kira and Lacus get to tell each other "I love you!" with dramatic catches thrown in despite no need for them, making things just awkward, we rush off to the final battle and it's like Fukuda took 5 episodes that were supposed to be the finale and condensed them into three, while cutting half the transitions. There's colorful pew pew, Shinn hilariously weaponizing his stupidity, things exploding, people dying, Yzak and Dearka pushing new gunpla sales, Mwu outright breaking the last remnants of my brain, Lunamaria and Agnes having a girl fight, Murrue ramming a space ship into another one because screw logic, and finally, rolled into this erratic nonsense burrito is Kira defeating Orphee with the power of Lacus' love and her being able to use the Force now, while Horny For Pink is still screaming about wanting to get into her pants and Ingrid still wants him to get into hers instead.

Thankfully, they both die and rid me of their presence.

The saving grace really are Athrun and Cagalli, who rely on actual skill and brains in their fight, and thus end up the best part of the movie by a landslide.

...And then there's Mwu tanking a Requiem shot to the face without issue and deflecting its beam with its puny shield to destroy various targets and Requiem itself because dinosaurs.

Dang it, D.J., stop writing the script for the movie and go back to your noodle pictures. I have a hard enough time reining Becky in as it is. The happy conclusion is everyone smooching or reaffirming their relationship status otherwise, while Lacus blathers over the ending song with her and Kira as two human shaped blobs ready to get nasty on the beach.

Hooray.

So what's the verdict?

Gundam Seed Freedom sucks. And I don't even mean that as a movie, but as a Seed movie. If I previously thought Seed's characters had the depth of a rain puddle, then Freedom threw a maxi pack of paper towels on all of them.

You get a gigantic cast, with various well-established characters with pasts, and, somehow, only Athrun and Cagalli resemble themselves. The rest are bulldozed to single word characteristics like dumb, horny emo, or rude.

For instance, there are two separate occasions where Compass fights a Destroy, and Shinn doesn't care. Stella even gets a cameo, going full Tokomon teeth in his mind at the Evil Dumbass Brigade trying to infiltrate it, but do you think her traumatic death would warrant a reaction when he has to face the mobile suit she piloted when she was killed before him? Naaah.

Kira starts the movie with something resembling a personality, but that gets quickly flushed down the toilet by the time he and Lacus go through the same scene for the 8th time.

Murrue? Don't get me started on Murrue. Murrue spends the entire movie in heat. Funnily enough, she's finally wearing a bra when Archangel gets hit, so no more gainaxing boobs. But she's worse than the horny teenagers.

Everyone else you know and love is just there. I don't remember Sai even getting a line. Miri does, one. Dearka and Yzak exist and it's a big, fat whatever. You'd think they could have put some of them on the ships' bridges, so that we could get cool discussions, right? Yeah, no, have two new characters instead, one of whom is voiced by freaking Jiraiya. No, not Jiraiya's VA, but Jiraiya, because that man doesn't vary his voice one bit.

As someone who used to watch Naruto, it drove me bonkers. Especially when the female VAs put in the effort to blow everyone out of the water. Props to Cagalli's new VA especially who manages to capture the original's stresses and pauses perfectly. I knew right away it was Cagalli despite the different voice. Kudos.

Another positive thing are the backgrounds of the movie. I'm pretty sure a sizeable chunk of the budget was invested in those. They all look gorgeous.

Those visual feasts sadly make the wonky characters stand out more though. Movements down to the very mouth flaps look really choppy, 3D Gundams are always a bad idea, please stop doing that, and often enough the animation quality dips noticeably.

This movie is also in love with potato noses so huge, Gerard Depardieu would laugh at them. It's especially weird 'cause half of those are on Coordinators. You know, the designer babies? Did dogs and pigs go extinct in the Cosmic Era that they need to sniff for truffles themselves now?

It's also a complete crime that the movie ends with no one having kicked Orphee between the legs. Or in the face. He taunts Kira so many times with the line that all he's good for is fighting that I kept yelling at my screen for Kira to please just display that and introduce a bat to Orphee's face.

Not even Shinn gets to throw a punch his way, and that boy is allowed to wave a sword at a person. But in a manner that makes me wanna tear my hair out.

That's a saber, you moron. You don't hold sabers with two hands. Coordinator, my foot. You deserve getting your butt kicked just for that. Though I went full panda facepalm when Yzak With Hair Horns started doing cart wheels during their fight.

Just. Throw a brick at my head, it's less painful.

Then we also have the gem that is the dance scene between Pinky and Horny For Her, which cracked me up specifically, because it's supposed to be this beautiful~ smooth~ charming~ skilled waltz the super Coordinators perform that makes Kira so sad, and I'm dying of laughter because I'm an avid Ballroom e Youkoso fan and if there is anything that series taught me, it's a) the man's hand goes where the bra strap is, so Orphee fails at a basic hold already and b) that's the most pathetic throwaway oversway I've ever seen. Total beer keg.

If Kira knew the first thing about dancing, he would have been sassing Blond Athrun instead of getting all mopey, like actual Athrun did to Discount Yzak. Would have improved the movie by x1000 actually if Kira had gotten the same amount of brain cells as his sister and friend and spent the two hours snarking at all the fanfic nonsense instead of acting like he got gut punched all the time.

Alas, we can't have nice things. What we get after 20 years and over a hundred drafts is a movie about Kira's and Lacus' love story that's literally no different from a Wattpad fic. It glues itself to the surface level of the concept and pulls it off as if the entirety of the two prior series doesn't exist, while making sure to give it no substance at all. Sure, they throw in names and reuse plot points that anyone who has seen the series knows, but they end up as mere Easter eggs. There is no taking advantage of established backstories or past events. Not even a nod. Creating a sense of continuity or closure?

Not in this movie.

Another thing is this bizarre tug-of-war between prudish and sexy Lacus. There's no opening anymore in which she can float naked across our screen, so the movie needs to push her boobs in our faces in a different way, I guess, but she's still a "pure" character so it just ends up being... weird. She won't kiss Orphee and probably whip herself every night for ever considering it, but she'll prance around naked on the beach with Kira and go all Golden Boy with how she's shown riding those wing attachments for the Freedom. Like, make up your mind, movie.

I understand why Fukuda wouldn't want to sully Lacus' "purity" (outside of teenager's minds >_>), but I really wish that she had just kissed Orphee. Just, give me something to work with here. You can't drag out "No! I don't love you! I love Kira!" for two hours by recycling the same exchange over and over. If she had kissed him, there would have been a point to all the relationship drama at least. But like this, it's just boring and inane because we're stuck at the setup and never move to a build up or climax, much less a resolution.

So yeah, outside of the Cagalli and Athrun scenes, this movie really didn't do it for me. I actually recorded my reaction for my own amusement because I thought I'd have a blast hate-watching it, but it's just me going "good grief" increasingly loudly as the movie goes on and pausing to check my speed settings.

Oh, and me losing my mind at Kira and Lacus keeping their motorcycles in their living room. Who on Earth does this???

[zolanort]

og gundam art style hero of hyrule