FIF#70-Mobile Suit Gundam SEED

Cosmic Era 71.  A war has erupted between the Earth bound Naturals of the Earth Federation and the Space bound, genetically enhanced Coordinators of ZAFT.  As the Earth Federation hurries to roll out its own mobile suit line to combat ZAFT, ZAFT forces attack a Federation outpost and seize four prototype mobile suits.  The outposts civilian survivors, including young Coordinator Kira Yamato end up on the Federation space ship Archangel.  On board the ship, Kira agrees to pilot the Archangel’s soul mobile suit, codenamed Gundam, against ZAFT’s forces…whose ranks also include Kira’s childhood friend Athrun Zala.  With friends on both sides of the conflict, Kira and Athrun cross swords and ideals as the war begins to threaten the future of both human factions.

 

GundamCember 2 continues with a first look at the Gundam series that kicked off (and kind of dominated the bulk of) the 2000s, Mobile Suit Gundam Seed.  Coming into the next century, im sure many were curious what kind of form Gundam would take after the controversial but successful 20^th Anniversary series, Turn A Gundam.  What we get with the premiere of Gundam Seed is an interesting premise that also sounds a little too familiar.

 

If certain things in the synopsis above do sound that way, that’s because I doubt much effort is being made to cover that Seed is basically a new era update of the One Year War that kicked off the franchise.  All of the usual suspects are here: ZAFT stands in for Zeon, Cooordinators are Newtypes, Rau Le Cruset is our Char Aznable and the Earth Federation…is pretty much still the same.  You could even go through the entire premiere episode alone and see just how copy and paste the plot is from the debut of the original series.  This over too familiar feel is a strange path to take, I mean why not just do an HD update of Mobile Suit Gundam in the end?

 

Well I didn’t say I wasn’t curious about the premise.  Pitting genetically modified humans (Coordinators) against regular old humans (Naturals) is something fresh in this pot of familiarity.  It touches on the eternal debate of race relations throughout history, making things even more so prevalent considering that this goes beyond race and gender in a couple of ways.  As to what caused this conflict, we don’t know much outside of the titular name of the “Bloody Valentine Massacare”.  Was Earth hit by a colony like the original series or did something else (possibly worse) happen?  And then there’s our Amuro Ray of the series.  Besides Kira being a Coordinator and more thank likely fighting to protect his friends by working as a Federation Gundam pilot (a la Amuro), Kira’s biggest story contribution is his friendship with up and coming ZAFT ace Athrun Zala.  Clearly these two parted on good terms and you could tell from a very simple flashback that they were close friends.  Equally clearly, this is Gundam.  This friendship is going to be put through the ringer.  And if the colony attack in the premiere is any indication, it’ll be a miracle if Kira and Athrun still want to be friends when it’s all over (more than likely they’ll team up to stop it all but that’s for later if I ever come back to this series).

 

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed might look like a carbon copy of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series at a glance and the comparisons to the classic are hard to ignore.  There is potential in the central lead duo and the story of humans fighting humans with genetically augmented bodies.  The question is, will Gundam Seed be able to branch out of it’s 0079 roots and forge its own path ahead?  Considering this series spawned a sequel (Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny) and was one of only two really big Gundam titles in the 2000’s (the other being Mobile Suit Gundam 00), im guessing something was done right.  I might have to continue on with this one, maybe even add it to the review cue somewhere down the line.

 

BTW the opening and ending themes, Invoke from T.M. Revolution and Anna ni Issho Datta no ni by See-Saw (Yuki Kaijura’s old group), absolutely rock and are some of the best in the franchise and ill always defend them as some of the best contributions Seed and Seed Destiny ever made to all of Gundam.  Come at me everyone.