The Minerva is attacked by Earth Alliance forces who
ranks include Orb battleships.
Determined to make her country see reason, Cagali and the reassembled
crew of the Archangel, including her brother, Kira Yamato, arrive to try and
force a peace between both sides. As
Athrun tries to make contact with the Archangel to assess the entire situation,
elsewhere, Shinn meets Stella, a beautiful girl who is far more dangerous than
Shinn could ever expect. But Shinn’s
brush with romance is halted when he and fellow pilot Rey Za Burel discover a
facility that might hold the secret to Stella’s origins.
And I thought I was going nuts ragging on the lack of
progression of a new cast of characters and the fact that the main character is
a time bomb waiting to go off. Nope,
turns out Gundam Seed Destiny wasn’t ready to go fully off the rails yet. It still hasn’t and there’s still half a
season to go. But “Destiny” feels like
an inappropriate title. This originally
should have been called Mobile Suit Gundam Seed: Land of Confusion. Cause “There’s too many men, too many people,
making too many problems. And not much
love go around. Cant you see this is a
land of confusion.” Ahh…thank Phil Collins and Genesis.
Well this time around, it was the old guards turn to mess
everything up more than it already was.
Cagalli, Kira and the Archangel resurfaced in the middle of a skirmish
between the Minerva and Orb controlled Alliance forces to put a stop to the
fighting…with Kira blowing up the Minerva’s main cannon for a start. Oh God Kira.
I get you don’t feel anything anymore and basically don’t want to be
here (both in battle and this show) but could you kick things off more
stupidly? And Cagalli, she is officially
a shadow of her former self. With
her…husband (was the marriage even finalized before Cagalli got scooped away by
Kira), Yuna in control, it was no shock he forced his men to fire on their
young rep to save face with the Alliance.
And Cagalli just kind of stood there in shock. Why isn’t she braving the fleet, landing on
the main Orb ship and chewing them out?
Scratch that, the Archangel intervening in this fight was just a bad
idea overall. No one knows what the hell
is going on with anything (Hence Land of Confusion) and everyones just jumping
to conclusions too quickly. Stopping the
battle outright? The Archangel isn’t
Celestial Being from Gundam 00, or at least doesn’t have their steely
resolve. I don’t think Kira’s wreck
every Mobile Suit but keep the pilots alive approach is going to work this
time.
Kira’s emotionless and idiotic plan resulted in the death
of a character who could’ve been even better had he lived longer. Heine
Westenfluss was a guy who was fun loving and more wisened about things than
most characters in Seed Destiny, even Athrun.
It’s also worth noting that he was voiced by JPOP legend T.M. Revolution
himself, giving Heine some added star powers (TMR’s also done numerous theme
songs for Gundam, Bleach and Rurouni Kenshin).
He was only around for a couple of episodes but I wanted to know more about
Heine than anyone else on the Minerva. Hell,
id take a series about him and Athrun being frequently team up onboard a ZAFT
ship. When Heine got killed by Stella
because of Kira being oblivious to the carnage he caused, the show lost
something special…and it only got worse.
Athrun, Kira and Cagalli’s reunion sums up everything
wrong with Seed Destiny, outside of Shinn.
No one knows for sure what the hell is going on and who they should be
fighting. Is it the racist
Alliance? Is it ZAFT for being so
shifty? Is it Orb because of Cagalli’s
bad leadership…ok that last ones not fair but dammit, no one seems to get that
Cagalli had ZERO say in Orb joining the Alliance. She would have opposed the treaty and
probably been taken out of the picture somehow.
Yet Athrun and Kira both place a quiet kind of blame on Cagalli for
getting Orb involved and that is unfair, again another sign of how badly Seed
Destiny is treating Cagalli. Kira’s
distant mannerisms tell me he’s just done.
He doesn’t want to fight but he doesn’t trust ZAFT and will remain in
the fight to deal with them. Sure it
could be Durandal who ordered the hit on Lacus but Athrun is also right, we
don’t know squat. But Athrun’s not
without blame either. Why doesn’t he go
back to Orb with Kira and Cagalli and get that place sorted? What does he owe ZAFT at this point? Yeah the Archangel is just as big a headache
as the Minerva right now with all the all over the place logic…but at least
it’s a familiar headache.
As if we didn’t have enough to deal with, NOW we want to
give some storytime to Neo Roanoke and his kids. I will give credit, they are trying to do
more with the origins of Stella, Auel and Sting unlike their three counterparts
from Seed. The exploration of the lab
where they were brought up was chilling.
I wanna hate Arthur for acting like Shaggy in the middle of a haunted
house but im surprised anyone kept it together in a lab full of corpses of all
ages. Also Stella and her fellow
subjects have a title: The Extended, child super soldiers made by Blue Cosmos
to combat Coordinators…yeah sounds like Cyber Newtypes to me. But hey, Shinn got to meet Stella and not act
like a colossal douche, saving her from drowning. So now the Kamille/Four relationship between
them has been established and now we get to watch it crash and burn because why
would anyone expect Gundam Seed Destiny to be original at this point? Oh and Rey’s a clone. Yeah his reaction to the lab spoke volumes
and I’m 100% certain he’s a Rau Le Crueset clone…Oh my God why?
Any bit of good to gleam from any of this? Well ok a little bit…but not much. Athrun waking up to find Meer in his bed (in
a see through nightie?) and trying to explain the situation to Luna, who wanted
to ask Athrun out to breakfast, was actually pretty funny. Meer showed off a bit of a bitchy side making
it clear “Athrun was her man” and Athrun all panicked made for a great bit of
levity. And while it feels small, the return
of Miriallia was nice too. It’s good to
see her keeping busy as a world traveling photographer but wait, she isn’t with
Dearka? Didn’t they kind of play up
something happening between them in Seed?
Yeah that’s Destiny screwing over good story possibilities for people
who deserved a happy ending. Lastly,
cudos to the head of the Orb fleet who went out of his way to make sure Cagalli
and the Archangel didn’t get hit by his ships in battle. At least one person in the Cosmic Era still
has a trace of common sense.
Where do things stand now at the halfway mark? Kira and Athrun are on opposite sides; Meer
“Fake Lacus” Campbell is blowing up the charts with her Lacus Remixes; the
Minerva lost its best new crewmember and now they have Stella in their
custody…AND SHES THE PILOT OF ONE OF THE THREE GUNDAMS THEY’VE BEEN CHASING!!!
(yes, plenty of sarcasm there…this show is bringing the worse out it me). Destiny is on fire (not the good kind as with
Seed) and not it not a question of if it will get worse…but how. And we’ll find out how when Mobile Suit
Gundam Seed Destiny returns Next Monday right here at the Gundam Anime Corner.
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