Cosmic Era 71.
What was supposed to be a swift conflict between the Natural Humans of
the Earth Alliance and the genetically advanced Coordinators of ZAFT has
stretched into a year long war. A young
Coordinator named Kira Yamato was far from the chaos until the war came to his
colony. A ZAFT strike team attacks a
secret Alliance facility developing next generation Mobile Suits to compete
with ZAFT on an even playing field.
Through a twist of fate, Kira ends up in the cockpit of one of those
Mobile Suits, taking his first steps towards a battle that wont only pit him
against his own people, but his childhood best friend, Athrun Zala, as well.
So this was supposed to be the big project that bookended
2020: one series in January and one series in December. But things change. New titles ive never seen before arrive. A worldwide epidemic takes over. Eventually, my mind returned to this little
project and now it has been reborn, even more ambitious than ever. For the next four weeks we’ll be looking at
over 100 episodes of Mobile Suit action, the era that brought Gundam into the
new millennium, for better or worse.
This is the big one everybody, Part One of a Two Part project that kicks
off today. Welcome, dear readers, to
Mobile Suit Gundam Seed.
Following the success of Gundam’s 20th Anniversary
series, Turn A Gundam, I’m sure the question was asked as to how to continue
the franchise into the 2000’s. It made
me think a little about the early 90s, when two approaches were taken: Mobile
Suit Gundam F91, which produced a fresh but flawed new start point well after
the events of Char’s Counterattack; and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust
Memory, which acted as a prequel to Zeta Gundam. The latter worked better than the former for
a number of reasons I wont get into right now.
Suffice to say, Seed seems to be taking the former but is off to a
better, if not too familiar start.
Firstly, the new setting is the Cosmic Era and the
conflict is a war between the Earth Alliance and ZAFT. Sounds familiar? Well that’s because the intro narrarations
and even some of the images on screen make it clear that the old One Year War
concept that successfully introduced Mobile Suit Gundam to the masses, has been
dusted off and given a new face lift with new concepts like The Bloody
Valentine Incident and the term “Coordinators”, which will no doubt be the
stand in for Newtypes during the course of this series…though that’s not
entirely accurate at all is it. Seed is
poised to delve right into the touchy topic of genetic engineering and the
conflict between humans enhanced before their birth and natural born
Earthers. I’m sure Kira and Athrun will
stand out down the line by showing off some Newtype like abilities. For now, we’re a Newtype for the time being.
Nevertheless Seed’s premiere does retread a ton of
moments we’ve seen before, no doubt nodding to the original Gundam series
itself on purpose: neutral-ish colony supporting Alliance Mobile Suit
development, colony is attacked, Chosen Youth gets to pilot a Gundam…you know
basic stuff. What helps Seed stand out
besides the animation and change in setting is the fact that the action is
pretty intense and the story itself is paced very well, moving back and forth
between chaotic war scenes in Heliopolis and those few and far between moments
when the Archangel crew gets a rare moment to breathe and take in their
situation. Side 7 mightve gotten off
relatively scot free in the original series but losing Heliopolis definitely
upped the stakes for Kira and emphasized just how bad things are going to get
and he’s only been in the Gundam for a couple of episodes. Also neat is Kira
coining the name “Gundam” based on the acronym for the Mobile Suits operating
system (General Unilateral Neuro-Link Dispersive Autonomic Maneuver).
While the story is set to predominately focus on the
tested friendship between childhood besties Kira and Athrun, the supporting
cast sometimes overshadowed the leading pair.
I’m a big fan of having two female commanding officers at the helm of
the Archangel. Murrue Ramius (def named
after Captain Marko Ramius from The Hunt for Red October…its true look it up)
and Natarle Badgiruel are more than just a pair of pretty faces who look good
in uniform. Thrust into command posts
they didn’t expect, I’m excited to see how they work together and no doubt butt
heads over their separate style of doing things (Murrue thinking of every
single factor while Natarle is more a straight go getter). There’s also Maverick…er Mu La Flaga…who’s
kind of like Maverick minus the ego, serving as the big brother figure to
Kira. He’s cool but I wonder if he’s a
Ryu being set up to guide Kira through the beginning of things before getting
killed midway through the show. Kira’s
support group of friends: Tolle, Sai, MIriallia and Kuzzy should all get
special recognition for not only stepping up to help when the Archangel needed
it but for also standing by Kira when it was revealed he was a
Coordinator. They didn’t know but they
also don’t care. Kira is their friend
and if he’s willing to risk his life to protect them, they don’t just want to
sit around. A good batch of kids
imho. On the flipside, half of Athruns
Mobile Suit team is ready to kick his ass.
Hothead Yzak and his bestie Dearka, along with tag along Nicol, don’t
get as much time to set themselves up like Kira’s team but we know enough about
them to get things going.
From an animation standpoint, we’re in the early 2000’s
when Digi Paint was all the craze and it does help Gundam Seed stand out…but
maybe not in the way it hoped. Sure the
character models and the mecha look good.
When the battles are going on and everything is moving around rapidly,
the flaws are more obvious and while I know Gundam had to get in on the Digi
Paint train eventually, it definitely doesn’t look as good as the beginning of
Gundam Wing or the whole of Turn A Gundam.
Heck, Gundam 00 a few years later would look much better by combining
the two art styles with a renewed emphasis on hand drawn animation. I’m sure (and hoping) the presentation looks
better as the series goes on but usually the production throws most of its
budget into the first episode to get the series instant attention. And again
they did…I just wish the show looked better than it does. What does fare better is the soundtrack. The
orchestrated work feels very Gundam but the OP and ED themes, God theyre
awesome. I know the Seed era takes some
flack for a heavy focus on JPop themes but I don’t care. “Invoke” by T.M. Revolution and “Anna ni
Issho Datta no ni” by See-Saw (Yuki Kaijura’s first group) are two of the best
themes in the franchise, fight me.
Well, that was a long one but im realizing “start of
series reviews” usually are here. Gotta
establish, setting, characters, conflict, etc.
And there’s still 9 more parts to cover…I’ll try not to think about that
and just try to enjoy the ride. And I
hope you do as well, dear reader. Cause
you’re getting a review every Monday-Friday until both of these shows are
wrapped up. The rides just getting
started baby. Here we go.
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