Friday, May 22, 2020

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny Part 5 Episodes 21-25


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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