You have fans of Universal Century, 00, Wing, G, Turn A, SEED and X, all of whom like something about their respective series/timelines that they feel other fans cannot see.
Most/almost all of the above fans, however, including fans of SEED, have a notorious reputation for particularly hating Destiny, which is rather surprising since Gundam fans are notorious for not really being able to agree on anything.
Why is this the case in such a fanbase?
Well, the story is incredibly unoriginal. Gundam storylines don't tend to have much in the originality department as far as themes are concerned, but SEED Destiny takes it to a whole new level. The story is a cheap rehash of SEED and Zeta, the characters are clones of the Zeta cast, the mech designs are unoriginal and uninspired, almost all of them taking something from a mech design found in some other Gundam anime, and the characterization that the characters went through in the first SEED is out the window for the sake of the plot...and it doesn't work. At all.
Oh, and the characters are equipped with enough plot armor to (literally) survive a nuclear explanation, in what is easily among the most immersion breaking aspects I've ever seen in anime thus far. This makes absolutely no sense in a war story, much less one that takes itself as seriously as SEED.
The war aspect in this story is a walking joke. The characters are rather petty, shallow and immature, and none of them feel or act like actual soldiers in the slightest. The first SEED had some incredibly slow but subtle development in the form of Kira slowly but surely maturing of the course of the show, slowly becoming more composed and natural in battle. This disappears very quickly, and the characters reset to their former characters, except that the flaws which were so prevalent and the characters worked hard to fix in the first SEED are out the window.
The animation quality looks awful, and repeated frames from both SEED and Destiny are present here. Yes, there is footage practically stolen from SEED and it is incredibly painful and intolerable to look at. The flashbacks were already a problem in the first SEED, but this is taken up to 11 here and every 5 minutes (on average) a flashback to someone or something has to be there. Particularly notorious is Shinn's tragic past which gets repeated so many times that I would just roll my eyes when it shows up.
The soundtrack is the only thing I loved about SEED Destiny, with tracks from TM Revolution, See Saw and so on, giving us one of the best soundtracks out of anime. The fourth opening deserves particular mention (in the original version of SEED Destiny) for being among the most awful and ill-fitting openings of all time, and the character models in the opening are not dramatic but rather hilarious to look at.
Honestly, why anyone likes this broken mess is beyond me. I can rag how this breaks the themes of the original SEED, how this ruins the resolution to SEED and the reasons for the war starting are plain damn stupid compared to SEED, but honestly, if there is one thing I can say, it's that you stay as far away as humanly possible from this.
This is bad. I cannot stress enough how far away you have to go from this. The only reason anyone would watch this is if they hated the original SEED and simply decided to have a laugh at this...thing.
For everyone else, avoid this like the plague.
