Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED Destiny

In the year Cosmic Era 0071, a wartime brawl between two mobile suits results in the destruction of a neutral country. Shinn Asuka finds his entire family killed as casualties of the violence, and swears his life toward a vengeful pursuit of the Earth's Natural forces, under the impression they were the ones responsible for his family's death. Shinn works his way up through the ZAFT military forces, eventually gaining access to the cockpit of the prototype Impulse mobile suit.

Athrun Zala, a veteran of the recent war employed in the service of diplomat Cagalli Yula Athha, finds himself drawn into a new conflict between the Naturals and the Coordinators: human beings artificially enhanced before birth and hated by the Naturals for their biological advantages.

As the new war rears its head and violence becomes inevitable, Athrun finds himself as a mentor to the bitter Shinn. Athrun must steer the young pilot towards a mindset of mercy before his rage and desire for vengeance consumes him.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Yamato, Kira Main

Hoshi, Souichirou Japanese

Clyne, Lacus Main

Tanaka, Rie Japanese

Zala, Athrun Main

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Athha, Cagalli Yula Main

Shindo, Naomi Japanese

Asuka, Shinn Main

Suzumura, Kenichi Japanese

Hawke, Lunamaria Main

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Za Burrel, Rey Main

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Haro Supporting

Mitsuishi, Kotono Japanese

Flaga, Mu La Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Le Creuset, Rau Supporting

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Yatate, Hajime Producer

Maruyama, Hiroo Producer

Morotomi, Hirofumi Producer

Satou, Hiroyuki Producer

Reviews

Oct 2, 2021

freedomzgmfx1oa

Recommended

To be completely honest, I still enjoyed this sequel, even if I thought the show didn't really need it. The first season was so perfect to me and I loved it from beginning to end. However, 'Destiny' had some problems which the first season didn't have. The main character Shinn Asuka was soooo annoying how he just purposely try to pick a fight with literally everyone, and his character didn't even improve up to the last episode, or he probably did but it wasn't enough for me to even begin to like him. Whatever your past is, you can always choose to do better and ... not take it out on others. Anyway, for what it's worth, I still loved this because it has Kira Yamato and Freedom in it. The first season, I can watch over and over, but this, I would really need to be motivated, or if I want to see Kira being awesome, so yeah... I still consider this an enjoyable watch in the end.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Apr 2, 2023

Re1612

Mixed Feelings

Are our roles in society pre-determined as part of destiny? Should it be? Etc. This is the core theme and namesake of the show that Gundam Seed Destiny is trying to tell. Unfortunately, it doesn't manage to quite get the message across amidst the many other concurrent themes and ideas that gets swept along the series -- this I mostly blame Bandai, as they severely limited the budget/cost cut for the series for the sakes of corporate profit (see below).

Seed Destiny is a divisive and controversial anime, probably one of the most ever for a Gundam series, and the reason for that is probably ... because of it's potential. No one gets seriously mad about a bad anime. They simply stop watching and move on. It is when a show that builds up a lot of potential and manages to waste it, that people often get very angry.

But first, let's start with the good before we go onto the not-so-good.

Good:
The first 10 episodes / start of Seed Destiny is amazing and demonstrates superb story writing. Within episode 1, Seed Destiny manages to set its tone, introduces its core characters, establish its theme and show the antagonist's (Shin and Gil) thoughts and motivations all in one go. Its exciting, fast-paced, and raw. We literally see Shin's entire family obliterated in episode 1 in one of the most gory and war-raw scene in Gundam history. There are casualties in war. We often don't think about them as all we see as viewers are the epic gundam fights happening on screen, but it's there, in the unshown background, and Shin's family was the perfect example.

Shin's family is given only brief seconds of cameo time, and yet, it is heart-wrenching to watch Shin play over and over again his dead sister's voicemail, using her pink phone as the only item left of her in the living world.

Bad:
Characters never get fully developed despite the anime being 50 episodes long. As such, viewers are left feeling alienated from Shin as the antagonist/anti-hero. With each passing episode, Shin sinks deeper and deeper into the horrific nature of Gil's schemes, and yet we as viewers do not sympathise with him, because of the rushed and lazy storytelling that becomes gradually more central to Seed Destiny's nature.

I attribute much of what went wrong with Seed Destiny to Bandai who had probably severely limited the budget for production -- clearly evident through their abundant reusing of animation (e.g., Zakus pulling out their axe from shield, Impulse slashing twice with beam sabre following a unit, even characters talking animation like Shin shouting whilst cutting down an enemy, etc.). This blatant reuse of animation, hefty long flashbacks (to save animation budget), etc. all contribute to the downfall of what initially started off as a promising Gundam series.

In the end, this culminates into one of the worst Gundam endings ever, where the reuse of animation, hefty long flasbacks, etc. ascend to a crescendo at its apex, and the viewers are left angry, shaking, and feeling very rightly so 'ripped off'. Despite this, I give Seed Destiny a good rating here because of its clear potential that was evident throughout the start of the series and the themes/motifs that never really managed to get to the finish line, but were built so strongly that I could just close my eyes and imagine the finish line in my head.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jul 27, 2024

Noahboy

Not Recommended

An extremely disappointing sequel to the great first season. I honestly see little point in this season existing, but it at least wasn't boring. There are a lot of genuinely good ideas here, but their execution is lacking, which makes it disappointing even off of its own merits. I would like to note that I watched the HD remaster.

I would also like to note that I was lucky enough to watch the fan edit that combined the old English dub with the newer HD-remaster. This English dub was very good and, like the standard definition English dub of Gundam Seed, I preferred it over the ... Japanese voices. If you can watch the show with theis dub, then I recommend you give it a try, assuming you're already familiar with the old dub from Gundam Seed, because this is done by the same people.

There are a lot of issues with Seed Destiny, the most noticeable problem is the absurd amount of animation reuse. The reuse extends even to animation from the first season and only gets more and more annoying as the season goes on, it actively made me roll my eyes regularly. The animation causes most battles to feel identical because of this, I swear there are some battles that mostly consist of reused animation re-edited into a different scene, which is just pathetic. This show will also use flashback animations as much as possible which I found pretty obnoxious, it feels like the anime staff were trying to do anything but animate the fucking show.

The series also has an unbalanced cast of characters, it introduces too many characters and takes far too long to develop them if they even get any development at all. One of the main characters, Shinn, is pretty insufferable most of the time. Much of his ideals are interesting, but his personality makes him anything but likeable. It also feels like Shinn had to be an extremely pathetic person for the plot to even happen in the first place, if he wasn't an obnoxious asshole this season might've been mercifully short. One character in particular was introduced only to die an episode later for dramatic effect, but they use his death to force drama between characters that already overcame this exact same fucking drama in the first season. I found things like this to be insulting to watch as a fan of Gundam Seed, this utterly lacks the tightly written characters and story that show had.

There aren't many things I like about this season, as most interesting things eventually become uninteresting before they finish. I will say that I like the inclusion of chairman Durandal as a character, he is probably the most interesting character in this season. I also think I like the shift in focus to Athrun as the main character, instead of Kira, the last season's main character.

Similar to Gundam Seed, a lot of effort was put into the recap episodes, they edit the recap into the story to the point that it makes sense that they would mention the old stuff while adding new stuff on top of it. This comes as a double edged sword, because it makes the recap episodes not as boring, but also means you can't skip them entirely because there is some new content in those episodes that you will miss if you do. One of the main characters, chairman Durandal, is given a lot of development during a recap episode, which I imagine many people would've missed by skipping the episode.

Honestly, I've seen worse, but Gundam Seed Destiny is still a huge mess. I'm mostly just disappointed because of how great Seed was. It might be worth a watch if you like Seed but don't expect it to be good, I struggle to recommend this in good faith.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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