Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED Destiny (Mobile Suit 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]

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Background

The series won the Animage Anime Grand Prix award during 2004 and 2005.

The HD Remaster of Gundam SEED DESTINY omits episode 41 of the original, but includes Final Plus (split between episodes 49 and 50), therefore still having a total of 50 episodes.

Episode Videos

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny
Prequel:	Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED, Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED: Hoshi no Hazama de
Side story:	Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED C.E. 73: Stargazer
Sequel:	Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED Destiny Final Plus: Erabareta Mirai
Summary:	Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED Destiny Special Edition

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

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

More staff

Staff

Yatate, Hajime

Producer

Maruyama, Hiroo

Producer

Satou, Hiroyuki

Producer

Fukuda, Mitsuo

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

	1: "Ignited" by T.M.Revolution (eps 1-13)
	2: "Pride" by High and Mighty Color (eps 14-24)
	3: "Bokutachi no Yukue (Our Whereabouts)" by Hitomi Takahashi (eps 25-37)
	4: "vestige" by T.M.Revolution (HD Remaster eps 38-50)
	4: "Wings Of Words" by Chemistry (eps 38-50)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Reason" by Nami Tamaki (eps 1-13)
	2: "Life Goes On" by Mika Arisaka (eps 14-25)
	2: "Result" by Nami Tamaki (HD Remaster eps 12-13)
	3: "I Wanna Go To A Place..." by Rie Fu (eps 26-37)
	3: "Shinkai no Kodoku" by Houko Kuwashima (HD Remaster ep 32)
	4: "Enrai (Tooku ni Aru Akari)" by HIGH AND MIGHTY COLOR (HD Remaster ep 40)
	4: "Kimi wa Boku ni Niteiru (You are Similar to Me)" by See-Saw (eps 38-50)

Reviews

Jul 12, 2010

Shinryu1284

Recommended

Gundam SEED Destiny is a direct Sequel to Gundam SEED. It's been rated as the worst Gundam anime ever. I highly beg to differ. It's not much as a sequel, but as its own anime, it's outstanding.

STORY - 8/10
To be honest, you shouldn't under any circumstances watch Destiny directly after finishing SEED. You'll see nothing but the same, and with SEED always stuck in your head, the good parts of Destiny's story are going to be left out. In fact; forget everything you know about Gundam SEED except for the coordinator-natural stuff, as well as the guys who played some large roles in the ... first series.

Once all that's out of the way, Destiny is a blast. It managed to maintain a fair amount of action while giving it what could be called a more "lively" story. Half of SEED was just a bunch of guys in a ship trying to get resupplied, Destiny did that differently, in the way that the main characters are on the offensive this time. Ok,the story was above average, to put it simply. It's not as terrible as many think.

ART - 8

The mecha designs were unique and memorable, as expected from SEED. The animation style was easy to look at and settle into, and the character designs for the new characters aren't 100% generic and cliche.

SOUND - 10

I'll come out and say it right now: The soundtrack was the biggest pro of Destiny. I've never gotten so much enjoyment out of a Mecha OST that I did in Destiny. And it did something pretty unique here: It made the ending songs better than the opening themes while keeping the OPs excellent. Sound effects and etc is something nobody really pays attention to, so I'm going to ignore that part. Voice Acting is in the same section.

Characters - 6

By far, Destiny's weakest aspect. Some teenager's family dies (because of his sister's cell phone (which he blamed on the federation), dedicated his life to taking vengeance for his family (Narutards should recognize that character setup) and joined the Z.A.F.T military, the SEED version of Zeon. The rest of the characters were left half-developed, and were all uninteresting from the start. The only character worthy of note was the new Chairman of Zeo- Z.A.F.T, who was one of those characters who acted like a living saint, but was really just preparing a plan that would trash people's lives for the greater good.

Enjoyment - 10

I enjoyed it a lot. I don't know why I enjoyed it so much, but I did. Certainly more than a lot of other people did.

Overall: I was left wanting more. A lot more. So many predictable plot twists were left unsolved, and the ending didn't particularly feel like anything had been solved.

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Jun 16, 2008

kiriska

Mixed Feelings

Sometimes, sequels to popular series work. Most of the time, they don't. Destiny was one of the latter.

STORY - The fact that this is a direct sequel to a Gundam series already puts Destiny's story at a disadvantage. Think about it -- all Gundam series start with war and end with resolution. Thus, SEED had resolution, and the only way for Destiny to begin is by destroying that resolution. And it has to be a cheap and forced-feeling destruction because there's hardly two year's difference between the end of the first series and the start of the sequel since they wanted to reuse a majority ...

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Sep 6, 2008

DonKangolJones

Not Recommended

Destiny is a tale of two shows, the show it could have been versus whatever the hell the staff of the show presented it as. To get to the point, I’ll point out the shows main problems immediately. The show’s pacing, character development and plot I felt were all horrible and on top of that unoriginal.

Destiny started off better off than any Gundam series I’ve watched so far. While most series in Gundam canon usually start off slow and tedious. Destiny gave you some brief, but useful enough introductions. The age old practice of stealing Gundams right from under the ... enemies' noses was fine, I chalked that up to them paying homage or going with a tradition. And then you were thrown headlong into the action. Pacing was pretty good throughout the first half, while they developed this somewhat annoying formula of action, followed by character development episodes, the action was good enough to make you put up with the way stuff was spaced out. A particularly enjoyable part of the show was the interaction between Athrun and Shinn. Though whiny, generally ignorant and pretty arrogant, he showed signs of hope, realizing at times that Athrun’s advice and tutelage had helped him for the better.

In the second half of the series, the trend continued, but with far less interesting action. The Gundams became over powered and the later battles seemed inconsistent and unfair at times. Also, the change in focus about half way through meant that you had to sit through the same babbling that permeated the original SEED, but this time its just a rehash of their already stated opinions and can’t be counted as character development. Clip shows and flashbacks were also used EXCESSIVELY and killed pacing. The worst pacing came towards the end, as entire episodes seemed wasted on minor characters or minor developments and MORE flashbacks, only to have a very short, rushed feeling ending that seemed to have a lot of out of character moments, but that’s an issue for the next paragraph.

Destiny showed signs of good characters and good character development. Instead of getting a patchwork group of out of place soldiers and refugees, you get professional soldiers in their element, facing extreme challenges (except for Arthur, I don’t know how he became an XO). Durrandal started to become my favorite character that, even though he showed signs of being evil, was just a very smart, sharp character with a lot of charm and who made a lot of sense. Shinn though a professional soldier is whiny and arrogant. Captain Gladys seems like a character with logic and a good amount of insight into the world. Athrun shows up as a conflicted character, who ends up being a mentor to Shinn. And tries to show him what is wrong with his impulsive and arrogant attitude.

Unfortunately, the interesting characters of Destiny are replaced halfway through with the much less interesting characters of the original SEED. And then the previous cast gets a serious downgrade in on-screen time, skills and even intelligence. The characters from SEED seem like less than objective observers, until they start meddling and screw everyone over. The characters of Kira and Lacus show no change, nor room for it. Athrun changes, but only in the way a pendulum does. It takes him an entire series to come to the same realization he had in SEED, war is bad, no one should be killed and hatred will destroy the future. The characters come off as almost god-like, knowing all, looking down on the world and generally being untouchable, literally.

As for the new cast-away cast, once they are pushed to the side, you don’t know whether the director wants you to root for them or not. They go from saving the day, to be viewed as oppressors in the span of an episode. On top of that, their skills and intelligence seem to change as the episodes go along. In one episode, they are able to practically fight off the entire Orb military by themselves, later in the series they are unable to take down Orb even with the entire ZAFT military behind them and with Shinn and Rey using upgraded, super powerful Gundams. The Alliance was able to take down Orb in the original series even with Kira, Athrun and the Archangel present, yet ZAFT receives a brutal punch to the nose and retreats. This is also in contrast to when they fought the Alliance earlier at Heaven’s Base. With no less than 5 Destroy Gundams (mountainous Gundam death machines with more weapons and armor by itself than most militaries), they pretty easily take their objectives. Even earlier than that in the series, one Destroy Gundam was enough to hold off both Kira and Shinn by itself.

The worst case is the final battle, where everything comes to a head. The same ZAFT that pretty easily defeats the entire Alliance, and takes their super weapon for themselves, gets a resounding defeat by a pretty small Orb force in what has to be the worst Gundam ending ever. Their ace pilots are easily chopped up, the Minerva is defeated, not by the Archangel, but by a restored Mu La Flaga in his overpowered (Hyaku Shiki rip-off) mobile suit. And in the end, three major characters on the ZAFT side decide to cash it in and commit suicide, while two more lie on the surface of the moon, next to their destroyed mobile suits crying.

My final gripe is with the overall plot of the show. Sure it started off pretty simple, but it then threw a pretty nice twist at viewers, by dropping a massive celestial body (Junius Seven) on the Earth at the beginning arc of the show instead of during the last two episodes like most shows. Great! Then the plot goes into the basic war itself between the Alliance and Z.A.F.T. Once the Archangel starts screwing with things though, it becomes a slower more convuluted plot. And when it gets near the end, it just seems to become nonsensical and chaotic. It really isn’t that complicated and there aren’t many surprises.

If the point of the show was to show that repeating one’s mistakes was foolish and stupid, then this show proved that perfectly. Then didn’t just repeat the stakes of the original SEED, which was a good show in its own right, it doubled them. Great character and mecha designs and potential are wasted by the flawed plot and logic. And this show has left me disappointed to say the least.

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Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED Destiny

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