'Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED Freedom' Announces Additional Cast

@icefirestone23 Well, that hasn't stopped G-Witch fans from making the "Barbie has always been feminist" move and claiming that G-Witch is extremely feminist and that the franchise has always been woke. However, although I would like to be biased, from what I have heard so far, Engage's MC serves as a kind of observer and does not actively change the plot. Except that at some points she cosplays as Forrest Gump, appearing in moments where she was not in the original anime.

@RobertBobert The funny thing about UC Engage is gundam, especially UC gundam has been accused of being misogynistic. Lalah, Icelina, Four Murasame, Reccoa Londe, Sarah Zabiarov, Emma Sheen, Chan Agi all suffered bad fates. Scirocco, the titans usurper, manipulated woman.
Not to mention 08th, 0080 had men looking through magazines of bare breasted women, and a zeon soldier in 08th openly gunned down a mother and her child. Althought not canon, Hoover (Dom Pilot) was known for sleeping around
Even for AUs, Naze from IBO had an actual harem who he fathered children with multiple women

@icefirestone23 Are you suggesting that Sunrise went back to SEED and UC because they simply couldn't create a relevant hyped character, while Suletta and Miorine first clashed with Guel as part of their own show (I remember Guel's hype and semi-successful attempts to make him memetic hasubendo), and then just ended up in the yuri pairings camera? So, trying to focus on shippers and yuri fanboys instead of traditional protagonists and love interests just played a bad joke on them? Well, while I haven't watched Macross and am much more familiar with Gundam in general thanks to UC, it's easier for me to remember the various Macross waifu than similar characters among Gundam. In general, will any of the characters from G-WItch or other shows be able to compete with Amuro, Char and Kira, forgetting that two of them appeared in the '79 show and the third will still need to be updated with new shows?

Well, while most of the characters mentioned came from shows with male protagonists, I'm afraid that with Love Live in mind, Sunrise will simply try to reinforce the transformation of Gundam into a female brand. For example, right now they are trying to promote a female protagonist in UC through Engage. Although with such fujoshi fandom and the number of GAR characters, they could well create competition at the expense of male characters.

@RobertBobert I seriously don't know what people expected if WfM will dethrone SEED/Destiny as the AU. 00 tried and it failed spectacularly especially after the movie that tried to be some horror film. IBO tried and it failed spectacularly giving a badly put together ending, that feels like there to slap people in the face. WfM I say just got carried by influencer hype, and because of plastic model kits. Cramming as many suits into a 2 cours series so much that I literally have to pause to identify suits isn't going to make me want to buy them.

This might surprise people, but now more companies are getting into gunpla and having their new line. https://twitter.com/KADOPLA
I delayed my reply because of this news, so I like your input on this. It shows that Sunrise has to watch out since Kadokawa plans to use their own popular characters like kurumi tokisaki, megumin, rem to compete with sunrise. Waifus that regularly hit #1 on global polls which suletta and miorine couldn't. Kids can now buy a Kurumi Tokisaki, Megumin, Rem without dropping $200 on a scaled figured, and this is seriously going to impact Sunrise's market share on plamo. They also have the advantage of their huge catalogue of shows meaning they can huge so many audiences vs people who just watch gundam. This has the potential to be a cash cow.

So Sunrise is going to have series competition because they are still reliant on legacy series like seed, destiny, 0079, zeta, CCA to make money. Trying to license Dragon Ball, One Piece, Pokemon, Yugioh model kits cost bandai money, whereas Kadokawa has rights on their own set of model kits, and they get all revenues from them. Their aus have too short of a runtime and just get drowned out by longer running shows.

@icefirestone23 Do you think that, intentionally or not, the show heavily overloaded its yuri aspect and despite claims to the contrary, even gundam fans cared about the yuri in this show more than anything else? This makes more sense with your comparison to Avatar Korra, which was also remembered purely for the romance and controversy it generated rather than anything that made the show part of the Avatar universe per se. Attempts to sell related products at the expense of queerness also fell into this.

I didn't know it was considered so bad. To me it just felt like typical edgy Japanese content that seems to deliberately want to depress you. Do you think a lot of people felt betrayed because the ending instantly negated everything they cared about about the story?

Well, I was around when it was still a one-shot and subsequently the first chapters received a scanlate. This was widely discussed at the time, mainly due to the fact that the manga attracted an unusual number of yuri fanboys who didn't care so much about the story as they did praying for the MC to remain a girl so that it could become a full-fledged yuri. I even remember how quickly it became hot on reddit at the time (reminiscent of the current debate about the potential yuri subplot in Iruma, which is why I put off watching new seasons of the anime). But at some point it just became sluggish and repetitive. Like a gender thigh ecchi version of Horimiya and Komi-san, lol. And now it ends with "lesbians before graduation", effectively both crushing the hopes of yuri fanbiys (while lazily teasing them) and straight shippers, leaving their desired ending behind the curtain. It's disappointingly lazy, which is why I don't like "and the adventure continues" endings. They simply help you write the ending like a generic chapter.

I always like to get very involved in works, so I always feel uncomfortable when the result disappoints me. Shitty feeling.

@RobertBobert G-Witch made pretty empty noise because all people remember from that show nowadays are "lesbians" and not much else. A lot of kits didn't really sell.

Platinum End was THAT bad. It was pretty much a show no one could recommend while Death Note is so iconic, it is seen as an entry anime. Bakuman similiar but to a lesser degree. Platinum end majority couldn't recommend and felt betrayed by the ending. It trying to be edgy ultimately didn't do anything to make the show more enjoyable.


Ayakashi triangle reception wasn't very good, definitely the worst of his 3 works. I don't think the damage done was nearly as bad as platinum end, if it got enough figures at the beginning and has fans. But it performed so bad, its score was one of the lowest, did abysmal on polls, terrible viewership. Its no wonder Aniplex cancelled it. I made mal posts on its poor performance outside japan and looks like I was right. A lot of people are sobbing ayakashi triangle is finished almost certain for good.

@icefirestone23 I won’t say that I adored To Love ru, I thought premise was pretty goofy even during the first season. But I like Yabuki as an author, especially his talent as an ecchi author and love hate relationship with censorship. So I was pretty disappointed with how Triangle LITERALLY used "lesbians before graduation" as an open-ended framework in a gender bender manga. In my list of "what were they thinking" this was only left out by the implications of Charlotte's ending and the inability of the author of one manga (I already forgot the name lol) to refuse fujoshi. Was the Platinum End's reception that bad? The plot had a pretty depressing effect on me, but I was literally shitted by the way it chose to convey the message about the dangers of suicide and despondency in the ending.

I understand the point of view that AUs are mostly experimental while UCs have a common concept, universe and ideas (although it seems like Engege right now is being used as a soft revision due to the new protagonist and her influence on events). But I still find it hard to accept that the Witch made such empty noise despite all the hype that Sunrise tried to create around her. Even now some additional material is being published on YouTube, and magazines are trying to regain the audience with the help of VA.

@RobertBobert Destiny had a pretty iconic soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfHYKSgTfr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caNXbASyBBQ
It had one of the most memorable fights in the franchises like freedom vs impulse as well as infinite justice vs destiny.

As for the first paragraph, they are both coming from the camps that what had promise ultimately disappeared into a fad of oblivion. Objectively I do agree that Ayakashi kept to its purpose while G-Witch had no idea. While G-Witch I feel is probably going to be overlooked since there are so many failed AUs. Ayakashi Triangle is almost like the coffin the Kentaro Yabuki's legacy. It may be the last anime he will ever get. Especially if you grew up on Kentaro's work, it does feel sad how his show got cancelled so quick. Similiar to how platinum end sort of tarnished Tsugumi Ohba's legacy and he isn't writing manga anymore.

I knew G-Witch was never going to beat Seed/Destiny's legacy since 00, IBO, Age all failed to do that by a large margin. But watching Kentaro Yabuki just fade to irrelevancy is much harder to stomach

@icefirestone23 I'm not saying it's a good or solid show, I just feel that even if it lost any sense halfway through and had a disappointing ending, it's still a more true to itself and "honest" show than The Witch, which went in different directions in conflicting attempts to satisfy different audiences. This is a difficult question if you look at it philosophically, but I think that bad content created by one author is still preferable and sincere than a bad commercial product. Although I still don't know how many of the Witch's bad decisions depended on Ichiro directly. For example, months later, one of the illustrators almost admitted that one of the reasons for ignoring the wedding in the show was an attempt to increase the value of the art book with fantasies of what it might look like.

Are you implying that the brand is so strong that even unsuccessful inclusions can rank so high in an entire decade? When I listen to other fans' opinions about SEED, one might think that watching the show is a war crime or something vulgar.

@RobertBobert kind of had the opposite feeling with Triangle. I felt the ecchi was handled more poorly than TLR and darkness, and it felt less structured than TLR was also. It felt less erotic in general. I only liked some of the character designs, but felt he took on too much of a workload with ayakashi vs when he shared the burden with Hasemi. . I have skimmed through the manga and really like only the pictures. Everything else is kind of predictable,Kind of sad how quickly Yabuki destroyed his own career. If he handled the show with Hasemi, Aniplex probably wouldn't have cancelled the show so fast. The viewership and ratings were abysmal relative to what came out during its time. I have only watched the anime, and I feel it is severely inferior to TLR

Destiny still was the highest rated show of its airing and some of its fights and mechs are more popular than its predecssors. It is the best selling anime of the 2000s disc wise and 3rd of all time. Destiny arguably has more memorable moments than seed, and was really focused till episode 28ish.

@icefirestone23 Well, the triangle had a good potential to milk that yuri potential that Ranma for some reason never used (apparently Rumiko liked making jokes about gays much more than milking the lesbians theme), but as I said earlier, Yabuki just burned out at some point and we got endless milking of one fetish with a pointlessly lazy open end. Amidst the production chaos that was The Witch, Yabuki is still an ecchi genius. Although I haven't watched the anime, perhaps The Witch won due to the much more professional production and talent of the VA (Mamiko Noto is now the forever evil matriarch for me, sorry Sawako-chan).

Overall, despite the problems with the sequel, do you think SEED was good commercially and production-wise?

@RobertBobert rau le creuset is still the best char clone. Imagine if g witch had someone like him. There was no point for g witch to add the school aspect since it largely did not add anything to the comedy aspect nor were the reactions enjoyable. Seed was meant to be a war drama and it succeeded. G witch tried to mix school, war, politics, yuri and it just became a polarizing experience.

There are very few authors who I know who can successfully blend genres. Kentaro yabuki tried to do this with ayakashi triangle. He tried to mix yuri, ecchi, battle shonen and the reception was so bad it led to aniplex canceling the show.

Koshi tachibana is like a master at mixing genres so much that wataru watari who was ranked #1 on ln authors after oregairu said tachibana was a better writer than him and he can carry teams. Which is how tachibana gets huge successes off small budgets and marketing often beating bigger players.

https://frogkun.com/2015/12/28/project-qualidea-special-roundtable-discussion-with-sagara-sou-tachibana-koushi-and-watari-wataru/

@MalchikRepaid Chinese money turned out to be more desirable than trying to create the perfect food for zoomers in G-WItch and Orphans? Although I heard that they even took on the revival of a number of even more forgotten shows.

@Ionliosite2 If this is not caused by the now popular fashion for milking nostalgia by any means, then I really wonder what happened in the depths of Bamko, that they were forced (?) to return even to what they had been trying to forget for a long time.

@icefirestone23 In that case, I dread to imagine what happened to their plans for G-Witch, if it could even revive SEED, whose development plans were considered a "short-term clouding of consciousness" for decades.

@Ionliosite2 I think unicorn was the result of the seed plan never came to fruition. Which is why 2000s had no uc content other igloo. Also fukuda is directing again after a long time

Funnily enough, from what I read, this was ALREADY the plan for SEED by the time of Destiny, and only the development hell and later writer death that happened with this movie made them stop and continue with other AUs.

The Gundam Seed universe is still popular in China. I can understand Sunrise trying to expand the "Cosmic Era" universe.

(Hint, hint, Chinese money.)

@RobertBobert they didn't say this was the finale of seed so that it is what I am imagine. Seed is still the most popular au by a large margin from a toy giant. So imagine they can turn it into another uc

@RobertBobert

Well yes I agree.