Gundam Seed

Quick & Dirty
Language: Japanese
Initial Interest: High
Favorite Character: Kira & Athrun
Opinion: Excellent series
Likely to Finish: Already have


Synopsis
Year 70 of the Cosmic Era. The Coordinators, a group of genetically-enhanced humans, have moved into colonies orbiting the Earth. But that hasn’t quieted the tensions between them and regular humans; the conflict soon escalates into a full-scale war.
On the neutral colony of Heliopolis, Kira Yamato, and his friends are going to school and just being kids. But when the ZAFT commando forces attack, Kira’s life changes forever. Left with no choice he and Federation officer Murrue Ramius are thrown into battle in a prototype mobile weapon, which Kira christens “GUNDAM”. Now, Kira must defend himself, and his friends, from his own people. For, unknown to anyone else Kira is a Coordinator. And the enemy he faces on the battlefield is his childhood best friend, Athrun! (Source: Bandai Entertainemnt – DVD box set)


Pre-Viewing Thoughts
This is actually an anime that I have already seen. It is in fact my husband’s favorite series. This being my first review it makes it difficult to accurately describe my expectations going in. I can’t really even remember what I thought about watching Gundam Seed before I met my husband. I do know I wanted to watch it but didn’t know when it started on Cartoon Network. I also know that I had at that point seen 5 different Gundam Series and loved 3 of them. So I probably had pretty high hopes for this series. By the time I actually watched it I had met my husband and knew how much he loved it and was therefore extremely excited.
As for my current thoughts on re-watching the first 5 episodes, I’m pretty cool with that. I liked the series, I don’t mind seeing it again. It might be interesting to watch it while thinking about what I think about it…we’ll see.


Favorite Character
The thing about picking a favorite character based on the first 5 episodes is that it’s entirely likely all of the characters will not have been introduced. Gundam Seed, however, is a series that introduces every important member of the cast in the first few episodes, with one exception. Unfortunately the exception here is my overall favorite – Lacus Clyne. As far as the first 5 episodes go I’ve decided I like Kira & Athrun best.
A lot of people think Kira is too whiny in this series but I tend to disagree. Sure Kira complains a lot at the beginning and he picks it up again later on when he’s being purposefully manipulated, but I think it’s safe to say most of us would whine at least as much in his situation. He doesn’t want to fight and he finds himself in a position where everyone keeps telling him fight or you and your friends will die. It sucks, no doubt about it. But he still fights. I can respect that.
Athrun is the other side of the coin and I think in the first 5 episodes I like him just as much. Athrun is a soldier. He believes in what he’s fighting for and you can’t blame him for wanting to fight because his mother was killed in the brutal massacre that triggered this war. Despite that, in both of the major battles Athrun takes part in he doesn’t fight. Why? Because his best friend is the one he’s supposed to kill and he just can’t do that. He tries his best to bring Kira over to Zaft so he doesn’t have to worry about this powerful personal conflict and in the process of trying not to kill his friend he kind of forgets what he’s supposed to be doing.
I think both are believable characters and I like the way their thoughts and interactions are presented in these episodes (and in the series as a whole).


Overall Opinion
Gundam Seed is a Gundam series in the truest sense. With a real Gundam series you can expect 3 things: mobile suits (some of which will be called gundams), war, and an extremely vague line between bad and good. And that last bit is what I really love about Gundam. Most series have a bad guy, a person or group that is always antagonistic and/or evil. Gundam has that too, in Seed it’s Le Cruise, but I think in another series Zaft would be the “bad guy” as it were. They set up the beginning very skillfully and I never quite appreciated it until I watched it with this purpose. The first shot you see is of Zaft soldiers beginning a mission. I think the mission is the one to steal the gundams, but it gets a little hard to tell (for me at least). But you don’t actually see the soldiers, you hear them. What you see is pictures in their cockpits – one soldier has a photo of a woman that’s probably his girlfriend, wife, or sister, another a woman with a baby. They shout the line “For the sake of Zaft” and then before we get to see their faces we learn that the Earth Alliance nuked a colony that sparked this war. From that one would suspect that Zaft soldiers are the heroes in this series, but technically the heroes are the crew of the Archangel (an Earth Alliance ship) and specifically Kira.
But that’s a very specific statement about the beginning and this is supposed to be my overall opinion so let’s get to it. I love this series. If I hadn’t already seen it at least twice from beginning to end I would definitely want to finish it. It presents a conflict that most of us can understand – war, them vs. us. The unique thing is that the main two characters from the very beginning are best friends on opposite sides and they know it. That’s important I think. When I watched the first episode of another series the best friends were pitted against each other but they didn’t know it; it creates tension for the audience but not for the characters and I don’t really want to see the moment when one of them unknowingly kills the other and then cheers or finds out who it was and is destroyed. That to me isn’t a good conflict, and it isn’t emotionally provocative. But in Seed they know from the beginning that they are facing their best friend. Suddenly in this game of them vs. us one of them becomes one of us, only we’ve still got to kill him. It makes me anxious to see the outcome, especially since I can see that neither of them can give up the thing they are fighting for. Athrun isn’t fighting to kill all naturals, he’s fighting to protect the colonies (Plants). And Kira doesn’t want to fight at all but the lives of his friends are on the line and he can’t back down. I want to know what’s going to happen between them because eventually they’ll have to really fight, though they haven’t really yet, and theoretically that means one of them will kill the other. The added issue here though is that from the first 5 episodes it seems obvious that neither one of them can kill the other because they care too much.
Overall this series has good, complex characters who grow throughout and a deep involved plot. It has a lot of technical aspects, being a war and all, but they aren’t so prevalent that they make the series unapproachable – I know, I’m a dunce when it comes to military terms. The animation is probably the part most lacking in this series; it isn’t bad but it’s the kind of style where everyone has exactly the same face. If you’ve watched Fafner, which has the same art style, you’re likely to feel as if you’ve seen everyone before. I recommend this one to anyone who isn’t vehemently opposed to all things gundam.


This part is not part of the review.
This being my first review I’m particularly interested in feedback. Was this interesting or helpful, is there anything specific you would like me to continue to do or do differently for future reviews? Also if you have any questions about Gundam Seed that you’d like me to answer, I’ll be happy to answer. And of course, any suggestions for future series to review are welcome.


Next official review: Ragnarok the Animation

So What Is It?

I love anime. I love all kinds of anime. Shoujo, shounen, romance, magical girl, giant robot, time travel, alternate universe, sports... I'm willing to give anything a try.

The specific point of this blog is for me to review anime. My intention is to watch a minimum of 5 episodes of a new anime every week and give my opinions on them. Now that number isn't immutable, if I have time and drive I may watch more than 5 episodes or I may watch 5 episodes from more than one show in a single week. 5 episodes per week is my minimum goal.

The trick is I don't want to have any control over what I watch. You read that right. Maybe I'll never have any readers and I'll always just be telling myself what I think, but the goal is to have readers and to have you readers choose my series. So, if you want to know my thoughts on a series, or even if you don't care about my thoughts and just feel I have to watch XYZ series, leave a comment with the suggestion.
Now I admit I'm not sure the best method for using these suggestions. If I imagine there are multiple readers who are happily suggesting series I can also suppose that they'll suggest different series so there are a few ways to handle this.
1) I could watch whatever the first series suggested on the latest post is.
2) I could keep a running (first come first serve) list of everything ever suggested to me and just work my way down.
3) I could watch whatever has the highest number of suggestions on the most recent post.
Each of these has their merits so feel free to give me your input.
Of course, until there are readers who are willing to give me suggestions I'll just be choosing my own choices.

Additional rules and notes:
1) I will use a series for my weekly review only once. However, if I enjoy the first five episodes I may finish the series and post a completed series review in addition to my weekly review.
2) I will not review porn. Don't suggest it. If you do suggest it and you trick me into watching it, I still won't review it. More to the point anyone who suggests porn will not be allowed to make suggestions anymore (that is, you can make them all you want but I'm not watching or reviewing them).
3) I am willing to review series I have already seen, I will even re-watch the first 5 episodes for that week to make sure it's fresh in my memory. So if you're wondering if I've seen it, it really doesn't matter (thought it might make a more complete review).
4) I own a fair amount of anime, but I don't own everything. I will not review a series if I cannot watch it. I have some streaming sites bookmarked and I will always make an effort to find a series but I cannot gaurantee I'll be able to find and watch every series. I will make a note in new posts if I was unable to find a series to watch.
5) For the most part 5 episodes isn't likely to contain any spoilers to get in arms about, however if there is something to spoil or I'm doing a more complete review I will try to keep spoilers hidden from the general view (I will lable them as spoilers at the beginning and end and use a font which requires you to highlight to read). Example: This is what spoilers will look like. End example.
6) I don't like dubs. There are very few exceptions to this statement. I will state at the beginning of each post what language I watched the episodes in but it will almost always be Japanese.

I will try to get posts up on Friday and will post no later than Sunday.