Cosmic Era - Tumblr Posts

Given that I’ve been talking about it a bit lately, I should probably give my opinions on Gundam Seed (and Seed Destiny), shouldn’t I?

While I like both shows, my principal comment about them is that they’ve aged rather oddly. The stock footage and stylings dates them somewhat (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing), but several of the topics they bring up (the cycle of violence, discrimination and designer babies) I think are just as relevant now as they were then.

I think that the Cosmic Era has a fascinating world, with ripe opportunities to explore all these topics and more besides. I love how each faction is clearly defined and how they have clear motives to hate each other, making war an inevitability between them, with everyone else just trying to survive. Because it works so well into the feeling of powerlessness. Of war as this inevitable, world-destroying thing. It helps that both sides are antagonistic to the protagonists, furthering the view that war has no clear winner and that each side will sink to extremes.

And then, having made this wonderful world in which to play around in, the series proceed to do none of that.

I get that there’s different priorities, it just feels like there’s so many interesting topics here that just get ignored. Coordinators are essentially applied Eugenics, there’s stuff there. They haven’t been legal long, so a lot of them were made illegally. Maybe by the ruling elite, with the money and influence to make it happen and ignore the laws, possibly posing a class debate? Nope.

We hear tales of coordinators being made for specific purposes, like combat. Would this lead into a possible caste system, where different “strains” of coordinators have friction with each other? Nope.

Oho! But coordinators aren’t sustainable past a few generations! After that things start going wrong and the become less and less viable, leading to things like organ failure or sight loss. Surely this is - nope, it’s only brought up in side materials and never resolved.

And that’s all just with coordinators as the sole topic. There’s other medical avenues, mobile suit development (think all the fancy newtype tech in UC), themes of dehumanisation, realpolitik between nations and different factions of the government. How did the Nuclear Jammer Cancellers impact Earth? There’s all these details that could be explored, so Kira and friends just grabbing the biggest stick they can find and browbeating everyone else into oblivion kinda just feels lacking (I know I’m oversimplifying here, I know).

I’m also not really the biggest fan of the mobile suit designs. I’m not really sure why. I think it’s because they all share just a few too many design elements that I think they end up looking too similar? I do love the Infinite Justice, simply for the novelty of having a Pink Gundam (it helps it’s cqc focused), but other than that I struggle to really focus on any of the gundam’s (maybe the Aegis) other than the Providence. But Seed Destiny making units patterned after the old Zeon ones really works against it, since I just prefer the old designs.

In a nutshell: The Cosmic era has so much potential, but the plots we get out of it really feel like they’re not making the most of the setting, and the Gundam MS designs are just so-so.

(I’ll do another post talking about some of the ms designs I like)

Since I did a post talking about all the Mass-Production units I liked in SEED/SEED Destiny, so I should probably talk about the Gundams I did like, especially now that I’m thinking about it with the new movie trailer.

Generally, I don’t have a high opinion of much of the Gundam-type mobile suits in the Cosmic Era, principally because I find they all look rather similar (that’ll happen when they’re all developed from the same five suits by only two factions). I’m also gonna be focusing primarily on suits that appeared in the animated series, since sidestories typically can afford to be a bit more “out-there” with the designs. The first three are the designs that I genuinely like and appreciate, whereas the last two have asterisks attached.

First up, the Infinite Justice. Narrowly makes it into the top spot for me. A good part of it is the novelty of having a bright pink Gundam, I admit. But I do love how, where the Strike freedom decides to add funnels and more guns with which to shoot people, the IJ instead gets a bunch of blades. Like not only is it pink, but it’ll also cut you. It’s still well-armed in the ranged department though, having a beam rifle, “fortis” beam cannons and a bunch of beam boomerangs. I do like the original justice Gundam as well, but the Infinite Justice just feels like a fuller vision of the concept, without being tied into resembling the Aegis too much, in contrast to the Strike Freedom, which felt like they nailed it first time and had to add a bunch of extra stuff on.

The Providence is a solid second, because I like the concept more than the execution. The background for the Providence is that it was supposed to be a heavy assault suit, but they had to retrofit it with the Dragoon tech in a hurry, hence the cabling on its chest and the system’s overall lack of integration. I love the concept of this, and the heavy weaponry it retains makes me imagine a sort of Full Armour Gundam 7th-style unit. I *think* that the whole Dragoon system on its back thing is supposed to give the appearance of a halo? So Rau is a sort of angel of destruction that Kira must stop? It doesn’t work, but I think that’s what they were going for. Providence is a pretty cool name though. I’m not really sure about the integrated beam saber/gun thing on its left arm, but its not bad. The Providence also gets a bump because I quite like Rau as a character, and this is his final unit.

Grabbing third (and bringing an end to the ranking) is the Akatsuki (specifically the Oowashi Akatsuki). The Akatsuki itself is this lovely melding of SEED’s Gundam Aesthetic with the Hyaku-Shiki, and I think it looks gorgeous. You can obviously see the Strike influence, but it’s blended together with elements closer to the Astray series and it all works rather well. Its sensibly armed with a shield and rifle with optional bayonet in addition to beam sabers. I should note that I specifically prefer the atmospheric-based Oowashi pack to the space Shiranui one. This is because the Oowashi pack actually looks like something - wings and two beam cannons evocative of those on the F91. The Shiranui’s just a big box with some funnels stuck on. I do like how the Akatsuki’s great against beam weaponry but crap against physical though, since it’s a nice reversal of fortunes compared to the start of SEED.

Now if only Cagalli actually did anything with it.

The Calamity is a bit of a cheat, since it’s at least partially here because it can become the Sword Calamity. I like a lot of artillery suits, and the Calamity is just my favourite here, mostly because of how sensible it’s weaponry is. Guns in the shield, beam weaponry fitted on the suit itself to take advantage of the generator, then a nice, lovely plasma-sabot bazooka to round out the armament. The only thing it’s really missing is a beam saber. It also makes the most of its integrated weaponry - most of its handheld and the backpack’s replaceable, but that “Scylla” cannon isn’t going anywhere. I also quite like the head. If we had had the Calamity instead of the Buster, I’d probably prefer it.

The Legend Gundam’s here because A) it’s got a nice head. And b) we saw virtually nothing of it in series. It’s here because I end up liking it when it (very-rarely) shows up in side content (like videogames), but it regards to the anime itself, it could charitably be described as “being there”.

I felt like writing something short today, so let’s talk about the New Gundam Seed Freedom trailer (it was either this or a quick review of SD Gundam CROSS RAYS).

I think I’m gonna genuinely struggle to take this movie seriously.

Now I’ve already done a few posts about my feelings on the Cosmic Era (and I’ll probably do more at some point), but in brief; I like both SEED and SEED Destiny. I like Destiny more because it feels like they had more freedom (ugh) with what they wanted to do, as opposed to vaguely retelling the original series, but I think SEED’s a bit more coherent.

(Stargazer’s a decent little yarn about Phantom pain pilots, I’d say it’s almost the cosmic era in miniature)

And I know it’s because it’s a scene taken out of context from the trailer, but-

Lacus: It’s my wish as well

Kira: UWA!?

Lacus: to fight alongside you

Kira: UK-GHA?!

He can emote, ladies and gentlemen!

Speaking of emoting, maybe it’s just that I haven’t seen Cucuruz Doan’s Island, but everyone seems to be really pushing that facial animation in this. Like, in another scene, Lacus turns around, looks faintly disgusted, then moves right along to joy. And I misread Shinn’s expression something like twice when rewatching the trailer (is it horny rage, or is it anguish?). It was odd.

Though I will say the new music (op? Inset song?) sounds really good, though I find the Cosmic Era’s always had good music.

Even though we have another moment of unintentional parody, where the music lulls and Kira says dramatically “I can’t see an end to this war, all I can do is……” (soundtrack) FREEDOM. And my mind immediately went to “metal gear protagonist”.

Admittedly while I don’t think I’ll be able to take it seriously, I do think it’ll be fun to talk about. But all the same, I was feeling oddly cynical. Not really sure why.

Unrelatedly, there was another announcement today, Mobile Suit Gundam Silver Phantom. A, uh, virtual reality narrative interactive experience as one news site has dubbed it. Gonna be honest, I feel the the top comment on the YouTube video sums up my thoughts “I was hype until the meta quest appeared”. Anyway, we know basically nothing about it, so I’m going to indulge in some baseless speculation for the moment. Presumably it’s a spin-off, I don’t think they’d make a whole new AU just for this. So then as a guess I’d say it’s likely either a Universal Century sidestory or SEED (since we got Gundam Seed Eclipse a little while back). But I did see one interesting theory while browsing earlier:

It could be this “Silver Phantom”. Unlikely, I think, but a neat theory.

SEED Destiny, while not in itself a bad show, has the tendency to magnify a lot of SEED’s flaws as a whole, so stuff that was infrequent enough in the original series (like the stock footage) can become a lot more noticeable in hindsight. In addition, Destiny affects the ending of the original in such a way that it can lead the original series to feel less satisfying overall (particularly since Destiny’s ending is - very broadly - quite similar to the original’s).

SEED is also very character-driven (the line I hear a lot is that it was basically written as a soap opera), which is something of a two-sided sword. If the characters work for you, then all the better, but if they don’t then it can be difficult to summon the enthusiasm. It can also lead to the feeling that the series comprises of “The Protagonist and his Allies” and “everyone else”, so Gundam’s vaunted grey-and-grey morality becomes less so. I’m given to understand that SEED’s character focus is a big reason of *why* it was so popular when it came out, but it wasn’t expected to become THE big AU, at least domestically. SEED Destiny was greenlit shortly after the first with a view towards being to the original what Zeta was to 0079, but this meant that the creators then had to them unpick the (pretty damn good) ending of the original, so Destiny has a difficult time reconciling that.

I also see a great deal of criticism aimed at the character dynamic of Kira and Lacus (which again, becomes more pronounced in Destiny). Lacus is an ardent pacifist with strong personal convictions and a lot of influence (soft power, if you will), Kira is, by the end of the original series, an ace pilot par excellence, who can shoot down enemy mobile suits without killing the pilots. So it creates the dynamic of Lacus,being the character who hopes and dreams for a world free of conflict, and Kira, who’s the biggest beatstick in the Cosmic Era. Kira also spends much of the series trying to find a solution to the cycle of conflict perpetuated in the series, and the numerous deaths weigh heavily on his conscience. Becoming a pilot so good that he can non-lethally carve his way through entire fleets isn’t really an actual solution to that problem, it just enables Kira to be a one-man army.

Lastly (and this is likely just my personal bugaboo), the existence of coordinators in the cosmic era is a massive thing that spurs many practical and philosophical questions, and there’s a lot of emphasis put on it throughout the original series. But all SEED seems interested in answering is “Genocide: how much is too much?”

In a nutshell, SEED is fine by itself, but Destiny, while not particularly bad, has a tendency to accentuate its flaws.

Okay now that I’m like, 7 episodes from the end of SEED, can someone explain to me why exactly it’s so insanely maligned among English-speaking circles? Because it’s pretty good/okay, so either Destiny royally fucks things, or you all are filthy liars.