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Ojjeorago posted:And episode 13 was clearly an inside job to get Kira back in the Gundam, Lacus did it. At the end of the show both ZAFT and the Alliance are shattered, the only fully standing military left is ORB. Lacus is personal friends with the leader of Orb, her boyfriend is the Kira Yamato and one of her best friends is the Pilot of the Justice. She even managed to get the biggest wildcard ace (Shinn) on their side. One of the final frames of the show is her going back to the PLANTs, to no doubt a leadership. Even the snippets of the new trailer line up, Kira must be stopped all of a sudden? Why Lacus? Because he is onto you? 
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Aug 10, 2023 19:31
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NikkolasKing posted:I always thought Durandal was a highlight of Destiny. You were just talking about Shinn's character and I alwways remember the small scene where the usually unhappy Shinn is over-the-moon because Durandal praised him. I guess I relate a lot to Shinn but didn't quite realize it at the time. One of those people looking for validation from authority figures. I think the issue there is that it's one of the times in the series the oddities of Coordinator culture come up. To Durandal that isn't actually that odd because to some degree it is already how Coordinators work. They're a society of nothing but genetic engineered people and so people do have jobs they trend towards for that reason, and due to the Coordinator infertility problem things like marriage are specifically tied to the potential to produce children. He was already someone who lived through that and his choice was to convince himself he was happy and it was for the best because the other choice is to admit life loving sucks. It genuinely makes perfect sense for Durandal as a character as introduced and for a war-torn CE it's easy to see how a lot of people could accept rigid control over their life and an absence of freedoms in exchange for safety. It even makes sense for Kira to be his 'rival' because Kira is literally the endgame of the Destiny Plan, a human being who was perfectly engineered for every single trait he has, and he loving hates it.
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Aug 10, 2023 19:32
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Zedd posted:Exactly. And the show never seems to examine the optics of this. The show never really examines the optics on A LOT OF THINGS.
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Aug 10, 2023 19:42
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Omnicrom posted:And the show never seems to examine the optics of this. This is again another thing that only really has terrible optics if you're predisposed to hate the characters. Within the confines of the series it is "Lacus, who already turned down leadership roles in the PLANTs once, and has been shown at basically every possible occasion to be a good leader, whose identity is so valuable that the last guy faked having her support, accepts the leadership role in the wake of a catastrophic war." There's literally nothing in or out of the series (except that one DWG joke) that implies she is anything but forthright and honest and was reluctant to take on the role until it is forced upon her. You can't even argue "and it means the Coordinators rule the world" because Cagalli is a Natural and is treated on an equal level. (Well, an equal level once they expanded the ending, the initial release was just EVERYTHING GOOD NOW BYE.) There's absolutely a degree of Main Character Syndrome where everyone important is like twice removed at most from each other but that's also a common problem for a lot of shows. (I do think it's fair to say SEED comes down too hard on the side of the Coordinators in terms of depiction and that's a problem, but on the other hand portraying NotAmerica as a bunch of absurdly racist loony toons who will elect incompetent leaders and destroy the world before they stop trying to be racist was if anything too accurate to life.)
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Aug 10, 2023 19:49
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ImpAtom posted:(I do think it's fair to say SEED comes down too hard on the side of the Coordinators in terms of depiction and that's a problem, but on the other hand portraying NotAmerica as a bunch of absurdly racist loony toons who will elect incompetent leaders and destroy the world before they stop trying to be racist was if anything too accurate to life.) I also think it's a classic case of Gundam revisionism, aka watching the original MSG and trying to copy it while missing the point and going "Spacenoids good, Earthnoids bad".
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Aug 10, 2023 19:58
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One point in CEs overall favor is that it has some drat good weird Gundam rear end names.
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Aug 10, 2023 19:59
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ManSedan posted:One point in CEs overall favor is that it has some drat good weird Gundam rear end names. You mean MS like the GOOhN, whose appearance is based on the average SA forums user?
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Aug 10, 2023 20:01
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LuiCypher posted:I also think it's a classic case of Gundam revisionism, aka watching the original MSG and trying to copy it while missing the point and going "Spacenoids good, Earthnoids bad". Perhaps, though it does feel noteworthy that the last villains of both shows are Coordinator assholes who have decided the path is cleansing fire on everyone who disagrees. But it's very much a case of "These guys are the problem, not everything around them, in fact many Coordinators fight against them" vs "Murata Azrael appears to represent roughly 89.3% of every living being on Earth" like earthlings where the best example you have is like Cagalli, Ramias and Flaga who all defect at the first given chance. Honestly part of SEED's problem is that it loves everyone defecting to the good guy side which leaves precious few people to oppose them but the crazies. Even Yzak "I literally murdered babies" Joule ends up being a softy in the end.
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Aug 10, 2023 20:02
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People really like the fanfic "Darth Lacus manipulates everything to achieve world conquest" interpretation of the end of Destiny because it's funny, but it makes little sense - her influence and pull was so great at the end of SEED that if she had wanted overall control over ZAFT she could have had it right then and there. She doesn't actually want power; remember that her originally chosen career was singer despite being the daughter of a big shot politician and very obviously having incredible political and leadership skills. She stepped back after SEED because she wanted to live a peaceful life with her boyfriend and poo poo collapsed almost immediately, so post-Destiny there's no other option besides to sigh and accept the responsibility herself. ImpAtom posted:Honestly part of SEED's problem is that it loves everyone defecting to the good guy side which leaves precious few people to oppose them but the crazies. Even Yzak "I literally murdered babies" Joule ends up being a softy in the end. One of the funniest bits of Destiny is Yzak and Dearka facing a court martial and discharge/possible firing squad for defecting to the Three Ships Alliance in SEED, Durandal using his pull to get both of them off scot free, and then both Yzak and Dearka betraying Durandal at the drop of a hat.
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Aug 10, 2023 20:03
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Kanos posted:One of the funniest bits of Destiny is Yzak and Dearka facing a court martial and discharge/possible firing squad for defecting to the Three Ships Alliance in SEED, Durandal using his pull to get both of them off scot free, and then both Yzak and Dearka betraying Durandal at the drop of a hat. I would pay good money for a series starring Yzak and Dearka that was basically like Beavis and Butthead in the CE.
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Aug 10, 2023 20:10
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ImpAtom posted:I would pay good money for a series starring Yzak and Dearka that was basically like Beavis and Butthead in the CE. The problem is that one of them uhehehe, hehehe, hehehe One of them actually scores. And like, with a really hot chick too!
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Aug 10, 2023 20:12
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LuiCypher posted:The problem is that one of them We have no proof of that!
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Aug 10, 2023 20:19
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ImpAtom posted:
FTFY. 
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Aug 10, 2023 20:28
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Kanos posted:People really like the fanfic "Darth Lacus manipulates everything to achieve world conquest" interpretation of the end of Destiny because it's funny, but it makes little sense - her influence and pull was so great at the end of SEED that if she had wanted overall control over ZAFT she could have had it right then and there. Oh yeah, no, I fully understand and realize this is what the show wants to say about Lacus. I do believe that in the heart of hearts of the production staff of the show Lacus is 100% supposed to be a good person without evil ulterior motives or anything like that. It's just that SEED and DESTINY have this problem of lacking self-awareness or self-reflection. So much in the setting of the show is not part of the plot or story of the show it's actually jarring. Lacus is supposed to be a character akin to Relena or Kudelia or Audrey, someone who is meant to be a moral center for the show. The thing is that in other Gundam shows those characters have major scenes and story arcs where the show asks critical questions about them and their perspectives and how much weight their ideals hold and how moral they are and what it takes to achieve their visions given the state of the world and so forth. And it's not that SEED and DESTINY totally lack the "But are they really" questions, it's that like so many other things the show doesn't really engage with said question. The response is a short "yes of course" and that's that. Also important is that all of these characters are used frequently as foils for the rest of the cast, the entire point of Kudelia was that her background is basically diametrically opposite from the kids of Tekkadan. They have an arc, their paths cross, converge, and then importantly and tragically diverge. Kudelia meets Tekkadan and her ideals are both challenged and ultimately reaffirmed. SEED and DESTINY don't really challenge Lacus, and more to the point Lacus and Kira never functionally diverge in their perspectives. Both of them are already axiomatically correct according to the show. Kira's arc in DESTINY is in realizing he needs to take a more hands-on approach to changing the world because he's already in the right and needs to double down. I think if there's any overriding reason behind the quasi-popularity of the "evil Lacus" fan theory it's because the way she and Kira exist in the final version of DESTINY is boring and uninteresting. Combine that with all the other ways that show avoids its own setting and you get a popular fan theory held up purely by a desire for there to be more to the show.
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Aug 10, 2023 20:59
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Lacus isn't really the moral center of the show, though. Kira is. Lacus's role in SEED is to serve as a counselor/guiding figure to help Kira clarify his own beliefs. Her speech to him prior to the Freedom basically boils down to her asking him point blank what he wants to do and what he believes in. It's muddier in SEED Destiny because SEED Destiny is a muddier show, but Lacus's role in that show is again mostly to provide logistical and moral support to Kira, Athrun, and Cagalli while they wrestle with their own moral quandaries. The show is never particularly interested in focusing on Lacus outside the context of other characters, whereas say, IBO S1 is very interested in looking at Kudelia as an individual. Kanos fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 21:34
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Kanos posted:Lacus isn't really the moral center of the show, though. Kira is. Lacus's role in SEED is to serve as a counselor/guiding figure to help Kira clarify his own beliefs. Her speech to him prior to the Freedom basically boils down to her asking him point blank what he wants to do and what he believes in. It's muddier in SEED Destiny because SEED Destiny is a muddier show, but Lacus's role in that show is again mostly to provide logistical and moral support to Kira, Athrun, and Cagalli while they wrestle with their own moral quandaries. Now I think on it, the two main women are the politicians while the men are out there doing the fighting. It leads to stuff like this, a really cool little part I liked in SEED and which I captured way back forever ago (I ripped audio because you never get copyright strikes for dub audio rips in my experience) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1aQuU5RLUY I dunno, it feels like she has more arguments than Kira does, maybe? Because again she's an actual leader figure and he's a soldier. I wonder if Lacus is Relena-inspired.
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Aug 10, 2023 22:52
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NikkolasKing posted:Now I think on it, the two main women are the politicians while the men are out there doing the fighting. It leads to stuff like this, a really cool little part I liked in SEED and which I captured way back forever ago (I ripped audio because you never get copyright strikes for dub audio rips in my experience) Probably a bit but I think they are both just evolutions of the princess archetype Gundam likes so much. Lacus goes all in in the pretty pink princess aesthetic despite not actually being royalty.
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Aug 10, 2023 23:53
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I love the Darth-Lacus theory but I obviously don't think that is the authorial intent. SEED is a perfectly okay show, Destinty is a waste of potential. There is a very good setting, universe, story there. There are potential great storylines and character conflicts. But it all ends in a wet fart. I am exactly the type of person the Strike Freedom was made for though, that thing is extremely stupid and I love it.
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Aug 11, 2023 00:14
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The Kira Lacus relationship also feels more Dianna Loran inspired than Relena Heero. I got more Dianna/Kihel vibes off Lacus in general.
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Aug 11, 2023 00:49
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Tulalip Tulips posted:The Kira Lacus relationship also feels more Dianna Loran inspired than Relena Heero. I got more Dianna/Kihel vibes off Lacus in general. I can see that, but with the caveat Diana and Kihel did way more and engaged with their setting way more than Lacus ever did.
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Aug 11, 2023 03:56
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Oh for sure, Dianna and Kihel actually had to deal with poo poo as it came up as well as the actual actions they take or don't take. They both feel a lot more engaged in the setting. Lacus has a, in my opinion, great moment where she's on the radio and telling people her dad was murdered and not to trust Patrick Zala but she feels outside of a lot of what's going on outside of some specific instances. Seed's better about engaging her but Destiny drops it outside of the assasination plot and when she finally engages with Meer, which is important. Lacus, to me, feels really divorced from a lot of Destiny so she comes off as passive and it's one of the things I don't like about itm Idk, I like Lacus but I like her inspite of a lot of where the plot takes her.
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Aug 11, 2023 06:26
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lacus is boring because she's too perfect. even shining space jesus kira yamato is allowed to have flaws and make mistakes, but not lacus.
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Aug 11, 2023 06:36
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gimme the GOD drat candy posted:lacus is boring because she's too perfect. even shining space jesus kira yamato is allowed to have flaws and make mistakes, but not lacus. Compare that to Flay, who's a bit of a hot mess but has an agenda and is not afraid to do what it takes to get it done (until she meets up with Blue Cosmos who are too cartoonishly chaotic stupid+evil even by her own revenge/racism-fueled standards). She's at least an interesting character who has an arc/development... right up until she gets fridged.
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Aug 11, 2023 15:27
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She basically stops existing when Rau abducts her. Extremely wasted character in typical SEED fashion.
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Aug 11, 2023 15:43
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SEED is very okay, mostly hurt by the HD remaster revisions imo having rewatched it a few years ago. SEED is kinda derivative in uniteresting ways, but its mostly fine generic Gundam stuff that at least hit the melodrama and "look cool robots" piece. Destiny as noted really just wastes a lot of its run time on stuff that should be way more interesting than it is, focusing on characters and actions that don't get the actual depth they need to be compelling to engage with falling back on Gundam tropes to hit points in the story for effect. SEED may be an obvious attempt to refresh Gundam as a franchise, but it was at least more or less successful at that. Destiny tried to play with too many other tropes of the franchise and lacked real vision or understanding of what made those moments valuable so it just comes off as "well we did it because" which is simply unsatisfying. My memory of Destiny (that one poster is totally right I only watched it once 20 years ago and haven't ever gone back to it so its all just shadows of impressions) is that what made it so unfun was the general character assasination is goes to great lengths to accomplish while not crafting anyone to fill that void which just makes a setting that was already secretly kinda grim and unpleasant even more so.
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Aug 11, 2023 17:39
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gently caress SEED, Roux finally showed up in the office lady Haman manga https://twitter.com/MechaGirlOTD/status/1689826243326136327?s=20
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Aug 11, 2023 18:00
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Tulalip Tulips posted:Oh for sure, Dianna and Kihel actually had to deal with poo poo as it came up as well as the actual actions they take or don't take. They both feel a lot more engaged in the setting. Lacus has a, in my opinion, great moment where she's on the radio and telling people her dad was murdered and not to trust Patrick Zala but she feels outside of a lot of what's going on outside of some specific instances. Seed's better about engaging her but Destiny drops it outside of the assasination plot and when she finally engages with Meer, which is important. Lacus, to me, feels really divorced from a lot of Destiny so she comes off as passive and it's one of the things I don't like about itm Idk, I like Lacus but I like her inspite of a lot of where the plot takes her. I'm not sure I agree with that precisely. The issue is I think that Lacus is portrayed as pretty much always 'being on' so even when she isn't doing things she's still technically doing things. Lacus is, from basically the moment she is introduced, pretty constantly doing something. When she's rescued by the Archangel she is in full "Oh gosh I am such a ditz, haha" mode but they make it pretty clear at the time (and doubly so in retrospect) that is an act she is putting on and she's basically spending her entire time on the Archangel trying not to die while also trying to figure out what Kira's deal is. Once she gets back to PLANT she instantly starts in on Athrun and starts trying to convince him that hey, maybe his Dad is kind of a poo poo and maybe he shouldn't want to murder Kira. Then she keeps hanging out until she has to save Athrun again, steal a brand new battleship, and take off. She's basically constantly doing something. But the issue there is that basically the first glimpse you really get of Lacus The Person is near the end of the series where after she finally gets to a 'safe place' she breaks down in Kira's arms and cries about her father, and even then her guard goes right back up once she's no longer in private. And then the only other time you see it go down is when she tells Kira she wants him to stay with her. (Which is still her being the one to tell stupid-rear end Kira "Hey, dumbass, I love you" because Kira is a moron.) If anything I think the problem is that we see very little of Lacus outside of her 'doing stuff' persona. And that could be genuinely interesting as a character beat if they focused on it more but instead they basically reserve it for "only allows her weakness to be shown to the one person she loves." And that's cute from a romantic perspective but means that you're basically dealing with a character who is acting for almost their entire onscreen time.
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Aug 11, 2023 19:03
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SEED Destiny has one memorable moment for me and that was the "black tristars" dropping in.
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Aug 11, 2023 21:38
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Apprentice Dick posted:SEED Destiny has one memorable moment for me and that was the "black tristars" dropping in. I've watched Destiny multiple times over the years(pray for me) and I don't remember this scene at all in any way. If I had to pick a "this is memorable" thing from Destiny, it would be Impulse vs Freedom, because it's probably the best fight choreography Cosmic Era ever got.
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Aug 11, 2023 21:51
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https://twitter.com/lumachwfqgt/status/1689973040996605953?t=Q8MfE7aBqs3T1Z2FDEndNQ&s=19
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Aug 11, 2023 22:01
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Waffleman_ posted:gently caress SEED, Roux finally showed up in the office lady Haman manga It's the moment we've all been waiting for, and it did not disappoint.
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Aug 11, 2023 22:08
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Kanos posted:I've watched Destiny multiple times over the years(pray for me) and I don't remember this scene at all in any way. I still remember literally decades ago a clip of super old, low quality, shaky-cam footage of some sort of event that was showing a new debut trailer for Super Robot Wars Z. Near the end during the big sizzle reel of special attacks it showed the Impulse Gundam's Exalibur attack running through Kira in the Freedom and the audience went wild, there was such a HUGE pop for it.
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Aug 11, 2023 22:12
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NikkolasKing posted:Now I think on it, the two main women are the politicians while the men are out there doing the fighting. It leads to stuff like this, a really cool little part I liked in SEED and which I captured way back forever ago (I ripped audio because you never get copyright strikes for dub audio rips in my experience) Relena was the first Gundam princess as we know them, but they were pretty well established by the time Lacus showed up, making it into a general trope as much as it was a specific tribute. And Kira's in an odd position since he's in the hot seat for most of the arguments on the show, as is natural for Gundam pilots, but he doesn't actually have the capacity for it. Even the emotionally damaged child soldier pilots like Mikazuki, Setsuna, and Heero have a lot more give and take when they're in an argument, while Kira is just blindsided with no ability to coherently state his positions, even as he wins, making his fights (if you're feeling uncharitable) look like a simple case of might making right. Mikazuki had the same role as the brute force to Orga and Kudelia's political operations, but he still understands why he does things and can put it into words. Meanwhile, Kira is more functional, but he's outright terrible at mid-combat debates, making his relationship with Lacus feel less equal than the show intends.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:08
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LuiCypher posted:Compare that to Flay, who's a bit of a hot mess but has an agenda and is not afraid to do what it takes to get it done (until she meets up with Blue Cosmos who are too cartoonishly chaotic stupid+evil even by her own revenge/racism-fueled standards). She's at least an interesting character who has an arc/development... right up until she gets fridged. She didn’t get fridged. That’s not what that means.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:14
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chiasaur11 posted:Relena was the first Gundam princess as we know them, but they were pretty well established by the time Lacus showed up, making it into a general trope as much as it was a specific tribute. Shakti
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Aug 11, 2023 23:16
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Gaius Marius posted:Shakti Point.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:30
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Gripweed posted:She didn’t get fridged. That’s not what that means. Well yes and no. "Fridging" refers to the bad trend of killing off women, usually love interests, to further the development of the men in their life. You can credibly argue that Flay died in large part to further motivate Kira and/or put another underline on why Rau is the bad guy, but at the same time Kira was already motivated and Rau was already solidly the antagonist and just about everything related to Kira in late period SEED is ignored for DESTINY so did it really further his character story? I would probably say that Flay got fridged, but there is maybe a little bit of wiggle room depending on how starkly you want to define that term. And I fully believe that what happened to Flay was entirely momentum for the franchise, as Gundam unfortunately has a habit of doing similar things. Remind me, how often does the Newtype(-adjacent) woman get killed in the crossfire of a hero and his (sometimes main) rival? chiasaur11 posted:And Kira's in an odd position since he's in the hot seat for most of the arguments on the show, as is natural for Gundam pilots, but he doesn't actually have the capacity for it. Even the emotionally damaged child soldier pilots like Mikazuki, Setsuna, and Heero have a lot more give and take when they're in an argument, while Kira is just blindsided with no ability to coherently state his positions, even as he wins, making his fights (if you're feeling uncharitable) look like a simple case of might making right. This is always been such a weird part of Kira to me and it applies to a certain extent the entire rest of the show: it is really bad at pitching its ideals. That's not usually hard for a Gundam show either, there's a reason the "wow cool robots" meme exists after all. There is the baseline of "war is bad" obviously, but SEED paints both sides as essentially genocidal lunatics and the happy ending of DESTINY is Kira and buddies crushing both major armies and taking on a leading role in the world which definitely doesn't help the "might makes right" accusation. And I'm not seriously arguing that really is the point of the show wants to make, but just like with the Darth Lacus fan theory the show is frustratingly bad at arguing its own position and it seems blind to a lot of its own weird internal dissonance.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:39
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Cecily from F91 probably counts, too.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:41
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Kanos posted:I've watched Destiny multiple times over the years(pray for me) and I don't remember this scene at all in any way. This and the mission where Shinn has to pilot his disassembled gundam through a tunnel to destroy an enemy outpost are the big action ones for sure.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:41
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Omnicrom posted:Well yes and no. "Fridging" refers to the bad trend of killing off women, usually love interests, to further the development of the men in their life. You can credibly argue that Flay died in large part to further motivate Kira and/or put another underline on why Rau is the bad guy, but at the same time Kira was already motivated and Rau was already solidly the antagonist and just about everything related to Kira in late period SEED is ignored for DESTINY so did it really further his character story? I would probably say that Flay got fridged, but there is maybe a little bit of wiggle room depending on how starkly you want to define that term. Fridging originally referred to the trend from American comics of having superheroes' girlfriends get horribly murdered just to motivate the hero. With the term coming from the time Green Lantern came home to find his girlfriend in the fridge. These were characters who existed for no reason beyond to be sexy and then get murdered. That was what the term was describing and criticizing. It has to mean more than just "women dying to motivate the protagonist" because if that's all it means the it's an extremely stupid way to criticize media. It's fiction, most things that happen to motivate the protagonist. Flay was one of the best realized characters in the whole show, she had her own arc, and her death was a conclusion to her own arc. If that's fridging, then who gives a poo poo about fridging? Nicol, aside from his gender, is much closer to the textbook definition of fridging. He only existed to be gentle and then die horribly to motivate Kira and Athrun.
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Aug 11, 2023 23:53
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