"Mobile Suit Gundam: Seed Freedom" Movie Talkback (Spoilers)

[wonderfly]

The News Team's PicardMan has a new review up on the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com:

"Review: “Gundam Seed Freedom”: An Action Packed Nostalgia Trip"​

"In 2002, Japan had a new wave of Gundamania when Gundam Seed premiered. In 2004, Gundam Seed came and went on American television, being the victim of Cartoon Network being in a phase where they treating every anime that wasn’t Dragonball Z (or later Naruto) like absolute garbage. Western fans were divided on the quality of Seed: some saw it as an inferior retread of the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam that deserved to get an early morning deathslot, while others agreed with the Japanese fandom of it being a great series in its own right. Canada’s Bionix block, their equivalent to the American Toonami action cartoon block, aired Seed‘s even more controversial sequel, which North American fans accuse of killing the fandom on this side of the Pacific. We are now in the year 2024 and Japan decided to cater to 2000s nostalgia by releasing a movie sequel to the Seed subfranchise.

That means: newbies beware, this movie is not for you. Netflix has been gracious enough to also re-release Seed and Seed Destiny along with this film, so fans can catch up. We’ll see if Netflix’s attempt to cause Seedmania to occur in the West (as it did in Japan twenty years ago) will actually happen or not. Anyway, what you need to know to understand the plot of this movie is that “Coordinators” (genetically engineered people) and “Naturals” (not genetically engineered people) fight wars against each other. The main character is an ace Gundam pilot named Kira Yamato. His love interest is an idol singer Lacus Clyne, a peace ambassador of sorts. Athrun Zala is the rival type character. A bunch of stuff happens in 100 episodes of Seed and Seed Destiny that this movie assumes you know, as the movie never exposits any of the information I gave above. Heed my warning and watch Seed and Seed Destiny first."

Read the full review here.

 

[J'onn J'onzz]

It is interesting this film put so much emphasis on Kira and Lacus’ romance. If people remember the original show, Kira’s first love is Flay, a beautiful natural girl who despises coordinators. Kira in Seed is a self hating coordinator. He is consumed by guilt for fighting his own people, including his best friend Athrun. Still, he feels a responsibility to protect his friends who were natural college students at a neutral colony attacked by ZAFT. Kira and Flay’s relationship is deeply toxic, and ends tragically. Kira refuses to see his parents when his friends visit theirs in Orb. Flay, having been orphaned by the war when Kira failed to save her father’s ship, both desires and despises Kira. She blows up on him for refusing to see his parents, since he is taking for granted something she can never have. After Kira recoils from her meltdown, he goes off and yells “why the hell did they have to make me a coordinator?” He would like nothing more than to be a normal boy, going to school and dating the girl of his dreams. The tragedy is that it is only because Kira is the perfect coordinator that Flay was drawn to him as a protector and a weapon against the coordinators she resents for killing her father. Flay barely acknowledged he existed before he showed his true power. She was engaged to his friend Sai until her father died, nullifying the arranged marriage proposal. When Flay breaks off the engagement, Sai continues pursuing her until Kira brutally humiliates him in front of his sister Cagalli and his girlfriend. It was only his power as a coordinator that drew her eye.

The relationship with Lacus comes later in Seed and in Destiny. It is focused on in intros, outros, and eyecatches. In the actual story of the show however, it is never really fully confirmed. Unlike Kira and Flay whose relationship is consummated on screen almost immediately, we are given little reason to believe Kira and Lacus are particularly intimate. They are always shown in separate beds, even after living together for years. Kira seems to be haunted still by his memories of Flay throughout Destiny. His survivor’s guilt from the last war seems to cut him off from Lacus on an emotional level. In Destiny he comes across as a bodyguard and enforcer of her ideology.

Lacus is initially depicted as the finance of Kira’s friend Athrun. This is another arranged marriage, and while Sai is willing to fight Kira for Flay, Athrun more or less gives up Lacus to Kira without a fight. It doesn’t hurt that the ZAFT chairman gives Athrun a lookalike of Lacus to maintain their arranged marriage while Kira is with the real Lacus. When Meer sneaks into Athrun’s room and sleeps with him, Athrun said “the real Lacus would never do this!” We can take it that Athrun and Lacus were never intimate. Their fathers are both ZAFT chairmen, and as soon as a rift between Siegel Klein and Patrick Zala emerged, Patrick tells his son Athrun to murder Lacus. Athrun seems to be attracted to Lacus’ message of universal peace and understanding, just as Kira was. It isn’t clear that either of them think of Lacus as a lover. Kira and Athrun seem to look at her as more like an angel sent for the salvation of mankind, with a pure heart that motivates her to sing songs of peace.

Athrun seems to quietly drop his engagement to Lacus at some point after the Lacus clone saga is resolved. His relationship with Kira’s sister the Orb Princess Cagalli begins halfway through Seed, but he seems to want to keep it under wraps, pretending to be her bodyguard Alex Dino and wearing shades early in Destiny. Despite the Destiny opening showing Cagalli in her underwear as Athrun walks off to rejoin Zaft, it isn’t really clear how far their relationship progressed. Athrun at one point gives her a ring, but he is too awkward to ask her to marry him, and she just says “this isn’t how you do that!” A few episodes later, she is in a political marriage with another Orb royal family. Kira saves her at the wedding from making this mistake, but it’s never clear if Athrun and Cagalli have reconciled. Athrun seems to have become enamored with the Hawke sisters after rejoining ZAFT, and takes Meyrin with him when he defects to the Lacus Klein faction. In the film, it isn’t clear if Athrun is with Meyrin or Cagalli. Meyrin accompanied him when he returned to Kira, but he also had a lewd fantasy about Cagalli at one point, in order to mess with a telepathic enemy. Athrun seems a bit of an afterthought in this film. He doesn’t really do anything until halfway, though he does have some cool action in the second half. In Seed and Destiny, he was as much the main character as Kira. Little explanation is given as to what he has been up to since Destiny. He seems to be some sort of spy now as he is seen hiding in a shadowy alley around thirty minutes into the film.

What I was expecting from the film was a follow up to the epilogue in Destiny Final Plus. Kira and Lacus as the king and queen of ZAFT, with Athrun and Cagalli ruling Orb. I thought some crisis would cause their nations to fight, but with the ace pilots on opposite sides from the original show. That doesn’t happen at all. We get Lacus running a peacekeeping group with most of the characters from Seed and Destiny working under her. Instead, we get a fist fight between Athrun and Kira. Kira seems to lose faith in Lacus after he sees her being seduced by Orphee and the Foundation. He doesn’t seem willing to fight for her when he first sees Orphee making a move on Lacus. This seems a big contrast from how he was willing to fight his own friend Sai for Flay’s love. There is also a scene where Lacus sees Agnes make a move on Kira, and runs away without staying to see Kira reject her. Lacus and Kira don’t seem to have much faith in each other, and the misunderstandings tear them apart.

In the end, the power of love prevails, but I think it would have helped if their bond had been better established by the original shows. Much of their screen time in Destiny is spent docked in Scandinavia discussing whether or not to trust Chairman Durrandal. Kira seems to almost regard her as another sister like Cagalli. There is a scene near the end of Seed where Kira awakens from an erotic dream of Flay to see Lacus and Cagalli standing over him. Lacus gives him her mother’s ring, and he kisses her on the forehead, almost like a father would kiss their child, then goes off into battle with Flay still at the forefront of his mind. Her ghost never stops haunting him as even in Freedom we see a flashback of the cruel things she said to him during Seed. This film has been very successful financially. I expect we haven’t seen the last of these characters. I hope future Seed projects can develop the Lacus/Kira and Athrun/Cagalli relationships better. I think there is a lot of depth to them but they are so emotionally stunted by trauma that it keeps their relationships from really advancing. Kira and Lacus do make strides at the end but Athrun needs to be more so in focus in the next film or series.