Overall Rating 5.2 out of 10 - Poorly made movie loosely based on original series
I do not recommend watching.
I did not yet review the original Gundam Seed. I watched it a while ago long before I began blogging and had a mixed experience with it. In view of lack of good anime to watch recently I decided to revisit this franchise and watch a movie.
The movie did disappoint. Original war between Earth Forces and ZAFT ended and they are not all friends for some reason. Later I checked there is whole 50 extra episode second season of Gundam Seed, called Destiny, that possibly explains how that happened, but after watching this one, I do not want to watch it. What they showed about Durandal in this movie is enough to not want to watch the entire 50-episode slog where he is main antagonist.
Back to the movie, Kira married Lacus, they live unhappily together, each too busy with their own work and feel guilty for not having time for each other. Each so driven to achieve peace and blaming themselves for not being able to. Back in original both of them were much nicer and a lot more easygoing, they were just nice guys, now they are as heavy with guilt as lead dumbbells.
Antagonists are not any better. The asshole knights who measure a person value based on ability to fight with a sword despite piloting overengineered ginormous mechs that can destroy a city or two at a press of a button. Spoiler alert, they end up being so called accords, genetically engineered beings above coordinators, who want to create a caste society dictatorship and try to convince protagonists and viewers that it is the only way to peace. I will not spoil the rest of the plot as the Accord's trap one of the few redeeming points of the story, together with Lacus cooking ability.
Story begins with pathetic "strength is all that matter" message and ends with "love is strength" (almost Beatles era, all your need is love), yes that pathetic. I simplify here, but I cannot be bothered to elaborate on stupidity of screenwriters of this movie.
Broadly speaking most of the story is unappealing and unpleasant, middle movie plot twist is the only interesting part. Animation is not any better, characters look uglier than in the original Gundam that was released more than 20 years ago, how did you managed to fuck it up that much? Some backgrounds somewhat redeem it, but not that much. There is a lot of beams flying all over the screen during the fight scenes, trying to make them look pretty. Its picture over substance however, oversaturation makes it hard to follow who fights whom and where. Mech's designs do not help identifiability either. So is the fact that Shiin looks too much like Athrun. The whole action feels either rushed or cut too far. Athrun seems like teleporting between his own fight with Shura and protecting Kira from Orpheus. Some scenes in between were probably cut.
Speaking of characters, my favorite and most relatable character from the original, Rue Le Creuse (the masked guy from ZAFT), is not in this movie at all, a be it you see him occasionally in memory flashes. I do not remember if he died at the end of original or not. My second favorite character, Athran is in it, but he is different from how he was in the original, and not in the good way.
Finally, the overall plot. In the original I could sympathize with ZAFT. Humans engineered coordinators to be smarter than ordinary people yet denied them status and power they deserved, expecting them to all to be like Kira and serve humanity for no benefit of their own. It was only natural for coordinators to fight against the earth forces.
In this movie however, the accords are extremely unlikable, and their society is horribly totalitarian and oppressive. The never-ending obsession with peace, that all sides profess, does not make it any better. I felt that Gintama should satirise it. It's like when Gintoki and Hijikata were arguing about treatment of that elder in video game (ep 99).
Overall, this movie is a bad, it's full of unlikable characters and I do not recommend watching it.
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