Gundam Seed Destiny Review, and its Dub's first impression.

Note: This WILL contain Gundam Seed Destiny spoilers, as the review is based on that of the plot. If you don't want to be spoiled, please do not read this review.

So, finally.

10am or so, Hiro has released Gundam Seed Destiny Phase 50, while XeroSux has released it a few hours earlier. Had I woke up a few hours earlier, I would have watched the one from XeroSux first.

Anyway, because of the debute of Gundam Seed Destiny on Kidscentral (Singapore is the first in the world to show it with dubs. Before America! \o/ Talk about a first.), and that my parents won't leave the house till roughly 3, I had to wait till 3 to watch Phase 50 (Final Phase), although I obtained the show at like 11am thanks to the high speed bots Hiro provides.

And so, the moment my parents stepped out of the door, I clicked excitedly on the file, my heart actually beating fast, wanting to see how Gundam Seed Destiny ends.

After watching, I have to say that the show was excellent, but it did lack quite a bit of things hanging.

Anyway, before we get to that, let me talk about the whole show first. Gundam Seed Destiny is the second season of Gundam Seed. It takes place 2 years after the end of Gundam Seed. The whole story of Gundam Seed Destiny can be summerised by something like "Blue Cosmos started war against the ZAFT. The ZAFT fought back and won. Then ZAFT turned evil and wanted to control the world. So, Kira and Co came in and defeated ZAFT".

Er..yeah, that's about the jist of it. However, as many of them say, Gundam Seed Destiny is not an anime where you simply see machines trashing each other, but they try to develop characters as well.

Unfortuntately, that's the downside of this anime.

This anime has started brillently, with Shinn Asuka, a new character in Gundam Seed Destiny, showing his hatered towards ORB. Athrun, a hero back in Gundam Seed, will end up being the one to straighten him out, and their friendship somewhat developed from there. This ends at around episode 26, when during a battle against the EAF, the Blue Cosmos' pawn, Freedom, piloted by Kira (another hero back in GS), killed a friend of Shinn and Athrun's. It is around that time, when the series started sliding downhill, as Athrun, a very decent character who is strong, becomes rather confused as to what he's fighting for.

So, it is also around that time when Kira and the rest of his friends from GS appeared in the series (they did appear in GSD in other episodes, but made little of no impact to the storyline). This is when the makers of GSD, Fukuda, tried to develop a little too many characters, but ended up messing up plenty of it. Athrun and Kira's
characters were developed with the help of 1 recap episode, but other characters with plenty of potential, such as Lunamaria and Meyin Hawke was developed poorly. Heck, one of the main villians of the show, Chairman Gilbert Dullindal, was hardly developed. Roaming thorugh message boards has allowed me to find others who agree with me that Fukuda messed the development up.

The high point of the show was when Shinn defeated Kira in episode 34. However, the show has effectively ended there, as after episode 34, we see Athrun escaping ZAFT and heading for the ArchAngel with Meyrin Hawke. During the escape, Shinn was forced to destroy Athrun (and hence Meyrin). However, after Meyrin had supposedly died, the relationship between Shinn an Lunamaria picked up, the only high point in the series after episode 34.

Sadly, after that, it has been boring all the way.

Even though the series was supposed to end at episode 50, there were 3 filler (recap episodes and episodes with little or no development of the storyline) episodes, including 2 back to back ones (47 and 48), something which has caused an uproar within the fans.

In the ending of Gundam Seed Destiny, we see the fights between Shinn and Athrun, and also between Rey and Kira. Both fights were eagerly anticipated by many, but both fights ended within 5 minutes, with the former getting trashed a little too easily (everyone hoped for a fight such as that found in episode 34, where Shinn took on Kira).

Truely disappointing. However, it is understandable, since there isn't time for two super fights.

The storyline, in a whole, was generally alright, with a few plot twists here and there. Of course, as I've said, the storyline, was in a downward spiral after episode 34, but still, the excellent parts of the starting of Gundam Seed Destiny more then made up for it.

As the storyline died in the later episodes, so did the music. The downward trend started with the 3rd Ending theme (I wanna go to a place... by Rie Fu), and hit rock bottom with the 4th opening theme (Wing of Words by Chemistry). Still, the background music and the insert songs (Vestige and Honoo no Tobira) more then made up for it. Still, while there was no screw ups with Gundam Seed's themes (with the slight exception of River, the 2nd ending theme), Fukuda messed up the 3rd ending and the 4th opening theme (I remember a fansubber saying how he hated timing the songs. LoL).

Why can't Fukuda simply made the dream anime everyone was wishing for (at least, I am one of them..LoL), whereby Shinn and Co fights along side Kira and Co. It seemes to be heading in that direction, before it somehow messed up somewhere near the end.

Gah.

The machines themselves are nice, however, Kira and Co seems to have their Gundams a little overpowered. We all know that Kira has an inbuilt aimbot in his brain. Combine that with a Dragoon pack (the little cannons you deploy so as to help you attack) on Strike Freedom (The name sure is original..>_>)? A gold gundam?

Er..

At least the ones from ZAFT is nice, especially Impulse and Destiny. Legend looks simply horrible, but since it's styled after Providence from GS, it does not have too much room for creativity.

The ending of GSD is somewhat similar to that of GS, where Fukuda simply hangs you at the end after Kira (him again. Rofl) has killed the enemy, in this case, Chairman Gilbert Dullindal. After that, the ending credits roll, leaving so many questions unanswered, among them..:

-What's going to happen to the relationship between Shinn and Lunamaria..?
-What about Meyrin?

Shinn and Lunamaria, as I've said before, was probably one of the best pairings in GSD for me (Many will disagree, since they find that Shinn is a chaotic ass.). Sadly, the link was not developed well, as it happened during the time when Kira and Co took centre stage, hence leaving little time for development of the relationship, because Fukada was working on Kira and Athrun. During that time, Shinn was protrayed as an insane maniac who isn't sure what he's fighting for. Even before that, fans of Athrun and Kira were already hating him, the former for Shinn constantly miocking Athrun after Athrun's defeat to Kira, while the latter loathing him because Shinn destroyed Freedom. There isn't a week where I can't find words such as "SHINN IS AN ASSHOLE" in IRC. Perhaps that is why many hated the relationship between Shinn and Lunamaria.

Well, I'm a Shinn fan. LoL.

The ending leaves a rather bitter after taste, but I have seen worse endings afterall....

All in all, a rather disappointing run towards the end. I had hoped that the final 2 episodes will redeem the entire series, but I was wrong. It can simply be seen when Shinn tried to attack Lunamaria because Lunamaria was blocking Shinn from attacking Athrun (Athrun then pwned Shinn in 5 seconds.).

Bloody hell...what really was Fukada doing? >_>

Still, the starting parts made up for it, particularly the ones before Bandai Licensed it (Coincidence? XD). A decent anime, if you go by average.

6.5/10 from the bird. The poor ending was just a little too much for me.



Up in smoke, just like the plot...



Boom. Sayonara, Gundam Seed Destiny

Anyway, with GSD, there was quite an interesting stuff going on between sub groups. There were like 4 groups which started subbing, but after episode 6, only 2 of them remained, namely AnimeOne/Anime-Kingdom and SEED-Fansubs. Both were quality subs, that is to say that they take their time to sub the titles, releasing the titles usually on Wednesday. When GSD was licensed by Bandai at episode 19, AnimeONE/Anime-Kingdom dropped it because it's not their policy to sub licensed animes, as they are based in America. SEED-fansubs continued. At episode 20, Haro^2Tori^2 appeared, bringing back the memories of Haro^2 from Gundam Seed, the ones who subbed GS even after it's licensed. (HaroTori)^2 is also a quality sub, which releases its releases slowly.

At episode 21, a new sub group called Cellphone^2 appeared. They had quality, and speed, which made them very popular after a few episodes. They usually try to release their subs by Sunday afternoon, which is within 24 hours of it's airing in Japan.

However, at episode 39, Cellphone^2 disbanded, reportedly due to an encoder leaving the group (he was asleep, which resulted in the 24 hour deadline not being met). After that, a few members of cellphone^2 joined some other staff from Nanashi, creating Hiro. Their quality was not as good as that from Cellphone^2, but no one really complained, as they had speed.

At episode 47, one more new group appeared, calling themselves XeroSux. Xero is a member of Cellphone^2 and Hiro, and a few said that he was one of the reason why Cellphone^2 disbanded. XeroSux was reportedly made up by the other half of Cellphone^2 staff which did not join Hiro.

Plenty of action on the Fansubs front. :D

--

The ending of GSD also marks the day which Singapore shows GSD dubbed in Singapore. Although it's in dual audio, where you can switch to Japanese audio and read the English subtitles, I decided to listen it in English. It was rather horrible, as is most dubs, but still, not as bad as those in Gundam Seed. At least they got more or less the plot and the speeches right, instead of twisting it horribily. The voices were also pretty decent, with the exception of Meyrin's voice.

Episode 1 summary:

-We see the part when Freedom was fighting to protect ORB during one of its fights found in GS. Shinn and his family (Mayu! <3) were running towards a ship which will transport the refugees to safety. Sadly, an explosion of a Gundam on the ground killed Shinn's family, who was saved as he was helping his sister, Mayu, to recover her handphone. The scenes ends with Shinn crying and shouting into the sky in anger.

-Next, we see Cagalli and Athrun, disguised as Alex Dino, her bodyguard, visits PLANT, and holds a meeting with chairman Dullindal. The subject is as to the military might of PLANT (or something of that sort. LoL).

-During that time, 3 new machines, Gaia, Abyss and Chaos were stolen by 3 unknown terrorists (Yay for everyone spoiling it, saying that they are the extended. \o/)

-Chaos..yada yada yada...Athrun and Cagalli went into a ZAKU for protection.

-It ends with Impulse, piloted by Shinn, being deployed to tackle the 3 stolen machines. Gilbert's words 'No princess, Strength is a necessity; There will always be conflict' ends the episode.

Remember to catch ig every sunday, 11am, only on KidsCentral! The first 19 episodes are worth it. Trust me.