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adventchildvii's Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Tv Review

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED tv Review

Cosmic Era 71. A war is under way between genetically enhanced Coordinators and unmodified Naturals. The Natural-dominated Earth Alliance, struggling to catch up with the Coordinators' superior technology, has secretly developed its own Gundam mobile suits at a neutral space colony. Through a twist of fate, a young Coordinator named Kira Yamato becomes the pilot of the Alliance's prototype Strike Gundam, and finds himself forced to fight his own people in order to protect his friends.

Story & Characters

This Gundam series begins with a war between the PLANTS, whose people are Coordinators, which will be explained in the series, and the Earth Alliance, whose people are known as Naturals. This war began with an event that is referred to often in the series, the bloody valentine. In the series, Earth greatly outnumbers PLANT, but are up against better technology and better talented opponents. The Story's main character is Kira Yamato, a coordinator who joins the new Earth Alliance ship Archangel, and pilots their newest Gundam, the GATX105-Strike. My biggest problem with the story is the lack of originality in it. It is very similar in story to a certain other Gundam series, just in a different era. Two warring sides whose idea of a quick end to the war is total annihilation of each other is not very original(and thats the basic idea of the war). It is unfornate also that most of the characters within the series are not original either, one way or another they fit a typical archetypal character profile. The only bright spot here in terms of original character is Flay Alster, a student from the neutral Orb satellite of Heliopolis who hates coordinators. (Note that many people hate her character, and for good reason for the first part of a series, but give her a chance.) The story of the first 30 episodes of this series are considerably better in plot then the last 20, which are loaded with action scenes, and minimal drama. The last 20 episodes also feature a constant dose of annihilate all enemies to end the war talk, which gets rather annoying. The first 30 episodes feature a very good rivalry between Kira and his childhood friend, Athrun Zala, who is fighting on the side of the PLANTS military, ZAFT. While not original, the rivalry forms a great part of the first part of the series and is nonetheless very well done. The first half of the series also features a better balance between the fights and character development, which i believe is part of why it is better. Overall, the story is still reasonably good, although again, don't expect anyhting you haven't seen before.

Rating: 7

Art

The art, both handdrawn and CG in this series, are quite good. The art for the capital ships, mobile suits, and other machines is the best done. Detail and poses for these mechs are probably the best part of the art in the series. Character animations are somewhat less well done though. When speaking, mouths seem to be a little misplaced. The art for explosions and other attacks, beam, sword, whatever, is also well done. Unfortunately, i don't know what happened, but in the later parts of the series, mecha attack animations (most obvious for a certain trio of Gundams) are so blatantly repeated in different story and battle situations. This can be somewhat annoying and is a mark on a series with otherwise normally well done art.

Rating: 7

Sound

This Gundam series has a lot of songs on it. It has 4 opening themes and 3 ending themes, all of which except the 2nd ending theme IMO are very good. My favorite of these is Anna ni Isshou Datta No Ni", the first ending theme. There are a couple of additional lyrical songs that play in the background during certain story events, and along with the rest of the background music, usually go very well with the situation. Sound effects are also very good. As with most Anime, i say it is somewhat better to watch it in Japanese with English subtitles(If you can't read Japanese, like me), when dubbed in English, the words spoken seem somewhat err, cartoonish or childish in manner, and just don't sound right. I believe in Japanese the Anime sounds better, despite my very limited understanding of the language.

Rating: 9

Presentation

Make no Mistake, this Anime is NOT original. The story is very similar to other anime seriers, including other Gundam series. Part of what i Do like about this Anime is that it is not oh so overly focused on the action. This anime also includes considerable focus into the mindsets and emotions of the characters, making for a good bit of Drama(humor is very limited in this series, its not a comedy). Unfortunately though, the characters are not that original either, with the exception of Flay, all other characters including the main character Kira fit into a certain anime or other story archetype, so despite good focus on them, there is little originality. I also personally disliked the ending to this anime, it seemed very abrupt and left some things unresolved it seemed for me. A lot is crammed and tried to be resolved into the last 5 episodes, when this could have been lenghtened by dumping the clip episodes in the series. Besides that, my only other complaint is that in the last 20 episodes, the same battle animation is so blatantly used. Beyond all of my above complaints, this is still a very watchable and enjoyable series, not original, but still enjoyable, battle sequences not repeated and the drama of the character emotions make this very good still.

Rating: 6

Final Verdict

7.0000 (above average)

Reviewed by adventchildvii, Jul 28, 2005

Comments

  1. Dufoe88 Jul 28, 2005

    intresting!..

  2. impulse10 Jul 28, 2005

    wah so much to read! a picture speaks a thousand words...so just post a picture of Freedom and walla!

  3. white-zero Jul 29, 2005

    This is probably the [b]most reasonable and well written[/b] SEED review.

    Good to see a review from a neutral POV :)

  4. badboi829 Aug 02, 2005

    very well written, couldn't have written it better myself. this is one of my favorite series

  5. vatican92 Dec 25, 2005

    Very good review but I personally think Gundam Seed deserves bit more than 7.

  6. Sanisa Feb 24, 2010

    Thanks for the review! Nice ^__^

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