Hoshi Sato

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol. 3.
$24.98
For starters this disc is the first to only have four episodes instead of five, and really the only reason this was done was to rip us all off. Bandai can't give one reason why they couldn't keep doing five episodes per disc, making the Destiny series 10 volumes like Gundam Seed. Instead now the rest of the discs have only four episodes stretching the collection to twelve volumes, ultimately leaving more money spent. Just felt obligated to point this out. Now the episodes on this volume are setting up what's to come in the next five volumes.

The first episode continues Athrun deciding whether or not to rejoin ZAFT. He spends the day with Yzak and Dearka, visiting the grave site of his fallen loved one's. Yzak mainly guilt trips Athrun into returning to ZAFT. Anyone can see that Athrun doesn't want to be a part of the war, but he's torn between serving his fellow Coordinators and finding a way to end the war completely. This ultimately sets Athrun up as the 'The Middle Man' between Shinn Asuka (The Minerva) and Kira Yamato (The Archangel). Cagalli meanwhile stands alone in her government as the only one opposing Orb becoming a member of the Atlantic Federation. If she really wanted to do something useful she could have taken her message to the people if she felt so strongly against it. I assume Democracy is still popular in this Gundam series, it makes more sense to get the people involved and let them have a say rather than leaving it up to a Cabinet of a few individuals. It would have been interesting to see what the majority wanted, seeing how the Earth Forces invaded their country in the last series, but the Junius 7 inncident is still fresh on everyone's minds.

The next episode is for all us Shinn Asuka fans. After the Minerva leaves Orb the Earth Forces attack. Orb in turn screws the Minerva over by not letting them back into their territory. After being pushed around by a new Mobile Armor, Shinn summons the power of the Seed for the first time. We then witness the best fight in the series so far.

Kira Yamato takes center stage in the last two episodes. A group of Coordinator assasins come after Lacus Clyne and Kira must pilot The Freedom Gundam to stop them. Now that ZAFT's intentions are in question Kira and company have some decisions to make. A question I have is if Kira's mother was with everyone in the shelter, where was his Dad? Meanwhile Cagalli prepares for her wedding to Yuna which she obviously dreads. I know she's a politician now, but I still don't understand why she ever agreed to go along with it. Of course I don't like how they villianize anyone who doesn't agree with Cagalli, making Yuna a jerk I felt was an easy out. Kira and the Archangel come to Cagalli's rescue, but really it would've meant more if Cagalli backed out on her own and than have Kira show up afterwords, without his Gundam even. As bad as Yuna is I doubt he'd be able to hold a gun to Cagalli's head and make her say I do. I just felt the Freedom Gundam shooting down Orb suits during its grand escape was a little over the top.

Shinn's awesome fight against the Earth Forces was the highlight of this volume. The three new pilots from the Earth Forces don't appear in this volume at all, most likely because the main, overall plot is still developing. Still your attention will be kept for the whole thing.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol. 2
$24.98
Well first off this is definetly the DVD for Athrun Zala fans. His character ultimately takes center stage for all five episodes. More characters from the original Gundam Seed pop up and virtually everything done at the end of the original Gundam Seed Series wound up being for nothing.

The first episode was by far the most action packed, making it the best. The new main character Shinn Asuka takes a backseat while two old faces take center stage. Yzak who is now a ZAFT commander and Dearka who was demoted for joining the Archangel during the last war. Along with Athrun the three of them pretty much fight off the Coordinator terrorists and the three Earth Forces pilots who stole the new Gundams. Athrun and Cagalli may have helped prevent Genesis from being fired on the Earth, but in the end it didn't mean a thing because the earth really gets it bad. It was a very big moment in the series, but considering the direction the series takes towards the end one could wonder whether they made a mistake having something as drastic as this happen so early in the series.

We are given the distinct impression that Athrun and Cagalli have dubbed themselves peacekeepers. If that's the case both of them really made some stupid decisions. Cagalli had no intention of telling the other members of the Orb government that Coordinator terrorists were responsible. So she really came off looking untrusting like a true politician when they found out. Athrun goes to the Plants to talk with Chairman Durandal because he's worried about what the Plants will do and he feels guilty about his father's actions. If Athrun was so concerned about the Plants then maybe he shouldn't have left them to begin with. Being former Chairman Zala's son he could've helped influence and inspire the Plants in a different direction. So you can't help but sympathize with Durandal when we're introduced to Meer Campbell, a double of Lacus Clyne doing just that. Besides Durandal isn't the one that needs to be spoken to about not starting a war, he's obligated to instruct ZAFT to fight back if the Earth Forces attack. What else can he do? A new Gundam is introduced and it has Athrun's name on it.

Kira Yamato, Lacus Clyne, Murrue Ramius and Andrew Waltfeld who are now all living in Orb each make appearances in this volume, although it's not made clear yet what there purpose will be in Gundam Seed Destiny. Murrue Ramius is now going by a different name like Athrun, no doubt in an effort to hide from the Earth Forces who she betrayed. Andrew Waltfeld has been kicking back and just keeping tabs on the relations between the earth and the Plants. The two people fans have been dieing to see, Kira and Lacus have been living with Reverend Malchio and helping take care of his orphans on a small island.

One of the best scenes is where Shinn Asuka comes face to face with Kira at the memorial where his family was killed. This volume is just as exciting as the first one so I highly recommend it.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny V10
$24.98
What goes on in this volume further seals the deal that Shinn is now being portrayed as a lowly antagonist because he hardly gets any screen time in these episodes except for the last one. Even in the last episode though any viewer will agree than Shinn is no longer the main character. As far as the flashback montages go they are toned done compared to the four episodes in the last volume. Note, this doesn't count episode 41. Overall there is much more action in this volume compared to volume 9.

In the first episode the Eternal gets located by ZAFT and Lacus orders Waltfeld to head to Earth so they can hand over the notes about the Destiny Plan they just found and something else. The Archangel crew learns about this and Kira heads up to space to resuce them. In response he is given the new Strike Freedom Gundam. If you thought the original Freedom Gundam was overpowered, all powerful you haven't seen anything yet. The Strike Freedom has a set of hip-mounted rail cannons and a hip-mounted pair of beam rifles, a chest beam cannon, head-mounted vulcan guns, a pair of beam sabers and the most noticeable upgrade, eight DRAGOONS on it's wings. That is a little too overpowered for my taste and normally I would've hated seeing Kira wipe out a bunch of enemies without taking hits all over again, but in the background we hear the new insert song by T.M. Revoultion called Vestige. It's a really cool song which made the action all the more exciting. I really didn't like the look of the Strike Freedom because it really looks just like the original Freedom except parts of it are now painted Gold. Andrew Waltfeld fights a bit in the Gaia Gundam. While I like the design of the Gaia I really hated it painted with Waltfeld's custom color orange, ugly! Well it's clear now that Durandal has been made the main villian of the show which I refuse to believe was the original intent of his character. Still they really are making him out to be a real S.O.B., with the discovery of all the files of the radical Coordinators responsible for the "Break the World Incident," being deleted. That indicates he at least knew what they were planning and did nothing to stop it so another war would start and he would have an excuse to eventually go after Logos. Meanwhile Durandal also makes Shinn and Rey members of Faith. All in all this was a fairly interesting episode.

In the next episode ZAFT's attack on Orb begins now that they know Djibril is hiding there. Yuna stupidily denies that he is there ensuring ZAFT's attack. I usually like the villians more in these kinds of shows but they really made Yuna into a stupid weasel, even more hateable than Djibril. Cagalli is sadly at the center of attention in this episode as she is given the new mobile suit "The Akatsuki." This suit looks almost exactly like the Strike Gundam except that it is all painted Gold. In the recorded message from Cagalli's father he calls her his son, I don't know if this was just an error by the staff or what but I didn't get it. Meanwhile Neo Roanoke is released from the Archangel's custody and it's becoming clear that he has some of Mu la Flaga's memories. This episode ends with Cagalli in the Akatsuki about to face off against Shinn in the Destiny Gundam. The ultimate cliffhanger, and what do we get next?

A clip show!!! Yeah that's right a real pacing killer, episode 41 is the worst episode in the entire Gundam Seed Destiny series. What makes it worse is that not only is it a clip show, but it's from the perspective of Athrun and Kira who we already know enough about. The really should've done a show about the start of the Alliance's Extended program from maybe Djibril's perspective and later even Neo Roanoke's. That way we could learn about the origins of Sting, Auel and Stella, mind you all three of them are dead now. In this episode we see things that we just saw in the last two episodes all over again. Plus the background dialogue from Athrun and Kira is just redundant and even lame, what with things like everyone hand in hand filled with nothing but laughter. Just shoot me!

The next episode picks up where episode 40 left off. Cagalli fights Shinn and starts to loose and then Kira descends from the heavens, oh sorry I mean space with Lacus in the new Infinite Justice Gundam. With Lacus not being a real pilot she heads to the Archangel who has started fighting the Minerva. Cagalli heads to the Orb military headquarters and Yuna gets a piece of her mind plus a punch to the face. Even though I can't stand Cagalli it was enjoyable to see Yuna get what was coming to him for being so stupid. Then it's the Strike Freedom Vs. Destiny! Unfortuantely Shinn leaves the battlefield for maintaince and repairs by order of Rey since he's been fighting to long. We then are introduced to more ZAFT defectors who have joined Lacus and the rest. If I were in charge of ZAFT I'd start doing something differently because it's amazing how all of Lacus's followers manage to do what they do and never get caught. Athrun who hates the thought of being nothing more than a soldier isn't thrilled when Lacus presents the Infinite Justice Gundam to him. Still he none the less launches anyway at the same time Shinn and Rey do, another cliffhanger. This episode was Ok, but Shinn leaving in the middle of the battle was stupid. His suit wasn't really damaged and plus the nuclear reactor in the Destiny replenishes his energy. By leaving Kira could go after grunt ZAFT suits, worsening ZAFT's position. Also the fight between Shinn and Cagalli should've been longer. Shinn probably hates Cagalli more then Kira and Athrun. It would've been cool if both of them went into Seed mode also, that's something Cagalli only did once in the original Seed and never in Destiny. Still seeing Cagalli get beat a little bit by Shinn was nice.

While I overall hate where the story is going since this volume has more action I'd say it's better then volume 9.

Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny, Vol. 1
$24.98
Well after the way the original Seed concluded I was interested to see what would happen next in the Cosmic Era. I find it ironic how people are so critical of the ending to this series but not of the original Seed. It got brushed off because they knew this season was coming. People would have been more critical if it had stopped with Seed.

If you've researched Destiny before viewing it you'll see a lot of criticism. This review pertains only to the first five episodes on this disc, not the whole series. Much like how the original Gundam Seed emulated aspects of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Destiny attempts to emulate Zeta Gundam.

One flaw is how similar the beginning plot is to the original, it's just in reverse. Instead of ZAFT pilots stealing Earth Federation mobile suits it's the Earth Federation forces stealing ZAFT mobile suits. The three pilots also happen to be lead by a man wearing a mask, sound familiar?! That's only part of it however. I really enjoyed being introduced to the new ace pilot Shinn Asuka who pilots the Impulse Gundam, the only one standing between the three other new Gundams piloted by the Earth Federation pilots. Shinn's parents and sister were killed when the Freedom (Kira Yamato) was fighting against the Calamity Gundam (Orga Sabnak) during the Earth Forces attack on Orb.

Very little character developement occurs in this volume, mainly just lots of action. It sounds good, but only when it's relevant to the story. The battle in episode four really was irrelevant for the most part, the main reason why I took off one star.

Two familiar faces appear from the start, Athrun Zala and Cagalli. I was not to thrilled about this. I felt the story of the characters from Seed had been told for the most part. Having them appear for an occasional episode or two was one thing, but they're set up as main characters from the start. Being true to life they are not the same people anymore. Athrun is now going by the name Alex, he doesn't want anyone to know who he is now that he lives in Orb. He's no longer that eager soldier wanting to serve ZAFT, but a confused indivdual torn between wanting to live in peace and helping out his fellow coordinators in his home land, the Plants, which is understandable. The real problem I had was with Cagalli. I could tell from the start she would be even more annoying in Destiny than in Seed. She at least fought and got her hands dirty before, but now she's a babbling politician. It would have made more sense for her to just be a part of the Orb military than be a Representative. I don't get just because she's the daughter of Uzumi that she rule Orb. That kind of reminds me of a Monarchy.

A whole new array of new characters are introduced, most whose names I didn't bother to get down because as I said little character developement has occured yet. A new warship the Minerva is introduced with a crew and everything to accompany the main characters. Shinn Asuka is my personal favorite and I could tell I'd like him from the start. He's more realistic than Kira Yamato who by the way isn't in these five episodes. My favorite part of this volume is when Shinn tells of Cagalli after she has a fit, putting his hateful view of Orb on the table. It's important to note that many die hard fans of the original Gundam Seed stick by the original characters and don't even bother to see the view points of the new characters. Since I like both Seed and Seed Destiny equally I'm more critical of the original characters.

The new Gundam models look very well as the graphics of this series are excellent, still I don't think I'll ever like any models better than the one's in Gundam Wing Endless Waltz. The theme music is very good to, it's the one thing that's truly better here than in the original Seed. The background music though is just OK.

Ultimately I'd have to say this series is worth checking out. Some will like it and others will not. All Gundam fans owe it to themselves to view this series at least once.