Horrible "farmers" killed a potentially great "Seed".

xamtaro

Over-hyped, overly long, over-the-top and overboard in every single aspect.

The "seed" that would eventually sprout into "Mobile Suit Gundam Seed" had so much potential. It was produced from a pedigree of award winning repute, combining the successful elements from the previous Gundam series into one show.

-The familiar premise of the original Gundam 0079 following a rag tag bunch of refugees and military personnel in a ship. Among them is the main character who pilots the titular Gundam with uncanny know-how.

-The strong character drama and a fully developed romantic subplot of the OVAs like 0080, 0083 and 08th Ms team.

-Philosophical ramblings, catchy J-pop and beautifully attractive character designs from Gundam Wing

-Flashy mecha from G Gundam

-intense combat sequences of Zeta Gundam and Char's Counterattack.

My list could go on. They even threw in some 9/11 terrorist attack analogies and the ongoing debate on genetic engineering. Cool.So how did a show combining all the great elements of its predecessors turn out so flat and uninspired?

For starters, the "farmers" in charge of nurturing the seed into the full grown plant, aka the creative team, pushed those elements too far. For example, They wanted "character drama", and they pushed the "drama" to the point of absurdity where every episode would have at least one character breaking down into tears. After a while the "sadness" starts to feel "forced"; like the director is trying his darnedest to FORCE the audience to cry and feel sad for the characters short of sticking an onion into the viewers' eyes.

The characters are rather "give and take". You got some really likable ones in the form of Muu Laflagga and Athrun Zala, some stock one dimensional characters like Rau le Creuset(which BTW is a huge disappointment in the history of masked Gundam antagonists) and then you have the downright terrible characters like Fllay Alaster and Kira Yamato. The characters do develop but in a way that defies logic. I lose count of the many "huh?" moments in regard to the characters' courses of action. This show seems to sacrifice the political and philosophical aspects of a war story in order to tell a more character centered tale, which i found to be another huge disappointment. Too much "heart" and not enough "head".

Apparently their idea of "character development" is to put the characters into as many heartrendingly sad situations as possible. Once is great, twice is fine, three times is pushing it a little but every other episode is GOING OVERBOARD. Honestly, the only redeeming characters plots was the relationship between Muu Laflagga and Rau le creuset. I could have been entertained if the show focused on them but sadly, it chose to focus on others.

The designs for the characters also do not help much. It is like the designer picked out what he thought audience would regard as an attractive male and female face and then just switch the eyes and hair color around to create the different characters. Honestly, 90% of the teenage cast HAVE THE SAME FACE. Yes they look attractive, but they all look the same; like every teen in Gundam Seed underwent cosmetic surgery to have the same attractive face.

Created in 2002 by a veteran animation studio and drawn and colored digitally, one would think that more time and effort would go into the animation thanks to the cost and time saving convenience of doing the art via computer. But NO! Character movement is stiff, mecha hardly move as much as "float about in a cool pose", and the series is plagued by repeated scenes and overuse of stock footage. The art, though detailed, is covered in some of the most bright and gaudy looking colors ever seen in a mecha anime. Everything from the spaceships to the backgrounds and even the weapons of war is rendered in a cheerful pastel color palette that clashes jarringly with rather mature storyline and themes. The combat scenes seem more obsessed with giving flashy displays of power than actual combat.

BUT GUESS WHAT? The creative team apparently thinks that Teenagers seem to like all this stuff. Teenagers like overly sappy tear jerking drama. They go ape over their attractive character designs that they can fantasize over no matter how stale or derivative they are. Oh and they absolutely love flashy colorful things. Hence gundam seed's obsession in making its superficial features as attractive as ever and downplays the deeper aspects of storyline and underlying themes.

In the end, Gundam seed is like a plant that only produces beautiful lush leaves but no flowers or fruit at all. It is great to look at on a surface level but everything else gets buried under all the fluff. Your casual superficial teenage viewer would no doubt regard this as the best gundam series ever. There is even ample amounts of catchy J-pop to bob your head to.

I would have given the series only 5/10 but seeing as it was the first Gundam series i ever watched, an extra 1 point is in order. Just a grateful gesture to Gundam seed for showing me that there are better Gundam series out there.

score 6/10

xamtaro 30 August 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2119140/