kalvasflam

Don't you just get the feeling this episode was horribly rushed and completely mismanaged. I mean we're not talking about EA punking out Orb here, (even that took three episodes), we're talking about a major fight that is supposed to be the end all battle of the war. It lasts one single episode. Super robot show was right. Essentially, the battle went like this: EA unleashes Destroy and their forces and beats the crap out of ZAFT, and ZAFT unleashes Destiny and wins the battle almost single handedly. HUH?!?!?!?! So, essentially, Dullindal would've been better off to just send in Destiny in the first place because the other ZAFT troops did nothing at all except die until Destiny came into the picture. Not to mention too much stock footage. Also, lots of little discrepencies. First, you see the Destroys over the water, blasting away at ships. The next time you see them, they're all on land getting chopped up. Somehow, they decided to retreat after wiping out a part of the fleet from just three MS. In regards to some of the other comments. Let's be serious, both sides already have the perfect first strike weapon. A mirage colloid ship loaded with nuclear weapons. Look at how close Girty Lue got to Armory One. ZAFT put mirage colloid on GENSIS for the love of God. The only thing you can say about EA is that they're made up of a bunch of morons. If you want to wipe out PLANTs that badly. Put up a few suicide ships with mirage colloid, pack it with nukes, park it next to PLANTs and have them go BOOM.

I find it absolutely hilarious that the pacifist Uzumi left for his daughter a frigging MS as a part of her inheritance. But realistically, the suit is dated now by about two years isn't it? So, how special could it possibly be... meh... and it's being handed to an incompetent.

space... earth... what's the difference, this is GSD we're talking about.

As a representative of the CE continuum, I can assure you that WWII never happened. Therefore, we have no idea what you're talking about. Our idea of special forces training is five guys marching loudly toward their targets, joking about what they'll do after they get there. And further more, we think it's much better to throw things at an enemy piece meal, and give them a fair fight rather than just killing them... Which is why we only tried to nuke the PLANT once in the opening. But we did think about putting together a small ship with Mirage colloid plus NJC equipped nuclear bomb, and parking it right next to ZAFT HQ, and then going kaboom. But we thought this would be a bad idea, so instead, we'll do a special raid using our only Mirage Colloid equipped ship to capture some MS to be used by highly dubious and utterly unstable pilots who aren't very good to start with.

The steamroller? It got steamrolled... ha ha ha ha. The perfect EA strategy would've been kick ZAFT off of the planet. Heavy forces to hold onto the moon base, then consolidate from there and push into the PLANT. The perfect PLANT strategy is lock down Earth and control space, remove assets from Earth operations to take down the moon and any EA space forces. i.e. blow up all the mass drivers, lock EA to the planet. The perfect Orb strategy was to go meekly along with the strongest power (EA) and shut its mouth and pray whoever it went with can either protect them or offer a bigger target to the opposition. Because in the real world, it would be squashed flat either way. If Orb was that big a threat, the responses would be: EA: what, Orb, you don't want to join us... here is half a dozen nukes. ZAFT: what? Orb, you want to join EA, here is half a dozen nukes.

What've been nice if after Minerva got back to the ZAFT Aussie base, they had a couple of real hardcore episodes of them defending against a massive EA assault to keep that base. By hardcore I mean a virtual seige, as MS are leaving the base, they get shot at and that kind of crap. That would've been interesting to watch, along with Shinn and Athrun going from point to point trying to plug up leaks desparately.

I've long since given up on the concept of realism in the show. I just go back to the super commandos sent to kill Lacus. And that alone tells me there is nothing even close to realistic about this. Kill Clyne: ok, let's use a sniper from half a mile away, put her down while she's working in the field. Want to bounce pieces of Clyne along with the rubble, ok, let's put 20 cruise missiles into the building at the middle of the night. No, instead, let's do a poorly executed commando raid, and when the commando finally gets to within 10 yards of the target, instead of hosing her down with his submachine gun, he carefully takes aim at her head with a sniper rifle just in time for Kira to push her out of the way. With GS, things went from poor to better, with GSD, they're going the other way.

Orb?!?!? Sigh... that entire story line was a waste of time in GSD, and it is even more so now. In GS it made sense, in GSD, just nuke the damn place already. We have the entire EA where we can have a storyline, not to mention space. But no, let's talk about Orb some more. Orb orb orb... gawd. It's no wonder I want Cagalli dead, if nothing else, just to shut them up about Orb. I wonder why they bother doing a story with GSD at all, they'd just be better off introducing new MS every other episode (they almost do that as is now) and have random fights. Character development be damned. Oh wait, that's already been tried, it was called G-gundam.

Hell, if that's the case, they should just bring in Sayla from MSG. That'll be so unexpected and such a nod that it's impossible to miss, the conversation would go like this. Sayla: Hello, Athrun, I've been sent to help you. Athrun: Wha... who are you? Sayla: I'm from an alternate reality where there are also gundams, but poorly drawn. I'm here to help you escape from ZAFT and save you from this stupid story line, you're really supposed to be a lot like my brother Char. Athrun: Huh? What are you talking about? Sayla: Well, due to poor writing, your character has been totally ruined, we want to make you the head of PLANT and ZAFT, but that's becoming less likely every passing moment, I'm here to help you with that. Athrun: Uh......... Hmmm, Kisaka stripping in front of Athrun eh? So, I see someone is finally coming out of the closet.

So... my exact thoughts to the spoilers Azrael put up is: Huh? What the bloody heck? I put that up because of the fact that most of these new developements have not had any real basis at all. It's like the Athrun/Meryn thing... all of a sudden, having Luna or even Meer makes much more sense. I mean we have a female character whose exact contributions have been saying yes to Shinn, her interactions with Athrun has been negligible. So, it's like all of a sudden: "let me help you and put my life on the line and all that even though I spoke to you all of what... three times?" The writers really need to stop smoking whatever it is they are smoking or better yet, share it with the rest of us so we can buy some of this. It's a case of let's pull something else out of our ass, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. Well, hopefully, it'll be entertaining at least with lots of things going kaboom. May be Sting managed to bail out... and they'll edit that in with GSD the specials.

As long as it's a good story, mech design doesn't matter too much. No one can argue that GSD has good mech designs, or rather, I should say good animation for tried and true designs from the old days, but it doesn't work that well because of the poor story line. Will have to see if I can get that one.

Actually, they would have brought in Sayla in Zeta. Unfortunately, Ms. Inoue was busy during the production of Zeta so they couldn't call her in. So they pushed her to ZZ. Bring back Sai....nah. Anyways, his seiyuu (Tetsu Shiratori) is working on a movie so they were lucky to even get him to narrate a recap episode. You're right about that, but I think it was for just one episode on Sayla... think it was during Char's speech. Not over and over again. That was kind of pointless, but at least it was a one time deal. I never liked ZZ much anyway... so I didn't care that they brought her in then... I think though that she and possibly Camille would've been good additions in CCA, but oh well.... As for Sai, I don't think he is needed anyway. They've already overloaded GSD with characters from GS, and they're taking center stage. It would've been better given the way that GSD is going to have put Kira/Athrun on the center stage in the first place. I haven't seen Turn A, is it as good as everyone says?

Well, I can't say much for the animation on Zeta, but I always thought it had a good story. It wasn't really flooded with the characters from MSG, I mean they are in there, and are put to good use, but the focus was more on the new characters. It is annoying though, they dragged GSD on forever I think, they could've cut out a good part of that Orb pointlessness and made a good storyline. I don't mind if they keep doing Gundams, I don't even mind if they stay in CE. But the story need to be interesting and compelling. I remember originally fukuda said that GSD would be a commentary on the iraq war... what a stupid idea, do a compelling story, don't do a political message

I agree on Neo vs Shinn... but the story line (theirs) right now is too forced. They are somehow just missing the story quality, you'll notice in Zeta, you don't see Yazan or Jerid all that much, but they're both more or less impact players, and the story mesh well. They don't drag in people like Sayla, or Mirai or whatever for no reason or to show a cameo. When they brought in Sai, he had a role, well integrated, and then when he was gone, there was at least a good reason. Same with Hayato, hardly favorite characters. Can you even see these guys trying to bring back Sai and Kuzy? Right now, you get a five second with Yzak/Deakka, and you're kind of wondering what was the point of that? Ah well, there is always a hope they can salvage the season.

No, I set it up for a sequel... Athrun's counter attack, he becomes absolutely bitter, ends up like Char, has a final duel to the death with Kira, thus closing out the CE universe for good. As for Dullindal faction being weak, I didn't bother fleshing out the story more after extrapolating to current episodes. If by weak you mean he doesn't have these main character type pilots, fine, I can accept that. But nobody ever thought Haman in Zeta gundam was weak, even though her side (Haman was always on her own side) technically had no other main character type pilots. So, it's not a very valid argument there. Seriously though, it's not that I don't like Cagalli, it's that characters should play an active part in the story line and have impact. I got sick of watch GSD with it's myriad of characters, most of whom have no impact whatsoever yet still get screen time. They need to have an impact event, not just kill off characters that nobody cared about. Sting died... huh? Auel died... who's Auel again? Heine... he was orange right? Stella.... oh, Shinn's sicko puppy girlfriend whose only contribution was "afraid, dying, lah lah lah...." Shinn vs Neo is dramatic if you assume Neo is not dumbed down as he has been. Think of Neo as Jerid... no... try more of a Scirroco without the ability to plot. Essentially, think of Scirocco being split into two people, Dullindal and Neo.

I saw the thread on Animesuki: what would you do to rewrite GSD to make the storyline more interesting. It got me to thinking about what's wrong with the series, which was mainly storylines that don't end, things that don't wrap up and focusing on older characters for no apparent reason and jumping around a lot more than needed. So thinking about this, I thought this would be what I'd do if I wrote GSD: Everything up until Minerva leaving Orb would be about the same. Then things will change majorly, there are several assumptions: 1. Dullindal is in fact evil for whatever reason. 2. Dullindal is pulling LOGOS strings behind the scenes and LOGOs is not even aware 3. EA is competent, especially Neo and the new druggies, who are quite simply put: DEADLY. They have a major military, and are very smart about their strategy. They are a lot more like the Titans. 4. Kira decides not to be a wuss boy and goes for the kill instead of just crippling. 5. Neo is not Mwu, Mwu is DEAD. The story will goes something like this: Athrun agrees to come back to Earth, but it takes him a few more episode to get back because he has to get help to break through the blockage around Earth that EA set up. He gets one or two episodes with Deakka and Yzak concentrating on this. At the same time, Lacus assassination attempt still occurs and fails. Cagalli grows a backbone seeing Yuuna stab Minerva in the back, so, she immediately consolidates support among the Orb military, kicks Yuuna family out of power, and abrogates the treaty with EA and declares neutrality even though ZAFT offers an alliance, with Dullindal saying: "no one can stay neutral forever, sooner or later, you have to decide." Cagalli ignores the message. This pisses off Jibril, and so he orders Neo to undertake a special mission to render Orb harmless. So, Neo uses stolen Gundams along with older ZAFT suits captured during the last war and launches an attack on Orb with the aim of decapitating the government and disarming the military using EMP devices. Freedom interferes and fights the druggies, but EA succeeds in killing Cagalli and seriously damaging Orb military. Everyone thinks ZAFT has become the enemy. But holding to Cagalli's last wishes, Orb stays neutral. After the incident, Kira decides that ZAFT may be very interested in Lacus given the assassination. So, they plan and send Lacus to space while AA along with a small contingent of Orb military leave the area. They will act as bait, making ZAFT think Lacus is still on Earth. At the same time, Minerva arrives at Australia base and is ordered to lead a strike group to take the Suez canal. So, instead of having one or two suits on Minerva, we'll have a dozen or so Zakus loaded aboard, along with a dozen subs. (A major force) We'll go through one or two episodes here, where they fight EA, and the ZAFT task force lose most of their troops, essentially character development for Shinn as he gets stronger. Athrun finally makes it back to Earth after Yzak helps him break through the EA blockade, and goes to Orb, he finds out that Cagalli is dead, Kira and company are no longer around, and everyone thinks that ZAFT attacked Orb, even though it was EA using stolen/captured suits. Since he can't find Kira, and Orb isn't the right place for him. He finds Minerva and hooks up with them and help them to liberate Suez. Jibril then sends Neo after Minerva, and we have a couple more fights. While Minvera is fighting their way to Suez, Dullindal sends out a special squad of Goufs lead by Heine and gives him one of those ZAFT carrier subs with orders to kill the AA. This should be about two episodes, where Kira gets rid of whatever rust of two years of inactivity, and basically destroys the carrier sub and forces Heine and company to retreat. Kira at this point has basically gone nuts, no more nice Kira, he goes for the kill.... it makes sense since he thinks ZAFT killed his sister and is trying to kill his girlfriend. Note: Heine is competent here, but is also a visicous little bastard, think of him as the Yazan of GSD. Minerva docks at the base in Turkey, and here, the chairman meets up with Athrun and company, tells them about LOGOs and put Heine and his team aboard Minerva since most of Minerva's other troops had been killed during the Suez liberation stuff. We'll get the Shinn meet Stella episode. Minerva is then ordered to check out an EA lab facility. (this would be the one abandoned by EA) AA at the same time finds out about this facility, so, they decide to check out what's going on. (yeah, this part is a bit contrived, but heck, it's nothing compared to what they already did in GSD) Minerva lands, and Talia has Heine and company pull security along with Shinn (who is still the "junior member" of the team), while Athrun and company goes and checks out the base. AA arrives, and Shinn sees Freedom, and remembers his parents from two years ago, and goes BESERK and attacks Freedom. Kira sees Heine's MS and they have a free for all. Athrun comes running in to try to stop the fighting... and tries to tell Kira that EA set ZAFT up. Kira doesn't exactly buy this, but since it's Athrun, he has doubts now... but then EA shows up, Neo and the stolen gundams along with a lot of Windams, so suddenly we have a three way melee. Kira sees that Athrun was telling the truth, but that doesn't stop Shinn and Heine from trying to kill Kira. The end result, Gaia gets crippled, Stella is captured, Auel is killed, Heine is killed somehow because of Kira's interference, Freedom is forced to retreat when ZAFT reinforcements show up. Now, we'll get the Shinn returns Stella to Neo episode; and then Stella gets put into Destroy. We get the Destroy vs Freedom vs Impulse episode, and Stella gets killed by kira, no explosion, I'm talking beam saber in her gut here. Here, Neo and Sting both survive and run back home. Athrun notes that the surviving members of Heine's squad keeps trying to attack Kira even though Destroy is the enemy. Eventually, Kira retreats. Athrun talks to Shinn and gets him to question about the motivation for fighting Kira and so forth, he can't deter Shinn from revenge, but does force Shinn to think about what he has done, especially the consequences of giving Stella back to Neo. Shinn now hates Neo even more than Kira. Dullindal then reveals LOGOs, and Minerva is secretly ordered to take out AA. Athrun objects and defects in Saviour. The rest of Heine's goufs are taken out, but Kira goes down at the hands of Impulse, and it takes Athrun to save him, but here Shinn isn't as blinded and doesn't try to go for the kill shot. AA barely escapes. They can't go back to Orb because then Orb would be a target for ZAFT. Athrun insists on talking with Dullindal, so he heads out into space. Shinn is hero for taking down Freedom. Dullindal gives him Destiny, and orders ZAFT to go against LOGOs. Dullindal also secretly gives Legend to Neo, who is revealed to be Dullindal's inside man at LOGOs all along and the guy in. At wherever LOGOs base is, ZAFT comes up against new druggies plus Sting. We have a fight, here Jibril is killed, LOGOs is done, and the rest of EA surrenders. While Athrun is trying to talk to get to PLANT, he is intercepted by Neo, and Savior is wrecked. But Athrun escapes and is saved by Lacus. Dullindal then proclaims that ZAFT is now in charge of the planet, and he uses Neo and the druggies who surrendered to enforce his rule, anyone who doesn't comply is killed, including those in ZAFT is killed. Dullindal is revealed to have planned the Junius 7 drop from before. Minerva along with a good number ZAFT on Earth as well as space rebel against Dullindal, most of Earth rebel against Dullindal's rule. AA joins up with Minerva, they all head off into space and meet with Lacus and her secret army. Athrun and Kira gets their new MS, and Shinn joins along. Dullindals' forces lose control of the Earth, and he is pressed by rebel ZAFT and EA forces, so he reveals GENSIS II. With the concept, if I can't have it, no one can, and threatens to destroy Earth. Then we'll have a glorious final fight, here Athrun and Kira takes back stage because they're trying to kill GENSIS II, and Shinn fights Neo. End of story, Neo/Dullindal dies, everyone is happy, Earth is saved. Side note, somehow work in Athrun to become so disillusioned by the leaders of ZAFT, he decides to take over PLANT at the end of series.

Again, if someone did that to you, eventually he/she would hit the right buttons and even you would throw a punch. It's human nature. Even if Athrun uses Stellar as a comeback, Shinn will come back and say he was never charged with anything so that makes him (Shinn) right. As I said earlier, Shinn has never been told he was wrong. Everytime, he's had some justification that what he did was right. If you've never been told you were wrong, then you will think that all you ever do is right. We can go round and round on this... Athrun: "yeah, whatever, make up whatever excuses you want, you had a hand in killing all those ZAFT soldiers and innocent civilians, you know it... charges or not, so much for protecting the innocent eh? What are you going to do with your powers next, slaughter some innocent kids?" Athrun is being silly, Shinn's buttons are much easier to push, but he lets himself be goaded and is too self absorbed to see the big picture. The point is, Athrun had the chance, and continues to have the chance to right things with Shinn, and be able to guide him. But he has too much pride and can't do it. Think about the jeep ride to see Dullindal, it shows up how petulant Athrun can be.

I didn't say Shinn wasn't arrogant. But what I'm saying is that Athrun need to be mature enough to be above Shinn's little taunts. It was obvious he was doing it on purpose, and he succeeded. To everyone else, Athrun look like a little mad dog. The smart thing he should've done is smile and said something intelligent that gets under Shinn's skin and walk away. May be: "so, you're trying to make up for all the deaths you caused when you handed Stella back to EA... too bad you can't bring back the dead, nice try though." Athrun also need to recognize that Shinn was quite a bit like him and be willing to find away to use that to his advantage, and may be guide him a little better, because he has been doing a damn poor job of it so far. As for Yzak and Deakka, join Clyne faction, whatever... it's like paying lip service to the fans without really adding to the story line. If they put them back in a little more, as in a few minutes every episode, then may be you have something, but as it stands now, they don't add anything in my opinion.

I think people have said it before, although Shinn deserved to be knocked down a few pegs for his arrogance, what he got from Athrun was not really deserved. Athrun smacked Shinn for doing his job, and then almost bragging about how good he was... as a good ace pilot would do. You could make the argument that Shinn goaded Athrun into this with his little taunts, but that just shows how much control Athrun has lost. If someone didn't know the history, they would look at the scene and say: "look at that mad dog Zala, he hit his subordinate because Shinn accomplished something that Athrun could." One weird thing though, it looks like Neo is getting close to being forgiven... what the hell is that about? It's like someone saying: "Hi, I orchestrated the killing of hundreds of people for no good reason, but I think that's because I didn't know who I was... so, all is forgiven, and can I be on your side now?" Rey seem to be destined for villany, it's too bad I don't really care much about it. He is all bright and cheery on one side, and then goes and sulks because Dullindal doesn't call on him. LOSER. Lastly, why did they bother showing Yzak and Deakka at all? For people who have made brief cameo appearences in GSD, their involvement seem rather pointless, actually, their involvement makes me want to say that the overall storyline is so weak that they have to get the old guys in to generate a buzz. I'm guessing we don't see them again for another five episodes... I wouldn't mind if we never see them again because they don't add anything to the story at all.

Mwu/Neo would make a lousy Char I think, he should never have come back. With Shinn I agree he is too arrogant. All because he has been coddled. Letting Stella go had very direct consequences, but he doesn't realize it. And Tali is doing a very poor job by not pushing the mistakes of his actions in his face, if he understood what he did and where he screwed up, then there would be hope.

I don't think so... Kira is shown as being a superiour pilot now compared to the end of SEED... he has already shown he can handle multiple aces at the same time without a problem.. why would one pilot who strategy is little more than to charge in and block shots present such a challenge? there's no reason kira would have been so frazzled by shin to act like such a newbie. Let's not just assume that Shinn got lucky. You have to remember that although he had training, prior to the theft of the three Gundams, he never saw actual combat. Having that experience makes a difference. Essentially, he went through what Kira went through in Seed, which is trial by fire. You don't know what his exact potentials are, no one does. Kira has gotten to a point where he isn't going to get much better. Shinn is still learning and improving if you will. Look at progression, he couldn't take down any one of the stolen gundams when he started, but eventually he managed to kill Auel, and would have likely killed Stella in Destroy too if Neo hadn't stopped him. It's plain wrong to just assume Kira is a better pilot regardless, it might be true at the moment, but that might change with time. There isn't any reason why he couldn't surpass Kira, and Kira had the better mobile suit when they fought. All the excuses doesn't really matter, he won that round. As long as he isn't too full of himself for killing Freedom, I think there is actually the chance that he'll be better than Kira as a pilot.

What can you say? The storyline took a serious dump after about episode 10 or 11 I think. The whole Orb detour to me was like a big waste of time, and worse yet, instead of just playing it out, they dragged out that scenario over like a half the show. All to bring back Kira and company. And in order to force that line of logic, they story became warped. Kira became all powerful, Athrun became a loser along with just about everyone else in order to push Shinn, and hell, Sting got killed by some nobodies. This is the same Sting that was kicking ass in the beginning, virtually raping and pillaging his way out of the PLANT. Then he got back to Earth, and I swear, for the sake of the storyline, he became totally useless along with Auel and Stella, but at least those two had memorable deaths. Sting? He was offed and there wasn't even a cockpit death scene like there was for the other druggies. The payoff for that Orb story is just not there yet... and if the story keep going this way, they'll go back into Orb again, ZAFT will attack Orb, or some such thing, blah blah blah. Seriously, someone should've just nuked Orb, that would at least put the misery out of that part of the story. Although to be safe, they need to kill Cagalli too, cause otherwise, she'd just keep crying and whining. Bottom line is, they seem to be making up the story line as it goes along. And whenever you see the spoiler on newtype or some other magazine, odds are it was probably just a week earlier when they finished that part of the story.

What?!?!? You don't like crying Cagalli? Do you have any idea how popular that particular doll is in Japan? I don't either actually. But with the add in water for instant tear feature, you know, squeeze here and she cries.... It's sure to be a big seller, like the next cabage patch kid. As for the upgraded Buster, it's Impulse with the big gun pack... heh heh, they just need to build another Core Splendor for Deakka.

You notice, there is supposed to be a Strike Rouge Destiny as well. Let me guess Destiny gets shot down, but Cagalli gets it as a hand me down, paints it pink and cries in it all the time. I wonder why they don't just recolor the various gundams and slap different pictures on it for pilots. (Yzak Freedom, with the awful silver/blue paint scheme, we can have a Deakka Freedom with that green/yellowish sandy looking paint scheme and so on) It might be a good way to boost MSIA series.

speaking of the pinkish gunbarrel ship of terror, I was watching ep 2 again, and I swear the quality of the show has gone down the tubes. EA troops in episode 2 were good, they took out a few ZAFT ships along with their complement of MS. That was beside the MS that the three stolen units took down. The show's quality across the board seem to have gone down. The EA side look like they all took stupid pills. The three druggies back then seem to be extremely capable, look like once they got back to Earth side, they all got dumb. As for Neo/Mwu, I think just giving him back the Exzas should be enough. Not everyone has to have an MS.