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I definitely don't like what I've seen of Stellar so far. Seems too much like a female Heero Yuy. When Lunamaria opened her mouth, I half expected to hear Flay's voice. Same for Sting, from whom I expected Orga's voice. Damn you, Hisashi "Clone 'Em All" Hirai. Granted, I already knew what these character designs looked like, so it wasn't a surprise or anything. But I didn't expect that it would actually stick out, and it did. The whole Impulse launch seemed ridiculously drawn out. It might be prudent to come up with a system that doesn't take a half hour to launch the mobile suit (in several different pieces, no less). Granted, all Gundam series kind of make a show of launching the MS out into battle, but it seemed especially pronounced here. It was also kind of strange that everyone just took a break from battle, sat back, and watched as Impulse docked up. In Victory Gundam, enemy pilots actually tried to hit the mobile suit components, sometimes with success. It sure was nice of them to let Shin get all his business in order before they continued the battle. Also, why was everyone so shocked to see him show up? They already know ZAFT built new Gundams because they're staring at three of them. Is it that amazing that another Gundam, this time with a friendly pilot, would show up and help out Athrun? I don't want to come into this show determined to dislike it, but I really didn't like SEED much and so I'm already kind of biased against it. If it turns into a genuinely good show, I won't deny it. So far it was just kind of blah, with some minor things that seemed a little stupid. I wasn't a big fan of the music (didn't much like SEED's soundtrack either, particularly in the early episodes) and I think I've already covered my disdain for the character designs. Mecha designs, as always, looked a bit better in animation than they did in lineart, but...I'm still not a fan. Gore doesn't really bother me, but I did think that the death of Shin's family was a little...excessive. It didn't upset me or anything, but it just seemed gratuitous. Most of the violence in SEED felt like that, too, like it was just gory for the sake of being gory. Overall I guess I'd say the episode was fairly average. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it wasn't as good either. I kind of wish that it wasn't essentially a replay of the first episode of SEED, though. Does anyone in the SEED universe ever get assigned to a Gundam that their own military built? Does everyone really have to steal or commandeer their machine?

The burners themselves aren't that expensive. Mine set me back $80. But not even god has the financial resources to buy dual layer discs. They're absolutely ridiculous.

Considering how much of a nut he was, choosing a clone over his own son, it's definitely possible. It's also possible that we've just once again fallen victim to Hisashi "Clone 'Em All" Hirai and his identical character designs.

Tomino shows get more leeway. Turn-A which also fared very poorly received it's full run of episodes (although it appears to have deservedly become more appreciated with time). Victory Gundam's television ratings were actually comparable to those of G Gundam and Gundam Wing, and higher than those of Gundam X and Turn A. I'm not really interested in models though, so perhaps it was a commercial failure. I don't know how well its merchandise sold. I think his point has some validity to it. While I don't think Evangelion was a major factor since they never competed, it very well may have played a smaller role - something does become clear when you compare the original Japanese names of the two shows - "Kidou Shin Seiki Gundam X" and "Shin Seiki Evangelion" - Coincidence? I'd say Sunrise tried to take a little ride on the success of Eva a little, and it didn't work. If not those things, it's a victim of it's times. Eva was popular at the time, and the last Gundam series had been the very popular Wing. Gundam X wasn't the "more of the same" that people craved. I don't think we'll ever really know what the reason for it failing was other than fans being fickle. You and I seem to agree for the most part that Evangelion didn't play any significant role in Gundam X's failure, so I'm not going to split hairs here except to say that if there is anything to the similarity in titles, I would think it had an extremely limited impact on the show's popularity (how many people are going to like or dislike the show based on its allusion to the title of another show?). I don't think Gundam X was a terrible show, but I don't think it was really a victim of its times -- I don't think it would succeed even if it aired now, mostly for the reasons you outlined in your post. That's a reflection more on the show itself than on the shows it ran against. Would it have done better if it wasn't coming just a week after the end of popular shows like Eva and Wing? Perhaps. But I'm not sure it would have done *much* better. In any case, I stand by my original point that Gundam X did not fail because it was up next to Evangelion.

Generally, when a show completes its run, it's at the height of its popularity, is it not? Imagine trasitioning from Eva ep 26 to Gundam X episode 1. Quite a jarring experience, especially when Eva apparently hit all the chords anime fans like--underaged fanservice, animal mascots, Christian symbols, and a dash of super robot style in the mecha designs. So, Gundam X had to compete with Eva--regardless of whether or not they were airing concurrently. This is kind of like how, when a video game does something perfectly, all successive games are compared to this one perfect video game. RPGs are judged by whether or not they're as good as Final Fantasy. Action games are judged by whether or not they're as good as Metal Gear Solid. FPS games are measured by whether or not they're as good as Half-life or Halo. Point is, Eva is one of the reasons Gundam X didn't do well. Period. That seems like a terrible stretch to me. If there's any sort of proof that Evangelion impacted X's ratings, then fine, but to me it looks like you're really reaching. It's not like people just stopped watching anime for a while after Eva ended. Besides, a lot of fans were actually pretty upset with the last couple episodes of Eva, so the transition to a new Gundam series after the disappointing climax to an otherwise popular series doesn't seem like it'd be too difficult. And Gundam Wing found plenty of success running at the same time (albeit, on different days) as Evangelion. I just have a very tough time believing Evangelion played any significant role in Gundam X's failure.

SEED was a miss? That's a funny one. The funniest part is that you responded to it as if my opinion were wrong and you knew the correct answer. I guess you probably, somehow, despite the fact that my post made it pretty clear I was talking about my own personal taste, came to the conclusion that I was talking about merchandising success. In the future, I'll draw you a picture so you don't get confused. I have, but the complaints always come from people who haven't seen the show and therefore don't understand the importance of Zaku to the plot. Turn A, because of its unique story, is an exception. Unless SEED Destiny's story is specifically written to tie into Turn A (unlikely, but not impossible), there's no good reason, from a story-telling perspective, that there should be any Zaku designs in the show. That's a myth. If Gundam X ran against Evangelion, it was running against Eva reruns. Gundam X started 5 April 1996 and ran on Friday (until its timeslot change, which moved it to Saturday mornings). Evangelion ran on Wednesday and ended 27 March 1996. Not only were they not in the same timeslot, but they weren't even running at the same time.

I don't know that I'd say Gundam has been sinking for the past decade. I think it'd be more accurate to say that it's always been hit or miss. Gundam ZZ was the first big miss, and it's almost twenty years old now. Turn A Gundam was one of the franchise's finest entries, and it's only five years old. And in between, there were plenty of good shows (0080, Victory, G) and plenty of not so good (0083, 08th MS, Wing). SEED was another miss and SEED Destiny, based on the material that's been released so far, doesn't look like it's going to be any better than its predecessor. But with the right creative staff, a good Gundam show is still possible regardless of Bandai's commercialism. Gundam has *always* been around to sell models (except maybe TAG), and the only reason it seems any worse with SEED is that Fukuda has been Bandai's willing lap dog (making Dearka change sides to improve the sales of Buster models, for example), but I think it's slightly pessimistic to conclude that the entire franchise is sinking. If Sunrise preserves the SEED staff for future shows after Destiny, then the franchise really will be headed downhill, but there's no reason SEED doesn't just have to be another bump in the road. Even if Bandai continues to pump out sequels to it, the SEED universe itself has some potential, so a competent staff might be able to pull a good series out of it.

Haha...unfortunately Anime Junkies didn't stop immediately after they were warned by Bandai. It was only on their 3rd, 4th warning of legal action that they actually stopped. Besides, AJ subs were sucky and I prerefed A-kingdom/Haro2. What has your friend have to gripe about? The Anime-Kingdom/Haro² subtitles were all right for the most part, although they did have a few glaring flaws ("Pacific Alliance" instead of "Atlantic Federation"). Their episode 50 seemed shoddy in general, probably because they rushed to be the first group to put it out. For overall quality, the best subs were the ones from Seed Fansubs (Anime-Gundam/Shinseiki Illuminati/Aoshi), but they were extremely slow. Anime Junkies is just an all around terrible group. They were awful with Gundam SEED, they were awful with Getbackers, they were awful with Ghost in the Shell, and I would wager they were awful with everything else they ever touched. "Mass naked child events" really says it all. I watched SEED raw, myself. Much of the plot was recycled from old shows anyway, so it wasn't too hard to follow. I watched the Seed Fansubs releases as they came out and also checked out Anikraze, Aone, and A-Kingdom/Haro² after those eps came out, too. I didn't actually watch AJ's SEED myself, but I heard all about it from people who did, and I've seen some of their other stuff, so I'm familiar with the quality (or lack thereof) of the fansubs they put out.

I thought Physica's death was *really* predictable, though, so that kind of lessened any impact it could have had. As soon as this character who had barely been an afterthought for the entire series so far suddenly starts getting all this screentime, you know he's about to bite the dust. So, knowing that it was coming, you were already prepared for it. And since Physica was hardly even in the show up until that episode, it was hard to really care much about what happened to him anyway. Gamlin's reaction really didn't get to me much more than the death itself did. I mean, it was sad, I guess...but it wasn't *that* sad. My vote goes to Kakizaki in the TV series. In DYRL, he was just kind of flying and suddenly he's dead, but in the TV series he's doing his best to get the hell out of dodge before that barrier gets him, and he just can't do it. And then while Hikaru's sitting there screaming, Max just silently crosses himself. I thought the scene was done very well.

Seeing as it's been longer than 24 hours, the answer was, in addition to the aforementioned Dianna Soreil, Agrippa Maintainer and Gym Ghingnham. I'm not in the mood to ask anymore questions at the moment, so if anyone else feels like asking one, go for it.

I'm aware of the original plans to write F91 as a 52-episode TV series, but none of those episodes were ever animated, to my knowledge. The condensed movie and the sequel manga, Crossbone Gundam, are all we got. Before I saw this thread I figured the second disc would just be all extras (although considering how sparse extras were on the CCA disc, a whole second disc for F91 is surprising), but then here Keith mentioned the OVA. I thought maybe there was something out there I was unaware of, like the little movie clips included on the 08th MS Team DVDs, but it looks like it was really just a misunderstanding. SEED is 50 episodes long, which will probably translate to twelve volumes. It's possible they might do five episodes per disc over ten volumes, like they did for Gundam Wing, but more recent releases like G Gundam were done four episodes per disc. So I imagine the first two discs will have five episodes and the ten subsequent volumes will have four each. Edit: Actually just after I wrote this post I noticed that Anime on DVD lists SEED volume 3 as being 125 minutes long. Assuming that's not an error, it looks like SEED will be ten volumes, five episodes each.

OVA? What OVA are you referring to?

I don't suppose you mean Diana Soleil? She's one of three.

In Turn A Gundam, who are the leaders of the Moonrace?

Barou.

I agree. There was speculation that ADV might announce L-Gaim at Otakon, but then they announced absolutely nothing instead, so that was pretty disappointing.