PinkuBentoBox

If you’ve been following Seed, and you’re not among the raving fanboy / fangirl crowd, you’ve probably been somewhat frustrated by the quality of Seed’s writing. The chief problem is in the story’s pacing. It seems like nothing’s been happening. If go back, then you’ll remember that the series started with a massive bang, and was on track to be incredible. Once they dropped Junius-7 on Earth, though, they switched into politics mode and the plot’s flow went from a torrent to a stagnating pond.

Seriously, think about it. Since the colony drop (episode 6) and now (episode 22), how many important events have happened? Orb joined the Earth Alliance, Athrun re-joined ZAFT, Minerva got kicked out of Orb and Shinn went Seed, Kira got the Freedom back, and Shinn met Stellar. That’s really not very much for 16 episodes.

Now, it can be argued (rightly so) that Seed also suffered from poor pacing in the first half of the series. However, important things happened constantly, there wasn’t gigantic gaps in between each major event. Kira went Seed, gave Yzak his scar. Fllay’s father died and she went insane. Kira decided to stay with the Archangel. The 8th Fleet was destroyed getting the Archangel to Earth, and Kira and Yzak’s emnity grew as a result of that battle. Kira met up with Cagalli again. Kira met and killed Andy. The events are more spread out, and to boot there was a lot less filler in between each major plot point. We’ve had two recap episodes already, one recapping the first 15 eps, and another recapping Seed. By episode 22, Seed had had zero recaps (13 wasn’t a recap, it was background information).

The structure of the episodes themselves is also poorly done in Destiny. Take 22 for example. The preview showed a big battle, with Freedom in it. As it turns out, the action was confined to the last 3 or so minutes of the episode - the rest was them mucking about. It left on a note which, had the action been spread out and paced properly, would have been an awesome cliffhanger, however due to the series’ pacing it ends up being frustrating.

Sunrise seem to constantly be taking the soft option when it comes to Destiny. We were told the series would be a lot darker, but I’m not seeing that at all. In fact, to me it feels a lot like Star Wars Episode II - too much focus on flashy things, and not enough of the basics of good storytelling. They constantly get into spots where they have awesome opportunities to surprise us with some quality plot developments, but instead take an easy way out.

Now, I know that Sunrise’s goal is to sell model kits. That’s why we have all these awesome ‘custom’ Zaku variants this time - same mould in a different colour + one runner of extra accessories = profit. However we really don’t need to see the bloody impulse-constructs-itself-in-mid-air sequence any more. We know it happens, it’s cheesy as fuck, and it takes up valuable time where they could he having things happen.

I’d also like to take a moment to complain about the characters themselves. Wasted potential. They’re all cardboard cutouts because despite the amount of dialogue etc that they’ve been through. It seems silly, but Athrun is the only one I’ve seen to have any development at all, and that was only minor. As a consequence, I find it very hard to care about any of the new cast. We’ve been told that there’s a major character death coming up, but right now, I don’t think I’d really care about it unless it was Lunamaria, and only because she has so much potential as a character that it would be a waste. The druggies… Stellar is obviously immune to dying at the moment. Auel, I’d love to see die, so they won’t kill him. Sting would be a good choice, because he’s the only one of them that actually has a personality. I’d be annoyed again if they killed him unless his death accomplished something meaningful. Sadly that would take the Chaos out, and Chaos is my favourite of the new Gundam designs.

While communicating these complaints to a certain person who shall remain nameless, I got the bog-standard response of a lot of Seed fans - “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it”. I call this the FFN clause - “If you don’t like it, don’t read it” in response to criticism. I complain about it because I care. I really wanted to see Destiny become awesome, and at the moment it’s failing to come close, with the exception of the first few episodes which did everything right. I was then given the “If you hate the plot so much why don’t you write it” response too. And so, I thought I would explain what I’d like to see happen in Seed.

At the moment, Minerva is engaged in battle against the combined fleets of Earth and Orb. Kira and Freedom have arrived to be fucking pussies who try to stop the violence or some such rot, and have badly damaged the Minerva. We know that somehow, Minerva will still win. There’s too much of a ‘oh I’m in my gundam so I’m disconnected from everything’ feel to the cluster of lead characters. They’re surrounded with a big bubble that keeps them from being harmed beyond the superficial. I want the Minerva to get shot down and destroyed, the characters to be split up and thrown in prison or something. Do something bad to them, burst the invulnerability bubble.

Both sides would turn on the Freedom and the Archangel, and force them to retreat. Stop interfering in people’s business with your pacifistic ‘no killing’ crap. It’s a war, and the people behind it want it to end in the extinction of one side. While the people may reconcile, the leadership will not. After the Archangel is forced off, the battle returns to the damaged Minerva. Kira’s destroying the main weapons of the ship will have a major impact now. Earth surrounds the Minerva, and is going to capture it.

Shinn, meanwhile, will have been fighting Kira, and by going Seed will have ‘won’ their encounter. Neo will have been involved in this fight too, and Kira will note how Neo’s way of fighting feels ‘familiar’. A much damaged Impulse is then forced to return to the Minerva to defend it. Having lost power, and having been badly beaten up, Shinn will switch weapons packs to the pretty much unused Blast Impulse, and do the Gundam X style powerup maneuver. It won’t be enough, though, as he is up against all three of the stolen gundams. He will defeat Gaia, and Sting, in an awesome heroic moment will intervene before Shinn can deliver the killing blow. Sting will sacrifice himself to defeat the ‘Seed mode’ Shinn. Impulse will be destroyed and Shinn captured by the EA forces.

Meanwhile, the Minerva is surrounded and defeated. Talia orders the ship to be evacuated. Lunamaria and Athrun cover the retreating escape shuttles while Rey and Neo duel again. Talia stays behind on her ship, triggering the self-destruct to destroy it along with a good portion of the fleet, going down with her ship in a final gesture of defiance. The crew’s escape shuttles don’t get very far, many are shot down or captured. The crew are split up, Heine sacrificing himself to defend the shuttle with Arthur and Meyrin aboard. The remaining major crew members are now in EA-occupied territory, wanted by the EA. We are now truly shown how badly the Earth was devastated by the Junius-7 colony drop as the rest of the crew, now split up, are forced to try and stay alive in such a hostile environment.

Shinn, meanwhile, has been captured. Neo recognises in him the ‘Seed’ - his berserker tendencies are not unfamiliar to Neo, who notes that others have done it. He has Shinn taken to a secret research laboratory, where the drugs fed to the Druggies in Seed were manufactured, as well as the current batch of ‘living CPUs’. He becomes a precious research specimen, a coordinator with the Seed. It is here that this little engima finally gets explained to us.

With the cornerstone of ZAFT’s resistance on Earth shattered, and so many of their key pilots lost (two members of FAITH dead, one missing) ZAFT’s hold on the planet crumbles, and the battle moves back to space. After days of battle, during which several PLANT colonies are wiped out, PLANT is forced to capitulate to the EA’s demands, surrendering and ending the war.

Meanwhile, after searching for days, Athrun tracks down the Archangel and more importantly, Kira. There is an emotional reunion between the two friends, and more importantly between Athrun and Cagalli - she had naturally assumed him captured or killed with the Minerva. They form a resistance movement, this time not aimed at sides (EA and ZAFT) of the conflict, but at the people behind this conflict - Blue Cosmos, and behind them, the Logos. A search for information begins, with Athrun and Kira trying to track down the other members of the Minerva crew, along with information on who the Logos are.

Having managed to re-locate Lunamaria and Meyrin, Athrun and Kira run into a new bunch of ‘Living CPUs’ in new Gundam models. These third generation druggies are enhanced to the point that they can outperform coordinators, and furthermore they have the ‘Seed’ ability, albeit only in a limited fashion. Barely managing to fight them off by also going Seed, Athrun and Kira discuss the Seed concept. Cagalli and Lacus chime in at this point, mentioning that they can also do it. At that point, Lunamaria points out that Shinn had done something similar, and Athrun makes the realisation that Shinn had been captured. They set out to rescue him, but first they must track down where he is.

Athrun theorises that Dullindal may know, and anyway, they should try and gather some support from what’s left of ZAFT. Archangel returns to space, and heads to the remains of PLANT. On the way, they run into a Zaku patrol lead by Shiho, who finally gets some lines. The remains of the ZAFT military have gone rebel, conducting a quiet resistance against the EA forces in space. Of course, the rebel flagship is the Voltaire, and the commander of the resistance is none other than Yzak, with Dearka as his XO and Shiho commanding the remains of the MS forces.

Yzak reveals that Dullindal disappeared not long after PLANT’s surrender, just like he had so suddenly appeared when there was need for a new Chairman. He is clearly surprised to find Lacus on the Archangel, and asks how she got on a ship that came from Earth when she’d given another broadcast from PLANT just hours earlier. Athrun explains about Meer, and notes that she was close to Dullindal and may know his whereabouts. Yzak arranges a covert operation to get Athrun, Kira and a few other characters onto Earth-occupied PLANT to try and find Meer.

When they do, Meer bolts, and a firefight breaks out. Meer ends up getting shot. She reveals to Athrun that she was a Logos agent, just like Dullindal. Dullindal was sent to PLANT, and strings were pulled to get him into the position of power that he had held, specifically so that PLANT could be brought directly under the control of the EA. Meer reveals that Dullindal has set up shop in the Mendel colony, where the revelations about Kira and Mwu were delivered at the end of Seed. He is apparently doing genetic research for Logos, but she knows no more than that. She is, after all, just a pawn. She then apologises to Lacus for pretending to be her, and explains how much she had respected the other girl before dying.

The group are forced to fight their way back off PLANT. Yzak and Shiho rescue them just when things are looking grim, and they all trundle off to the Mendel colony. When they get there, though, they find a heavy EA presence, including the same Super-Druggies from earlier on. They fight their way through them, and Athrun and Lunamaria go ahead and enter the colony while Yzak, Shiho, Dearka and Kira fight the super-druggies. Luna and Athrun confront Dullindal inside the colony. He has hundreds of people growing in vats, a legion of mass-produced ‘Super-coordinators’ to control the world with. Logos makes no distinction between Coordinator and Natural, unlike Blue Cosmos, who are just one of their pawns. Dullindal is also one of the lead researchers who worked on the Druggies, and was previously the assistant to Ulen Hibiki, the man who had cloned Mwu’s father to make Rau Le Creuset.

After some exposition on the nature of the Seed, cloning, etc, Dullindal manages to give the group the slip by letting some of the new Super-coordinators out. After a long firefight, the crew break into the holding cells, finding an utterly broken Shinn. They are escaping with Shinn when they are confronted by Stellar and Auel. Shinn had been talking to Stellar several times before now, as with the new generation of druggies around, Stellar and Auel had been reduced to little more than guards in the facility. He finally makes a breakthrough, causing her to rememeber everything that they had ‘wiped’ from her memory. Not just her meeting with Shinn, but everything that they had worked so hard to make her forget. She turns on Auel and knifes him for his part in it. With her memory back, she’s a lot less spacy, and much more normal. They set explosives in the colony’s reactor, then they all escape the colony, with Shinn taking the Abyss Gundam. The MS team outside fights the super-druggies off, Yzak and Shiho exerting a combined attack on one and managed to kill her.

The group returns to Earth, having heard that Dullindal had escaped to Orb. Orb will be where the showdown finally occurs, the key to Logos’ power. Before they can go there, however, Shinn’s Gundam has to be replaced. The Archangel just happens to run into a certain group of people, lead by Lowe of Astray fame. Together they gather the parts of the Impulse and several other slagged suits, building a new suit for Shinn. They also upgrade Freedom, and Savior, and build a new suit for Stellar by combining parts of Gaia and Abyss. Meanwhile, Djibril is talking to Dullindal, who reveals that the Blue Cosmos is no longer necessary for Logos. Neo then appears in Djibril’s little hideout and puts a bullet in him.

Returning to Orb, a gigantic battle erupts. Neo appears again, this time leading the charge against the Archangel. He makes the mistake of opening a communications channel, however. When he sees Murrue, his mind becomes unhinged and he disappears for a second, before taking his mask off and revealing a scarred Mwu. Mwu reveals himself properly, explaining that he had lost his memory after nearly dying in the previous war, and that Dullindal had found him, recognised him as the Hawk of Endymion, and had fed him false information in order to get him to fight for Logos. Mwu returns, in style, teaming up with Kira and Athrun to fight off the two remaining super-druggies, while Shinn, Lunamaria, Cagalli and Stellar run forward to confront Dullindal.

It is at this point that Rey appears. Rey is a genetically enhanced clone of Mwu, which is why they can sense each other. They fight, and eventually Mwu beats Rey, killing him. Kira and Athrun defeat their opponents. Meanwhile Shinn leads the charge on Dullindal’s seat of power, defeating hundreds of enemy suits as he goes. Finally, Dullindal sories in his own Gundam. Shinn and Dullindal clash, exhanging philosophies along with blows, in typical Gundam fashion. Dullindal, unable to get under Shinn’s skin properly, turns on Lunamaria and destroys her suit, killing her. Shinn then goes ballistic, and eventually gets the upper hand.

Meanwhile, Cagalli had gone on to the Orb parilament. She bursts into the room, and stops pussyfooting around in the political arena. Punching Yuna in the face, she removes him from her chair, taking back her rightful position. She then grabs the EA leader who is present for a conference and conducts some ‘negotiations’ with him.

Dullindal reveals the truth about Logos to Shinn. In an incredibly sneaky move, it’s revealed that Dullindal is himself the leader of Logos, and that he had been carefully manipulating things while pretending to answer to a higher authority. Shinn is about to deal a finishing blow on him when Stellar’s memory clicks. She realises that Dullindal is her father, and dives between the two. Shinn stabs her suit directly through the cockpit, killing her. The blade goes through and penetrates Dullindal’s cockpit, and both suits explode. Shinn, meanwhile, goes mad with despair, snapping completely.

In the mopping up, Cagalli is once again the leader of Orb, and stronger for it. EA relinquishes control of PLANT, allowing them full autonomy and signing a treaty for lasting peace again. Shinn, meanwhile, gives up war. Lunamaria turns out not to be dead, just badly injured. The world is once again on a path to peace and stability… that is, until the final scene where we see Athrun and Cagalli finally getting married, and in the crowd is a sunglasses-clad Dullindal, who has cut his hair and dyed it blonde.

Anyway, that’s how I’d write it. Chances of something even close to decent like this at the moment look pretty slim.