Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny (2004–2005) User Reviews

Destiny Redeemed

[pip-7 · 8/10 · 24 June 2006]

Well, I did make a critical comment on Seed Destiny on IMDb prior to this (and yeah, I still don't like the first Seed) but after watching it on later episodes, something tells me that Destiny really seems to capture the core essence of this mighty mecha-based franchise, and it all shows in some of the most intense battle sequences ever made on TV. So it's pretty fair for me to pull back those crude words I uttered for the sake of all Gundam fans.

Though there are so many changes since the first show (truthfully, you'll be stuck in the woods if you don't follow its trail), it's still pretty much about the conflict between ZAFT (for dummies, space guys) and the forces of Earth, just like its predecessors. OK, I really miss lots of episodes in Seed (cause I don't really like it at all), so I have no idea the whole premise here but there's one thing I know about its characters: not one single person wants to prove to be heroic nor evil in this show because they are just doing what is right in their own eyes. And makers of the Gundam shows get smarter these days.

Despite its melodramatic nature, frequent uses of flashbacks (doggone these stuff) and the fact that the 'save our country from the enemy' conversations can become really annoying, the major highlight (and the main reason I watch Destiny) is the grand mecha battles: every single Gundam, including the famous one-eyed bots, make their appearances on (this time) both sides of the battlefield. Unless you know the show well, viewers will be virtually confused with their affiliations. Aside from improved 3D effects (and they blend really nicely) and character animation, one of the greatest thing that I realize recently is that most anime have 3D robots these days: the Gundam series, like Mr. Miyazaki himself, instead defy them by using the old-school methods (hand-drawn, that's for sure) and the result is impressive. In fact, I think these hand-drawn mechas look more versatile and exciting (nostalgia is the perfect word) compared to the rest of the 3D robots, which is a wonder why most recent mecha shows suck.

Like all anime stuff, there are some J-Pop songs specially produced for Destiny: mostly are varied in quality, ranged from awesome and memorable to the state that makes you think 'WTF?'. Just check them up, listen and you'll see what I mean.

And here is my analyst of the later episodes of Gundam Seed Destiny and yes, I admit it's really good. If you don't like its convoluted storyline, you'll be still enticed by Destiny's mecha battles, and they're all worthy of its parent name.

For those who gave up on Gundam...

[rockfordphile · 28 April 2005]

...there is finally an "alternate universe" worthy of the Gundam name - that was founded in "Mobile Suit Gundam Seed", and now carries on in "Gundam Seed: Destiny".

Both Seed and Seed: Destiny take place in the "Cosmic Era", as opposed to the original series' "Universal Century". Still, despite the imposition of *this* universe's legal and creative realities, the CE draws much of its appeal from a similar vein as the UC.

To my mind, the Seed series has brought back much of what made Gundam a legendary franchise in the first place: technical realism (within its own framework, of course - I unfortunately still cannot buy my own Quebeley or Freedom); fun, interesting characters and attention to their development; and the underlying obscenity of war. (but mostly I just like the floating pink robot with funny semi-random phrases)

Bind this up in a glossy, model selling package, complete with newfangled animation techniques (a little cg, some cool motion effects and camera work), bitchin' JPop goodness and a commanding budget, and Seed and Destiny have brought Gundam BACK.

At the time of this writing, just over half of Destiny has aired:

Destiny picks up a few years after Seed. It wastes no time in establishing a new protagonist, but also re-acquaints us with old friends.

There are those who have complained that Gundam Seed moved too slowly. (please, kids, take your Ritalin. It's called a 'story'.) Destiny has a quicker pace; the action to episode ratio seems to have increased.

While the underlying story may seem painfully familiar at first, it does gain intriguing (and addicting) twists along the way, and the new faces keep you watching.

While it remains to be seen if this sophomore series will truly live up to Seed or its Universal Century predecessors, it's off to a damned fine start - and I'm glad to know that there are still producers and directors who care enough to *try*.

my thoughts on gundam seed and destiny

[jbcostan · 10/10 · 26 July 2013]

Probably my best anime of all time. Well I kinda do like Gundam seed better than Destiny, but this was pretty much my Star Strek. I really like this era although most hardcore Gundam fans out there probably hate it since most Gundam shows are from different eras. If you're trying to get into Gundam/Mobile suits anime, this is a good start. Start with Gundam Seed though. Loved the story line, the twist and turn between the good guys and bad guys. There are some parts that irritates me a bit and those are the repetitive scenes, especially the fight scenes. Love the models, the characters, the songs, and I sometimes wonder that if any Gundam series out there that could happen in real life, I think that this is probably the closest.

Not your father's Gundam.

[tyrenol · 3/10 · 8 November 2006]

My first true experience with Gundam was through the Wing series when it was shown in the US via Cartoon Network. From then on I watched the 3rd movie of the original, Double Zeta, Char's Counterattack, Victory, and a few episodes of Turn-A. And I appreciated Yoshiyuki Tomino's ability to tell a good war-based story (despite the lighter mood in Double Zeta and Turn-A). And my opinion of him didn't change after I found out that Tomino had psychological problems.

I started watching Gundam Seed Destiny with the hopes of seeing a "Gundam" title return to its roots. But after episode 21, I lost all hope for anything animated in Japan and having to do with war.

Mitsuo Fukuda and Chiaki Morosawa are the two people to blame for this series. How many more "re-cap episodes," rewritten specials, and re-usage of base images must they require in order to be satisfied with their end product? Why make a lead character (who had an actually good story to tell) along with a set of new characters when their next step is to shine the spotlight on the old set of characters? I know the lead singer from TM Revolution had a busy schedule, but why does he have to play some "shining cannon-fodder" who lasts less than 5 episodes?

I had my opinions of this series booted off of review sites because of my "bias." But isn't it our duty as viewers of media to commit to some "whistle-blowing" whenever we see something wrong? If a director, producer, and/or screenwriter rely too much on lazy re-caps, re-usage of images, and "specials" based on re-used and re-edited scenes; then one wonders why people like them have been hired or are still employed.

not too good as ppl think - this contains spoilers

[illusionistsonata · 4/10 · 25 October 2006]

I find this season surprisingly disappointing, Athrun just practically went back to being an idiot like he was at the beginning of Seed, fighting for what he "blindly" believes in. Kira, I can understand he wants to live peacefully but man, honestly he looks like a depressed old man to me -__-. Destiny just practically copied everything from Seed, except doing them backwards, rather than the ZAFT steals EA's mobile suits at the beginning of the season, this time is the opposite...and ZAFT have shitty mobile suits this season, the only fights that are worth seeing is when Kira kicks ass with Gundam Freedom, and later on both Kira and Athrun kick ass with their Infinite Justice and Strike Freedom. Probably the only thing worth seeing. The new characters are soooo annoying, if u ppl thought Yzak was bad, then man he is a cool character, and him and Dearka should have had a bigger role in this season. Shin is just unacceptable, a BRAT!!!

OK, i might sound like a complete ass for dissing this so much, but if ur looking for a good plot then don't bother with this season, if u end it at Seed, then it makes hell of a better ending than continuing like this.

I personally loved Gundam Seed, although I was cheering for Fllay to die lol. but Destiny is just utterly disappointing.

Good start...

[silent_killer_195 · 3/10 · 18 May 2006]

Gundam SEED Destiny, the direct sequel to Gundam SEED, got off to a great start. We were thrown into battle that raged on and off for 4 to 5 episodes non-stop, and our hopes were high. There were new characters that had stories to be told, and a new plot to be delivered. But, this all stopped before the series even hit the 20th episode. Instead of the new characters being in the spotlight, Lacus and the crew came in and took it back. Athrun was left in the cold, and it became the Jesus Yamato show. Instead of seeing intense battles, we get to see Freedom strike the same pose over and over again as hundreds of grunt units explode.

Gundam SEED retained elements from the older, more war oriented Gundam series, which made it easily watchable and quite entertaining if you could get by the re-use of the same frames. But SEED Destiny became a "super robot" show in which the main characters suits could easily take out an entire fleet without getting a scratch. The new suits, while flashy, are just blatant copies of UC suits. Pumping up a Zaku and giving it a huge backpack doesn't mean you've created a new suit.

Destiny had the potential to be as good as SEED, but it ended up destroying itself by becoming a super robot show filled with Gundams.

I give it 3 out of 10 stars, because it did have a good start.

Flashy but insipid

[etg1701 · 4/10 · 19 December 2007]

This series revives many the characteristically flashy visual and musical elements that gave the first SEED its barrages of pink laser fire and pervasive J-Pop background. Of course these worked much better with a good plot and characters to back them up. Despite its promising start, this series spirals out of control with the reappearance of Kira Yamato from the first SEED. Little by little, the intended protagonist Shinn falls to the way side until the hopelessly perfect Yamato takes his place. The notion of 'real robots' once so central to earlier incarnations of Gundam effectively fades away with the introduction of inexplicably godlike mecha for most of the major characters, reaching the apotheosis of absurdity with the one Kira receives.

Save your money

[Shaneymike · 3/10 · 11 October 2007]

There are just so many problems with this show, my mind is boggling as to where to start. Well, I suppose the best place to start is the beginning.

The story initially begins during one of the major battles from the previous show, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED. A young boy named Shinn Asuka and his family are caught in a crossfire between two mobile suits, one of them piloted by Kira Yamato, the protagonist from Gundam SEED. Although Shinn survives, his entire family is killed, leaving Shinn aghast. Fast forward two years later, Shinn has relocated to the PLANTs and enlisted in the ZAFT military.

This show definitely had a lot of potential during the first twelve episodes, which focused mainly on Shinn and all the other new characters. But then the writers decided to switch gears and bring back Kira and the rest of the old cast from Gundam SEED, and they ultimately save the day. What is frustrating about that is Kira has no struggle to speak of. Yet in the last few episodes of this show, the writers decided to make Kira invincible in his latest mobile suit and the climax was insufferably one-sided. Overall, this show is a disgrace to the Gundam franchise.

Yoshiyuki "Kill 'Em All" Tomino, the instigator of Gundam, is definitely the superior director and I would definitely recommend any of his shows or movies over this lame series anytime . They don't call him "Kill 'Em All" Tomino for nothing. No sir.

Frustratingly irritating plot, with some cool moments here and there.

[H-V-Kooijman · 5/10 · 24 January 2014]

!!!MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE REVIEW!!!

The series started out interesting. New characters (immediately committing a massacre in episode 1), new reasons for war (Colonydrop on Earth and a repeat Nuke attack at the PLANTS(exactly same footage as ending of Seed..)) and to my delight returning old characters.

Sadly Cagalli being one of them, who, to make it worse, is even more annoying than in SEED. She first puts Orb in the psychotic Blue Cosmos- led Earth Alliance (EA from now on)(I can understand that, because else the EA will destroy ORB yet again). Yet later when she has joined the Archangel, she's constantly ordering Orb forces to stop fighting, while it is because of her that they have to fight in the first place! But if they stop fighting, the EA will once again destroy them etc. Vicious cycle, make up your mind already!

Even worse is when ZAFT is invading Orb for the SOLE PURPOSE of capturing Lord Jibril. She overthrows Yuna Roma and takes control of Orb, but does she try to STOP THE FIGHTING (like she tried the whole SEED and SEED Destiny series)? Maybe CONTACT ZAFT and tell them: "Hey! We know you want Jibril and he's in Orb, we are hunting him so stop attacking please!"? Nope, she launches an all-out attack on ZAFT killing hundreds more people for absolutely no reason. WHAT?

Then there's Shin, constantly nagging at Cagalli (Which I'd be fine with were it for aforementioned reasons, but nu-uh). According to him his parents died because the EA attacked Orb, seemingly because Orb (Lord Uzumi to be precise, NOT Cagalli) stuck to it's ideals too much. But when Cagalli decides to abandon Orb's ideals to protect the population, and joins the EA, he's still whining because this time they're traitors!... His hypocrisy knows no bounds, as, whereas he's traumatized because he lost his family, instead of following Kira's example of non- killing, he keeps stomping cockpits and shattering hundreds of families himself.

Speaking of hypocrites... Lacus Cleyne. Near the end of the series, when 2 parties keep interrupting each other's worldwide broadcasts(seems to be ridiculously easy in the future), The real Lacus (HypoLacus from now on) is blurting out an amazing amount of nonsense about her fake clone counterpart, WannabeLacus:

-"She and I are 2 completely different people-

No? All the WannabeLacus has been doing the entire series is dampening the rage of the PLANT population with hippie-peace talk and a repeat of the same cheeky songs over and over, EXACTLY what HypoLacus has been doing the entire SEED series. By all means, HypoLacus should be grateful, else Durandil wouldn't have been able to stem the rage tide and the following war could've been much worse.

-and our beliefs are just as different as well"

WannabeLacus stated that their anger should be directed to Lord Jibril, and that everyone should work together to apprehend this psycho racist maniac. So you don't have this belief? Really HypoLacus? You want to bring down Chairman Durandil who is helping innocent people on Earth, directing attacks only at LOGOS (>>THE<< reason for all the wars in world) and preventing as many casualties on the EA as possible, while Lord Jibril went around and:

-Attempted nuking the PLANTS (AGAIN!) -Wiped out Berlin and 2 entire other cities along with tons of innocent people -Conducted horrible experiments on genetically enhanced child-soldiers (Extendeds) -Stated he wanted to wipe out every single coordinator (Including you HypoLacus)

Really? And later on, when Jibril destroys 6 PLANT colonies, killing another few million people, HypoLacus apparently gives sod-all and claims they still have to stop Durandil! JIBRIL IS STILL ALIVE! The ZAFT forces only killed 1 of those EA Beam Reflectors. They still had like 10 left, and could easily move another one in position to slaughter another few million more people. Yes Durandil wants to execute a Destiny Plan, but to install that takes a hell of a lot of effort and time, and it doesn't slaughter millions of innocents instantly, you can stop him LATER!

Rey does that actually... Loyal to the death to Durandil the entire show, but a few words from Kira and he back-stabs him... That's just weak, and lame.

Okay some positive characters:

-Mu Laflaga! I know I know, his death would've had a lot of meaning if he had actually died in SEED. But in HypocritLand it's hard to find someone who isn't Emo and hypocrite, and cool at the same time. Finally a hero, with cool quotes, that doesn't need an overpowered suit that kills entire armies without taking a scratch, to make a difference (like Kira, doesn't even fight anymore when he loses his Freedom... wussy).

-Athren Zala. He grows a lot throughout SEED and SEED Destiny, expresses emotions accordingly, makes sense and fights in whatever suit there's available.

Lastly, I enjoyed most of the battles. Deaths of main characters made quite an impact, especially cause most of their deaths came so unexpected (Like Heine ,very cool character BTW). And Stella, I expected she'd jump on the Gundampilot Girlfriend Bandwagon, mainly due to the Seed Destiny intro clips).

The story could've been a lot cooler were it not for several annoying characters, but if you don't care for that, I think it's worth the effort to watch through both Seed and Seed Destiny. But there are better Gundams out there!

A Trainwreck That's Earned Its Criticism

[DonaldDooD · 3/10 · 22 August 2014]

From what I heard, Gundam Seed is essentially a remake of Gundam Uno. Gundam Seed Destiny starts out as a remake of Gundam Seed, disguised as a sequel. The suits may be different, and we have new characters, but too much is familiar. Athrun is back with ZAFT and fighting against Kira, Kira is still trying to force peace, the Earth Federation is as evil as ever, and is still using drugged psychopaths. The action is better, but we still spend more than enough time on the cruiser, with characters not strong enough to warrant the time spent.

Finally, Destiny begins to pick up. Kira's interventions are only making the battlefield chaotic. Shin loses a friend and a lover (you don't believe either relationship, but regardless...) and swears revenge. Shin is developing, and Kira is no longer a perfect hero. He's like an anime Superman, powerful and virtuous, but narrow-minded and immature. In retrospect, his fight with Rau is (un)intentional genius. Rau argues humans will never learn to live with each other, and Kira can say nothing to debunk him. He believes in doing the right thing, no matter what. And because of this, Shin kills him.

Just kidding. Kira "Jesus" Yamato is just as explosionproof as he was in Seed.

After that peak, the show rapidly descends downhill. Oh, its still copying Seed, but now the writers no longer give a crap. Relationships are forced, characters do 180s, and plot-twists come out of nowhere. Worst of all, the only real conflict is ruined. Instead of relative neutrality, they frame Kira and company as our peaceful heroes, Shin and the rest as misguided antagonists. Shin believes in the Destiny Program for no good reason. Kira has learned absolutely nothing from this journey.

Clip shows, unresolved character conflicts, Mu's corpse pulled out of his grave. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I like the fights, the mecha designs, the openings and closings...not worth it. It might as well not exist.

This is the revolutionary in the Gundam legacy some people have been looking for!

[inviolet_now · 14 July 2005]

When I saw the show, it was THE most amazing Gundam series I have seen in years, even more so than Gundam SEED. The new machines in SEED Destiny is more well designed than the others; even some that weren't seen in SEED (I'm talking about SEED-MSV) made it into SEED Destiny. Of course, even though Freedom is destroyed, a new Freedom stands up to take its place; I'm talking about the ZGMF-X20A Strike Freedom. There's even a new Justice Gundam on the block; ZGMF-X19A Infinite Justice. But, one thing has now caught my eye; a new mobile suit called the Akatsuki; it looks like Zeta Gundam's Hyaku Shiki in both appearance and color. Anyways, besides the machines are the characters; Shinn Asuka, orphan boy, ZAFTs top class, hates Kira, pilots powerful machines, etc. Then again, some old characters come back; Kira, Athrun, Cagalli, Lacus, Andrew Waltfeld, Murrue, etc. This show completely is a revolution in the Gundam series. Let there be GUNDAMS!!!!!