Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny

Power is necessary because conflicts continue to exist. - Gilbert Durandal

Status

Anime: complete. (50 episodes subbed.)

Thoughts

Whoo. Where in the hell do I begin?

Destiny is a very decent anime and one of the best Gundam series...in theory. When written on paper. Then the theory became practice, the writing became a show...and everything went to a level of hell surpassing Dante's lowest circles. In short, the people behind Destiny had some very good ideas, but, simply put, they were handled poorly. And that's putting it very, very nicely.

Some of the general problems with the show...

The new cast (which looked excellent initially, for the record) is not developed half as well as it could have, and should have been. Shinn could have been an ace pilot with a lot of issues that gradually matured (very vaguely reminiscent of Athrun from Seed), Luna could have been some much-needed useful female presence in the show, Rey could have been a very sympathetic anti-villain that gradually found his own reason to live...the examples can go on for quite a while. And although Djibril is a complete monster, damned if he isn't more interesting than Azrael. All the potential in these characters largely goes to waste, mostly because...
The old (Seed) cast hijacks the spotlight from the new cast in the final third or so of the show, but even before then, they're shown to be continuously interfering with most of the new cast and somewhat hindering their development. A large part of the problem stems from the fact that the old cast is considered to be absolute moral perfection by the show, without any room for development or debate. This is especially irritating given the hypocrisy in the pacifist ideals preached by the wielders of the most powerful Gundams. And on that note...
Destiny tries to pretend that there is some legitimate debate being thrown around, but anyone with half a mind for logic can easily see otherwise. For instance: Athrun tells Kira to stop flying into the middle of battles and shooting the crap out of everyone, to which Kira responds "but Cagalli is crying!" - a true wallbanger. Or another instance: Lacus, when advising Cagalli, tells her "first you must decide, then you go and do it" - something that, I don't know, every character in the show is doing. But that isn't even the worst of it, because...
The plot feels contrived to the utmost, with many potentially interesting threads (e.g. Zala Loyalists, Rey vs Neo, Heine) being dropped soon after starting. And whenever major battles occur, combat ability becomes stupidly arbitrary (Kira vs Shinn being the most notable, though hardly the only example) and the number of deaths that should occur, but don't, is quite a bit higher than zero. Kira surviving a nuclear explosion with no permanent injury is only the tip of the iceberg; then there's the fact that...
Destiny's overall production value is quite poor, with stock footage being reused like there's no tomorrow (many battle scenes being irritatingly copied frame-for-frame from previous ones) and a lack of original design (when compared to Seed) on many Gundams, most notably the Strike Freedom and Infinite Justice. The last third of the show was especially subject to this, with two recap episodes, and a final battle almost ripped verbatim from Seed (except with a flawless victory for Kira and co instead of a hard-fought one). The only saving grace is probably the music.

More details to come later...