Gundam Seed Recommended

Publisher
BEEZ
Director
Mitsuo Fukuda
Production
Sotsu Agency, Sunrise
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Running time
50 Episodes/25 Minutes Each
Year
2002

Gundam Seed

By Bryan Hoang
5th Sep 04

My first impression of this Gundam series was like wow; this is such a good mech anime. The first Gundam series I watched was Gundam Wing, which I though was one of the best anime I've seen. It talked a lot about war, politics, philosophy, and had some romance. It had good fight scenes and everything, so when I heard of Gundam Seed to be one of the best Gundam series; I had to check it out.

Like most Gundam series, it usually talks about some war between 2 nations. In the futuristic time, Gundam Seed was composed of 2 races, Naturals and Coordinators. The Naturals were people that were originally born on Earth. Coordinators, however, were people that were created, similar to test tube babies. So Gundam Seed's war started after Earth used nuclear weapons against Janus7, a colony with many Coordinators living in it. The Coordinators notice the destruction and declares war against Earth. Now the two nations of Plant and Earth are at war, though no one would expect the war to become a stalemate and lasted longer than expected.

On Helopolis, a neutral colony was infiltrated by an organization called Zaft (group of Coordinators). The organization created havoc on Helopolis as they are trying to find Orbs (neutral Naturals) latest model of Mobile Suits, the Gundams. Zaft soon finds the hideout of the Gundams and begin to take them. Zaft has taken 4 out of the 5 Gundams at Helopolis; the one missing is taken by Kira Yamato; a Coordinator that is against Zaft, and his own kind.

After seeing all 50 episodes of Gundam Seed, I wondered, why would anyone say this was the best Gundam Series ever? I was clearly misinformed. Gundam Seed started off pretty slow, with some cool action. The story progressed with more action and got more interesting as it went on. It was when the show concluded that really ruined its value. Gundam Seed, unlike Gundam Wing, took the approach of having cool fight scenes but lost the value of a good storyline. Though I have to admit, the idea was interesting, but if they had only put more value on the story than the drawing and animation, it would have been a lot better. Good things to say about Gundam Seed are: it has good animation, fight scenes are excellent. Of course all Gundam has good theme songs, meaning no exception to Gundam Seed. One thing I didn't expect Gundam Seed to have was a sequel, though I feel like it was the right step for this series since obviously they left a lot of loose ends. Gundam Seed rates just above average because of the great animation, an average storyline, weak character development and very retarded conclusion.

I really had high hopes for this anime, though now I don't know what to say. Overall it's a good anime, but not much more stimulating than that. So if you like action and Mech battle try and watch Gundam Seed, and if you finish Gundam Seed, and like it, be sure to watch Gundam Seed Destiny, the sequel.

-- Bryan Hoang 5th Sep 04

Gundam Seed Images