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

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Volume 1

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
4th Jul 05

One of the newest additions to the immensely huge Gundam franchise, Seed is set an alternative universe to the majority of Gundam shows. Taking place in year seventy of the “Cosmic Era”, Seed is similar to the story of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, but mixes some of the more popular elements from other series as well.

Thanks to the “Bloody Valentine” tragedy, tensions between “Naturals” on Earth and ZAFT a group of “Coordinators”, living in advance space colonies called PLANTS, have resulted in full scale war. Whilst the Earth forces have superior numbers ZAFT have advance weapons known as mobile suits as a result the war has been at a stalemate. Kira Yamato a young coordinator living on Heliopolis, a PLANT, part of the neutral “Orb” nation, lives peacefully with his friends despite on the ongoing war. However, Heliopolis is where the Earth forces have begun work on its newest weapons, and experimental battleship, the “Archangel”, and five new prototype Mobile Suits. A group of ZAFT commandos lead by the mysteriously masked Rau Le Creuset, attempt to destroy the new battleship and capture the new Mobile Suits by attacking the PLANT. Kira is caught up in the fighting, but encounters his old friend Athrun Zala is one of the members of ZAFT attacking Heliopolis. Athrun steals one of the Mobile Suits, whereas Kira is forced into the last remaining suit with the Earth forces officer Murrue Ramius for his own protection. Ramius has difficulty controlling the suit and in order to protect his friends in the colony Kira takes control of the “Strike”. As the battle rages, the PLANT suffers damage and the Archangel with few, inexperienced, crewmembers a number of civilians (including Kira’s friends) and only Kira and the ace pilot Mu La Flaga for its protection, needs to escape from Le Creuset and the new Mobile suits they captured for safe ground (or space).

If you’ve never seen any Gundam before, then Seed is certainly one of the best places to start. Whilst Seed does borrow a lot from other series, with the Archangel being a modern version of the “White Base” from the original series and the five different “Gundam”* Mobile Suits play homage to Gundam Wing. Also theirs the coordinators, who unlike the newtypes of the Universal Century timeline are products of genetic engineering rather than evolution. Seed would certainly impress those who may refuse to watch the older Gundam shows, but for those who are Gundam fanatics, they may find a lack of anything new as it does tread old ground.

The production levels are high, the animation is amazing and some of the battles between Mobile Suits in this first volume are amazing, the use of CGI is good, but sometimes seems unnecessary.

Gundam Seed is certainly a top class series a must for Gundam fans and for those who have been reluctant to view any of one of the largest anime franchises ever. The series is 10 DVD volumes long and contain 49 episodes (that’s 5 episodes per disc, and one with 4) which means it would take a while to complete, but it’s certainly well worth it.

R2 DVD Notes

Features: English/French/German/Japanese Dub, English/German/French/Polish Sub, Beez Trailers, Mechanical/Chacrcter Files, Clean opening and closing animation.

Release information: Publisher: Beez Relase: Out Now Classification: 12

Notes: The Mechanical/Charcter files provide some good information for the charcters and all the specifics for the Gundams, which will certainly get the fires burning in mecha fans. Clean opening closing animations are always a nice touch but are so common on DVDs nowadays it's more unsual for a DVD not to have them.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 4th Jul 05

Gundam Seed Images