STORY 4/10
The story is pretty damn bad if I say so myself. Theres not a whole lot to talk about without getting into spoilers, but I can give you a brief synopsis: everyone is happy that the war is over, so countries are enjoying peace. One day some bad stuff happens, people die, people get mad, Athrum gets laid and giant robots! I honestly don’t remeber the bulk of the story. Its not all bad, in fact I do remember some of the more competent, intesne, well-written scenes. One of my favorite things about OG seed were the themes about racism, war and society. Although there is much less commentary than gundam seed, the ones present in Destiny I found to be very well done. The politics, reasoning and philosophy behind war are explored and it creates some very interesting scenes in a pretty large pool of average. Id also say that the story drags on like a bitch! If this show was shorter than 50 episodes, then we would have a more straight-forward, coherent and focused story, because it often gets side-tracked. Plot points are introduced and are either forgotten about or resolved oddly quick. The central conflict becomes a mute point later on - assuming there was a central conflict to begin with.
CHARACTERS 6/10
A mixed bag. Seeing as though this is an etirely new series, there’s bound to be new characters, but seeing as though this is a continuation to another series, there would be recurring characters. Throughout the series I felt like the 2 casts of characters were fighting for screen time. My absolute favorite part of gundam seed were the characters. Very well developed, dynamic and interesting. Athrum and Kira’s arcs made the show as good as it was. Needless to say I was stoaked to see them return, but I was not stoked to see them done horribly. For starters Athrum’s character completely resets, making all development in gundam seed null and void. Also, since these charatcers already went through very good arcs in the previous show, they can’t grow any more. A charatcer arc means they start out as something and grow to become the opposite. If the story were to continue after the charatcer has his/her arc, then we’d just start where we began! Athrum grows backwards, Kira doesn’t grow at all, Lacus is replaced by some whore who calls herself Lacus, and Cagalli is depressingly less badass than she was in seed.
So how are the new characters? This is where the good things in the show start appearing. Not all of the new characters are done very well (one of them is the aforementioned whore), but the ones that are make this show worth it at times. Shinn, Stella and Durandal are probably the best parts of this show. Right off the bat, Shinn had an intriguing backstory, clear motives, a goal one can get behind, and to top it off he completely changes in a good way. Although the story wasn’t bery good or memorable, I do remember and appreciate the finale, not because its the most recent thing I watched, but because Shinn’s arc made it happen and made it as good as it was. I’m aware that not a lot of people like Shinn, because he is not a good replacement for Kira. That I can agree with, but I also say that its a good thing. If all Destiny ever did was copy the good parts of seed, then we’d have entirely different problems. I’m glad that most of the new characters go in different directions than I expected.
ANIMATION 6/10
Overall, I bashed on the animation in Seed. The characters looked ugly, every action scene had 5 minutes of recycled footage and the openings were 100% garbage. This show was made a few years later, so you’d think there was time to improve, right? I will say that the character designs have improved, no one looks like weird ape babies anymore. But every thing else, not so much. The action scenes do have less recycled footage on average, but less miscellaneous shots being reused are replaced by an uncomfortably long transformation sequence, that when paired with the launch sequence that starts every battle, adds up to about 5 minutes, which isn’t that different from seed when you think about it. The openings have some how gotten worse. The songs are not bad, but the shots and animatons during the opening are once again bad. Very bad. In all 4 openings there is a drop that leads into the chorus, and in 3 of these openings, the same exact shot plays during this drop, followed by the same action shots, and the same closing shot and its all just Ugh!!
SOUND 6/10
As said before the songs used in the openings are not bad. Much like a lot of other anime, the soundtrack within the epiodes never stood out or were memorable, but not every soundtrack has to sound like “the dark side of the moon,” so its ok. The dub is very bad. The gundam seed dub wasn’t that great either, or at least, not until the last quarter or so when adrew francis came into play and somehow the voice cast magically dscovered how to make themselves sound like humans. Destiny never has this. The dub sucks from beginnign to end. Durandal has a good voice and Shinn delivers a very touching monologue, done pretty well in english, but thats not enough. Watch it subbed please, that voice cast was really good.
OVERALL 6/10
This didn’t need to be made. There were no interesting plot points, commentary or character arcs that weren’t done better than seed before it. Everything, except for maybe the action and animation, was done better in seed. This show has left me with such a hollow experience, that I really just stopped caring altogether towards the end. Come episode 37 or somewhere around there, I cared so little I was contemplating dropping it. But the potential for greatness, good new characters, cool action scenes and occasional great episodes kept me watching it. In the end, I don’t regret watching it, but if I didn’t watch it, nothing in my life would’ve changed. In fact I would now have a free 25 hours I couldve spent watching something else.