Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Season 2

Due to the fact that we're reviewing this show in two parts, there may be a spoiler or two in this review. Read at your own risk, you have been warned.

Welcome back for the second half of our review. For those of you who just joined us and want to know what the first half was like, you may still be able to find the review for the first season at the bottom of the page, or if you're tuning in a little later, I've got a link here that will take you directly to it. As with all our reviews you can also find both of these by clicking on the link on the list to your right and a little below some of the other fun gadgets on the page. So we don't forget, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED was produced by Sunrise and is licensed in the United States by Bandai Entertainment. One last thing before we start. I have tried hard to keep the spelling constant for names, but I have found so many alternate spellings for some of these it's hard to keep track. So hang onto your space helmets, the the battle between the Coordinators and the Naturals continues now.

What could be more metaphorical than a fence for these two?
I shouldn't have to explain why.

So, when we last left our heroes, Kira and the rest of the gang aboard the Archangel had just barely made it into the territory of the country of Orb after a brutal fire-fight with ZAFT forces. Thanks to Cagalli (who happens to be the daughter of the leader of Orb) being with them, they are able to enter Orb's territorial waters without being blown to smithereens. They are subsequently granted shelter at the facilities for Morgenroete (the military contracting firm that designed the Gundams in the first place) and are allowed to rest and regroup. Meanwhile Athrun and his pilot comrades sneak into Orb on recon in order to figure out if the Archangel is still there. So how do we move back into the plot? Do we jump back into the action by immediately seeing what happens with Athrun and his posse, or perhaps seeing some character development as the Archangel's crew decides what they'll do next in order to get to Alaska? Well, we do get to that eventually, but not before two whole episodes of extended recap, (Oh joy...) where we basically go over everything that has happened from the moment the shooting started at Heliopolis! That includes the stuff I just told you about. But after this, it is discovered that Morgenroete wants Kira to design a new operating system for the Gundams they are building so that naturals (normal humans) can use them just as easily as coordinators can. During this period of recovery and info-exchanges, the parents of some of the kids from Heliopolis come to visit with them at the facility, but Kira stays with Fllay because he has work and he's not ready to talk to them just yet. He also ends up meeting Athrun when his robotic bird Torii (which has been used so far as a metaphor for his friendship with Athrun) flies off and Athrun returns it through a fence near the facility. Not a lot is said but it is a very solemn meeting as the two know that the time will come when they will have to fight again. Eventually, the Archangel has to leave Orb (with Cagalli staying behind) and make the final journey towards Alaska wherein they continue to be hounded by ZAFT.

The Earth Forces top brass, as they plot on how best to deal
 with the embarrassment of having one of their ships being
protected by a coordinator.

The former half of the series spent a considerable amount of time introducing the expansive cast that has been assembled and showing who they are affiliated with and how. But now that we're in the second season, we spend a lot more time exploring what the characters do with their circumstances. Tolle, Kira's friend changes his position from a bridge hand to a jet pilot (the plane is called a skygrasper actually), and is soon killed in action. Nicol, one of the ZAFT Gundam pilots also meets his end around the same time and these two deaths result in a major face-off between Kira and Athrun who are both angered by the losses. Both Gundams are totally destroyed in the ensuing fight leaving both Athrun and Kira missing in action. Dearka (one of Athrun's comrades) is also taken prisoner after his Gundam is rendered unable to move. Athrun is eventually found by the people from Orb, while Kira is found by a new character by the name of Father Malchio who subsequently sends him to be cared for by Lacus Clyne in the PLANTs (the space stations the coordinators live on in case you forgot). However, things continue to move as the Archangel finally makes it to Alaska. It turns out that the Earth Alliance's remaining commanders have plans to move their fleet to Panama and in a ploy to strip the Archangel of it's preferred crew members they assign Flay, Mue la Flagga, and Natarle Badgiruel to other positions, leaving the rest of the crew to help defend the base in Alaska, however, in a sickening twist it turns out that they are aware of an impending attack on the base by ZAFT and are planning to use the remaining personnel as decoys to lure them in so that they can decimate their forces by blowing up the base. If it so happens that the Archangel's connection to Kira (the Earth Forces have been co-opted by Blue Cosmos by now and they really hate coordinators meaning it's a major embarrassment that the Archangel used one) is obscured by the loss of the ship he was connected to, the officers in charge don't seem to mind.

The ZGMF-X10A Freedom: Otherwise known as
Kira's sweet new ride, courtesy of Lacus Clyne.

Meanwhile Athrun is returned to ZAFT, emotionally conflicted by the experience of apparently killing his friend, while Kira recovers with Lacus as he faces the same sort of turmoil. Eventually he decides that he needs to go back and Lacus, being somewhat unhappy with the war situation as it stands, gives him a new Gundam, called the Freedom to fly back in. This gets her in a lot of trouble with ZAFT, naturally, but it allows him to pull the Archangel's fat out of the fire, though not before Fllay is captured by Rau le Crueze and taken prisoner by ZAFT, Mue returns to the Archangel of his own accord, and the base in Alaska is blown to pieces. Athrun also gets a spiffy new Gundam called the Justice, which his father sends him out in to go chase after the Freedom, but while he's back home, he is confronted by Lacus who tells him Kira is alive and gives him some interesting food for thought. Eventually, he does reconnect with Kira and the Archangel at the battle for Orb, and they discuss the situation. This final reunion will eventually result in the Three Ships Alliance, a neutral alliance between one ZAFT ship (piloted by the not-quite-dead-as-we-thought Desert Tiger, Andrew Watfeld after he and Lacus use it to shoot their way out of the PLANTs), one Earth Alliance ship (the Archangel under Ramius) and one Orb vessel (belonging to Cagalli and one of Orb's chief officers) using their combined military strength to end the war.

What she goes through in the second half of this series is more
than punishment enough for what she did in the first half.
Some may even consider it overkill...

I have been very impressed with the way the characters have developed over this particular story arc. Kira has become a much stronger character since the beginning of season two, and there have been some fascinating plot twists associated with his past and his current state of affairs as he has become more of his own man and has developed a relationship with Lacus. Athrun has gone through his fair share of storm and stress as well, and his internal conflict caused by the various factors affecting his life is very well played out too. Even the minor characters receive very high marks for development as they have become much more three dimensional in the subsequent episodes of this season. For instance, Miri and Tolle, whom I had not paid a lot of attention to previously suddenly became very important to the story (though I have to admit it felt a little bit contrived that Tolle died so soon after Nicol did, almost as an afterthought so that Kira would have a reason to lose his head and go after Athrun in his last fight using the Strike without reservations). It makes things interesting when Miri finds herself face to face with Dearka (the guy who surrendered) as it allows him to rethink his reasons for fighting and eventually convinces him to join the Three Ships Alliance as well, but not before a large amount of storm and stress. Sai becomes more of the stabilizing influence within Kira's shipboard nakama as Miri's pain over losing Tolle overshadows her previous position in that role. Mue la Flagga and Murrue Ramius, are clearly in love with each other by this point and even Natarle get's some really awesome moments especially when she resurfaces near the end. However, the character I am the most impressed with, and this might surprise you given how harshly I talked about her during the last season, was Fllay, and here's why. She goes through some pretty harrowing experiences as Rau le Crueze kidnaps her, holds her prisoner, and then uses her as a courier when he eventually lets her go. During that time, she learns what the other side looks like and it broadens her perspective on the whole hating coordinators thing. Eventually she even attempts to redeem herself later in the series. It is safe to say that I no longer believe her alignment is lawful evil. You did some awful things, but I forgive you Flay.

Rau le Creuze can breath in...   bad atmosphere!
Okay seriously, how is the atmosphere in this space station breathable?
No one has lived here in years, and sure there is atmosphere,
but unmaintained, there's no way the air could be safe to breath.
I don't even want to think about what's in those clouds.

We also get a few new antagonists this season, in the form of Muruta Azreal, the head of Blue Cosmos and a major leader for the Earth Alliance, and his team of Gundam pilots, who happen to be psychotic drug addicts. Naturally, they are scary to fight, but I can only imagine how scarily efficient they'd be if Azreal had decided he didn't need to control them with drugs. Of course, this is not to mean that the old antagonists don't still get time to shine. The Earth Alliance definitely becomes quite antagonistic after the Archangel flees Alaska because they weren't supposed to leave their post, but Patrick Zala, Athrun's father is also stirring up trouble, and le Creuze is still out there being a major enigmatic pain in the bum. He's also got some interesting secrets related to Kira and Mue, which he reveals to them at an old space station near the end of the series. I'm not going to tell you what they are, but it is a pretty awesome sequence, and will leave you at the edge of your seat. I do wish they would have shown his face though. Mue actually shot his mask off during that encounter, but we didn't even get to see it! ><

Don't write him off just because when he gets the Strike,
he's getting a hand-me-down. The most efficient way
to express Mue la Flagga is this simple formula:
Mue=Awesome. That's all you need to know.

Naturally, with all of these antagonists there's going to be plenty of fights. Oh yes, there are plenty of those, and all of them are epic. Many of them are very well put together and I only had trouble figuring out what was going on once. Naturally, as Kira and Athrun move on to better machines when they get the Freedom and the Justice, some of the other characters get a couple of promotions. For one, Cagalli is permitted to fly a new gundam called the Strike Rouge, which happens to be pink (which suddenly had me noticing how color coded many of the other girl's costumes are). Mue la Flagga also gets the original Strike. Even if some of the fights were formulaic, I found myself wanting to cheer a lot more in this season as the characters had their success, and was a lot more willing to let myself worry when things started going wrong. Like for instance, when the ability to use nukes was reintroduced in the picture. Things got really ugly. I would go into detail about how ugly, but I don't want to ruin it. As far as the ending is concerned, I am more than satisfied as the show goes off with an Earth-shattering finale. It's safe to say some people don't make it. I'm not naming names, but it will leave you on the edge of your seat. Technically, the show ends at episode 50, however, there is a short ova that is often considered episode 51 even though it's only a few minutes long which shows what happened to everybody and serves as a nice little epilogue to give some extra closure.

Athrun in the Justice as he's about to open a
can of whoop-ass on some unfortunate Earthers.

Though we start sliding slightly up the scale of idealism as we head towards the end of the show, it doesn't necessarily leave you with all the answers, except perhaps that you need to fight for what you believe you need to protect. As I got closer I was worried that it would come across as an anti-war piece or perhaps a straight up work arguing against nuclear weapons, but was I relieved to find that the writers weren't approaching the story with too heavy handed an approach though it can get a bit bogged down in questioning itself. It's a very serious piece with little comedy relief, but the drama is very well done for the most part. On the flip side though, the series does continue some of the negative trends it started in the first season, like it's tendency to waste entire episodes in flashbacks. And also, Lacus continues to sing the same song from season one whenever we get to certain points in the plot. It's totally unnecessary. I like her character, generally, couldn't she have had a little more variety in her repertoire? Oh well, that's just my opinion. I also found it a little hard to believe how fast Kira ended up with Lacus at her place in the PLANT's. I mean, how fast do those rocket ships go? They don't seem to be going at light speed and those giant space stations are at least farther out than the Moon (which would take our current space ships about three days), so how is it that he gets rushed to Lacus (by a blind man who doesn't know him from Akira by the way) in what seems like a day or so at the very least? I mean, if they were inside the  Moon's orbit we would have been able to see Earth from there right? Oh well, that's a mystery for another time. It could be they just skipped a few days without telling us.

When it comes to presentation, a lot of the stuff I said about the first season remains constant. As we go through this season there are two more opening themes used, "Believe" and "Realize" which are both by Nami Tamaki. We also get two more ending themes, "River" by Tatsuya Ishii, and "Find the Way" by Mika Nakashima. I didn't care for them as much as I like "Invoke" or "Anna ni Issho Datta no Ni" but "Find the Way" has a sweet melody and does provide a nice soft exit from the otherwise very intense latter part of the series. We also have a few new notable voice actors joining the cast such as Nobuyuki Hiyama (Hiei in Yu-yu Hakusho) as Muruta Azreal, and singer Shunichi Miyamoto (who did "Byakuya True Light" for D.N. Angel), as Shani Andras, one of the drug addict Gundam pilots under Azreal's command. Surprisingly in the English dub, we get Andrew Francis (Dilandau from Visions of Escaflowne) doing Azreal. However, from what I've heard of the English track, some of the minor characters don't really sound all that convincing. For that reason, it may be better to stick with the Japanese track if you can. There's too much in the English track that just sounds like some of the actors are just reading their lines rather than acting them. It just feels kind of wooden. The ambient music is less noticeable early on, but once you get into the heavy combat sequences it can range from soaring image songs and theme-song echoes, to some very appropriate and epic orchestral scores, especially with the space battles.  In terms of how the whole series measures up, in spite of the flashback issues and the singing issues, I give it a very favorable rating. The story is good, the characters are interesting even if they have to grow on you a little in some cases, the world is detailed, and the plot is like an exciting roller-coaster even if it does have it's moments of calm. Check it out some time if you get the chance. Even if you aren't a hard-core Gundam fan, it's worth a watch. And that's the tiger's two cents.

Images taken from Mobile Suit Gundam SEED.

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