Gundam Seed Character Theater is a short series of omakes included with the DVD editions of the Gundam SEED Destiny series. They are hilarious and in no way meant to be taken seriously, and good-naturedly mock everything about the series in general.
The following tropes apply:
- Always Someone Better: Because Athrun performs better than Yzak in everything, the latter attempts to discover his secret in the first short.
- Art Shift: Kira and Athrun yell out each others' names in regular anime style... before we see that they are playing a video game and they switch back to Super-Deformed.
- Black Comedy: The Destiny ZAFT team die in comical ways in the last short, with Luna getting a massive nosebleed, Rey getting burned to death from hot sauce, Meyrin's computer exploding, and Shinn dying of exhaustion from all the singing he did.
- Break Them by Talking: Lacus gets a dog to stop attacking her by entering SEED Mode, giving her a rather scary appearance as she questions its morals and drives it to tears.
- Covers Always Lie: See several of the characters in the page image who should be dead by the end of SEED? They don't appear here.
- Deadpan Snarker: Dearka to Yzak. That seems to be Dearka's entire dialogue range.
- Denser and Wackier: Compared to the dark and often depressing feel of the source material, this series is pretty much entirely light-hearted comedy.
- Depth Deception: Hey, it's Tori, Kira's little robot bir-HOLY SHIT WHEN DID HE GET SO BIG?!
- Epic Fail: The results of trying to destroy Athrun and Kira's friendship backfire like you wouldn't believe, making them even closer.
- Failure Hero: The ZAFT team of Shinn, Rey, Luna, and Meyrin try to be heroes to ZAFT (and in Rey's case Gilbert). They fail both of their missions. Though from our perspective, they're the antagonists of the shorts.
- Failure Is the Only Option: Even when Yzak wins, he loses. He has a giant photo album of all of his losses!
- Fire-Breathing Diner: Rey tries to ruin Lacus' cooking by adding in several bottles of hot sauce, only for Kira to like it so much that he enters SEED Mode. Confused for as to why it didn't work, Rey drinks from one of the bottles and ends up getting blasted back from fire spewing from his mouth and dying.
- Forehead of Doom: Poked fun at with Athrun's, who won a shiny forehead contest and gets called "the captivating oversized forehead" at the start of the beach volleyball game.
- Gone Horribly Right: Yzak manages to go into SEED Mode... and then his newfound strength breaks the volleyball and costs him the game.
- Hilarity Ensues: The raison d'etre behind the whole thing.
- Make Wrong What Once Went Right: In the second short, Shinn, Rey and Luna's mission is to destroy Kira and Athrun's lifelong friendship. It doesn't work.
- Mission Control: Meyrin. Oddly, Talia Gladys is missing, and her filling this role would make even more sense.
- Moe Anthropomorphism: The whole character design of everyone. Even more silly when it averts this.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Kira and Athrun go SEED Mode WHILE playing video games. Say My Name and all. Also, Cagalli and Lacus use their own SEED Modes to get a dog to stop attacking them by scaring the hell out of it.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Rey's attempt to sabotage Lacus' cooking make it even better to Kira.
- Nosebleed: One of the episodes has the cast of SEED Destiny try to break Kira and Lacus up. Lunamaria just happens to scout ahead while Kira and Lacus are making out. The resultant nosebleed sends her flying a few hundred meters.Lunamaria: [Her nosebleed sends her flying] Weapooooon!
Rey: Lunamaria's been taken down.
Shinn: I wonder what she saw? - Offscreen Teleportation: Kira and Athrun have no idea how they ended up at the beach volleyball game.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: After stealing Lacus' dress, Shinn sees that Kira is heading in his direction and quickly puts on the dress to pretend to be Lacus with his face remaining the same. Kira can tell that something is off, but thinks it's more that "Lacus" is acting very strange and runs off.
- Pokémon Speak: The LaGOWE can only say its own name.
- Refuge in Audacity: Shinn. In drag. Singing one of Lacus' pop standards while shredding the stage with Sword Impulse's BFS. That is all.
- Rule of Cool: EVERYONE can go into SEED mode, and they usually dial their own awesome up.
- Rule of Funny: Cagalli turning into the Strike Rouge when she goes SEED Mode? Dearka having access to a human-sized version of the Buster's cannons? Shinn using the Destiny's wings of light to fly as a human? Can't happen anywhere but here.
- Say My Name: Kira and Athrun do this while their friendship levels rise. While holding hands. And they get more excited the more they say their names.
- Shout-Out: To Gundam in general, and even Sailor Moon at one point.
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Spiritual Successor: This series feels like Cosmic Era's answer to the old Mobile Suit SD Gundam shorts, due to being a goofy parody of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny with Super-Deformed character designs. - Super-Deformed: Uses this art style.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Durandal sends Rey an angry text after they fail their mission complaining about his subordinates and saying he wishes Rau were here.
- Terrible Artist: Part of Yzak's plan to win the beach volleyball game is draw Haro's face on the ball so that Kira and Athrun won't want to hit it to score. Unfortunately, his drawing is so bad that Kira and Athrun think it is garbage of some kind and hit it back harder to get it away from them, hitting Yzak in the face and letting the opposing team score while he is unconscious.
- You Have Failed Me: What Rey the Gilbert Durandal fanboy lives in fear of from the man himself.
