Characters / Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny Main Characters

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Character Index
SEED Main Characters | SEED Destiny Main Characters
Factions: Three Ship Alliance/Terminal/Compass | Earth Alliance | ZAFT | Orb Union | Kingdom of Foundation
Others: Other factions and characters

Spoilers for all previous Gundam entries in the Cosmic Era continuity, including Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, will be left unmarked.

Main Characters from the Cosmic Era - Introduced in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny

From left-to-right: Shinn Asuka, Rey Za Burrel, Lunamaria Hawke

Shinn Asuka

Affiliation: ZAFT (SEED Destiny) → Compass (SEED Freedom)

Main mecha: ZGMF-X56S Impulse Gundam (SEED Destiny), ZGMF-X42S Destiny Gundam (SEED Destiny), STTS-808 Immortal Justice Gundam (SEED Freedom), ZGMF/A-42S2 Destiny Gundam Spec II (SEED Freedom)

Voiced by: Kenichi Suzumura (Japanese); Matthew Erickson [Ocean dub], Aaron Phillips [NYAV Post dub, Destiny], Kieran Regan [Seed Freedom] (English)

Shinn in SEED Freedom

^{Click here to see Shinn in SEED Destiny}

"Do you want to start another one?! Another war?!"

The initial protagonist of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. His family was killed attempting to flee when the Earth Alliance invaded Orb during the First Bloody Valentine War; he became a refugee and ended up in the PLANTs. He blames Orb (and the Athha family in particular) for their deaths, and carries a lot of hatred for both. He joined ZAFT and became a Redcoat alongside Rey Za Burrel and Lunamaria Hawke as the pilot of the Impulse, the Minerva's flagship Gundam. Shinn has a problem with authority figures in general; he tends to lash out at his immediate superiors and resents being given orders. Due to this, he relies heavily on his peers for support; Rey acts as his moral compass, while Lunamaria eventually provides him with much-needed emotional support.

In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom, Shinn, now 17-years old, fights alongside many of his former adversaries as a part of Compass, notably into the Yamato Team under his former ennemy, Kira Yamato.

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• Accidental Pervert: Accidentally grabs Stella's chest in their first meeting in SEED Destiny. He also accidently gropes Hilda's breasts in SEED Freedom while panicking watching the Foundation's nukes go off.
• The Ace: He starts to get this treatment following his victory over the Freedom in SEED Destiny and is even dubbed a "Super Ace" by the ZAFT military. However, Shinn may be closer to being a Broken Ace as many of his victories for ZAFT was more a result of Shinn's immense amount of rage and hate for war and conflict rather than belief in his ideals or from a clear sense of resolve.
• Ace Pilot: Swiftly reaches this status in SEED Destiny, becoming one of ZAFT's highest-scoring aces of the Second Bloody Valentine War.
• Adaptational Badass: In his final fight against Athrun in the two manga adaptations, The Edge and the Takayama manga, Shinn puts up a much better fight.
  • The Edge: Goes quite similar as per the anime except Shinn manages to slice the Infinite Justice's arm off rather than suffer a complete Curb-Stomp Battle. Additionally. Shinn wins against a still-recovering Athrun in the Battle of Orb rather than Athrun passing out after the battle.
  • Takayama manga: Like in The Edge, Shinn slices off the Infinite Justice's arm but his loss is a lot different. Shinn manages to destroy the METEOR unit Athrun was using and manages to briefly overpower Athrun. Athrun managed to win by pulling a Batman Gambit with the Infinite Justice's backpack and shield's grappling hook rather than how he defeats Shinn in The Edge and the anime.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The SEED HD remaster shows the Asuka family trying to evacuate during the Battle of Orb per Shinn's introductory flashback at the very beginning of SEED Destiny. His time on the ZAFT military school is also briefly shown.
• Alertness Blink: In SEED Freedom, when he senses that Kira is danger, the same "Newtype flash" effect seen with Mu is used.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Destiny Gundam basically rolls all of the individual combat specializations of the three Silhouette Packs (or more visually, the three original Striker Packs) into one multi-purpose mobile suit.
• Animal Motifs: Canines. He's mean-spirited, confrontational, and his fighting style is very feral and unpredictable but at the same time, he's loyal to what he thinks is right and can be a dork at times.
• Anti-Hero: He's not a bad kid, he just has a lot of issues, which consistently derail his attempts at being heroic.
• Anti-Villain: One of the best examples in the Gundam franchise, particularly in SEED Destiny. No one does all the wrong things for all the right reasons like he does. He starts out as an antiheroic protagonist, shifts to an antagonistic, but not necessarily villainous figure once the perspective flip goes down, and then moves up to Well-Intentioned Extremist who unknowingly Became Their Own Antithesis during the show's last act. By the time of SEED Freedom, he is fully heroic.
• Armed Legs: Carrying over from the Infinite Justice, the Immortal Justice has beam blade emitters along its shin areas.
• Astral Projection: Semi-standard for a Gundam show. He has a couple with Stella in SEED Destiny. At the end, she tells him that he gave her a yesterday, and because of that she understands tomorrow; that's she's happy because of it, and she'll see him then.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: When Shinn becomes particularly enraged (which in turn usually drives him into SEED mode). Deconstructed as Shinn gradually undergoes Sanity Slippage and increasingly lapses into uncontrollable rage. Shinn can singlehandedly mow through hordes of grunt mobile suits and even a few Destroys, but against experienced pilots like Kira and Athrun he becomes more and more predictable, especially at the end of SEED Destiny. By the time of SEED Freedom and under Kira's wing, he grows out of this.
• Attack Drone: The Silhouette Flyer of the Impulse, though its purpose is to provide tactical support for Shinn by delivering the Silhouette Packs before or during battle, rather than actually engaging in combat alongside the Mobile Suit.
• The Atoner: Implied at the end of Final Plus of SEED Destiny. More for what he became during the war rather than what he did. And probably why he has joined Compass, willingly working with Kira, his former enemy.
• Badass Boast: Gets one in SEED Freedom on the Black Knights piloting the Destiny Spec II, telling them that they won't win this time because he's in the Destiny. He also makes good on his promise.
  Shinn: This isn't like the time when I'm in the Justice! Don't underestimate the Destiny!
• Bash Brothers: With Rey in SEED Destiny, after acquiring the Destiny and the Legend, respectively; Shinn usually fights head-on, while Rey provides support. Often, the main reason Kira and Athrun are able to gain the upper hand against Shinn is because the two are separated.
• Battle Boomerang:
  • The Sword Impulse and the Destiny both possess two beam boomerangs to be thrown.
  • In SEED Freedom, the Immortal Justice's beam sabers also double as boomerangs; notably one of the weapons he's most proficient with since his previous Gundams also have them. He uses the Destiny Spec II's on Griffin in the final battle.
• Battle Couple: With Lunamaria in SEED Freedom, fighting side-by-side in Compass. With his Destiny Spec II and her Impulse Spec II, they destroy the rebuilt Requiem together.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: This is a major theme with Shinn in SEED Destiny; he basically wanted to become strong because out of a desire to prevent tragedies like the one that took his family. However, Rey and Durandal's manipulations and his own inability to deal with his anger and bitterness gradually turn him into the kind of person that caused those tragedies in the first place. And he doesn't even realize it. He's called out on it during the final battle on the series, which causes him to have a breakdown.
  Shinn: It's not the same! IT'S NOT!
• The Berserker:
  • In SEED Destiny, Shinn is a very headstrong and very emotional young pilot, and as such, during battle he rushes headlong at his enemies (often without much regard for his own safety), relying on sheer aggression to win fights. As the series progresses and Shinn's mental stability degrades it becomes a weakness when forced to fight equally skilled opponents like Kira and Athrun and he's still doing things like reckless, mad charges with his BFS, to the point that by his final duel with Athrun he's taken a massive mental nose-dive and loses the ability to tell between friend and foe.
  • In SEED Freedom, unfortunately due to Shinn restraining himself not to kill his targets as much as possible and Immortal Justice built around Athrun's, he was forced not to utilize this. Once Shinn got Destiny Spec II, this fighting style is very effective against the Black Knights mind reading abilities because of the sheer unpredictability of his movements.
• BFG: The Blast Impulse and Destiny are equipped with powerful beam cannons. Like the original Destiny, the Spec II in SEED Freedom carries a high-power long-range beam cannon. But even it pales in comparison to the Zeus Silhouette, which contains a cannon that fires solid rounds with enough power to completely destroy Requiem in a single shot.
• BFS: The anti-ship swords, large physical blades with a beam generator across its length, is Shinn's preferred weapon of choice in combat. He is first shown dual-wielding them with the Sword Impulse; he would later switch to using just one with the Force Impulse and the Destiny. The Destiny Spec II in SEED Freedom retains the anti-ship sword "Arondight," which Shinn uses to kill Liu.
• Beware the Silly Ones: In SEED Freedom, outside of battle, Shinn's main purpose in the movie is to provide levity with his antics, whether it be forgetting to bow when Compass is greeting Aura, showing up with piles of food while blissfully unaware of Agnes and Lunamaria's conversation, or getting pummeled on two separate occasions (once by Lunamaria and once by Athrun and Kira). In battle, however, he's just as much of an Ace Pilot as he was in SEED Destiny, if not more so.
• Big Eater: In SEED Freedom, he is seen eating a huge plate at the party between Compass and the Foundation, and in another later scene is holding two smaller, but still stacked plates containing nothing but desserts. The "Moonlight Valkyrie" novel had him be more concerned about his hamburger rather than Lunamaria spilling coffee on his shirt, even laughing the ordeal off.
• Bigger Stick: The Destiny Gundam is superior to any mech the Earth Forces have in SEED Destiny, and allows Shinn to run rampant for a while. It thus comes as a rather nasty shock to him when the equally powerful Strike Freedom and Infinite Justice arrive on the battlefield.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Mostly in SEED Destiny. He's not insane per se, but his obsessive belief in Black-and-White Morality is certainly unhealthy, and is portrayed that way. Shinn's biggest problem is his inability to see anything in shades of grey. He and his friends are right, everyone else is wrong, and away we go. The root cause of this is his mess of anger issues; he gets wound up too damn fast and lets his feelings cloud his judgment.
• Blinded by Rage: In SEED Destiny, Shinn's SEED factor is always triggered by rage and he admits to feeling only a subconscious amount of control and awareness when it activates. This trope comes into full effect during the final battle when in his mad desperation to kill Athrun, Lunamaria gets between them hoping her presence will get the out-of-control Shinn to stop. She was wrong, but she was thankfully saved by Athrun.
• Blue Is Heroic: Shinn is 100% a good guy in SEED Freedom, and his pilot suit has blue highlights. And just like its predecessor, the Destiny Spec II is primarily blue in color.
• Break the Haughty: Compare his attitude after disobeying orders to return Stella to Neo to that after her death an episode later in SEED Destiny. And there's his reactions once Kira and Athrun make their comeback and demolish his unchecked belief in his own superiority.
• Brought Down to Badass: Since the reinstation of the Junius Treaty in SEED Freedom does away with the nuclear reactors, Shinn had to downgrade from the powerful and well-rounded Destiny Gundam, and adjust to the more melee-oriented Immortal Justice with its conventional battery and melee fighting style. This does not stop him from being one of the best pilots the Cosmic Era has seen.
• The Brute: In SEED Destiny, Shinn really wouldn't know what "subtle" means even if it slapped him in the face. He's far from stupid, but favors brute force over anything else, and only resorts to tactics when he absolutely has to, making him the Brute to the Chairman's Big Bad and Rey's Dragon, post-perspective flip.
• Character Catchphrase: In SEED Destiny. "You don't know anything!" tends to be the first thing he'll say to anyone he disagrees with — without realizing that while he knows certain things and despite everything he's been through, there's still a lot he doesn't. His image song is called "Primal Innocence" for a reason.
• Character Development: Gets the most of any character in SEED Destiny, almost all of it negative. He starts out as a relatively sympathetic Jerk with a Heart of Gold with anger and depression issues. But as the series progresses his personality conflict with Athrun, war-trauma, stress from his relationship with Stella, and inability to see beyond moral absolutes slowly eat away at his sanity. He becomes increasingly convinced of his own self-righteousness, even as he grows more unstable by the minute, and has to rely on Rey to justify his actions and Lunamaria to keep him from being completely consumed by rage. Stella's death and Athrun's defection finally break him, leaving him more susceptible to Rey and Durandal's manipulations than ever. When he loses his Sympathetic P.O.V., he is eventually shown the way the Archangel crew sees him: an Anti-Villain with lots of issues. It's not until the very end of the series when he realizes exactly how badly he's been acting all this time. By the time SEED Freedom rolls around, Kira's influence has changed him for the better, and he's come a long way from the angry and impulsive young man he was during SEED Destiny.
• Chest of Medals: Shinn is the only known ZAFT soldier to have received two Order of Nebula medals in his tenure. This along with his FAITH membership makes him this trope.
• Close-Range Combatant: Subverted in SEED Destiny; while Shinn certainly favors close-range combat, his skills are flexible enough that he can effectively pilot the Impulse and its diverse Silhouette Packs as well as the Destiny and its versatile weapon set. This tendency really comes to bite him in the ass whenever he decides to fully embrace close combat over versatility in his fights against Athrun and the Infinite Justice. As the latter suit is a true Multi-Melee Master with a more experienced pilot that also specializes in melee combat, Shinn plays right into its strengths rather than playing to the Destiny's strengths, resulting in him losing both fights. Played straight and justified in Freedom as the Foundation's machines are all immune to ranged beam weaponry unless they are fired at point-blank range. When Shinn is thinking straight, he is proves to be very capable in close-range as the Black Knights learned the hard way.
• Combat Medic: Downplayed in SEED Freedom. The Destiny Spec II is a powerful Mobile Suit that can also recharge other MS thanks to the built-in Deuterion Beam System on its head.
• Combat Pragmatist: When he's actually using his head in a fight Shinn's shown to be remarkably resourceful and has a good grasp of combat tactics. He makes good use of his equipment (such as Impulse's Silhouette packs), and can be surprisingly creative at times by coming up with unconventional uses for the resources at his disposal. ^note A few examples: tossing the Impulse's shield past an enemy then bouncing shots off it to hit them at angle, destroying a shielded enemy command post by dropping an exploding enemy mobile suit into it like a giant grenade, and takes a page from Uso Evin's book by using the Impulse's modules to dodge attacks or letting a part take a hit then either jettisoning it or flinging it at his opponent Above all else he's driven, and willing to do whatever it takes to beat his opponents. Add access to SEED mode and it can make him a very dangerous opponent. However, Shinn's volatile personality (and ego) prevent him from making full use of this, and goes out the window once he gets the "Destiny".
• Combining Mecha: His Impulse is composed of three parts — Core Splendor, Chest Flyer and Leg Flyer, as well as the Silhouette Packs that change its combat capability.
• Composite Character: The Destiny Spec II in SEED Freedom physically resembles its original counterpart but its colors are mostly similar to Rey's Legend. It also wields a variant of the Legend's Beam Rifle.
• Corporal Punishment: Shinn gets punched by Athrun twice in SEED Destiny — after disobeying orders, and after apparently killing Kira. Bragging about killing someone's best friend to their face is neither intelligent nor kind, Shinn. Of course, it backfires in that it basically just convinces Shinn that Athrun hates him. It has left quite an impression on him because when Athrun starts beating Kira in SEED Freedom, Shinn immediately tries to stop them from fighting and all the poor Shinn got is to be hit by both of them.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Shinn in Destiny is this to Kamille Bidan; he's basically Kamille, but without the guidance provided by Amuro and Char. Throughout Destiny, he gradually turns into Chang Wufei, circa Endless Waltz, when he defected to the Mariemaia Army.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Shinn develops a bad case of tunnel vision late in SEED Destiny, favoring going up close to kill his enemies in any machine he pilots rather than fully utilizing their features, especially in the Destiny. Kira and Athrun exploit this by taking advantage of his close-combat tendencies to deprive him of his Arondight Sword mid-combat and/or use everything on their own Gundams to wreck the Destiny. Averted with the Impulse Gundam compared to the Strike's packs. The long-range Blast Impulse can hover over water for added mobility options and has a beam javelin for close combat while the close-combat Sword Impulse still retains the beam rifle for mid-range combat.
• Custom Uniform:
  • While it's on the subtle side, the inside of his pilot suit's helmet in SEED Destiny is blue, in contrast to the one Athrun borrowed in Episode 6 of the show, which was green on the inside.
  • His Compass pilot suit in SEED Freedom is red with blue highlights.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Most of his character can be traced back to his family's — and in particular his little sister Mayu's — death.
• Dark Is Evil: Major antagonist suits in Gundam SEED employ a downplayed version of this, wearing slightly darker shades of the iconic Gundam red, white, and blue (the white is replaced with grey, for instance). The Destiny, the suit Shinn gets after losing his Sympathetic P.O.V. in SEED Destiny, is no exception.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The original Destiny Gundam already used a darker version of the standard red, white, and blue color scheme used by protagonist MS (replacing white with gray), and the Spec II in SEED Freedom color scheme is even darker. Despite this, Shinn is at his most heroic in this movie.
• Dash Attack: His signature attack, and favorite tactic, is to charge towards his opponent with his BFS (sometimes with the blade held in front of him like a skewer).
• Death Glare: To the Hibiki siblings in SEED Destiny; Cagalli for daring to preach her father's and nation's ideals that failed to protect his family, and Kira (actually more towards the Freedom) for his constant interference and dominance on the battlefield. Also just about anyone that somehow draws Shinn's ire, which among the simplest tasks in this series.
• Death Wail: Twice in SEED Destiny. When his family was killed and when Stella dies in his arms.
• Decoy Protagonist: We follow Shinn for the first half of SEED Destiny, learning to sympathize with him and his point of view. Then Durandal is outed as the villain, the POV shifts, and Kira and Athrun become the protagonists.
• Deflector Shield: Unlike the previous Gundam units, the Impulse is equipped with a shield enhanced with a beam deflecting forcefield, allowing it to bounce beam shots and defend against powerful attacks that mundane shields cannot effectively block. When Shinn feels like being creative, he often takes advantage of this by throwing the shield at the opponent and firing his beam rifle at it for a trick-shot.
  • The Destiny is also equipped with two beam shield generators in both of its forearms along with a smaller basic shield. They are powerful enough to block even the Destroy's triple Chest Blaster Wave-Motion Gun, and can't be bypassed by beam sabers to boot. Shinn doesn't make much use of them, though.
• Demoted to Extra: As the Special Edition version of SEED Destiny focuses on Athrun as the protagonist right from the start, Shinn has a notable decrease in screentime. One notable manga adaptation, The Edge, takes a similar approach, though it does put more focus on his and Athrun's relationship. Inverted in the manga adaptation that ran in Comic BomBom magazine, where he remained the protagonist all the way through.
• Depending on the Writer: Shinn in the drama CDs is depicted as a Brilliant, but Lazy student who can perform well when he puts all his effort into things, including surpassing Rey in his exams. However, Shinn in the "Moonlight Valkyrie" prequel novel is a poor student but also a Determinator which gets him the results he wanted. The drama CDs and prequel novel give him completely opposite personality traits when it comes to work. The Destiny anime and The Edge manga goes with his Determinator traits where he frequently practices in the simulation machine and against data of the Freedom Gundam.
• Detachment Combat: In his battle with the Freedom in SEED Destiny, Shinn has a moment of particular ingenuity when he separates the Impulse at the waist to dodge a potentially decisive strike from the Freedom, allowing Shinn to deal a crippling blow to it in turn.
• Determinator: According to the Moonlight Valkyrie prequel novel of SEED Freedom, Shinn was initially one of the lowest ranking students. However, he works very hard and asked Rey and Lunamaria to tutor him on subjects like Mobile Suits and judo. This hard work is what got him to become a ZAFT elite red coat. Shinn keeps this trope in SEED Destiny where he studies Kira’s movements in the Freedom Gundam and frequently practices in the simulation machine in The Edge manga. This hard work and assistance from Rey is what lead to Shinn defeating Kira. Athrun and Mu acknowledge that Shinn is a very dedicated pilot that continues to improve his skills.
• Didn't Think This Through: Attempts to break up Athrun and Kira's fight in SEED Freedom. All it gets him is knocked down on the floor with both men slug him in the face completely by accident (neither of them even realized that they hit him). He has another one of this when he tries to take Lunamaria hostage to surprise her, and he nearly gets killed by her until he removed his mask..
• Does Not Like Spam: In the drama CDs, Shinn does not like eggplant, mushrooms or sour food.
• Don't Think, Feel: His biggest flaw when he gets the Destiny. Shinn's blindness towards his anger ends up costing him battles against Kira and Athrun. However, it's reconstructed in SEED Freedom in that Shinn's tendencies to feel actually makes an effective shield against the Black Knight's mind reading abilities, as they are baffled that Shinn doesn't think.
• Drunk with Power: Shinn's relationship with his machine(s) in SEED Destiny is not a healthy one. He starts out as a Combat Pragmatist who utilises his machines' versatility to defeat his foes. Unfortunately, his personality and huge ego got the better of him and when he receives the Destiny, he basically opts to go up close to any enemy he sees to brutally finish them off rather than put his new machine's versatile Lightning Bruiser purposes to full use.
• Due to the Dead: The Destiny Spec II's color schemes is largely lifted from the Legend Gundam, which was piloted by Shinn's late friend and ally Rey Za Burrell.
• Emo Teen: He's often accused of this by the fanbase and he certainly is very angsty, especially in SEED Destiny. Then again, he has reasons for it and no one around him is helping him get over it.
• Facepalm of Doom: The Destiny has the "Palma Fiocina" palm beam cannon. Deconstructed somewhat in that the cannons don't have to be fired at point-blank range - the fact that Shinn never thinks to use it any other way (except once in the rerelease) says a lot about his mental state. Like the original Destiny Gundam, the Spec II in SEED Freedom features the "Palma Fiocina" palm beam cannon, which is used to kill Daniel, playing this trope straighter.
• Fish out of Water: Having been chosen by Kira to pilot the Immortal Justice in SEED Freedom due to Athrun remaining in Orb's military, Shinn is still good with it, but he's far from his prime - Athrun's style and the Justice's weapons are unfamiliar to him, and he has to figure out how to fight effectively under Kira's "no-killing rule". This pays off in the end as it forces Shinn to develop the Self-Control he never had back in SEED Destiny; he refines and sharpens his melee and close combat techniques, builds up his tactical/strategic awareness, and (most critical of all) learns to fight defensively and offensively at the same time. As a result he is a much more effective fighter when he upgrades/returns to the Destiny Spec II.
• Flaw Exploitation: In SEED Destiny, he is a prime victim of this. First, Rey and Durandal exploit Shinn's own insecurities to keep him on their side. Second, both Kira and Athrun exploits Shinn's prechant for close combat in his Destiny (despite being a versative Gundam), resulting in Shinn losing his favorite weapon against Kira and both fights against Athrun. On the giving end however, Shinn exploits Kira's need to not kill anybody during their mid-season showdown, resulting in the Freedom's destruction.
• Foil: To Kira in SEED Destiny. Both use a multi-pack Gundam and are aboard the new battleships in their respective organization, ZAFT and the Earth Alliance. As the war progresses, their mental health deteriorates due to the pressure of battle and personal issues and they both had a blonde-haired colleague to mentor them during the war who are both related to Rau Le Creuset, Mu and Rey respectively. Their main difference was that Kira had Mu looking out for him very well and had a good network of friends to help him like Tolle and Cagalli. Shinn only had Rey who provided genuine friendship and advice but was manipulating him for Durandal's agenda and while he got along decently with the crew, none of them knew Shinn well enough or were able to help him with his issues. Both Kira and Shinn has worked with Athrun at points in their life but while Athrun provided good advice and assistance to Kira, he was unable to help and mentor Shinn.
• Forgiveness: It is heavily implied that Shinn has forgiven Kira for killing Stella by the time of SEED Freedom, judging by his Undying Loyalty to Kira. Same for Mu/Neo for not keeping his promise about Stella, being familiar with him enough to the point of calling him "old man" (to Mu's chagrin). It is also implied that Shinn has moved past his hatred for Orb and for the Athhas for the death of his family as he gladly accepted to have his Destiny Gundam back, which was upgraded under Cagalli's orders into its Spec II.
• Freak Out: Late into SEED Destiny, Shinn's issues are so out of control that Rey and Durandal's "guidance" is the only thing keeping him from having a breakdown. But when Durandal's good image starts to fall apart, so does Shinn. He finally snaps in the final battle where he nearly kills Lunamaria (who has a Heel Realization at the moment) but Athrun stops him and swiftly defeats him. In the epilogue and by meeting Kira as the pilot of the Freedom, Shinn has his own Heel Realization, finally snaps out of his desire of revenge and accepts Kira's offer to fight side-by-side with him. As SEED Freedom shows, Shinn is much healthier and happier under Kira's command than under Durandal's.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: His family died in front of him in SEED, he's never gotten any help for it in SEED Destiny, his superior officer is a Shell-Shocked Veteran with No Social Skills and his Only Friend is a Manipulative Bastard who doesn't want him to get better. Nonetheless, a few characters point out Shinn's not the only person who lost people he cared about in the ongoing wars, and that it doesn't justify his every bad mood and decision.
• Freudian Trio: Deconstructed in SEED Destiny. Shinn is the Id, Lunamaria is the Ego, and Athrun/Rey is the Superego, but Luna spends the first three-fourths of the show completely focused on Athrun and dismissing Shinn, and the last quarter competing with Rey for Shinn's time and attention — and Lunamaria still never once sides with him against Athrun or Rey about anything.
• Friend Versus Lover: Rey is less than thrilled when he appears to be getting closer to Lunamaria in SEED Destiny. Luna doesn't do much fighting back though.
• Genius Bruiser: Shinn's violent, aggressive, and favors a fighting style that's based all around brute force. At the same time, he's far from stupid, and demonstrates a knack for tactics and improvisation that can be surprising to his allies and enemies both.
• Good Costume Switch: Downplayed in SEED Freedom; while he was far from evil even at his lowest and his villainy in SEED Destiny was the result of Durandal's manipulations and his own Well-Intentioned Extremist stance with Rey, Shinn switching his old ZAFT unform for a Compass one symbolizes his transition to an unambiguous member of the good guys.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: When Shinn returns Stella to Neo in SEED Destiny, he made him swear that he would take Stella somewhere far away from the war and never be forced to fight again. As an Extended, Stella is far too valuable an asset to the Earth Forces as a living weapon, and while Neo is far from happy about breaking his promise, he stoically follows his orders in putting her in the apocalyptic mobile weapon of mass destruction Destroy. When Athrun chastise an incarcerated Shinn for taking the word of a complete stranger and his enemy, Shinn's response to this is a puerile "but he promised !"
• Good Is Not Nice: In SEED Destiny, Shinn means well, but between his trauma and his general attitude he's not really capable of being nice about it (though he does Pet the Dog with Rey, Stella, and Luna), and even his attempts at winning people over frequently backfire; see some of his interactions with Athrun.
• Good Is Not Soft: While he has mellowed out considerably compared to where he was at the start of SEED Destiny, getting on Shinn's bad side in SEED Freedom is still the last thing to recommend as the Black Knights Squad found out the hard way in the film's climax.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It's not hard to make Shinn lose his temper in SEED Destiny. The number of times he devolves into a berserk rage is actually a little disturbing.
• Heartbroken Badass: Shinn is a damaged set of goods, and his pain fuels his rage in combat, letting him take on the likes of Athrun or Kira.
• Heel–Face Turn: Whatever one thinks of his motivations or whether he was right or not, he ends up on Kira, Athrun, and Lacus's side at the end of Final Plus of SEED Destiny, after Kira, whom he met earlier at the very same place — a memorial to the victims of the OMNI invasion that killed his family — shook his hands and said that he's willing to forgive him and even invites him to fight alongside him. In SEED Freedom, they are assigned together in Compass, Shinn is even piloting a Justice Gundam in Athrun's stead, becoming Kira's number two on the field.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: While Kira and Athrun have also used beam sabers for their Gundams, Shinn is rather famous for his close-combat preference and usage of anti-ship swords (with it being his key weapon in his finishing move on the Freedom Gundam). Promotional art and previews for SEED Freedom also show him brandishing a sabre on foot. Same goes when he sorties in the Immortal Justice.
• Heroic BSoD: When the Infinite Justice appears at Orb and Athrun contacts Shinn, the latter completely freezes up in disbelief - to the point that even fighting Kira is forgotten about. When he does finally regain cognition, the only thing he can do is mumble in shock that he'd already killed Athrun.
• Heroic Wannabe: One of his subtler flaws in SEED Destiny. Shinn desperately wants to be a champion to those being subjugated by oppressive powers (i.e. the Earth Alliance) and being recognised for his "heroism". It's exploited by Durandal who secures Shinn's loyalty by praising and awarding Shinn for his skills and "heroism", making Shinn feel like The Paragon he wanted to be. At the end of the day though, Shinn's a genuinely good kid and means well, but he's far too screwed up to ever be The Hero.
• Hero with an F in Good: God knows he tries in SEED Destiny, but he just can't seem to get anything right. He seems to realize this, as well, which only adds to his frustration.
• Hero-Worshipper:
  • In SEED Destiny, Shinn eventually develops this for Durandal (though not quite to Rey's extent), seeing the Chairman as a politician that actually gets things done and provides Shinn with the approval he craved. Unfortunalety for Shinn, he was used by Durandal and Rey.
  • By the time of SEED Freedom, he greatly admires Kira and is overjoyed when the latter relies on him, a stark contrast of his attitude toward him (more against the Freedom than Kira personally but same thing) in SEED Destiny. It helps a lot that unlike Durandal and Rey, Kira is a genuine Benevolent Boss to him.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Rey in SEED Destiny; even closer than the ZAFT example of the previous war. A rare undivided Gundam example.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: The Immortal Justice, like the Rising Freedom, is a non-nuclear, battery powered suit due to the public's concerns of Compass being "too powerful".
• Hot-Blooded: To a degree that reaches deconstruction in SEED Destiny. He's utterly determined to stop war from happening and is highly emotional while doing so but those emotion eventually get the better of him and cloud his judgement. By the time of SEED Freedom, he might have mellowed out significantly, but he still has that hot blooded spirit in him that would make Domon Kasshu proud.
• Hypocrite: A major aspect of Shinn's character in SEED Destiny is he contradicts himself... a lot.
  • He bawls Cagalli out for Orb's actions during the last war, claiming (not unfairly) that Orb's attempt to stick to it's neutrality lead to a lot of people getting killed, his family among them. Then, when Orb sides with The Earth Alliance to keep from being invaded again, he gets pissed off and calls them hypocrites, even though that was essentially what he was advocating to Cagalli. Indirectly, this also addresses a flaw in his Irrational Hatred: If he's so pissed at the Athhas for sticking to their ideals and letting Orb burn and him losing his family in the process, what did he seriously think would happen if Uzumi did simply surrender Orb to Azrael, especially since he and his family are all Coordinators?
  • He's outraged by what the Earth Forces have done to Stella, and is enraged when Kira—who had no other options available—cuts her down in the middle of a fight, going so far as to try and get revenge on him for it. He himself does the exact same thing to Auel and Sting (who he is fully aware are Extended) without batting an eye. ^note With Auel, Shinn was holding back until he was pushed into SEED mode by Kira. For Sting, the Chaos Gundam was shot down in Berlin, so Shinn likely assumed Sting was already dead.
  • He also got his start with his family dying in a war. What does he do? Fight in wars. Especially bad once his side invades the country that his family died in, essentially making a cycle of pain.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Mayu was already this; then Stella bites the dust as well.
• Ignored Epiphany: There are several moments throughout SEED Destiny, especially towards the tail end, where Shinn begins to doubt the path he's on. Doubts that really kick in after the unveiling of the Destiny Plan and when he finds out that Durandal has ordered the Requiem to be used. However, he still decides to put his faith in both Durandal and Rey, which sadly lead him to his fateful final duel with Athrun...
• Immigrant Patriotism: Played with in SEED Destiny. Despite being born in Orb, he's one of ZAFT's most loyal soldiers. We never see him waving a flag or claiming PLANT is a better place, though. He's certainly angry at Orb, but too traumatized and disinterested to become very enthusiastic. In the last two CD dramas, it's revealed Shinn has returned to Orb and enlisted in their military. By the time of SEED Freedom, it is rendered moot as he is now part of Compass which is under the three main powers of the Cosmic Era.
• Improvised Parachute: In SEED Freedom, Shinn manages to survive Immortal Justice's destruction by the Black Knight Squad via bailing out and using the pilot seat harness as a parachute which keeps him in the air long enough for Hilda to fly over and grab him.
• Innocently Insensitive: In SEED Destiny.
  • He called Cagalli out on how Orb's actions led to the death of his family, but as Athrun later points out^note (to Luna, not to Shinn, which is what he should have done) Cagalli lost family too.
  • In episode 35, he out and out brags about shooting down Kira. To Athrun... Kira's closest friend, who had also done the same thing once. Needless to say, Athrun, already upset, took it very poorly. In Shinn's defense, Athrun never bothered or even tried explaining his real history or the intricacies of any of his relationships to anybody on board the Minerva and Rey rightfully calls Athrun out for responding completely inappropriately.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Forms one with Hilda in SEED Freedom after she rescues him following The Reveal of the Foundation's true colors.
• Invincible Hero: In Freedom once he gets the Destiny back, he easily destroys three of the Black Knights, cripples a fourth one enough for Hilda to make the finishing blow and does it all without taking a hit once.
• It's All About Me: Played with in SEED Destiny. He's perfectly capable of instantly acknowledging and caring what people like Stella, Rey, and Lunamaria have been through, but isn't able to do this with Athrun, Cagalli or anything related to Orb, due to his anger and massive unresolved loss and trauma. He eventually grows out of this by the time of SEED Freedom.
• Javelin Thrower: The Blast Impulse has a pair of beam javelins for close combat but can be thrown like traditional javelins, which Shinn makes use of to kill Auel and destroy the Abyss.
• Jack of All Trades: Personal preferences aside, Shinn is this skill-wise. Both the Impulse and the Destiny are geared to be versatile machines that emphasized combat adaptability. Alas, while Shinn can be pretty damn creative when actually using everything available in his arsenal, his emotional hang-ups means that he tends to favor just charging in guns-blazing or swords-swinging to slaughter his enemies up close, especially near the end of ''SEED Destiny''.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his anger and depression issues, he does care about his friends.
• Kubrick Stare: Towards Kira/Freedom in SEED Destiny, particularly after Stella's death.
• Lack of Empathy: Zig-zagged in SEED Destiny. Shinn is ruled by his emotions and often forgets or outright refuses to acknowledge those of others, especially if they're someone associated with the Earth Alliance or most especially Orb. If someone else's troubles don't resonate with Shinn's own tragedies and personal conflicts, Shinn will have a hard time feeling any sympathy or consideration.
• The Lancer: In SEED Freedom, he is Compass' best overall pilot after Kira and his de-facto Number Two on the field and he took the role from Athrun (who stays in the Orb military), even piloting a Justice Gundam. Shinn and Kira are also notably the only Compass pilots with Gundams.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His biggest weak spot in combat in SEED Destiny. Shinn's temperament often gets the better of him during fights, meaning his Hot Bloodedness actually undermines his performance. Impulsive and reckless to a fault, he often runs off into the think of things without a clear strategy, or giving much consideration to his allies at all. Kira and Athrun exploits this in their final confrotation with Shinn and the latter swiftly defeats him in the final battle of SEED Destiny. Under Kira's tutelage in SEED Freedom, Shinn grows out of this and displays far a more effective fighting style as the Black Knights learned the hard way in the final battle.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Destiny Gundam. Designed to be an all-purpose mobile suit, it has a BFS, beam sabers that double as beam boomerangs, palm beam cannons, and a BFG, as well as the "Voiture Lumière" system, which allows it to grow wings of light to move at very high speeds and create afterimages in its paths, allowing it to disorient enemies who are trying to aim at it.
• Mecha Expansion Pack: The Impulse's Silhouette Packs — Force (flight), Sword (melee) and Blast (long-range).
  • While the Destiny Spec II in SEED Freedom doesn't carry any new weapons by default, it can be equipped with the Zeus Silhouette to gain boosters on the legs, a back-mounted missile pod, and a cannon that's more powerful than any other solid round-use armament in the Cosmic Era. And while it was mostly used by the Akatsuki, Mu's dialogue towards Shinn confirms that the Silhouette belongs to the Destiny by default.
• The Mentally Ill: A milder example than many in this franchise, but Shinn is still in desperate need of emotional and mental counselling for his PTSD and anger management issues in SEED Destiny. By the time of SEED Freedom, he is much more healthy than before under Kira's command.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: The titular Destiny Gundam in SEED Destiny, which is vastly more powerful than the Impulse.
• Military Maverick: Displays no respect for the chain of command in SEED Destiny, and frequently disobeys orders, yet is allowed to get away with it due to his skill and some of Durandal's meddling to keep Shinn on his side.
• Mood-Swinger: Mostly in SEED Destiny, he shifts from almost catatonically depressed to berserker rage to cheerful and back at a frightening rate. Gets worse as he suffers his Sanity Slippage.
• Moral Myopia: In SEED Destiny, Shinn has a lot of trouble understanding or sympathizing with the actions of anyone outside his small group of friends. When a ZAFT pilot is killed, it's the actions of an Earth Alliance monster. When an Earth Alliance pilot is killed, even if it's just some poor bastard doing his job, it's heroism. This is especially obvious with regards to the Extended—it isn't okay for Kira to kill Stella, whom Shinn was very attached to with, but his own take downs of Auel and Sting (whom he very clearly recognizes) were entirely necessary. He finally grows out of it at the very end of the series.
• Multiform Balance: The Impulse's Silhouette Packs. Force Impulse has great mobility and standard weaponry, Sword sacrifices said mobility for close combat might with a pair of beam boomerangs and Big Freaking Swords, and Blast trades said speed for heavy firepower, with missiles, railguns and a pair of beam cannons.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He has this reaction after attacking Lunamaria during the final battle of SEED Destiny (and then, to a lesser extent, coming to his senses about his behavior during the series as a whole).
• Mythology Gag: Not funny at all, but Shinn loses his entire family in an explosion in the exact same way as Frau Bow in the very first episode of Gundam — accidentally, inadvertently surviving by having jumped a highway guardrail in a battle to go after something seen as important. It's what inspires a boy to pilot a mobile suit...
• Nice to the Waiter: Not the same level of friendship he has with Rey but Shinn gets along quite well with the two technicians Vino and Yolan.
• No Social Skills: Shinn is bitter, brusque, and cranky, likely due to PTSD. Rey and Lunamaria are his only real friends, and even with Luna, a good deal of their relationship is a back-and-forth belittling of each other.
• Non-Uniform Uniform: He wears his uniform's jacket open most of the time, only closing it on certain occasions.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: In SEED Freedom, Shinn kills Griffin by firing the Destiny Spec II's long-range beam cannon up close. And like in SEED Destiny he uses the "Palma Fiocina" beam cannons at zero range.
• No-Sell: In SEED Freedom, when the Black Knights tried to mentally attack Shinn, he wasn't affected in any way. It turns out that Stella's spirit is within Shinn, protecting him and even turned into a monster that drove out the Black Knights from Shinn's psyche.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • His reaction to seeing the Strike Freedom at Orb in SEED Destiny and recognizing from its movements that it's the same pilot as the original.
  • Gets one near the end of SEED Destiny when he, so absorbed in his rage, nearly kills Lunamaria, only for Athrun to intercept.
  • Shinn freaks out when he sees the nuclear missiles explode in Freedom, and is so shocked he doesn't even realize that he's groping Hilda's breasts. He also has a hilarious one when Shinn quickly takes off his mask in front of Luna, screaming that it's only him when he tries to take her hostage.
• Old Shame: In SEED Freedom, Shinn isn't proud of his reputation as the "Freedom Killer" because it's a constant reminder of how he was Durandal's attack dog in the previous war and because (in his mind) it undermines the respect and admiration he has since developed for Kira; Shinn believes it causes Kira to not truly trust him because how could Kira rely on someone who nearly killed him and hated him with such fury? Unknown to Shinn however this is not the case, as Kira's distance and insistence on Shinn playing support is because of Kira's own issues and not because he doesn't trust Shinn.
• One-Man Army: He all but singlehandedly wins the war for ZAFT in SEED Destiny, especially once he gets the titular Destiny Gundam. In SEED Freedom, Shinn killed three (indirectly four^note Shinn rushes over Redelard, enough for her to be disoriented for Hilda to give the killing blow) of the eight named antagonists by himself. Considering the Destiny Spec II's Doppelgänger Attack ability, you could say the trope is as literal as it gets.
• Only Friend: In SEED Destiny, he's Rey Za Burrel's and given his rocky relationship with Lunamaria, Rey is his. Except for gaining Luna's support very late in the show, they're basically all each other has. They're even described in official art as "alone together". With Rey's death, Shinn starts to develop more bonds which will include Kira, his former enemy.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: In the "Moonlight Valkyrie" prequel novel and Freedom, Shinn is very uncomfortable and withdrawn around Agnes as she always belittles him every chance she gets. His Death Glare is a staple in Destiny but when he unexpectedly gives one to Agnes, even she got briefly scared.
• Palette Swap: The Destiny Spec II's improved engine results in a slightly different color scheme from the one it previously had.
• Parental Abandonment: His mom, dad, and sister were all killed in the First Bloody Valentine War.
• Pet the Dog: In SEED Destiny, with his friends in need.
  • He goes from screaming at Stella for being an idiot to vowing to protect her in about two seconds, while she's still a complete stranger, after he realizes how traumatized she is. He goes as far as to spend time with her in the infirmary when she's sick, weak, and bewildered — and very happy to see him — reinforces how much kindness he has.
  • Odd beginning aside, his relationship with Luna is generally very gentle, sweet, and has both of them coming off as better people than they were for most of SEED Destiny.
  • And Rey. Not only does Shinn manage to pay sufficient attention to both his troubled new girlfriend and his clingy, anxious Only Friend, he sits by Rey's bed, too, when he needs him, and publicly states their thoughts and feelings are in accord after having a Psychic Powers moment at Messiah. And Rey smiles.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Downplayed in SEED Destiny and SEED Freedom; both Shinn and Lunamaria's pilot suits are primarily red, but the inside of the helmets are blue and pink respectively.
• Playing the Victim Card: Plays this a lot as justification for his attitude and self-righteousness in SEED Destiny, seeming to forget that others have also lost loved ones in the previous war. He also extends this card to other people: Stella was a Tyke Bomb and Slave Mook who was made to kill many people, and while Shinn does acknowledge the horror of her "employment" and desperately tries to get her somewhere where neither she nor other people will die, for him, Stella is seen as nothing but a helpless victim, and anyone who wants to bring harm to her is an unforgivable monster.
• The Power of Hate: Thoroughly deconstructed in SEED Destiny. Most of his life since the day he lost his family has been defined by his hate. He hates the Earth Alliance for attacking Orb, yet hates Orb just as much for failing to protect his family. His true dream is to protect others and keep anyone else from experiencing the same sort of horrors, which isn't powered by hate at all — but he comes to believe it means wholeheartedly ending war (something he hates) forever, and is so desperate to make it happen that he, consciously or otherwise, hates anyone or anything that threatens that dream, which eventually becomes in his view anything that opposes ZAFT and the chairman. He grows out of this in SEED Freedom.
• Power Up Letdown: Power-source aside, the Freedom novels state that the Immortal Justice has better firepower than the Destiny Gundam. The letdown part is that Shinn doesn't feel right piloting the Immortal Justice that was designed for Athrun rather than him which he feels hampers his ability to fight as well as he used to in the Destiny and Impulse.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: Though toyed with in SEED Destiny, he do not become the Big Bad or The Dragon, but an Anti Villainous Brute.
• Punny Name:
  • As the ostensible protagonist with a Meaningful Name, Asuka was the era in Japanese history following the Yamato period.
  • And when compared to Shinji Ikari^note meaning "wrath" and Asuka Langley Soryu/Shikinami of the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise.
  • Shinn also shares a name with the protagonist of Ultraman Dyna.^note only reversed, as Gundam traditionally doesn't adopt the Japanese tradition of putting the family name before the given name Impulse Gundam has three modes that can be used for different situations, like Ultraman Dyna's Flash, Miracle, and Strong forms, and like Dyna, succeeds another Gundam or Ultraman – Strike and Tiga respectively – that does the same.
• Psychic Block Defense: Surprisingly, the same traumas that made Shinn susceptible to Durandal's manipulation would give him a powerful defense against psychic attacks two years down the line. When the Accords try to use their Mind Control trick on him, they find his mind is protected by a monstrous version of Stella looming over them like some sort of Eldritch Horror. This could be interpreted as Stella herself protecting Shinn from beyond the grave, or a representation of the feelings and emotions that made him The Berserker. Whatever the case may be, it scares them shitless.
• Red Baron: In SEED Freedom, Agnes and Griffin refer to Shinn as the "Freedom Killer" due to him being the first person to outright defeat Kira in the Freedom. Shinn isn't happy with this reputation, compared to how ecstatic he would've been back during the events of SEED Destiny.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: He has dull, red eyes that makes his gaze very striking.
• Red Is Heroic: Downplayed as Shinn is more of an Anti-Hero in SEED Destiny, but nonetheless Shinn genuinely wants to protect innocent people from suffering what he went through. Unfortunately his anger and naivety lets Rey and Durandal play him like a punk and while not a complete Face–Heel Turn, by the fourth act Shinn no longer distinguishes between actually protecting what he loves and simply killing what he hates.
  • By the time of SEED Freedom, he's part of the heroes' team now. Same goes for the bright red Immortal Justice, which he pilots in Athrun's stead in Compass. The Destiny Spec II's inner frame also glows red when he uses the Wings of Light.
• Red Is Violent: In SEED Destiny, Shinn is a red coat pilot, has red eyes and he primarly utilizes the Impulse's red-colored Sword Silhouette before getting the Destiny and he is The Berserker on the field, slaughtering his ennemies without restraints. Subverted by the time of SEED Freedom, while he did pilot the red Immortal Justice Gundam, Shinn tries his hardest to kill the least possible, showing that he wanted to follow Kira's example. Somewhat double-subverted when he gets his hands on the Destiny Spec II's where Shinn kills most of the Black Knights by himself but it is more of a last resort against the dangerous Foundation.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Rey's blue in SEED Destiny, especially being more Hot-Blooded than the soft-spoken and calmer Rey. Shinn becomes this with Kira in Freedom where Shinn is the eager and Hot-Blooded fighter whereas Kira is the focused and careful one. This relationship is Played for Laughs in the prefecture tour promotional images for Akita in front of the Namahage statues◊ where the Immortal Justice and Rising Freedom dresses up as the red and blue Namahage respectively.
• Redemption Demotion: The OVA's credits and the HD Remaster's last episode of SEED Destiny show him missing his FAITH badge, implying he was either demoted or FAITH stopped being an active unit.
• Redemption Promotion: Zigzagged in SEED Freedom. Shinn pilots the Immortal Justice which is the brother unit of the Rising Freedom which puts him on equal footing with the commander Kira Yamato. He may not be the same Compass rank but he is trusted enough to be given an equally powerful unit as Kira's rather than being relegated to an Ace Custom.
• Replacement Goldfish: Some see his relationship with Stella in SEED Destiny as romantic. Others believe that she's a substitute for his deceased sister, Mayu. Shinn himself feels like he is one to Athrun in Compass in the Immortal Justice.
• Rescue Romance: If you interpret his relationship with Stella in SEED Destiny as a romantic one. He not only saves her from drowning during their first meeting, he later prevents her from dying on the Minerva by returning her to Neo.
• Revenge Before Reason: He's trying to kill Kira in SEED Destiny for defeating an enemy that he himself was fighting. Rational thought was not involved in this decision. Especially considering that even if Shinn could have successfully talked Stella down before Kira killed her, Stella would likely have died anyway from a repeat situation of being drug-starved in ZAFT custody the same as before. As for his personal war against the Earth Alliance, as has been pointed out numerous times here, Shinn's actions aren't solving anything. And for all his anger towards Orb, he seems to blame them more than he does the Alliance for the battle that got his parents killed in the first place, and conveniently forgetting that if Orb simply let the Earth Alliance take over, he and his family of Coordinators would certainly have been rounded up and killed.
• Revenge Myopia: In SEED Destiny. He makes it very clear when he goes after the Freedom that he sees it as a way of paying Kira back for Stella.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Not only is this his default state in battle in SEED Destiny, but his rage is actually the trigger for his SEED mode - though unlike Kira and Athrun, his is more uncontrollable. It doesn't help that he seems to have a convenient reason (be it real or imagined) for him to hate everyone aside from his own team; he wants payback against the EA for causing the renewed war, he blames Orb and it's policies for causing them to be invaded and result in his family's deaths, he holds the Archangel and Kira responsible for the attacks on his comrades and later the death of Stella, then again when Athrun joins them after he and Meyrin were nearly killed by Shinn.
• Rummage Sale Reject: Off duty, Shinn more or less dresses like a closet explosion, randomly mixing and matching scarves, sleeveless shirts, you name it. This outfit was actually based on something T.M.Revolution wore at one point. There's a fine line between looking like a homeless guy and looking like a J-Rocker.
• Sanity Has Advantages: In SEED Destiny, he fares better against Kira in a Mobile Suit inferior to his (Impulse vs. Freedom) than when they are in machines that are technological matches for each other (Destiny vs. Strike Freedom). The difference is that in the first match, Shinn still had enough mental health to spend a long time carefully studying Kira's fighting style and developing counters to it. As his issues get worse however, he starts fighting with nothing but rage, and stops using any strategy more complex than "get close to the enemy and hack him to bits". This makes it very easy for Kira to counter everything Shinn throws at him, in an ironic reversal of their previous fight. It's worse when he goes up against Athrun (A defensive/counterattack expert) and the Infinite Justice (Heavy-Armored Melee unit). Athrun was also severely injured at the time, too. SEED Freedom further proves the point by showing that when Shinn has fully surpassed his issues and is focused on the battle, he can take on enemies that have both numerical and technological advantage and still win.
• Sanity Slippage: His mental health takes a dramatic turn for the worse over the course of SEED Destiny. He hits the pinnacle of this when he battles Athrun for the last time where Athrun's words of reason headbutt all of Rey and Durandal's manipulation that he turns into a screaming berserker. It's not until the epilogue that he even starts to recover.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Shinn has a strong penchant for this in SEED Destiny and it's definitely a deconstruction — Shinn liberally disregards rules and orders no matter how direct, and always feels his punishment is undeserved or unwarranted because he made what he believed to be the more moral decision.
  • During the Indian Ocean battle he breaks off combat to level an Earth Alliance base and free civilians being used as slave labor. When Athrun then administers Corporal Punishment, Shinn responds with this trope. And gets slapped again.
  • Basically everything to do with Stella. He brings her on to the Minerva hoping she can be treated for her injuries (Talia points out it's not the wisest thing to do since she's also an unrestrained enemy combatant), then he breaks her back out of the ship to return her to Phantom Pain when it looks like she'll either die or be used as propaganda or an experiment by ZAFT. Even Rey has no problem with the latter and majorly assists him.
  • His breakdown over the last arc after Stella's death partly comes from subverting this and deciding he must obey the Chairman to accomplish his goals for peace, but even then he needs Rey's personal and moral framing of the issues to keep going.
• Screaming Warrior: Usually while hacking things to bits with his BFS.
• Second Love: Lunamaria, after they each lose their respective first choices (if his relationship with Stella is interpreted as romantic).
• Shadow Archetype: Shinn is what Athrun would've become had he chosen loyalty over conscience in the later half of SEED Destiny. There's also some parallels to how Kira could have become if during the first half of the series he'd chosen emotion over reason or allowed himself to obsess over the past.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Shinn's an interesting example in that his PTSD stems from his experiences as a civilian during the First Bloody Valentine War, with the trauma he experienced when his family died serving as the core of his characterisation. None of this is helped, of course, by his time as a soldier in the Second Bloody Valentine War, which only contributes further to his Sanity Slippage.
• Shout-Out: His Red Is Violent nature, name, and partnership with Rey are all seen as references to Neon Genesis Evangelion, with the 'Rei' and 'Asuka' names themselves being a reference to Brave Raideen.
• Skilled, but Naive: It would be hard to find anyone in SEED Destiny who's more badass than Shinn (that would be Kira and Athrun). It would also be hard to find anyone who's more gullible or easy to manipulate.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Justified in SEED Destiny. Shinn is very, very good, and the fact that his opponents tend to hold back, or suffer mental breakdowns makes him seem even better. It would be impossible, however, for anybody to be as good as Shinn himself thinks he is by the end—which leads to some very harsh lessons.
• Smug Super: In SEED Destiny. Crosses into this when he's released after being imprisoned because he let Stella go, he pretty much brags to Athrun his superiors are on his side due to the amount of skill he has. It gets worse after he destroys the Freedom. Thus it's quite the nasty shock for him when Athrun easily cripples the Destiny in the battle over Orb. (Probably would have been worse for Shinn had he known that Athrun was still recovering from injuries he'd received during his escape from ZAFT).
• Speed Echoes: The Destiny's Wings of Light have Mirage Colloid incorporated in them, which when they "light up", allows the Gundam it leaves a trail of afterimages as Shinn charges his enemies. This helps Shinn better combat remote drone weapons. The Destiny Spec II retains these, though they are somehow now capable of pulling off a Doppelgänger Attack.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: A possible interpretation of his relationship with Stella in SEED Destiny. It certainly ends tragically enough.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: Shinn shows shades of this compared to his portrayal in SEED Freedom. Shinn is a spiky-haired boy who is a lot more cheerful than he used to be, is a Big Eater and has a strong sense of justice (even piloting a Gundam named Justice no less!). The only times Shinn gets angry during the film is when his friends are in danger and works hard with Compass to make the world a better place.
• Super Mode: Like Kira, Athrun, Lacus and Cagalli, Shinn has access to SEED mode, entering it in almost every battle he participates in. Unlike Athrun and Kira, who are able to activate theirs at will in SEED Destiny, Shinn's is entirely rage driven and thus he loses himself to it more easily.
• Supporting Protagonist: The Anti-Hero and Villain Protagonist of SEED Destiny takes on a more supporting role for Kira this time around in SEED Freedom. He gets the third most focus in the film behind Kira and Lacus, as well as his own unique character arc throughout the film.
• Survivor Guilt: Shinn's clearly suffering from a bad case of this in regards to his family; the situation with Stella only makes it worse.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: Though he starts as the viewpoint character of SEED Destiny, he eventually loses it — first to Athrun, and then to Kira.
• Sympathy for the Devil: One of the few people to express any sympathy for the Extended in SEED Destiny. Not that this stops him from cutting down two of them without a second thought...
• Tautological Templar: Shinn gradually starts slipping into this by the last quarter of SEED Destiny. With Durandal successfully swaying the public that he was their Messiah, Shinn starts to think (or at least forces himself to think) that every action ZAFT takes by default is righteous/noble and will help create a better world. Including obliterating his home country off the face of the planet.
• The Snack Is More Interesting: During the Ball scene in SEED Freedom, Shinn was more interested in the food than socializing with the guests. Shinn is also more concerned with his burger than the coffee Lunamaria accidentally spilled in his clothes in the "Moonlight Valkyrie" prequel novel.
• There Are No Therapists: In SEED Destiny, Kira and Athrun's lives would have been a lot easier had someone taken the terminally depressed kid who just watched his entire family die to see a shrink. Or at least anger-management. Then again, Durandal needs him to be that screwed up because it makes him easier to control.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Under Kira's command in SEED Freedom, Shinn adopts his "incapacitate only, kill as last resort" approach, something which hampers him in combat. He tosses this out the window once he gets the Destiny Spec II (to be fair, it is treated as a last resort since the Foundation is very dangerous and needed to be stopped), ending with the highest body count in the film with three named kills.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works:
  • Shinn threw one of the Sword Impulse's BFSs when he was taking on the Gaia, Abyss, and Chaos at the beginning of SEED Destiny.
  • Subverted later with the Destiny, as it has two beam boomerangs that can alter its beam length to become beam sabers, but he always throws them in the former mode.
  • Justified because Immortal Justice's main beam sabers double as beam boomerangs, seemingly based off the "Shining Edge" boomerang/saber the Infinite Justice carried in it's shield as Immortal Justice was designed based on its data.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Faces this a few times in SEED Destiny, and as the show goes on, his Good decisions (freeing imprisoned laborers, moving heaven and earth for Stella) turn Lawful after deciding to execute Athrun and Meyrin.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the novel, it's revealed that Shinn trying to take Lunamaria hostage was Shinn's idea to surprise her that he was still alive. However, it backfired horribly and Shinn nearly gets his head blown off by Lunamaria. Shinn is lucky that he got out of that with a few slaps to the face, and in the novel, Shinn even lampshades it by thinking to himself on how really stupid that idea was.
• Took a Level in Badass: Thanks to his time in Kira's team in SEED Freedom, Shinn becomes far more formidable than he was back in SEED Destiny, as shown when he kills three of the Black Knights in quick succession while piloting the Destiny Spec II. And that was before using the Zeus Silhouette, which Mu borrowed earlier for the Akatsuki.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Having more or less overcome his trauma at the end of SEED Destiny, Shinn's inherently bright and goofy nature is on full display in SEED Freedom. Fukuda describes Shinn as a "affectionate and cute" character, who was plagued by his feelings of powerlessness and anger issues. Now he no longer has to push down his true self.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In SEED Freedom, he is noticeably less hot-headed and impulsive compared to where he was in SEED Destiny and tries to use non-lethal force whenever possible, showing how much Kira's influence has rubbed off of him.
• Transforming Mecha: The Mobile Armor mode of the Immortal Justice was derived from Orb's Murasame, which helps save power on the non-nuclear battery. It's also a departure from the detachable Fatum backpacks of Justice Gundams past; it can't be remotely piloted because of said battery having a time limit.
• Tragic Hero: He's a sympathetic but very flawed individual who makes some bad choices in SEED Destiny (as seen by the other entries on this page). Yet it's hard to actually fault him for his actions at the same time, as he's naive and smack dab in the middle of a situation he barely understands. The people around him were also a factor; Durandal was just using him, Rey is just as fragile and troubled if not more so, Athrun failed to be a good mentor, and Luna first ignored him and then was in over her head. Regardless of how you spin it, Shinn's story is not a happy one. He starts out with noble intentions, but his inability to grow past his flaws ultimately made him no different than the people he hated.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: When Athrun defects in SEED Destiny and is escaping Gribraltar with Meyrin in a stolen GOUF Ignited, Shinn is unable to reason why Athrun would betray ZAFT and soon his rage overtakes him. After he seemingly killed Athrun and Meyrin in a maddened fury, he could only weep in silence for what he had done.
• Tragic Keepsake: Mayu's cellphone, which he uses to periodically listen to her voicemail greeting (i.e. her voice).
• Ultimate Job Security: His incredible talent as a pilot in SEED Destiny allows his bosses to tolerate acts of insolence and insubordination that by rights should have gotten him cashiered or even executed – at least, Shinn himself appears to believe this after getting away with returning Stella to Phantom Pain. The real security is implied (especially in the audio drama) that Durandal noted his SEED factor as soon as he either emigrated to PLANT or joined the Academy, and cultivated him as the only one around who could fight on Kira's level.
• Underestimating Badassery: It varies in SEED Destiny. He (and Rey) are exceptionally careful not to underestimate Kira, but Athrun's struggles with everything on the Minerva leave Shinn completely unimpressed and angrily dismissive of him as a traitor, leaving him vulnerable when facing a fully-functioning Athrun. This also applies to him, as Luna and a few other people underestimate him for most of SEED Destiny and later the Black Knights in SEED Freedom.
• Undying Loyalty: After Shinn has sorted his issues from SEED Destiny and being under Kira's command in SEED Freedom who was a Benevolent Boss to his subordinates, Shinn was nothing short of loyal, a far cry of SEED Destiny when he wanted to kill Kira. When Kira and Athrun got into a fistfight, Shinn immediately came to Kira's defense.
• Unknown Rival: Shinn is this to Agnes in SEED Freedom where she sees him as an obstacle to her advancement in Compass as he was given the Immortal Justice while she was given the Ace Custom GYAN Strom. As far as Shinn is concerned, Agnes is still the same bully she was back in the academy.
• Unstoppable Rage: His best weapon in a fight, but it's also a deconstruction. He increasingly slips into bouts of this as his experiences in the war slowly gnaw into his sanity. This becomes something of a problem for him in the latter half of SEED Destiny, as his urge to charge in blindly lets him cut through countless mooks, but screws him in combat against fellow aces like Athrun and Kira, who are much more composed.
  • Eventually, this is Played for Drama. Shinn just can't let go of his anger. He feels like it's the only thing he's got left and he clings to it, even though becomes harder to really justify it as the series goes on. It's not that he can't see shades of grey, but rather that he just doesn't want to admit it because it would mean giving up the one feeling that has kept him going.
• Unwitting Pawn: Subverted in SEED Destiny. After the Destiny Plan is revealed, Shinn (like the rest of humanity) is stunned, but when Rey points out that "you knew it would be something like this, right?" for their long-discussed Well-Intentioned Extremist goal of changing things, Shinn starts to adjust. When he's later asked if he believes the same things as Rey (which turn out not to necessarily be everything the Chairman does), he says he does.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The enraged berserker and the kid we see playing with his sister in the flashbacks don't really have a lot in common. In his academy days in the Moonlight Valkyrie novel, Shinn was still quite friendly as he was concerned for Lunamaria's wellbeing over coffee spilled on him. Even his signature Death Glare in Destiny was considered the exception rather than the rule as Agnes was taken aback that he glared at her.
• Villain Killer: He manages to bring down the entire Black Knight Squad in SEED Freedom, barring Redelard (whose unit he cripples) and Shura^note who all fell to Hilda and Athrun, respectively, in one fell swoop.
• Walking Armory: While all major Gundams by the end of the series carried a relatively balanced set of armaments, the Destiny in particular possessed at least one one weapon suited for nearly any type of engagement — it had two beam swords (which double as beam boomerangs) and a physical sword for close combat, a beam rifle for mid-range, and a beam cannon for long-range.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Mostly in SEED Destiny. He wants to get rid of wars and child experimentation and keep other people from experiencing the same sort of pain he already has. He's willing to become a soldier himself and destroy anything (including friends or misgivings) if he thinks it will ultimately further this goal.
• With Us or Against Us: Starts expressing this kind of attitude as the war progresses in SEED Destiny. The scary part is that he doesn't realize that he's doing this. This is ultimately rooted in his Black-and-White Morality way of thinking (see Black-and-White Insanity above); Shinn is so utterly convinced that ZAFT and Durandal is flawlessly just and righteous that, in his eyes, any other factions in the world that doesn't submit to or support Durandal's regime is either ignorant or evil.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The boy either needs a vacation, a psychiatrist, a goddamn hug or all three. Instead, he's turned into a weapon to be manipulated.
• Would Hit a Girl: Shinn makes a pretty determined effort to kill Cagalli when she confronts him in the Akatsuki (although it's not known if he actually knew the pilot was Cagalli or even female). He also tries to go through Luna when she gets in the way during his final confrontation with Athrun (though this leads to a My God, What Have I Done? moment soon afterwards). When he breaks Stella out of the ZAFT infirmary to return her to Neo, he isn't above punching a female nurse in the stomach to knock her out. Shinn has no qualms holding back against the younger Redelard but in his defense, she along with her teammates have given Shinn hell in their first encounter.
• Wrecked Weapon: Happens several times in the final episodes of SEED Destiny at the hands of Kira in the Strike Freedom and later Athrun in the Infinite Justice. And each time it happens, Shinn is left with a look of stunned disbelief.

Lunamaria Hawke

Affiliation: ZAFT (SEED Destiny) → Compass (SEED Freedom)

Main mecha: ZGMF-1000 ZAKU Warrior (red)(SEED Destiny), ZGMF-X56S Impulse Gundam (SEED Destiny), ZGMF-2025/F GELGOOG Menace (SEED Freedom), ZGMF-X56SE2 Impulse Gundam Spec II (SEED Freedom)

Voiced by: Maaya Sakamoto (Japanese); Marÿke Hendrikse [Ocean dub], Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld [NYAV Post dub] (English)

Lunamaria in SEED Freedom

^{Click here to see Lunamaria in SEED Destiny}

"I'm fine! I got defeated splendidly, though."

One of the Minerva trio of ZAFT Redcoats in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. She apparently comes from a totally normal background and family life, compared to the other two. "Luna" is cheerful and outgoing, and a "people person", which balances out her friend Shinn's frequently-wrathful disposition and their friend Rey's nigh-disturbing calmness. On the other hand, she can be a bit petty, insensitive, or oblivious, especially to subtle things or pessimistic emotions. Her younger sister, Meyrin, serves as part of the ship's bridge crew. She is the pilot of a red ZGMF-1000 ZAKU Warrior and later inherits the Impulse.

In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom, Lunamaria, now 18 year-old, now fights for Compass alongside Shinn, under Kira Yamato in the Yamato Team.

---

• Ace Custom:
  • Her ZAKU Warrior in SEED Destiny is a standard Mook unit, except painted red.
  • Her GELGOOG Menace in SEED Freedom is painted red instead of blue-gray, and both of its backpacks trade in a missile pod for a rail-cannon.
• Ace Pilot: Decorated, even, though overshadowed by Can't Catch Up in SEED Destiny. While not as over-the-top badass as the other main characters, Luna holds her own against Gundams and the Extended, despite piloting a ZAKU for most of the series.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Makes an Early-Bird Cameo in SEED HD remaster Episode 39 along with her sister and Rey instead of being introduced in SEED Destiny proper.
• Badass Adorable: Sweet ray of sunshine, she is.
• Battle Couple: With Shinn in SEED Freedom, fighting side-by-side in Compass. With her Impulse Spec II and his Destiny Spec II, they destroy the rebuilt Requiem together.
• Beta Bitch: Used to be this with Agnes in the "Moonlight Valkyrie" prequel novel. Flipflopped between this and Innocent Beta Bitch as she was not always cruel but did follow Agnes's line of thinking when it came to judging men.
• BFG:
  • On her ZAKU Warrior. How big? The stock and part of the barrel are both collapsible when the weapon is not in use, and even then, the weapon is as long as the ZAKU is tall. Also later on the Blast Impulse which has two.
  • One of the alternate rifles that her GELGOOG can use (according to the HG model) is a large caliber beam rifle reminiscent of ones utilized by the Gelgoogs in the Thunderbolt sector.
• BFS: On the Impulse. She actually seems better with it than she was with her ZAKU's BFG.
• Boyish Short Hair: The shortest of the main female characters.
• Break the Cutie: In SEED Destiny, although Foreshadowed with a broken arm she received in battle beforehand, with absolutely no warning, she's informed her two best friends have executed her little sister and the man she's been idolizing together, for treason. And she ends up wailing in Shinn's arms due to shared grief and trauma, anyway. Ow.
• Can't Catch Up: Lampshaded from the very beginning of SEED Destiny, when the engine of her ZAKU blows midair as she and Rey are racing to Shinn's aid, and it isn't helped by the fact that she's stuck in an inferior mobile suit throughout the show. By the end, Rey and Shinn have been given a promotion and are more or less shutting her out of any and all serious discussions. She carries on with relatively good grace nonetheless, but it's quite clear that it's frustrating her as she can't really discuss anything with Shinn without Rey becoming a Crazy Jealous Guy.
• Celeb Crush: On Athrun in SEED Destiny. She seems a tad disappointed when she actually meets him. Whether her feelings for Athrun were truly romantic (she thought he was engaged, after all) or just very enthusiastic subordinate Hero Worship is another question. Either way, she eventually gets over it.
• Character Development: It starts with Break the Cutie, and is tied to developing maturing feelings and sensitivity due to grieving and developing a much closer, more romantic relationship with Shinn by the end of SEED Destiny. An interpersonal example is how she learns not to be so quick for judging potential partners which she used to do when friends with Agnes in the "Moonlight Valkyrie" prequel novel.
• Chekhov's Skill: Lunamaria tutored Shinn in judo during the Moonlight Valkyrie prequel novel of SEED Freedom. When Lunamaria was thought to be the sole survivor of Compass, she used her judo moves on who she thought was an intruder when it was really Shinn. Shinn even states in the novel he could never beat Lunamaria in hand-to-hand combat.
• Clingy Jealous Girl:
  • Subverted. In SEED Destiny, when "Lacus" (Meer) both isn't very polite to her and apparently spent the night with her "fiance", Luna's idolized Commander Zala, Luna temporarily gets quite bitchy to Athrun in response; it's the opposite of clingy.
  • After she hooks up with Shinn near the end of SEED Destiny, she finds herself constantly fighting a losing battle with the Crazy Jealous Guy Rey. Subverted again from her end as she deals with it fairly maturely and gracefully and isn't clingy even when she has plenty of reason to be jealous.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Receiving end in the final battle of SEED Destiny. Even after getting her own Gundam, the Impulse, Athrun was just leagues above Lunamaria in both skill and experience and the gap between the Impulse and the Infinite Justice probably just as wide, leading to Lunamaria barely being a speedbump to Athrun.
• Custom Uniform:
  • Her ZAFT pilot suit in SEED Destiny is pink both in the chest area and on the inside of the helmet.
  • Her Compass pilot suit in SEED Freedom is red with pink highlights; even the chest area is pink instead of the usual white.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: Her uniform in SEED Destiny consists of a shortened ZAFT redcoat on top and a very short, loose pink miniskirt with thigh-high socks on bottom. In the epilogue of the Compilation Movie, she can briefly be seen in the standard version with a long coat and pants. In SEED Freedom, she wears a skirt again but this seems standard for Compass uniforms as Agnes' also has one.
• Dark Is Not Evil: All three versions of the Impulse Spec II in SEED Freedom use a darker color palette than the original, but Lunamaria is now fighting on the right side.
• Foreshadowing: In episode 7 of SEED Destiny, Luna was a lousy shot during her target practice sessions at a shooting range. Guess what happens when she tries to shoot down Djibril's shuttle?
• Freudian Trio: Deconstructed in SEED Destiny. Shinn is the Id, Luna the Ego, and Athrun/Rey the Superego — but Luna spends the first three-fourths of the show completely focused on and siding with Athrun and the last quarter of SEED Destiny competing with Rey for Shinn's time and attention; she never once sides with Shinn against Athrun or Rey about anything. The trio/quartet are a very broken version of this.
• Friend Versus Lover: Since Rey was her friend as well, when her relationship with Shinn changed in the wake of her sister's apparent death, this got awkward. She endured, and is eventually shown to have regained or retained his respect.
• Genki Girl: At first, she's cheerful and energetic, and fawns shamelessly over Athrun. Later on... less so.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Lunamaria is the older, bolder, higher-ranking Pretty one with the more glamorous life; Meyrin is the Smart shy one in the background. Luna also fully takes a patronizing older sister attitude and freely scolds and criticizes Meyrin on many occasions while never appearing to consider Meyrin's insecurities or notice her crush on Athrun... but she loves Meyrin deeply, is badly broken when she thinks she's been executed, and if it wasn't all subverted prior to the Final Battle of SEED Destiny, it is when Meyrin becomes her Morality Pet.
• Good Costume Switch: Like Shinn in SEED Freedom, this is downplayed, as she was hardly a villain back when she was part of ZAFT, but Lunamaria switching to a Compass uniform shows that she's on the good side now.
• Heroic BSoD: Two in SEED Destiny.
  • She suffers her first one when she is informed that Athrun turned traitor and somehow coerced Meyrin to jump ship with him, which resulted in Shinn having to (seemingly) execute them both as they tried to escape. Lunamaria is in complete disbelief and despair, and her decision to forgive Shinn and undergo a Relationship Upgrade is largely a result of suddenly being as broken as he is and for the first time gaining some understanding.
  • Later, she appears to suffer a second of these during Shinn and Athrun's final battle, openly shocked and horrified upon seeing how compromised Shinn's mental state is and watching frozen from the sidelines as he's eventually driven into a corner by Athrun. Even when she does finally snap out of it, it's to try and stop Shinn's rampage - which nearly gets her killed - and then make sure Shinn is alright after he's defeated, her will to fight having been completely broken.
• Hero-Worshipper: Of Athrun in SEED Destiny, at least at first. He strongly discouraged this though, as he made it clear that his experience in the last war is not to be glamorized. Nevertheless, unlike disdainful Shinn and wary Rey, she persisted in believing and acting like he could do no wrong, right up until he disappeared with her sister at Gibraltar.
• Idiot Hair: It's a Mythology Gag, in her case.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: A rare heroic case in SEED Destiny. Unlike most examples of this, Lunamaria is specifically shown to have some difficulty being an accurate shot (not just when she's aiming at an enemy), despite having managed to be a top academy graduate and elite pilot. Her most infamous display of this trait is when she failed to shoot down a shuttle Djibril was escaping on (which had horrific consequences, considering he then destroyed six of the PLANTs), to the point where it's exaggerated or parodied in spinoff works.^note The Special Edition and HD Remaster did attempt to mitigate this by reanimating the scene to show how strongly the wind resistance was affecting her aiming, but it's a simultaneous case of Once Done, Never Forgotten and Never Live It Down.
• Internal Reveal: Lunamaria learns quite late in the SEED Freedom movie that Agnes betrays Compass for the Black Knights.
• It's All About Me: Downplayed in SEED Destiny, but Luna's unimaginative tendencies are fairly consistent. She continually underestimates Shinn until shock and grief force her to re-evaluate, she accepts the unlikely explanation of her sister and Athrun being LOGOS spies because she seemingly can't manage any other way while shocked and grieving, and she has a big moment of this by never even noticing Meyrin liked Athrun, too.
• Just Following Orders: She tells Shinn (and herself) this as rationalization for following through with the order to kill Athrun and Meyrin in SEED Destiny.
• Just a Kid: Calls Shinn this frequently both as an insult and occasionally affectionately. In the prequel novel, Lunamaria even had the gall to call Rey this just because he stopped playing the piano for them and promptly left in favor of helping tutor Shinn.
• Killer Bear Hug: Played for Laughs. Unintentionally does this to Shinn in Freedom when she finds out that he is alive and was the masked assailant when Compass sneaks into the Millennium. Shinn swore he began to see black spots from losing air in the novelization.
• Long-Range Fighter: At first in SEED Destiny. Even before she and Rey were stuck on the Minerva's upper decks to serve as fire support for Shinn, Luna always sortied with the Gunner Wizard Pack for her ZAKU Warrior, despite it being a poor matchup against Stella and her fast-moving Gaia. Fully averts this after she acquires the Impulse.
• Mecha Expansion Pack: In SEED Freedom, a given with the Impulse Gundam Spec II but the ante gets upped when Lunamaria gets a METEOR unit to herself, a piece of equipment previously only used by Athrun and Kira. Courtesy of Dearka who passes his unit to her in the final battle. The Impulse Spec II has the honor to be the first non-nuclear Gundam which can use a METEOR system.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: The Impulse may be an older Gundam (relatively-speaking, as it was the mascot Gundam for the first half of the show), but it's a huge cut above her ZAKU.
• Morality Pet: In the final battle of SEED Destiny, Meyrin screams at her that she's wrong, she can't tell who the real Lacus is, and she needs to stop fighting. All of that combined with the shock of hearing Meyrin really is alive pushes her out of combat. Unfortunately, when she tries to convince Shinn of the same thing, he almost kills her.
• Ms. Fanservice: There's no other explanation for her uniform — Shiho Hahnenfuss wears the standard redcoat outfit and Riika Sheder in Astray wears Proper Tights with a Skirt. Highlighted with her inevitable Panty Shot in the HD Remaster of SEED Destiny. The fact that Luna wears the standard redcoat uniform at the very end of the compilation movies seems to acknowledge this.
• Multiform Balance: The Impulse, which finally gave her a chance to show that she earned that red uniform, it can switch between the Blast, Sword, and Force Silhouettes for different combat purposes. In SEED Freedom, Lunamaria pilots the Impulse Gundam Spec II which unsurprisingly retains its ability to switch between the same Silhouettes as the original.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Lunamaria had valid reasons to question her sister and Athrun apparently being executed for spying for LOGOS, given that she eavesdropped on Athrun's meeting with Kira, Cagalli and Miriallia and there wasn't a single thing said that would even hint at disloyalty. Furthermore, her highly-skeptical CO, who had ordered the surveillance, came to the exact same conclusion and told her the matter was closed. Instead of questioning the Durandal-issued explanation, however, Luna immediately chose to accept it to cope with the shock and grief of Athrun's desertion and his and Meyrin's "death" at Shinn's hands.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Her red ZAKU doesn't have Char Aznable's famous command antenna. Her head does.
  • Luna missing several shots against Djibril's shuttle was a nod to an episode of Zeta Gundam, where Char failed to shoot down Jamitov's shuttle.
• Nice Girl: It takes some Character Development to make Luna more thoughtful and reflective and considerate of others, but she is unarguably this by the end of SEED Destiny, even earning judgmental Crazy Jealous Guy Rey's blessing. Although he still praises her as strong, she also became more openly gentle after her Relationship Upgrade with Shinn and showed a different kind of strength.
• No Sympathy: Despite knowing Shinn's entire family was killed and supposedly being his friend, Luna doesn't have much for him, constantly calling him immature and preferring Athrun. Eventually subverted in the last quarter of SEED Destiny, where she gains quite a bit of understanding after thinking Meyrin's been killed.
• Oh, Crap!: Has three of these moments.
  • The first was during the Battle of Orb, when she tries to shoot down Djbril, but the latter escapes because Lunamaria couldn't make the shot.
  • During the Final Battle of SEED Destiny. The first is when Athrun's Infinite Justice easily overpowers her Impulse and slices off it's arm, left reeling as she realizes how badly outmatched she is. The second is when she tries and fails to stop Shinn's berserk rampage, only able to stare back in shock upon realizing he can't tell friend from foe anymore and is about to tear right through her - and it's only because of Athrun saving her that he doesn't.
• Old Shame: By the time Freedom rolls around, she considers her service with Durandal this alongside Shinn. She also considers her former friendship with Agnes back in the military days until the latter betrays her and steals her boyfriend this, as well as what she thought of Shinn initially before he improved himself.
• Older and Wiser: A lot more mature in Freedom that she recognized her own shortcomings as a person when she was younger in the novelization compared to how she thinks now.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Inverted in SEED Destiny. Shinn is the only one who calls her "Luna".
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Being a ZAFT red ace, Luna's a perfectly competent if not exceptional pilot, capable of holding her own with Stella's Gaia using only a ZAKU Warrior. Unfortunately for her, she's on the same team as far-more-skilled Shinn and Rey, and ends up going up against even-more-skilled Neo/Mu and Athrun in the final battle of SEED Destiny.
• Palette Swap: In SEED Freedom, the Impulse Spec II's improved engine resulted in its three forms having different color schemes from their original counterparts. This is most noticeable with the Sword: the head, arms, and legs went from white to red, while the torso and shoulders went from red to black.
• Perky Female Minion: Subverted. Luna starts off the series as a Genki Girl, at the time Durandal could still come off as Ambiguously Evil. By the time it has becomes apparent that Durandal is the uncontested Big Bad of SEED Destiny, Luna has already lost most of her effervescent personality.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Downplayed in both SEED Destiny and SEED Freedom; both Lunamaria and Shinn's pilot suits are primarily red, but the inside of the helmets are pink and blue respectively.
• Pink Means Feminine: She's the only female pilot on Minerva and could have worn the standard uniform or presumably had a skirt of any other color, but it's this trope.
• Rank Up: In SEED Freedom, after ZAFT adopted the Alliance's military ranks following the end of the second war^note As heard in the drama CDs from the HD Remastered Blu-rasy, Lunamaria was initially an Ensign. By the time of the movie, she's now a Lieutenant Junior Grade.
• Red Is Heroic: In SEED Freedom, her Compass uniform and pilot suit are all primarily red, and she's part of the heroes' team now. Same goes for her GELGOOG Menace. The Sword Impulse Spec II is also more red than the original version.
• Relationship Upgrade: She and Shinn go from being friends who bicker and aren't very focused on each other to having a romantic relationship and supporting each other emotionally.
• Second Love: Shinn, after they each lose their respective first choices.
• Shorttank: While undoubtedly attractive, Luna isn't nearly as feminine as other female cast members.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Meyrin. Whether it's attitude, hairstyle, uniform, job, or relationship with Athrun, pretty much everything about her and her sister is different. The only thing they seem to agree on is that Shinn is immature and Athrun seems impressive, especially by comparison. Interestingly, both sisters' behaviors were switched around when meeting Lacus (the real one), in the Quarters CD drama set post SEED Destiny, Lunamaria was really nervous at the idea while Meyrin was really calm when meeting her earlier in SEED Destiny.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Inverted in SEED Freedom — when Lunamaria sees it was Shinn trying to take her hostage while hijacking the Millennium, she happily embraced him before smacking him repeatedly. But then hugs him again.
• Sole Survivor: In SEED Freedom, not her personally but her GELGOOG Menace is the only one of Compass's original mobile suit squad to survive the entire movie. All but it and Agnes's GYAN Strom are either destroyed or ruined after the mid film battle and Agnes's was wrecked by Lunamaria herself in Impulse in the finale, while the GELGOOG was given to Hilda who got it through the finale undamaged.
• There Are No Therapists: If there were, Luna might not have decided that clinging to Shinn and My Country, Right or Wrong were the only ways she had of coping with her sister's and idol's suspicious "deaths". Of course, given that there was never any help for her teammates and since the Chairman's entire goal is for no one to question anything, it's not surprising the trope continues to be played straight.
• Third Act Stupidity: Given her spying mission on Athrun, you'd think she would be suspicious of there actually being two Lacuses or that there might be some foul play going on on ZAFT's part. She proceeds to do nothing with this information for the rest of SEED Destiny, even when it is globally revealed that there were two Lacus Clynes (though it seems to color her attitude somewhat). Perhaps most glaringly is how she accepted that Athrun and Meyrin were agents of LOGOS, despite all evidence to the contrary.
• Token Good Teammate: Of the redcoats post-perspective flip of SEED Destiny. It's not that her teammates are truly evil, but Luna's the only one who manages to keep her sense of perspective and avoid going totally over the line.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Boyish Short Hair Action Girl to Meyrin's and Meer's girly girls.
• Took a Level in Badass: In SEED Freedom, the GELGOOG Menace is a significant improvement over her old ZAKU Warrior, which it replaces as the new ZAFT mainstay. This extends to Luna herself - she's shown to take more accurate shots thanks to the Gelgoog's long-range loadout; She even successfully snipes down a nuclear missile, a far cry from how she missed Djibril's shuttle back in SEED Destiny. And then she gets the Impulse Spec II which can now use a METEOR unit, an equipment only used by the Freedom, the Justice, the Strike Freedom and the Infinite Justice Gundams. The Impulse Spec II is the only known unit to use the METEOR units without a nuclear reactor in the unit itself or the METEOR like the ones Serpent Tail uses.
• We Used to Be Friends: Lunamaria stopped being friends with Agnes after she stole her then-boyfriend from her, even though her and Agnes were quite close at the time. Slightly downplayed as Agnes herself is not aware of this as Lunamaria would rather remain cordial but at a distance rather than let Agnes know that she was affected by the incident. Even so, Lunamaria still somewhat cares for Agnes in the novel as she was worried about even her not returning after the Foundation enacts their plan, notably thinking of her by name along with Kira, Hilda and Shinn while the rest were seen as the others and the Archangel crew, Mu and Murrue included. Officially happens after learning Agnes has betrayed Compass.

Rey Za Burrel

Main mecha: ZGMF-1001/M Blaze ZAKU Phantom (white), ZGMF-X666S Legend Gundam

Voiced by: Toshihiko Seki, Houko Kuwashima (young) (Japanese); Kirby Morrow, Lisa Ann Beley (young) [Ocean dub], Kevin T. Collins, Michael Sinterniklaas (young) [NYAV Post dub] (English)

"Whatever kind of life it is — we want to keep on living, if we can."

The third of the Minerva's pilot trio in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. He is calm, stoic, and firmly loyal to Durandal — as well as a mentor to Shinn, providing some much-needed stability to offset Shinn's volatile emotions. When the others are confused, questioning, or doubtful, it's Rey who brings them back to focus on their mission. He also displays a penetrating intelligence and grasp of both tactics and strategy, which makes him a useful supporter and consultant for both Shinn and the Chairman.

He pilots a white ZGMF-1001/M Blaze ZAKU Phantom, performing the same function as Lunamaria (standing atop the Minerva and providing fire support). Eventually he gets his own Gundam — the ZGMF-X666S Legend — and begins to demonstrate exactly what he is capable of; he and Shinn provide most of the muscle for ZAFT in the later battles.

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• Ace Pilot: Like his brother before him, he is a sniper who keeps his distance and picking off enemies one at a time. At least until he gets the Legend, with which he can Beam Spam like both the Freedom and Providence from SEED.
• Ace Custom: His first suit, the Blaze ZAKU Phantom, a Mecha-Mook painted white. Unlike Lunamaria, Rey uses the ZAKU Phantom which is a higher-spec version of the ZAKU Warrior given to ace pilots or commanders like Yzak and later Dearka.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Makes an Early-Bird Cameo in the SEED HD Remaster Episode 39 along with the Hawke sisters instead of being introduced in SEED Destiny proper.
• Affably Evil: Rey is a loyal friend and effective subordinate, so long as you're on his side. However, he's also a badly damaged Manipulative Bastard who thinks that humans are scum and wants to install a One World Order based on genetic determinism, and is willing to cross any lines to get there.
• Anti-Villain: Rey honestly thinks he's making the world a better place, but his methods are ruthless, he tends to be unforgiving and he's not shy about shooting people to do it. At one point he tells Shinn that he won't accomplish anything by being too kind.
• Arch-Enemy: Considers Kira as his enemy, as revealed near the end of SEED Destiny.
• Avenging the Villain: Given his intense focus on destroying Kira, who killed Le Creuset and represents everything Rau loathed, this likely plays a role in Rey's motivations.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: After being noticeably brusque and irritable with Lunamaria and clingy with Shinn for the entire last quarter of SEED Destiny, he finally tells Shinn just before the final battle that Lunamaria "is strong. Trust her more." And he even smiles while he does it. It's not only a Pet the Dog moment in a very dark and chaotic couple of episodes, it's a nice reminder that the three of them are still friends.
• Badass Normal: Rey is a clone of Al Da Flaga and like Creuset, he is actually a Natural and not a Coordinator. Regardless, Rey can effectively pilot Coordinator machinery and is skilled enough that he stands out among even Coordinators, becoming an elite pilot in ZAFT and the pilot of the Legend Gundam.
• Bash Brothers: With Shinn in SEED Destiny. They make a formidable and frightening team wielding the Destiny and Legend on the battlefield. A downplayed version with Lunamaria when in their ZAKUs.
• Be Yourself: How Kira rebukes him after a major Oh, Crap! moment in SEED Destiny when Rey tries to invoke Rau out of his own anger and psychological confusion.
  Kira: That life you are living is your own! Not his!
• Beam Spam: The Legend has a total of 26 beam guns across its ten DRAGOON units, and it can fire them while they're still docked, allowing it to achieve this trope in Earth as well as in space.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Rey is one of the quietest and most-mannered characters for the first part of the show... and one of the most violent, ruthless, and lethal after that, including being the one who shoots the Big Bad of SEED Destiny.
• BFG: Legend's beam rifle is longer and larger than a typical firearm for a MS (though not as massive as the Providence's shoulder-mounted beam rifle/bazooka).
• Bigger Stick: Although understated, the Legend is among the best Gundams in the entire storyline, on par with the Destiny, Strike Freedom and Infinite Justice. Although on paper it doesn't seem to be anything impressive (it even has less Beam Spam than Providence), it is much faster, has better offensive and defensive options, and can use its heavier firepower even in Earth. Two of its Attack Drones are capable of close range engagement as well, and when combined with the drone's speed the Legend is a nightmare for most mobile suits specializing in close combat. Even Athrun in his Infinite Justice avoids a one-to-one confrontation with the Legend.
• Broken Pedestal: Convinced by Kira's words that he is his own person and not a second Rau Le Creuset, Rey is the one who shoots Durandal, in the very end of SEED Destiny.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Rey practices at the firing range frequently. Ultimately, he's the one who takes Durandal down with one shot at the end of SEED Destiny.
• Clones Are People, Too: Kira Yamato eventually convinces him to be himself rather than living under Rau Le Creuset's shadow, which leads to his Villainous Breakdown. This is also why he is ironically the most prominent living example of why the Destiny Plan was never going to work.
• Clone Degeneration: Just like Rau, he suffers from this as his telomeres are shorter than they should be. Since he's younger than Rau though it's not quite as bad with him as he only starts to need the medicine that kept Rau alive at the very end of the show and in small doses. Rau by contrast at that point in SEED needed to down a chunk of the bottle to keep his seizures down. If Rau was any indication Rey probably would have been able to last about a decade more with the medication, but Rey would die at the end of the show long before the telomere problem could become potentially fatal to him.
• Conflicting Loyalties:
  • Foreshadowed in a Bilingual Bonus when he and Shinn go to meet Durandal for the final time at Messiah. Rey ostensibly addresses Durandal, but uses ore to refer to himself instead of watashi^note  Rau's pronoun. Like Athrun, another character with consistently Conflicting Loyalties, Rey used the personal/formal ore/watashi throughout the show, suggesting he may have had these all along or been foreshadowed even further back, which means he's actually talking to Shinn, who visibly notices. In the end, Rey picks "his [Shinn's] tomorrow", not Durandal's.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Rey is not happy when anyone or anything tries to get between him and Shinn, his Only Friend^note Athrun, and the brief possibility of Stella taking him away, but most obviously with Lunamaria after her Relationship Upgrade with Shinn. The fact it makes him Not So Stoic suggests it's understandably pretty personal, not just political or philosophical.
• Custom Uniform: He wears a white and purple variant of the Minerva's pilot suits.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Rey has a complete breakdown trying to infiltrate the abandoned Lodonia facility, because Rau apparently rescued him as a small kid from a place that was quite similar — and that's the only thing we know about his history, other than his being a Flaga clone, having no parents, and then losing Rau at the end of the prior war. He's pretty serene about it, but still doesn't go into most details.
• Dark Is Evil: Downplayed. In his case, it's the Legend Gundam that wears these colors.
• Deflector Shield: The Legend is equipped with a pair of beam shield generators, just like the Destiny.
• Double Weapon: Equipped with two beam javelins (really just ordinary beam sabers) in the Legend's legs, although Rey only seems to use them as a combined doubled-ended beam saber rather than Dual Wielding.
• The Dragon: He operates subtly as Durandal's, enforcing his will aboard the Minerva, and acting as his primary physical defense.
• Drone Deployer: Being the Providence's successor, the Legend also has the DRAGOON System. Eight of them are equipped with 2 standard beam guns; the other two are larger and are equipped with 5 beam cannons and 4 beam spikes, the former being powerful enough to tear through gigantic mobile armors and the latter can penetrate their Deflector Shields (which is weak against close range beam weapons such as beam sabers). Unlike the Providence, they can also be used while attached to the Legend's backpack as well as after deployment, allowing it to be more consistent with its Beam Spam.
• Evil Mentor: Can be considered one to Shinn in SEED Destiny. Rey keeps Shinn in line, is his greatest advisor and provides him with nearly all of his emotional stability and support, but he's also using his friend to his and Durandal's own ends, ensuring that Shinn's actions match the agenda they ostensibly share. Worse yet, he can't fix any of Shinn's underlying emotional issues, which only leaves the kid more screwed up than he started out, while simultaneously feeding him a With Us or Against Us attitude.
• The Evils of Free Will: Shares the Chairman's belief that free will is what ultimately leads to suffering, and thinks that if everyone has their path in life laid out for them in advance the world will be a better place.
• Foil: To Rau Le Creuset. Both are by-products of very cruel experimentation (Rau being the bribed clone of a Narcissist and Rey being a prisoner and likely experimented on as a small child with no identity whatsoever), they take pills for their wellbeing, and they pilot Ace Custom mobile suits before upgrading to Gundams with Attack Drones. However, while Rau wants to cause all of mankind to exterminate themselves, Rey desires a better future, even if it means putting everyone into a twisted kind of peace. Rau manipulated many folks to achieve his goals, including his higher-ups and their enemies while Rey is subjugated to Durandal, sharing his ideals. Finally, Rau is defeated by Kira and decimated by the GENESIS while still believing humans were a self-destructing species, while Rey is only defeated by Kira in their final sortie and subconsciously agrees with Kira's views by shooting Durandal before dying in the Big Bad's Collapsing Lair.
• Freak Out: He has one at the Extended lab in SEED Destiny, foreshadowing both his clone status and his eventual Villainous Breakdown.
• Freudian Excuse: Rey's "childhood" consisted of being a clone with no family and essentially no identity, surviving as a prisoner or a lab experiment for a significant period of time. That he was able to grow and function and stay as composed as he does speaks volumes for his Determinator status — and possibly his Newtype one.
• Freudian Trio: Deconstructed in SEED Destiny. Shinn is the Id, Luna the Ego, and Rey the Superego, sharing the role in the group with Athrun. However, for most of the show Luna consistently focuses on Athrun, leaving Shinn with Rey, then ends up competing with Rey for Shinn's time and attention — and still never once sides with Shinn against him, or with Rey against Shinn, for that matter.
• Friend Versus Lover: Rey gets downright bitchy when Shinn starts getting closer to Lunamaria, and does his best to shut her out of the decision making process, given that Luna could express doubts about the Destiny Plan, which Rey needs Shinn to believe in. Also, Shinn's the Only Friend Rey has.
• Gender Flip:
  • Of Sayla Mass from Mobile Suit Gundam, given his role as The Quiet One, keen intelligence, blond beauty, strict demeanor, sharp tongue, Dark and Troubled Past, and problematic, masked older sibling who's abandoned him.
  • He's also a calm, stoic clone with a white color scheme who hangs around Shinn Asuka. Many comparisons have been made with Rei Ayanami of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
• Gray Is Useless: Subverted. The Legend is still mainly gray with Phase Shift activated — and a highly useful mobile suit.
• Hero Worship: Similar to Stella and Neo, he has a very high view of Durandal in SEED Destiny — who likely appeared as a more Reasonable Authority Figure than anybody in his horrifically Dark and Troubled Past, even if Durandal tends to treat him as an Ignored Enamored Underling — and his capabilities for changing the world.
  Rey: (to Athrun and Meyrin) I won't forgive you for betraying Gil!
  Rey: (after shooting Durandal) Gil! I'm sorry!
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: From target practice and discovering crimes against humanity, to sharing a room to plotting combat tactics, to freeing Stella and getting thrown in the brig, to bringing humanity to the brink of a One World Order, Shinn and Rey are always together.
• Hidden Depths: As shown in episode 15 and 29 of SEED Destiny, he has a long-held fondness for playing the piano, at which he's quite skilled. Lunamaria and Agnes acknowledge that his piano playing sounds beautiful.
• I Choose to Stay: In the finale of SEED Destiny, Rey chooses to remain on the Messiah as it goes down in flames, opting to die with the people that were the closest thing he had to parents.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Of the cool and unflinching variety.
• Identical Stranger: As a child he's shown to look almost exactly like a younger Stella Loussier and is voiced in the original by Houko Kuwashima, who plays both her and Flay Allster, Rau's other Rescue Introduction. Given their similar backgrounds and roles in Shinn's life, it's probably not coincidental.
• Ignored Enamored Underling: Rey is Durandal's most fervent supporter and has known him for years, shown by a head pat when he was smaller, but Durandal only allows an ecstatic Rey to hug him when Talia is watching, and doesn't return the affection in kind.
• Instant Expert: Unlike Lunamaria in the Force Impulse, Rey was instantly able to adjust to mid-air battles in the Earth's atmosphere once he gets the Legend Gundam.
• Irony: In an effort to keep Shinn loyal to Durandal, he does his best to stop Shinn from listening to anyone else. Yet ultimately, he ends up being swayed by Kira's words, and shoots Durandal at the end of SEED Destiny. Also, long before Kira even hits him with the fact that Clones Are People, Too, we see that he is completely nothing like Rau, at least in terms of how they view the world and what they intend to do about it. And neither of them are like Al Da Flaga either. Meaning that the biggest enforcer of Durandal and the Destiny Plan is the biggest proof that the their logic is completely horsecrap.
• The Last Dance: Much like Rau Le Creuset, drugs stave off the Clone Degeneration to some degree, yet he tells Shinn he'll die shortly. This clearly factors into his desire to see the Destiny Plan implemented soon.
• Light Is Not Good: Blond hair, blue eyes, white mobile suit and pilot uniform...you get the idea by now.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Legend is much faster than the Providence, fast enough to fight toe-to-toe with the Strike Freedom, and has absolutely no issues avoiding the latter's own Beam Spam.
• Living Emotional Crutch: He acts as the voice of reason for Shinn both on and off the Battlefield. Deconstructed in that Rey actively encourages this to keep Shinn under his sway- something that proves to be a mistake. Rey makes a tactical error in the final battle when he orders Shinn to go on alone, apparently not grasping that without his presence Shinn would start to fall apart at the end of SEED Destiny. Shinn also appears to function as his, given their Only Friends mutuality.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Look at him. He's got blonde hair reaching to his shoulders and he's pretty handsome.
• Manipulative Bastard: He has Shinn wrapped around his little finger for the entire duration of SEED Destiny, maintains control over the Minerva through his role as The Political Officer, and almost drives Kira into a Heroic BSoD during the final battle by revealing his cloned nature. Both Justified and Subverted because he believes he needs to be his even more manipulative "brother" Rau; a view fostered onto him by Durandal. However, Kira rebuffs his arguments, showing that Rey is not the same Rau, and that he himself had been manipulated.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Rey is an obvious reference to Amuro Ray, the franchise's first Gundam pilot and Arch-Enemy of Char Aznable (who was voiced by Durandal's Shūichi Ikeda).
  • It also means "king" in Spanish, considering this show's Chess Motifs ...and how the end turns out.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Gains the Legend Gundam as the series approaches its final arc of SEED Destiny; this new machine proves to be far more powerful than his ZAKU Phantom.
• Mistaken for Gay: Rey's partner preferences are unknown. According to Fukuda, Agnes thinks Rey is not into women because he ignores her advances towards him.
• Mythology Gag: Several from Mobile Suit Gundam.
  • His Meaningful Name, as in legendary Amuro Ray, The Hero, as well as his "White Kid" nickname. 'Za Burrel' appears to have the same katakana as the obscure MSG-retelling novel "For The Barrel".
  • As a Gender Flip of Sayla Mass from the original series, Rey has a great deal of loyalty and affection for Gilbert Durandal, whose seiyuu voiced her Aloof Big Brother — with the exact same voice.
  • Well, everyone was wondering who'd get the bazooka to the head in a show featuring Shuichi Ikeda and Mami Koyama...
  • And notable with all the other ones, Rey's forehead wounded and bleeding at the end, referencing the end of the series.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: According to Fukuda, Agnes tried to start a relationship with him but Rey did not have any interest in Agnes. Rey witnessing how poorly Agnes treated Shinn was what probably caused him to ignore her.
• Not So Stoic: During his Freak Out at Lodonia, and his Villainous Breakdown at the end.
• Number of the Beast: ZGMF-X666S Legend.
• Only Friend: Shinn and Rey are one another's for most of SEED Destiny. There's official art describing them as "alone together". Given that Rau is dead and Durandal is a pathological Narcissist, it exponentially increases Shinn's importance to Rey. In the prequel "Moonlight Valkyrie" novel, it is a sure-sign of their friendship where seeing Shinn's enthusiasm to wanting to better himself from a failing student was one of the few times that made Rey genuinely smile.
• Only Sane Man: Double Subverted. Rey appears to be the rational one in the Minerva's crew, but he's actually the single most damaged person on the ship... which doesn't actually negate the fact he's got pretty decent advice for Shinn and Luna a lot of the time.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Any time Rey is not stoic, quiet and perfectly composed, something major is going on. Yelling while both attempting to shoot Athrun and Meyrin and later trying to get Lunamaria to let him be alone with Shinn are two of the major examples.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: As with Lunamaria, Rey pilots a ZAKU (and mainly tasked with fire support) for most of the series, leaving Shinn and Athrun to receive most of the spotlight in their flight-capable Gundams. He breaks out of this later when he becomes the pilot of the Legend.
• Pet the Dog: His conversation with Shinn before the final battle of SEED Destiny. He gently asks if Shinn's all right, reassures him Lunamaria is fine, then makes a major switch from his earlier behavior and tells him she's strong and he should trust her more. He even manages to smile, while Shinn himself isn't too happy. Finally, he tells Shinn Shinn's going to save Orb. Given the Downer Ending the two of them subsequently had, they still had one last very sincere True Companions moment.
  • Rey is very nice to Lunamaria when Shinn is not concerned. He gave up his hotel room so she could have it under the pretense that she is a lady and when the Second Stages were stolen, he immediately shielded her from the explosion. He even genuinely complimented Lunamaria during her first sortie in the Impulse Gundam.
  • Rey is sympathetic to Stella, possibly because they were both raised in laboratories at points in their lives. How he helped Shinn with Stella is almost opposite of his approval of Shinn's relationship with Lunamaria in the second-half of the series. Stella is an Earth Alliance soldier whose presence on the battlefield may affect Shinn's ability to fight and Durandal's plans consequently, yet he helps Shinn return her to Neo so that she survives. Meanwhile, Lunamaria is their ally who is helping them with Durandal's cause, yet he begins to shut her out of conversations even though she is a skilled pilot who can assist the two with their strategies and battles.
• Team Dad: Rey sometimes takes this role when its him, Shinn and Lunamaria on the battlefields. He is also a literal case of the trope name as Rey is a clone of Al Da Flaga, Mu's father.
• The Philosopher: Very much in the same vein as Lacus, Durandal, and Le Creuset, he spends a lot of time brooding about life, meaning, nature and actions.
• The Political Officer: Very quietly plays this role on the Minerva, ensuring that Luna, Shinn, and the rest of the crew stay loyal to the Chairman.
• Prophecy Twist: Rey's effective Last Words to Shinn, which, given how winning the final battle and allowing Durandal to use the Requiem on Orb would not qualify, may mean Rey knew they would have to lose... and was fine with it as a better thing for Shinn.
  Rey: You're going to save that country. (smile)
• The Quiet One: As befitting a Gender Flip of Sayla from Mobile Suit Gundam, Rey doesn't waste his words.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Rey gives a blisteringly withering one to Athrun after the latter punches Shinn for taking down the Freedom, icily pointing out that Shinn was Just Following Orders (ostensibly reasonable and legit ones in this case) and reminding Athrun of what actual military responsibilities are. It's so striking, Athrun has a flashback of Lacus verbally eviscerating him two years ago in a similar manner.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Shinn's Red. Just look at their eyes.
• Rescue Introduction: With Rau, who found an imprisoned and much smaller Rey years ago and saved him.
• The Reveal: A rather subdued one, when Shinn (and the viewers) see him taking some of Rau Le Creuset's trademark little pills, and he casually remarks that he suffers from short telomeres due to being a clone.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Rau. Rau’s a flamboyant and dramatic masked white coat with wavy hair and more Heroic Build who admires Lacus, works alone, and doesn’t bother telling Patrick Zala he betrayed him; Rey’s a quiet, businesslike redcoat, with straight hair, a delicate build, and no mask. He hero-worships Durandal, always cooperates, shows extensive loyalty to his friends and comrades, and cries profusely and apologizes after shooting Durandal. Contrast their responses to Athrun over his Kira issues — Rau is initially extremely sympathetic and tells Athrun he can’t make him shoot his friend even if Athrun is a soldier and Kira is an enemy; Rey finally gives him a "Reason You Suck" Speech and points out that Kira is an enemy (again) and Athrun seems to have lost all grasp of what being a soldier is.
• Significant Double Casting:
  • He shares Rau Le Creuset's voice actor in the original Japanese version and most dubs.^note Rey was voiced by the late Kirby Morrow in the original English dub instead of Rau's VA, Mark Oliver. The NYAV post dub corrected this by having them both voiced by Kevin T. Collins Rey, like Rau, is a clone of Al Da Flaga.
  • In the Filipino dub, Rey instead shares his voice actor with Neo Roanoke, which isn't exactly a Dub-Induced Plot Hole since Mu La Flaga is biologically related to both Rey and Rau.
• The Smart Guy: Shinn and Luna's battlefield advisor by default in SEED Destiny. Shinn's life coach, also by default. Rey speaks very intelligently and constantly tries to explain things to everyone else, usually because he's questioned about it.
• The Stoic: Always calm, always controlled.
• Straw Nihilist: Subverted. While Rey has a very negative view of humanity, he consciously rejects Rau-style Omnicidal Mania, believing instead that Utopia Justifies the Means. Further cemented in the finale of SEED Destiny, when the realization that he can be his own person and make his own choices — rather than blindly following the path set out before him by others — leads him to betray the Destiny Plan and shoot Durandal.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Rey is generally protective, determinedly rational, and reliably on the icy side of calm... unless something from his Dark and Troubled Past is triggered, in which case he can be very sweet and open, break down completely, or do his best to shoot someone – or all of the above. In this aspect he's not too different from Rau, despite their general Sibling Yin-Yang.
• Sympathy for the Devil: He's the only person other than Shinn to expresses some sympathy for Stella's situation in SEED Destiny. He also has some sympathy for Le Creuset, whom he regards as a rescuer, as well as a brother/other incarnation of himself.
• Team Dad: Rey shows shades of this when he provides advice to Shinn and occasionally Lunamaria, acting as the rational one of the three. The ironic part is that Rey himself is a clone of Mu's father, Al Da Flaga who is known to be a terrible father.
• Those Two Guys: Rey is this to Shinn in their downtime and in battle once he gets the Legend Gundam. When in battle with his ZAKU Phantom, he is this with Lunamaria.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Becomes this to Lunamaria in the final act of SEED Destiny where he begins shutting her out of important discussions with Shinn once they get the Destiny and Legend, a far cry with how well he treated her at the start of the series in their few moments together. He still respects her but a lot more harsh the closer Durandal gets to completing his plans where he needs Shinn to focus on fighting.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Zigzagged. Despite genuinely caring for him, defending him, and even depending on him, Rey is not necessarily the best influence on Shinn. While the friendship is quite real, Rey wants to use Shinn to further their ideal world since he can't do it himself due to his short lifespan. He goes to great lengths to keep Shinn dependent on him, such as having Athrun framed for treason, and being a Crazy Jealous Guy where Shinn and Luna are concerned. All the while remaining unaware (or indifferent) to Shinn's failing psyche. In the end, though, he compliments Lunamaria and tells Shinn to trust her, and ultimately shoots Durandal with the excuse that it was for Shinn's sake.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Ultimately subverted. For most of SEED Destiny, Rey's loyalty to Durandal is his signature trait. However, this loyalty is based more on a childish affection after a horrific ordeal and a belief Durandal will change the world, ignoring the fact that he has no place in Durandal's schemes other than as a substitute for Rau or Athrun, and when his Arch-Enemy Kira points out that he can, in fact, choose to be whomever he wants, Rey finally snaps.
  • Played straight, however, with Shinn, whom he always backs — even freeing Stella when Durandal wanted her as a propaganda specimen, at the potential cost of his own life and Shinn's — and ultimately chooses over Durandal.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: If Durandal's flashbacks are any indicator.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Why Rey is loyal to Durandal; he honestly believes that Durandal's world will be a better one, regardless of how many bodies are used to line the foundations.
• Vague Age: Rey's age is unknown given his backstory. The hints the audience has are that he is a clone of Al Da Flaga but when he was created was unknown. Rey is confirmed to be younger than Rau Le Creuset which means he is below 27 (Rau is 25 in SEED, so he would be 27 in SEED Destiny), indicating they were not cloned at the same time. Rau also found Rey when he was a small child. The few times Rey's military academy days were shown was that the other students he was with were all around his age, Shinn and Lunamaria included and he tends to hang around the similarly aged Shinn and Lunamaria.
• Villainous Breakdown: An utterly epic one, during the final battle of SEED Destiny. Kira convinces him that clone or not, he is his own person who has to make his own decisions. Rey takes this rather hard. By the end, he's crying for his "mother" in Talia's arms as Messiah Base caves in on them.
• Villainous Friendship: Had one with Durandal and Le Creuset. He has one with Shinn as well, though Shinn's hardly evil.
• Villain Respect: Not a villain in the novel but definitely an antagonist towards Shinn; Agnes has this towards Rey in the "Moonlight Valkyrie" novel. Rey is the only person Agnes has never been antagonistic or ill-willed to, having full respect towards him. She found it fitting that he became a FAITH-level pilot and enjoyed his piano playing. Even when she insulted Shinn and Lunamaria for siding with Durandal in Freedom, Agnes never spoke ill of Rey.
• Villains Out Shopping: Like Nicol from the previous series, Rey is particularly fond of playing the piano when he's not on-duty.
• Visionary Villain: Shares Durandal's vision of a changed and apparently peaceful future for all humanity.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Having seen what his "other self" already tried to do as well as what human fears, greed, and violence managed to do to children like himself and Stella, and even to his Only Friend Shinn, Rey is convinced that something has to change, and backs Durandal as the most likely way of accomplishing it.
• When He Smiles: His smile isn't seen much due to his stoicism, but it's positively angelic.
• With Us or Against Us: The show's main proponent of this attitude.
• Zen Survivor: Probably the clearest example in the series, if not CE. Rey's eerie calm, cryptic remarks, idiosyncratic morality and enigmatic behavior are all ways of dealing with the Dehumanization and majorly traumatic nature of his Dark and Troubled Past.