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YMMV / Mobile Suit Gundam SEED

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  • Adaptation Displacement: Some of the scenes from the HD Remaster that originate from the Special Edition release are often mistaken for being created for the former.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation:
    • Lord Uzumi's involvement with the G-Weapon Project. While Rondo Mina Sahaku initiated Morgenroete's involvement with the G-Weapon Project as established in Astray, how much Lord Uzumi knew about it remains in question. Kisaka certainly claimed that Lord Uzumi was uninvolved but notably Uzumi himself never makes a definitive statement in private. He publicly claimed responsibility and stepped down as Orb's Chief Representative in any case. So whether he viewed the project as Necessarily Evil to maintain Orb's neutrality in the face of ZAFT and the EA's technological advancement is left to the viewer. It's possible that he trusted Admiral Halberton enough to let the project go forward.
    • Due to being the only scene of its sort until the sequel series and Kira not responding to anything Flay says, some fans assume Flay's Redemption Equals Death scene to not be supernatural and instead either be a hallucination Kira is experiencing out of grief or a Dying Dream Flay is experiencing in her last moments (which would make Kira's Heroic Second Wind less from Flay's apology and more a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to kill Rau).
  • Americans Hate Tingle:
    • Kira Yamato is one of the single-most popular Gundam characters of all time in Japan, ranking high on popularity polls even more than 20 years on. The western fandom on the other hand find the story's constant service towards the character to be a major point of contention, and think he's uninteresting at best, and utterly despises him at worst. This is arguably the single-biggest point of contention between the Japanese and English-speaking Gundam fandoms, leading to both sides wondering how the other can view Kira in such a way.
    • Flay is a Base-Breaking Character in the west. Not so much in Japan, where she's generally well-liked. Which is ironic since the director had actually thought she'd be the type of character to appeal to Western audiences, but things ended up reversed.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Flay is a polarizing character. She spends much of the first half of the show being manipulative for a sympathetic-but-unjustified reason, and later attempts to make up for it. Either she was a Jerkass Woobie who redeemed herself in the end, or a selfish asshole too wrapped up in her own problems to empathize with anyone else and her later actions were too little too late... with a third option being that yes, she's a selfish, broken asshole and this is a substantial part of the point, with this interpretation being that she's an example of a somewhat catty rich girl whose entire world is shattered by the war violently entering her life and who is a hopelessly broken victim of the war long before her death in combat.
    • Lacus, given her status as an idol singer, which some fans feel doesn't fit really well with the series' tone (this having long been a staple of the rival Macross franchise). Her turning out to have a large amount of political clout while being a teenage idol singer also pushes Suspension of Disbelief a little thin. Her worst critics argue that she comes off as a hopelessly naive person who lucks her way into victory and power. However, there are plenty of people who feel that her portrayal as a Relena Peacecraft-esque alternative political figure who is actually far sharper and less naive than she appears works fine, and even some who don't mind the Idol Singer angle given that the Gundam franchise is all Sci-Fi Humongous Mecha anime, making it all beyond the Suspension of Disbelief to start with.
    • Kira himself. For everyone who hates the "Jesus Yamato" angle and finds it makes him overbearing and boring, there's someone who finds him awesome and likes that at least one Gundam protagonist is willing to actually stop killing people instead of doing it and then endlessly Wangsting about it. In 2018, Kira scored high for both the best Gundam character poll, and the worst Gundam character poll, so it's pretty hard to find a consensus on him.
  • Broken Base:
    • The HD Remaster has also spawned the matter of Nicol's death, which was retconned in the Remaster to make it appear largely accidental. In the original, he attacks Kira and dies when Kira reflexively counters. In the remake, he attacks Kira and dies when Kira dodges, because the attack carries him into Kira's sword anyway. Here's a comparison video. The base is split over whether this is an example of Adaptational Self-Defense and an attempt to make Kira less responsible for his death, or whether it's a minor choreography change that doesn't really mean anything (as regardless of the version, Kira still feels the weight of what he did).
    • When the NYAV dub itself came out, it was split into two bases regarding comparisons to its predecessor. Was it on equal grounds as Ocean's dub? Or was it an unsatisfying, unnecessary mess that did not need to exist in the first place?
  • Catharsis Factor:
  • Common Knowledge: It is easy to believe that Nicol is cowardly because of his kind nature and how he was described by an early Yzak. In reality, Nicol is a keen strategist as he managed to infiltrate Artemis all on his own. He is also very reckless as he tried to pursue the Sword Strike when Artemis was crumbling down and recklessly tried to defend Athrun from the Sword Strike on Earth, the second battle leading to his death.
    • The three Boosted Men were believed to be death row inmates who had the choice of execution or becoming test subjects for Blue Cosmos. No official sources or information allude to this in their backstory while Destiny indirectly denies this with Clotho whose data was found in Lodonia where children were trained to become Biological CPUs.
  • Complete Monster: The sociopathic Muruta Azrael, leader of the terrorist organization Blue Cosmos, wants to kill all the genetically engineered Coordinators and takes delight in their slaughter, making the omnicidal Rau Le Creuset seem sympathetic. A raging hypocrite who uses drugs and brainwashing to turn children into the Extended, while claiming that genetic engineering is a sin, Azrael is behind both the Atlantic Federation and the Earth Alliance Forces, whom he manages to corrupt and goes out of his way to make sure that neutral nations are co-opted or destroyed. Having started the war by launching a nuclear assault on the Coordinator homeland, Azrael hopes to end it the same way, willing to blow up his own men to do it. The side-story Stargazer adds some further atrocities to his name, showing that he regularly took children from their parents, put them through brutal training and brainwashed them with anti-Coordinator propaganda in an effort at creating pilots who could match Coordinators in combat but without the drug problems of the Extended. A man moved by hate, Azrael's sole motivation is that he was bullied by Coordinators when he was a kid.
  • Critical Backlash: Some of the hate for this show's sequel has seeped back to this series, leading to a great deal of Mis-blamed.
  • Die for Our Ship: If you like Kira/Lacus, Flay is a rapist whore. If you like Kira/Flay, Lacus is annoying. There is NO middle ground.
  • Draco in Leather Pants:
    • Muruta Azrael. Some fans either downplay or handwave his atrocities in the show because he's so pretty and hot. Also note that his Freudian Excuse is supposed to make him come off as more monstrous rather than less.
    • Shani, Clotho, and Orga get the same treatment. Yes, they're Slave Mooks forced into the war by Azrael, but that doesn't make them any less vicious or insane.
    • Do we even need to bring up Rau Le Creuset and the leather pants fans give him? Some people actually view his being an Omnicidal Maniac as a positive, on the logic that the show is filled with horrible people and humanity deserves to be wiped out in the Cosmic Era timeline... which ignores his own efforts in feeding and escalating the conflict in the first place. Or maybe they do acknowledge that and in fact encourage his efforts.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Evil Is Cool:
  • Fandom Rivalry: With fans of Universal Century Gundam series. UC fans tend to view this series as an easy target for deriving too much from the first series, while fans of SEED tend to either prefer their series' take on the events and concepts or simply don't appreciate the heavy bashing UC fans sometimes give the show.
  • Fan Nickname: Clotho, Orga, and Shani are called "The Druggies" for their dependence on drugs to perform at their peak.
  • Fanon:
    • Fanfictions like having Dearka be the perverted type, likely originating from him reading a swimsuit magazine in The Turning Point note . His interactions with Miriallia bolsters this as his first comment when seeing her was being surprised they had girls like her on the ship and on the GundamInfo subtitles, he frequently refers to her as "Honey".
    • Fanfictions with Shiho Hahnenfuss varies her personality where a common one is giving her a serious Consummate Professional type of character. Her actual personality in official manga and side materials gives her character a strong sense of duty but also a friendly side. Some believe that the CGUE DEEP Arms in the SEED MSV Astray OVA was piloted by Shiho as she is the only known pilot to use that unit.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: In the episode "Star Falling in Space", Kira fails to protect the civilian shuttle from being shot down by the Duel which became one of the traumatic moments in his life. Come the finale, he's also unable to protect Flay's escape pod from being shot by Rau's Providence Gundam, resulting in her demise.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: At her appearance at Sakura-Con 2024 in Seattle to promote Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom, Rie Tanaka said that she became a fan of the Gundam franchise after she watched Mobile Suit Gundam Wing during her high school days, and had a crush on Heero Yuy. Rie also said that she originally auditioned for Flay, but she got the role of Lacus after singing one of Lacus's songs. To recap: Rie originally auditioned to be the Cosmic Era's version of Dorothy Catalonia (Flay); instead, she got the role of the Cosmic Era's version of Relena Darlian (Lacus).
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The joke on how Lacus, an Idol Singer can easily sneak Kira Yamato into the Freedom Gundam's hangar and stealing it, and in general how many Gundams get stolen in the Gundam Seed in general becomes hilarious when the Rising Freedom, aka the Freedom's successor, gets its Gunpla data online leaked by faulty Gundam Metaverse security, allowing anyone with a 3D printer to make the Rising Freedom months before the official release.
    • Athrun being yelled at by the Hair-Trigger Temper Yzak is a lot funnier after the release of the drama CD and accompanying manga of Kira and Athrun's youth where Athrun was on Kira's case a lot with school assignments. Now Athrun knows how it feels to be on the receiving end of having someone be on his case all the time.
  • Iron Woobie:
    • Go ahead life. Torture Kira. He'll get over it, eventually.
    • Athrun Zala can also be considered this. Lost his mother in a nuclear strike, has to fight his long lost best friend, watches two of his closest friends and allies die due to his hesitation to fight Kira, has a General Ripper for a father, and is too socially awkward to emote or channel any of this grief until it boils over the top and he breaks down. Yet, he still manages to be possibly the best pilot in the series.
    • If you're charitable to Lacus, she fits in like a hand to a glove. She's sheltered and ultra naive. — but when the chips come down, she does her best to gather her resolve and do what she can to help. Only once she breaks down, and that's when she cries in Kira's arms while telling him about her dad's death.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The first half of the series retreads many plot points of the original 1979 series, and the Cosmic Era is the AU that is the most like the UC shows. This makes it a frequent target from UC fans.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Flay Allster, especially once she has her Heel Realization and tries to redeem herself. On one hand she's a self-absorbed, prejudiced and flawed Fille Fatale who's hellbent on revenge and manipulates the hell out of Kira. On the other, she's also a desperate girl who pretty much lost everything and barely knows how to handle herself in the world until her Character Development kicks in.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Some fans admit to finding Mu La Flaga to be the best part of the show and say that they would have preferred for him to be the main character.
  • Love to Hate: Rau Le Creuset, who is incredibly popular due to his brilliance, badassery, and ability to give a speech.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Commander Rau Le Creuset is a ZAFT officer plagued by abuses endured from his "father" from whom he was cloned. Believing all of humanity is suffering just as much as he is, Le Creuset sets out to kill everyone along with himself to end the agony. Playing the role of right hand to ZAFT's Chairman Patrick Zala, Le Creuset also sells secrets to the bigoted Muruta Azrael of the Earth Alliance's Blue Cosmos anti-Coordinator group, leading to the latter launching a genocidal attack and beginning a massive war. A brilliant tactician, Le Creuset leads his team of talented Mobile Suit pilots after the heroes, pursuing them at every turn and keeping the bloody conflict going even with their attempts to reveal the truth to the world. In the final battle, Le Creuset sets up Zala and Azrael to kill each other, leading to the deaths of both military leaders and nearly ushering in the end of all mankind. Even when beaten in battle by hero Kira Yamato, Le Creuset dies smiling, believing his plans have come to fruition and the rest of humanity will join him soon to be free from the pain of a life with conflict and suffering.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • Arnold Neumann, the helmsman of the Archangel, thanks to his Improbable Piloting Skills.
    • In a rare derogatory example: Kira Yamato is often called "Jesus Yamato" with frequent Plot Armor jokes. Moreso for the sequel.
    • According to some fans, Mu La Flaga can single-handedly take on the Gundam multiverse with his Moebius Zero and win.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Gundam SEED: Directed by Michael Bay. note 
    • Bloody Valentine/FOR THE PRESERVATION OF OUR BLUE AND PURE WORLD! explaination
    • Bow before your savior, invokedJesus Yamato. Explanation
    • "Nicol was fifteen! He loved the piano!" Explanation(spoilers) Occasionally rendered as "HE LOVED TO PLAY THE PIANO."
      • Subtitled version: "Nicol loved to play the piano. And he was only 15."
      • Parodied here.◊
      • Kira swung first! Explanation(spoilers)
    • Freedom Gundam: Taste the rainbow. Explanation
    • Gundam SNEED (formerly Gundam CHUCK's) Explanation
    • "Return of Mobile Suit Gundam", due to the anime bears resemblance to the original 1979 series.
    • The Many Deaths Of Flay Allster. Explanation
  • Memetic Psychopath: Lacus puts up a front of innocence to hide her true skills, but her kindness and good intentions are completely genuine. Fans on the other hand like to jokingly depict Lacus as an Evil Overlord who pulls strings behind everyone's backs to Take Over the World. This is so frequent that Dynasty Warriors: Gundam turned it into an Ascended Meme.
  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • Muruta Azrael is written as a Hate Sink and a Complete Monster who exists to make the other major villains in the show seem sympathetic in comparison, but considering some of the tropes we have him under here, that didn't quite work. His successor, Lord Djibril, seems to have been written with this in mind by having him lack Azrael's competency and charisma while retaining all of his worst traits.
    • As far as some fans are concerned, Rau Le Creuset is right about humanity in the Cosmic Era and him wiping out everyone is a good thing. Ignoring how we are shown that many of the soldiers on both sides are sympathetic and just happen to be working for madmen, Rau's intervention is what escalated the war to near-extinction levels of destruction.
  • Mis-blamed: As mentioned many times on this page, many of SEED's detractors take Destiny's flaws and put them onto SEED instead of focusing on SEED's own flaws. In fact, even though there were a lot of changes in production just like Destiny, they improved the overall quality of the series by forcing the production team to cut down on their ideas that, while certainly worth exploring, would have unnecessarily cluttered the narrative.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Rau Le Creuset pretty much gives Kira every reason to make an exception for his Technical Pacifist practices once he nonchalantly uses his DRAGOONs to kill Flay (who had grown attached to Rau and by this point redeemed herself) and everyone else aboard her escape pod for no reason other than to hurt Kira.
    • And then there's Patrick Zala, who crosses it either by shooting Athrun, his own son, or by using the GENESIS to kill scores and scores of Earth Alliance soldiers — twice — before attempting to use the GENESIS on Earth, something that shocks even his subordinates.
    • Muruta Azrael crossed it long before we even met him by arranging for the attack that caused the Bloody Valentine Incident, killing 243,721 civilians.
    • Captain Sutherland and the Earth Forces as a whole crossed it after the incident at JOSH-A with the Cyclops System.
  • No Yay: It isn't hard to interpret Azrael's interactions with Natarle Badgiruel as an attempt at hitting on her. Squick!
    • Flay towards Kira when she is pretending to be in love with him. She seduced him into having sex, and the pride she had afterwords made her come off as a sexual predator. Her later attempts at seducing him are no less disturbing, especially when she kisses him against his will.
  • One-Scene Wonder: The Perfect Strike in the HD Remaster. Only appears in two episodes (the Battle for Orb) and is never seen again (despite being edited into all of the openings besides the first).
  • Ron the Death Eater: Flay starts out manipulative and bratty, but eventually realizes the error of her ways and redeems herself. Yet a very large number of fans act as if her redemption never happened, or paint her bad actions in even worse light than the show itself did.
  • Rooting for the Empire:
    • ZAFT is pretty much the show's equivalent of the Principality of Zeon, who already have a huge following for this trope. What do you expect? It is arguably even worse than Zeon however, due to many of ZAFT's actions being defensive in nature and the Earth Alliance being much more evil than the Earth Federation. At times, many feel that until the end of the series, ZAFT would have been Designated Villains if not for their coordinator-supremacist ideology.
    • While the later conflict is meant to be a case of Evil Versus Evil with the protagonists trying to put a stop to it all, some fans ended up rooting for the Earth Alliance because of the insane disparity between the kill ratios between the Alliance and ZAFT. Especially since many sympathetic POV shots indicate that most of those poor Earth Alliance bastards getting killed are just doing their jobs at the behest of raging bigoted lunatics instead of being raging bigoted lunatics themselves. The fact that the EA soldiers and pilots are also all normal people while ZAFT is entirely made up by what the show directly states to be genetic engineered super humans further enhances this feeling. It also doesn't help that the first high-ranking Earth Alliance official we really get to know, Admiral Halberton, was a pretty cool guy who shot down Natarle's suggestion that they conscript Kira into the military. He ended up dying tragically with his command, the 8th Fleet which was completely wiped out except for the Archangel.
    • Alternatively, some people want Rau Le Creuset to kill everyone and destroy both ZAFT and the EA. Given the outright depressing nature of the Cosmic Era and needless evil actions of the different factions, some fans see Le Creuset's plan as both merciful and karmic. This is ignoring the fact that Rau himself was complicit in many factors that led to the Evil Versus Evil nature of the war, one of which involved secretly leaking information to both sides on JOSH-A; which led to Patrick Zala's increasingly authoritarian rule to vent out the disaster on opposition, and the annihilation of moderate members in Earth Alliance led to the stranglehold of Blue Cosmos over their command.
  • Slow-Paced Beginning: The series is rather slow-paced for the first 30 or so episodes (basically, every episode generally follows the ZAFT-attacks-Kira-saves-the-day routine; that these episodes are more or less a remake of the original Gundam series doesn't exactly help), but after a few Wham Episodes SEED finally escapes this routine and sets off on a path to its own original, epic Grand Finale. To its defense, the first episodes do a good job of familiarizing and endearing the characters to the audience.
  • Special Effect Failure: While the Remaster is generally successful when converting the series into HD, there are some instances in which eagle-eyed viewers will be able to notice a slight blur in the lines. In a bit more of a less subtle example, there will be times where the outlines for the cel-shaded CGI doesn't react to the filter at all and you can see every pixel that makes them up.
    • In the episode Fateful Encounter, a shot with the DINNs and Aegis Gundam almost appear identical to their line art and look like as though their official images were directly lifted and pasted into the scene.
  • Superlative Dubbing: The first English dub can safely be called this.
    • The original Ocean Dub features a polished voice cast for its time, as well as managing to largely be a faithful dub despite a few missteps in translation as well as odd sound mixing for certain scenesnote . Despite these flaws, performances are overall good, with Samuel Vincent and Mark Oliver in particular considered to be stand outs as Athrun and Rau. It is hampered a little by its age, though not quite to the same extent as other early to mid-2000’s anime tend to be.
    • The NYAV Post dub features an All-Star Cast that includes Max Mittelman, Chris Hackney, Cherami Leigh, Johnny Yong Bosch in major roles and even Ray Chase and Christopher Sabat in major supporting ones. In terms of production, some argue that it's an even more polished dub that features performances and pacing more consistent with the Japanese original. Combine these with an updated, but still overall accurate translation, and you got a high quality production.
  • Tainted by the Preview: When it was announced that the HD Remaster was gonna have a brand new dub, fans were furious as the Ocean Dub was considered a beloved classic, even by those who disliked SEED. Indeed, when clips came out, fans were quick to criticize the dub, as numerous performances and the script were considered inferior to Ocean’s.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The Remastered version is by and large the same, but there are small touch-ups and additions of scenes here and there. One notable instance is in episode 36 which adds a shot of Shinn and his family trying to flee the fighting. Probably the bigger change is in the ending themes: the first ending theme was remade and sounds somewhat different, while the original 2nd ending theme "River" by Tatsuya Ishii is omitted entirely and replaced with a new song by FictionJunction. Predictably, some fans of the original run have reacted much in the same vein as "Han shot first."
    • And if you are really picky, you will notice that some of the music cues have been changed as well, including the end of the first episode. In the original, the vocals of "Anna ni Issho Datta no ni" start as the Strike Gundam rises, but in the HD Remaster, the intro is much longer and the vocals don't start until several seconds into the credits.
    • When the HD Remaster was released on Blu-ray in North Americanote , many fans were left dissatisfied with the dialogue, delivery and production of NYAV Post's dub, as opposed to the original Japanese or Ocean performances. An example is Kevin T. Collins' performance as Rau. While considered good, was not considered as good as Mark Oliver's. It really doesn't help that the original dub was only available in a Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition, instead of an alternate audio track.
    • Fans were quick to criticize Cagalli and especially Clotho’s lines in the HD Remaster. The former swears a lot more, making her seem a lot less of a Nice Girl while the latter uses a lot of video game slang, which is considered extremely dated.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: Several viewers thought Nicol was a girl based on his looks, voice, and gentle mannerisms.

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