It's a Gundam thread!

WHAT.

I'd try to ask questions about why [heavy sarcasm]the accomplished director of this series[/heavy sarcasm] thinks that way (besides the whole "my vision of the series was taken in a different direction, boo hoo hoo" schtick), but apparently we've crossed over from subjective to objective territory with these tweets.

I think it has more to do with the behind the scenes drama surrounding Destiny's production, and certain Japanese VA's Fukuda and his wife did not personally like, being given respectable roles, and subsequently, more money, and "subverting how Fukuda envisioned the series". which means Shinn and Cagali's Character Derailment is somehow MORE acceptable than not being there.

plus, it's pretty common for Complete Monsters and Anti-Heroes to be be played with in SRW, from Gendo Ikari in the Alpha timeline (all of the Alpha Numbers, (effectively all but CORRECTION PUNCH his personal EVA unit in Alpha 3.) to even the likes of the Linebarrels anime in SRW L.

Honestly, I'm suprised Fukuda wasn't up in arms when Shinji Ikari told Kira to stop crying in Alpha 3.

edited 11th Jan '11 7:08:35 PM by Clawshrimpy

Is this Fukuda trying to be like Tomino?

If it is, he's failing miserably.

And no, we're not gonna root for him the same way we do with Peachi's version of young Ocelot. Tomino was messed up when he did Victory Gundam, and I'm guessing a lot of fans think that it's okay because of many reasons.

But this... this is blatant unprofessionalism. We can expect this from the likes of David Freaking Gonterman, but for someone given the reins of a long-running series, This Is Unforgivable!.

Well, SEED's run is over, and that movie will probably never see the light of day, given Morosawa's condition. Maybe Fukuda is feeling a little bit of that Tomino-style depression, but his handling of Gundam allways seemed a bit odd. Destiny's VA's had to have gotten fed up with him for a reason.

My guess is he's also being a jerk because Destiny will have to share the spotlight with Gundam 00 Season 1 in this new game.

edited 11th Jan '11 7:22:16 PM by Clawshrimpy

I honestly think that Shinn's character development was fine. I mean, it was negative (in the sense that Shinn became a worse person over the course of the series), but that doesn't make it bad (in the sense of poor writing). I tend to view Destiny has having Athrun as the main character, but mostly as a viewpoint for both Shinn and Kira. So, Shinn is a Decoy Protagonist for Athrun, but Athrun is The Ishmael for Shinn, and later Kira, I guess. Maybe not the best way to handle things, but considering things from that direction, I can see how Fukuda could be upset at attempts to "fix" Shinn by making him more standard-Gundam-protagonist-y.

Yeah, but, still, I think It has to do more with "implying that Kira and Lacus are not 100 percent right, and the be all end all protagonists."

Honestly I was more upset over Cagali's changes more than anything else, and SRW Z brought her to a respectable level again.

Quoting from the Super Robot Wars L page:

The changes made to SEED Destiny in this game are quite unusual for Super Robot Wars. Most of the time the changes they make are limited to killing characters who should have been killed in canon, saving characters the audience likes, condensing stories so that they all fit in the game, and making reasonable changes to the characters through interaction with characters from other series. They went far beyond that with Gundam SEED Destiny in L. Essentially, they rewrote the entire second half of the plot.

• Which is somewhat hilarious, seeing as how Bandai is Banpresto's parent company, meaning the rewrites likely were approved by the same people who released the original series.

In all fairness, the Banpresto guys pretty much slapped Fukuda in the face each time they used Destiny. He's entitled to his opinion on the subject, and it's not unreasonable that that opinion would be negative in light of that treatment. Of course, Banpresto had a good reason to make those changes: Destiny was simply bad, and Fukuda should feel bad for directing it. I'm just saying I don't think everyone should be jumping on him for his comments, at least not in this case. For past statements he's made (and we all know which ones I'm talking about) he deserves everything he gets.

Is it really true that Director of Gundam Seed Destiny mess the series up on purpose because he had a grudge against some of the voice actors? I keep hearing about this online but I've never seen any solid proof and seems to me that it's just rumors made by the Fan Haters made to discredit him.

edited 15th Jan '11 10:28:35 PM by Azxc

So how exactly did SRW change Seed Destiny?

Well, here's one obvious change: in canon Shinn and the crew of the Minerva remain loyal to ZAFT until the very end. In Super Robot Wars L, they completely cut ties at the battle of Orb and never look back. Having the theoretical protagonist fight on the side opposite the one he does in canon? If that isn't a literary slap to the face of the writer and director, I don't know what is. Anyway, that's the tl;dr version. Here's a more complete summary of some of the changes from gamefaqs user Deranged.

The major character change in Shinn started at the episode before, in the battle of Berlin. In the intermission before the battle, Dearka personally delivered orders from Durandal to the Minerva to defend against the Earth Federation army's rampage, and some chatter between Athrun and Dearka revealed to Shinn that Dearka had fought alongside the Freedom Gundam before. Shinn asked Dearka what kind of person the pilot of Freedom is, and Dearka replied that though he's a bit awkward, he's a good person who doesn't like to fight.

During the battle itself, after a few turns, Kira tried to destroy Stella's Destroy Gundam, but Shinn forced him (and the rest of the Archangel crew) back after, and Kira manages to infer that Shinn wants to save the person inside it. (at this point, Archangel was refusing any communication with either LOTUS or ZAFT) After LOTUS/ZAFT lowered Stella's Destroy down to low HP as stated in the mission objectives, it healed back up and LOTUS/ZAFT started to lose hope in saving Stella. Kira then flew in and attacked, disabling the Destroy, and tells Shinn that he knows Shinn wants to save the person inside, so he should hurry and do it. Shinn does so, the rest of the enemies are mopped up, and Archangel leaves then.

In the intermission, Dearka then delivered more orders from Durandal that were not meant to be opened until after the battle at Berlin. The orders directed Minerva to eliminate the Archangel, which Talia, Shinn and the rest of the Minerva crew were aghast to(except Rey of course). LOTUS then provided a possible solution by suggesting that they would try to convince the Archangel crew to join LOTUS, in which case the Minerva would have no more reason to shoot them down.

Once LOTUS/ZAFT caught up with the Archangel, this failed as the Archangel crew wanted to remain relatively hidden and neutral until they could figure out who were the ones who tried to assassinate the real Lacus, thus did not want to join LOTUS. This left both sides with no choice as they sortied their respective mecha, and Kira flew straight at Shinn, but this was only to defend it from the "unknown radar reactions" who happened to be the Iczer enemies. Talia then agreed to a temporary alliance since the Iczer enemies were far more of a threat to humanity than the Archangel crew ever could be.

After the battle, everyone non-ZAFT tried to convince Talia to let the Archangel crew go. Her reply was to fire the Tannhauser at the Archangel, but in the intermission after, it was made clear that Talia purposely aimed in a way that did not kill off the Archangel, but made it seem like they did. This was then reported to Durandal as a successful kill. (though Ray reports otherwise in private to Durandal after)

This set of events was what generally made Shinn (and Minerva's crew on a whole) have a much better impression of Freedom and the Archangel crew. It got to the point that Shinn mimicked Kira in the Heaven's Base stage, where he intercepted a Destroy Gundam that had appeared out of nowhere and was interfering with Heero, allowing Heero to chase after Djibril who had escaped with Relena. When his super-fast reactions to that Destroy Gundam that appeared from nowhere was remarked on after the stage, Shinn said that he felt that the winged Gundam's pilot had someone he wanted to save, so he wanted to help him, just like how Kira had helped him save Stella.

There was a lot of talk amongst the Voice Actors of Gundam SEED Destiny, about how Fukuda and his wife imposed a lot of unresonable demands on the voice actors.

the closest thing I can find of the stuff, given that SEED aired a decade ago, was this tidbit:

"Director Mitsuo Fukuda's wife is Chiaki Morosawa, the main/lead writer of SEED Destiny, and from what has been said/reported post SEED Destiny was apparently the main reason why the series went downhill. Most sources agree that the original intent was for the series to be divided into three arcs. The first arc which basically aired unaltered was centered around Athrun and Cagalli. The second arc was to be about Kira and Lacus. The third arc which would have been the bulk of the second half of the series would be centered around Shinn with the old characters like Kira and Athrun being moved into the background as support characters. Morosawa, though, for some reason didn't want Kira being shoved out of the spotlight and started doing rewrite after rewrite. Because of all the rewrites, the animation staff either had to do recap eps or reuse stock animation (one notable example was Impulse being accidentally replaced with the original Strike from SEED). It's also the reason why they've had to retcon stuff in either the Special Editions or in the model kits. There's also unconfirmed rumors that Morosawa had issues with some of the voice actors and rewrote some scenes to make the respective characters look bad. While it's never been proven, it would explain the drastic change in Cagalli's character... "

Someone who looked hard enough could probably find the actual interview in question, but at the very least, there had to be some struggles behind the scenes of the show, to the extent of the drama is just what's unconfirmed.

edited 15th Jan '11 9:26:03 PM by Clawshrimpy

A new chapter of Gundam Sousei came out.

God is this manga funny.

I should read that.

That stock footage thing they had going on in SEED and Destiny was weird (also incredibly annoying, and a major detraction of the quality of the action). It's not like they didn't have the budget. And there's also that one time in Destiny when they animated a scene to be shot-by-shot identical to the scene in SEED when Lacus gives the Freedom to Kira, except that in destiny the mobile suit and all the characters involved were different.

The explanation came to me recently. I was watching a super robot anime, GearFighterDendoh, and about three episodes in I started thinking to myself "Wait, this feels awfully familiar." Because they overused stock footage in that series, too. That, along with various other clues, prompted me to look up the director, and I was not at all surprised by his identity.

So yeah, as for the stock footage thing, that's apparently just how Mitsuo Fukuda rolls. One wonders why they allowed this guy to direct the remake of perhaps the most famous anime in history.

Eh, the stock footage in Seed and Destiny didn't bother me. It's not like Fukuda is the only director to ever use (or even overuse) stock footage. Hell, Mobile Suit Gundam reused the hell out of that one clip of the Gundam's component parts combining in mid-air, to the point where it was blatant filler — they used it as the opening for a half dozen or so episodes that were otherwise completely unrelated (it was "training", IIRC). The only mecha show I can recall offhand that doesn't make extensive use of stock footage is Evangelion... which is not-conincidentally infamous for using up their entire budget with two episodes left to animate.

I think the problem with Seed and Destiny isn't so much the fact that they use stock footage, but they way that it's used. Rather than (or rather, in addition to) using it as part of the startup/launch sequence for the various mecha, actual combat shots get continually repeated in not-very-subtle ways. (I vividly recall a particular shot of Forbidden's curved-beam cannon arcing through the shot, taking out two MS at once while a third manages to dodge out of the way.) There are times when stock footage is accepted and even expected — during launch sequences, transformations, signature moves etc. Stock footage there is effectively invisible. But when it shows up in the middle of a combat scene — when viewers traditionally expect the animation to be at its highest quality? That's pretty conspicuous.

It's all in how it's used. Gao Gai Gar for example made good use out of Stock Footage, pretty much just for launch and transformation bits and even it's clip show had a point. You begin to wonder about Mic's motives when he's sifting through 3G's Zonder footage

Where, with SEED, there's very little rhyme or reason for it, one example is the episode early on where it literally just plays clips with Rau la Cruset talking about nothing in particular in the background. Maybe a few worthwhile bits of information like the N-Jammers and the George Glenn stuff, but not all that much.

edited 19th Jan '11 12:28:29 PM by Clawshrimpy

You can usually even get away with putting stock footage in combat, as long as you keep it to the Mooks. Where Destiny gets most of its flak is because about 60% of the final fights were stock footage, and given that that was supposed to be the climax of the series, watching a fight that consisted mostly of footage that we'd already seen sort of made it fall flat on its face.

Well, I've officially started Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ now, even if I've only actually seen the episode that recaps earlier series.

ZZ is actually my favorite UC series. MSG has some Early-Installment Weirdness (but is still good overall), Zeta is entirely too wangsty for my tastes (Kamille is seriously a certified psychopath), and Victory is too grimdark (it hits War Is Hell and Kill Em All so hard that I found myself unable to care about any of the characters, because I knew they'd just be killed off pointlessly soon anyway). ZZ is rather silly (especially toward the beginning), but I don't consider that a strike against it. I definitely like Judau best out of all the UC protagonists (OA Vs included, even!), I'll say that much.

No, what's great about Double Zeta is that despite the series turning grim dark at the halfway point, Judau doesn't exactly lose all his optimism and idealism.

It's sorta like After War Gundam X in that regard.

...I still haven't watched the first real episode.

Hey you guys remember that Gundam statue ripoff that the Chinese built last year?

It's back, it's modified, and the officials are denying any remote resemblance to a gundam.

It looks like someone slapped Zaku armour over a Gundam/GM type mobile suit now.

I honestly think that Shinn's character development was fine. I mean, it was negative (in the sense that Shinn became a worse person over the course of the series), but that doesn't make it bad (in the sense of poor writing). I tend to view Destiny has having Athrun as the main character, but mostly as a viewpoint for both Shinn and Kira. So, Shinn is a Decoy Protagonist for Athrun, but Athrun is The Ishmael for Shinn, and later Kira, I guess. Maybe not the best way to handle things, but considering things from that direction, I can see how Fukuda could be upset at attempts to "fix" Shinn by making him more standard-Gundam-protagonist-y.

I agree, what I liked about Destiny (and is a dynamic I think is pretty much unique) is that we have a viewpoint chracer (Athrun) who has gone through everything once already (and is thus a little bit more jaded and cynical than the others) who's paired against a rookie hothead. Usually our POV is with the rookie rather than the cynical veteran.