Athrun's most and least powerful units?(SPOILER)

[Mafty]

So of the four Gundams (I'm not counting the ZAKU Warrior as it's mass produced) Athrun used which was the most powerful and which was the least?

I think the Savoir was the weakest unit Athrun pilots. It has more armaments' than the Aegis, yet somehow seems less powerful. Despite combing and improving on several of Athrun's previous Gundam, the Savior is damaged beyond repaired far quicker than it's predecessors (Compared to the Aegis and Justice which Athrun self detonated, and largely managed to avoid damaging in battle beforehand)

The ∞ Justice Gundam is probably the most powerful and heavily armed unit Athrun pilots; as its the improved culmination of every weapon and capability of the previous units, and its equipped with two separate weapon backpacks.

What does everyone else think?

[Arsarcana]

On paper, it really should be Aegis<Saviour<Justice<I-Justice. Justice has the advantage of unlimited operating time over the next Gundam Athrun piloted, it can still fly under its own power quite effectively and as Kira demonstrates with its brother unit Freedom, being two years newer isn't much of a help to the Second Stage suits.

As for Saviour versus Aegis, I think a lot of that comes down to the direction rather than the performance of the suits themselves. Saviour not only has more weapons than Aegis but it can use them much more effectively. The former's two plasma cannons can be used in both modes and (in theory anyways) in MS mode they can cover a wide arc above, below and behind the suit as well as firing straight forward. The Scylla cannon on the other hand is not only fixed forward but requires the suit to engage its complicated transformation sequence and thus can't be used in MS mode. This is one of the issues with the' design that the Rosso Aegis of Delta Astray was designed to fix.

Aegis also has a transformation that doesn't work at all well under gravity (further complicating its use of its biggest gun) which forces it to rely on a subflight system while Saviour can use its full potential regardless of environment and doesn't need a support unit. Then on top of that, Saviour in theory has better operational endurance due to the possibility of mid-battle recharging even if we never really saw that play out. The one thing that Aegis has over it is the second set of beam sabers in the feet (which plays to Athrun's strengths) but he barely uses those anyways.

And yeah, there's no question that I-Justice is his most powerful unit.

[Seto Kaiba]

So of the four Gundams (I'm not counting the ZAKU Warrior as it's mass produced) Athrun used which was the most powerful and which was the least?

[...]

What does everyone else think?

The answer to a question like this is pretty much always going to be "whichever one they used last"... because there's almost never a de-escalation of conflict in Gundam.

[Kuruni]

The answer to a question like this is pretty much always going to be "whichever one they used last"... because there's almost never a de-escalation of conflict in Gundam.

Well, the conflict might only get worse but so is pilots' luck. That being said, the only official exceptions I can think of are Banagher and Yazan. The Silver Bullet Suppressor and Geze are nowhere near Unicorn's and Hambrabi's evel. If one count manga, there's also Judau and his Gump, Yazan also has a custom GM Night Seeker which huge step up from the Geze but I doubt that it's as good as Hambrabi.

[Mafty]

Reading some more of the background development shows that Savior was actually part of the ZAFT Second Stage Series; thus explaining why it isn't quite as powerful as Athrun's other units, plus its design looks a bit like a Red Gaia Gundam with plane transformation capability.

[Kuruni]

plus its design looks a bit like a Red Gaia Gundam with plane transformation capability.

More likely to be Soul Lancer sneak in Gundam.

[MythSearcher]

More likely to be Soul Lancer sneak in Gundam.

Pretty sure it is just a Messala Gundam.

Edit, sorry, I mixed up Gaplant and Messala

[Kuruni]

More likely to be Soul Lancer sneak in Gundam.

Pretty sure it is just a Gaplant Gundam.

That's Messala... Since we bring it up, I remember read it somewhere that Fujita originally design it as non-transformable MA but it got rejected since it doesn't look like Gundam mech (too much like GERWALK, it seems), so he add the MS mode. In other words, Messala Dinofaust might be closer to what Messala original was.

[MythSearcher]

That's Messala... Since we bring it up, I remember read it somewhere that Fujita originally design it as non-transformable MA but it got rejected since it doesn't look like Gundam mech (too much like GERWALK, it seems), so he add the MS mode. In other words, Messala Dinofaust might be closer to what Messala original was.

Opps, I keep mixing up the two for some reason.

And the Dinofaust just look so MS?

[Mafty]

The Savior's Mobile Armor Mode really does resemble a recolored Gaplant. This makes sense really as the CE Verse is full of shout outs to previous series(Not Just Gundam); fitting being it was kinda a remake, with some being more blatant/obvious than others( Heliopolis resembles Frontier I from F91, Athrun's team being a bit like the Dragonar Heroic Trio, And the Aile, Jet, and the Infinite Justice Fatum packs resemble the Dragonar Lifters, etc). The Gaplant similarity is a little less obvious( The Gaplant was a less seen unit, and some of the first time audience wouldn't be as familiar with it as Zeta was an older series)

[John-Luck Pickerd]

The Savior's Mobile Armor Mode really does resemble a recolored Gaplant. This makes sense really as the CE Verse is full of shout outs to previous series(Not Just Gundam); fitting being it was kinda a remake, with some being more blatant/obvious than others( Heliopolis resembles Frontier I from F91, Athrun's team being a bit like the Dragonar Heroic Trio, And the Aile, Jet, and the Infinite Justice Fatum packs resemble the Dragonar Lifters, etc). The Gaplant similarity is a little less obvious( The Gaplant was a less seen unit, and some of the first time audience wouldn't be as familiar with it as Zeta was an older series)

Never thought Gaplant looked like Savior. But was Heliopolis look like Frontier?

[Mafty]

Maybe at bit of a stretch ; but both Colonies are home to a mobile suit lab (Okay not that uncommon in Gundam), and are permanently attached to a large resource asteroid; Heliopolis was around 40 years old so that asteroid wasn't going anywhere, while Frontier I had the asteroid attached to the colony adding a mountain system and mines.

Again maybe this was a stretch, but visual references to locations did happen in SEED, for example Copernicus Lunar City looked a lot like Ghingham from Turn A Gundam.

[John-Luck Pickerd]

Maybe at bit of a stretch ; but both Colonies are home to a mobile suit lab (Okay not that uncommon in Gundam), and are permanently attached to a large resource asteroid; Heliopolis was around 40 years old so that asteroid wasn't going anywhere, while Frontier I had the asteroid attached to the colony adding a mountain system and mines.

Again maybe this was a stretch, but visual references to locations did happen in SEED, for example Copernicus Lunar City looked a lot like Ghingham from Turn A Gundam.

I am pretty sure Copernicus did reuse whatever footage from Turn A, with some touch-ups. Bandai at the time was not doing very well financially

[Kuruni]

The Savior's Mobile Armor Mode really does resemble a recolored Gaplant. This makes sense really as the CE Verse is full of shout outs to previous series(Not Just Gundam); fitting being it was kinda a remake, with some being more blatant/obvious than others( Heliopolis resembles Frontier I from F91, Athrun's team being a bit like the Dragonar Heroic Trio, And the Aile, Jet, and the Infinite Justice Fatum packs resemble the Dragonar Lifters, etc).

Deagonar is special case in the sense that it's technically first Gundam animate AU...

And the Dinofaust just look so MS?

No, but it's untransformable MS/MA hybrid so it's likely closer to the original untransformable MA Messala.

[Mafty]

Yes Dragonar was made to give a non Gundam, yet still Gundam style show to a wider audience; evidently that didn't work out so they later went on to AU Gundam series, though at least Dragonar became a cult classic. Fukuda worked on storyboarding several episodes, thus explaining some of the Dragonar shout outs in SEED, Another example being the Dragoon system of weaponry. Of course despite it's relative obscurity Sunrise already did shout outs to Dragonar in Stardust Memory(take a look at Meio Plato then look at Anaval Gato, also Dragonar seems to be the first Sunrise show to have a space attack on Australia, Gundam didn't seem to decide on the location until later, See 0080 for an inconsistency in this).

As for the Dinofaust it really does resemble the GERWALK mode from Macross. It would also seem that Fujita would recycle these design styles for the Video Game Quo Vadis.

[BrentD15]

I think you're all forgetting Athrun's least powerful unit, the ZAKU Warrior.
Oh wait, that was Alex Dino. Nevermind.

[Mafty]

To be fair Athrun manages to handle the ZAKU Warrior quite well; he's seen fighting off the stolen Gundam's, and even survives atmospheric reentry. Ironically the ZAKU Warrior survives better than the Savior does against another Gundam.

I agree the Alex Dino thing seemed kinda weird; even in Zeta several characters quite easily guessed that Captain Quattro was Char.

[MythSearcher]

To be fair Athrun manages to handle the ZAKU Warrior quite well; he's seen fighting off the stolen Gundam's, and even survives atmospheric reentry. Ironically the ZAKU Warrior survives better than the Savior does against another Gundam.

I agree the Alex Dino thing seemed kinda weird; even in Zeta several characters quite easily guessed that Captain Quattro was Char.

Well, it is not that people don't recognise him, most PLANT people recognise him pretty quickly.