The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

[pk-man]

Although the remaster does polish some things visually, it still doesn't fix the majority of the problems that make this one of the worst Gundam series. The writing has always been a sore point for this series and no amount of fan service can really fix that. From the copius use of stock footage, main character switch, anti-climatic one-sided final battle, to the plot armor, Destiny is a highly flawed series, despite having potential to be good in the first half. With that being said, I can't decide whether this or Gundam Age takes the crown for being the most poorly written series. They are both bad in their own ways I guess.

[Amion]

I think you're right about AGE and Destiny being bad in their own ways. Regardless of its other flaws though, AGE still had superior animation. I also am one of those who dislikes Hirai's style so AGE hit it better for me with its artwork.

Of course, Destiny had a more solid storyline and probably a better ending to boot given that it actually resolves everything, versus another sixty years of fighting we never see.

I still say the most offensive thing Destiny ever threw at me was all those clip shows and Uzumi BBQs. Silver, have you been able to sell any of that yet?

[Dark Duel]

The problem with the [sarcasm]incredibly diverse character design work of Hisashi Hirai[/sarcasm] is very much a dead horse, so I wont't waste much energy on it. BUT when you have a character in his 30's and a preteen who both have pretty much exactly the same face, it is annoying, so I agree there.
But IMO, AGE was worse. Back when it first came out, I watched GSD all the way through. AGE got so bad I dropped it midway through Arc 3. I have NEVER dropped a Gundam show before except due to not having access to the whole show.

[Evex]

Although the remaster does polish some things visually, it still doesn't fix the majority of the problems that make this one of the worst Gundam series. The writing has always been a sore point for this series and no amount of fan service can really fix that. From the copius use of stock footage, main character switch, anti-climatic one-sided final battle, to the plot armor, Destiny is a highly flawed series, despite having potential to be good in the first half. With that being said, I can't decide whether this or Gundam Age takes the crown for being the most poorly written series. They are both bad in their own ways I guess.

Your expectations are way to high especially when you look at the definition of the word remastered.

Remaster: to make a new copy of (a recording or film) with the sound or image improved

- merriam-webster dictionary

No where in the definition does it say bandai/sunrise, or the directors behind gundam Seed Destiny have to rewrite the entire script. This is just a rearing of gundam seed destiny with some improved audio and visuals.

[latenlazy]

For me, many of the flaws of this series were even more glaring than when I first watched it, all the way back in high school. Before I could tell the story was junk on many levels, but I couldn't quite pin down why. Being older and having a better comprehension and understanding of what makes a good story and strong characters probably has something to do with it (doing a lot of film analysis and script editing in college certainy helped!).

[Blazer-X]

As poor as Destiny is overall, it at least didn't throw in a crapload of one-off characters that had really crappy on-screen performance. Sure, the druggies never got much more development past "they are victims of war who are conditioned to be good at fighting" and most of them had very basic personalities.

But they weren't three episode characters given a LONG backstory, only to be killed off without any lasting consequences. *cough*Girard Sprigan*cough* Actually, I suppose that is true for almost everyone in Age's cast that wasn't the Asunos and the Galette, because everyone else just got killed off as soon as their arc was over.

And I think that's one of the bigger flaws with Age that Seed Destiny avoided. Yes, the story took a turn for the worse half-way through with the main character switch. But at least, looking at it now, most of it was consistent development, and for the most part, it was still playing around with the same main cast throughout the show. They weren't introducing new characters every few episodes (and a completely out of nowhere final boss) just to offer their death for the sake of "plot".

[pk-man]

Your expectations are way to high especially when you look at the definition of the word remastered.

Remaster: to make a new copy of (a recording or film) with the sound or image improved

- merriam-webster dictionary

No where in the definition does it say bandai/sunrise, or the directors behind gundam Seed Destiny have to rewrite the entire script. This is just a rearing of gundam seed destiny with some improved audio and visuals.

I never expected them to rewrite the story as the point of the remastered version is to improve the visuals to better suit HD, but watching Destiny again just makes me sad at how easily one series can be botched by the director and his wife.

[HellCat]

I'm in the minority but I prefer AGE to Destiny. AGE at least knew what it wanted to be from beginning to end, it just lacked creative energy. Destiny is so bad that it couldn't even hide what a mess production was and pretty much spat on what good energy the original had managed to muster . In particular, and this was the criticism I had originally when I was 18, it's alot like Wing in that there's alot of posturing and trying to cater to the fickle teenage average. I enjoyed MSG because it offered a range of ages and character types. Even if you might have agreed with Amuro you could sympathise with Bright and understand the larger conflict. A show like Destiny is just empty to me, too focussed on giving TM Revolution cameos and reusing animation. Destiny exists essentially because SEED was successful, not because it has a necessary story to tell or even a compelling way to do it

[Silver_August]

Alright, Just watched the final episode (finally) and rather then move straight onto watching Build Fighters i felt i should give my say now and let the discussion carry on while im away.

Anyways!

As far as an ending is concerned, honestly... I kind of like this episode, we still have the out of no where "I have a child, go visit him once and a while" thing which makes NO sense and we would've done better without that. But that aside, I was actually kind of into the ending.

While all the build up to this moment could've been A LOT better, I like the end of this battle/series because its so... somber. Shinn lost, and while the build up was PAINFUL at times and seeing Shinn become this lap dog was so friggin stupid, it does have a pay off when Shinn is basically forced to look back at the phsyical representation of all his screw-ups leading up to this point and he does indeed realize he's become everything he hated and vowed to destroy, basically becoming his own worst enemy.

That whole moment whent hey were looking up at the universal ceasefire was both visually pretty to look at but also kind of got to me because it really did bring home the whole...witness to everything crumbling around them.

Gladys is still a sore point for me really... I mean watching this episode her leaving the ship doesn't seem AS bad because.. well, I guess she knows everyone's just going to abandon ship and surrender and she's basically going off to side so....eh? I dunno but honestly I wasn't mad at the series nearly enough as I would be before to really care.

Oh can we all agree that Stella had the worst naked dream space speech? Lol she speaks like a freakin 4 year old..but I get what she was getting at, thanks to Shin she actually has memories but I get amused by the thought that now Shinn's gonna be haunted by the ghost of Stella on a daily basis lol.

But the mexican stand off, I can't say Athrun felt shoe-horned in like he was in all the other versions that added him.. maybe the re-watch helped because it felt right, coming in to provide back up plus his involvement with all these characters... but Rey shooting, I didn't mind it, he basically snapped several times over and I can kind of buy him caving in because he knows the battle is lost and if anything, wanted to feel human? And taking people's humanity away with this Destiny plan didnt feel like the right thing to do given he knows he wouldn't live long enough to see it happen - so rather then repeat history with being Rau and want humanity to be damned because he was robbed of a normal life, he wants them to live on and cherish what he couldn't have. So... Eh I'm fine with it. He got to die happy (for most part).

The ending again felt somber, it's weird because the stakes we're technically huge, but it didn't feel like a BIG FINAL BATTLE, it actually did feel like a build up to something larger (said movie that'll totally happen before the 20th Anniversary!) but it kind of does what I want (just not as good) where we had a victory but still feels like no one truly won because.. alot of destruction was made and a lot of lives were lost, which in that regard is a good effect because it more properly presents the reality of war that even if there's a "winner" both sides still suffered to some extent in the end.

As far as Destiny over all is concerned - The remaster has 100% saved this series for me, before I would outwardly bash this series and consider it the black sheep, but now I have a deeper appreciation for it and understanding of it. The Remaster is definitly the version to watch if you ever want to get a 2nd taste of this series because even though ti wasted money on fanservice, it just did a better job trimming the fat and making a better package over all (those last 2 episodes in particular).

To my surprise, there were honestly moments even when the series was "supposed" to go bad that I was still enjoying myself and having a lot of fun watching it. I suppose that's the main thing, I don't regret watching the remaster, I went in expecting to have a laugh at how dumb it got, I didn't laugh so much as I watched and analyzed it, figured out what made it so bad but also if those traits were as big as time has made them out to be. Overall no, a lot of the issues that people talked about were for most part exaggerated, still present mind you (now with nipples and panties...!) but really at this point the biggest thing for me was Gladys - heck the remaster actually cut out a couple clip shows! It still had 2 more then it should've but frankly I'm ok with both clip shows, the context of both was fair, and for someone who skipped out on SEED remaster, it provided a refresher on information I haven't gone over in 10 years lol.

The ultimate question after all that then becomes... is it better or worse then AGE? My answer is... similar to MAHQs review average where Destiny is just BARELY ahead of AGE.

AGE and Destiny both had a solid start, AGE's was slowly, but it also had to establish the universe, Destiny only had to establish its cast and ride off the coat tails of SEED. AGE's first arc finale is one of my FAVORITE moments in gundam honestly, I loved the whole Flit vs Desil + Yurin moment, and the reveal, while predictible, was still a jarring one because this big can of worms was opened and the end of Arc 1 really left a good impression on me.

At this point in Destiny it was the wedding scene, and already the series was straining on people because of said wedding with Mr. Creeper.

But AGE quickly fumbled as it went into Arc 2 which is oddly enough, considered the favorite, with that school arc, Asemu's bitchin' and After School Special, women becoming baby factories... for ALL THE FAULTS Destiny had at least you can say this... it ends with women basically being in charge of both ZAFT, Orb and possibly the Earth Allience? I dunno who that women was that Cagalli shook hands with but I'm assuming shes from EA (Earth Allience, not the equally evil video game company, lol).

...and then Arc 3 happened and as much as I love AGE, the series that got me back into Gundam, I will be the first to admit, Arc 3 was way worse, it was a scrambled mess trying to get from A to B, it knew where it had to go but dear god the road was rough. Though on the other side of the coin least it felt like it knew where it was going, Destiny kept itself in mystery till episode 47 and even then it wasn't worth the build up (or lack there of).

But AGE definitly had the worser ending if we consider the Remaster the official ending, It's villain was the person it should've been, and the ending hit all the notes on at least my checklist.

So with that in mind, if I were to give AGE 2 Understanding Speeches out of 5, I'd give the Destiy Remaster 3 Meer Nip Slips out of 5.

Total Uzumi BBQ count: 6 - Less then expected but still more then there ever should be because well... to answer your question Amion, I haven't sold any and I think I know why... while obviously no one wants to be a cannibal, no one wants BBQd tofu either, so being the hippie he is, rather then offer BBQd human, Uzumi BBQ is nothing but propane cooked human made of tofu. Thus its been tossed aside for the Canadian geese sitting outside my house.

Hopefully they don't mind the taste of stock footage and mild disappointment.

[monster]

AGE at least knew what it wanted to be from beginning to end

By all accounts, so does Destiny.

too focussed on giving TM Revolution cameos

Speaking of exaggeration...The number 1 focus of this show has been on Shinn.

[HellCat]

So Destiny always intended to introduce a new group of characters, retard their development and have them go along with a would be dictator while constantly sneering at anyone who disagreed with them? Because from that and other evidence, that's a show that threw it's main cast under the bus in favour of bringing back proven favourites.

And no, I don't accept the fan theory that Shinn becoming a raging extremist idiot was some masterful counterpoint to Kira and Athrun. Shinn is present throughout the show but he hardly gets solid treatment.

[monster]

So Destiny always intended to introduce a new group of characters, retard their development and have them go along with a would be dictator while constantly sneering at anyone who disagreed with them? Because from that and other evidence, that's a show that threw it's main cast under the bus in favour of bringing back proven favourites.

You mean introduce a group of characters who don't switch sides at a drop of a pin? Sure. And the only one sneering was Shinn, and only at Athrun.

And if it's a matter of fan favorites, they could've easily had the Minerva/Shinn switch sides, thus earning them people's favor by associating them with the fan favorites, and having Rey be the ultimate pilot on the enemy side. They didn't because that's not what they had intended for Shinn.

And no, I don't accept the fan theory that Shinn becoming a raging extremist idiot was some masterful counterpoint to Kira and Athrun. Shinn is present throughout the show but he hardly gets solid treatment.

I don't know about masterful counterpoint, but Shinn was always intended to go against Kira/Athrun. His treatment is fine for what he's meant to go through.

[Silver_August]

I'm not saying it was their plan, I hardly think they were competitent enough to see what they had going, but in the end its what we got and ultimately it did end up inspiring a potential alternate path the story could've gone if it was more smartly written.

Ultimately yah... all the new guys got tossed under a boss and oddly enough.. Shinn, Luna and Meyrin were the only ones to come out alive, lol.

This is why I see it now more as a failed attempt at a tragedy of sorts.

Shinn, consumed by anger, defects from his nation and joins an opposing military where he's met by someone who's returning out of guilt and internal conflict over the reminants of his father's legacy, thus 2 different persectives as a conflict blossoms from the SEEDS (see what i did there?) of the previous war. As Shinn grows favor in the eyes of the people he's saving, he slowly grows more and more blind and his orginal reasons for joining become foggy till ultimately he casts asside anyone who questions the side hes on, strung along by the chairman who butters him up and Rey who has replaced Athrun as that guy who he talks to regarding their reasons to fight and such. In the end all of these characters have ended up where we are in the finale, strung into this mad yet understandible plan, as if an act of DESTINY they find themselves on the losing side as everything around them falls and this effort to end war crumbles in favor of a world where the attempt to end war while maintaining their humanity continues.

Now that isn't quite what we got, but that's how I like to look at how it could've been and I honestly like that idea.

I've also long discarded the notion that this series was "Shinn's" I see it more as an ensemble because even early on we had entire episodes without Shinn in it at all or getting maybe 1 line and just watching things from the audience perspective.

[monster]

Now that isn't quite what we got

It's pretty close, except for the "2 different persectives as a conflict blossoms from the SEEDS of the previous war" part, but that's more on the part of Athrun.

But, as disappointed as I was with Athrun in Destiny, he's been pretty consistent in that regard, so I have no trouble accepting that this was indeed what they had planned for Shinn.

[latenlazy]

So Destiny always intended to introduce a new group of characters, retard their development and have them go along with a would be dictator while constantly sneering at anyone who disagreed with them? Because from that and other evidence, that's a show that threw it's main cast under the bus in favour of bringing back proven favourites.

You mean introduce a group of characters who don't switch sides at a drop of a pin? Sure. And the only one sneering was Shinn, and only at Athrun.

And if it's a matter of fan favorites, they could've easily had the Minerva/Shinn switch sides, thus earning them people's favor by associating them with the fan favorites, and having Rey be the ultimate pilot on the enemy side. They didn't because that's not what they had intended for Shinn.

And no, I don't accept the fan theory that Shinn becoming a raging extremist idiot was some masterful counterpoint to Kira and Athrun. Shinn is present throughout the show but he hardly gets solid treatment.

I don't know about masterful counterpoint, but Shinn was always intended to go against Kira/Athrun. His treatment is fine for what he's meant to go through.

It's not so much whether they switched sides or not. That's largely irrelevant to HOW the characters switched sides or decided to stay. The same with Shinn. It's not whether Shinn was going to be a counterpoint to Kira/Athrun. It's HOW he became a counterpoint to Kira/Athrun. Destiny's problem was that it paid lip service to complex ideas and complex characters, and did nothing to really put substance behind them. Stories are not just about the outcome of the plot, but the process by which the plot and characters go through to reach that outcome, and that's what Destiny lacked the most in. The process was superficial and sucked. The characters all become stereotypes of themselves. Maybe it could have worked for a 26 episode series, but Destiny was 50 episodes, which requies a much more involved treatment of characters than what we got.

[Silver_August]

I will say, I agree in a sense just because when you look at the over all scope of what happened in Destiny... there wasn't alot of PLOT going on, they didn't really go to a lot of places and probably could've kept this 26 episodes and thus keep the awesome fast pace of the first 7 episodes.

[monster]

It's not so much whether they switched sides or not. That's largely irrelevant to HOW the characters switched sides or decided to stay. The same with Shinn. It's not whether Shinn was going to be a counterpoint to Kira/Athrun. It's HOW he became a counterpoint to Kira/Athrun. Destiny's problem was that it paid lip service to complex ideas and complex characters, and did nothing to really put substance behind them. Stories are not just about the outcome of the plot, but the process by which the plot and characters go through to reach that outcome, and that's what Destiny lacked the most in. The process was superficial and sucked. The characters all become stereotypes of themselves. Maybe it could have worked for a 26 episode series, but Destiny was 50 episodes, which requies a much more involved treatment of characters than what we got.

Well, I guess I just don't get the superficiality of the process (even compared to other 40-50-episode gundam series) or how the characters became stereotypes of themselves.

Regardless, as far as the story is concerned, I don't see this "throwing under the bus" of the main cast in favor of the fan favorites, as HellCat puts it, if for no other reason than the fact that these so-called proven favorites have always been part of the main cast, or at least hinted to become.

[latenlazy]

It's not so much whether they switched sides or not. That's largely irrelevant to HOW the characters switched sides or decided to stay. The same with Shinn. It's not whether Shinn was going to be a counterpoint to Kira/Athrun. It's HOW he became a counterpoint to Kira/Athrun. Destiny's problem was that it paid lip service to complex ideas and complex characters, and did nothing to really put substance behind them. Stories are not just about the outcome of the plot, but the process by which the plot and characters go through to reach that outcome, and that's what Destiny lacked the most in. The process was superficial and sucked. The characters all become stereotypes of themselves. Maybe it could have worked for a 26 episode series, but Destiny was 50 episodes, which requies a much more involved treatment of characters than what we got.

Well, I guess I just don't get the superficiality of the process (even compared to other 40-50-episode gundam series) or how the characters became stereotypes of themselves.

Regardless, as far as the story is concerned, I don't see this "throwing under the bus" of the main cast in favor of the fan favorites, as HellCat puts it, if for no other reason than the fact that these so-called proven favorites have always been part of the main cast, or at least hinted to become.

Let me put it this way. Athrun and Kira screaming WHYY at each other in Destiny was about as deep as Asem and Zeheart screaming each other's name during the heat of battle in AGE.

[monster]

Let me put it this way. Athrun and Kira screaming WHYY at each other in Destiny was about as deep as Asem and Zeheart screaming each other's name during the heat of battle in AGE.

Well, that's no different than in SEED.

[latenlazy]

Let me put it this way. Athrun and Kira screaming WHYY at each other in Destiny was about as deep as Asem and Zeheart screaming each other's name during the heat of battle in AGE.

Well, that's no different than in SEED.

Except in SEED Kira kills Nicol and Athrun kills Tolle and that actually really strains their friendship. Then they go at each other like madmen, and mutual KO, and they have to process their feelings of confusion and regret and pick up the pieces of their friendship afterwards.

Nothing even close happens in Destiny. Athrun and Kira scream at each other, and no one really does anything to the other of consequence. Then Athrun watches his best friend go down to Shinn, who himself has an understandable but narratively weak reason for going after Kira, which then convinces Athrun to defect and reunite with the super friends. That's what I mean when I say that Destiny is superficial.