The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

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Erisie
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

monster wrote:2. The Freedom can be repaired as it wasn't destroyed like the Justice.
I'm talking from the point of view of the writing. The Freedom is repaired and is still able to obliterate anything on sight. When has an "old" machine in Gundam be so powerful before or after? It would have been much more interesting to see a "Freedom Repair" of sorts: a hastily repaired hodgepodge of pieces that Kira has to use as a last resort to defend the mansion, rather that the shiny machine that's 100% combat capable, like if nothing had happened.
monster wrote:3. The treaty prohibits the use of NJC in the military. The Freedom wasn't used by the military.
It's prohibited in weapons, which the Freedom is. And even if it is as you say, you're arguing semantics: who are Kira and his lackeys, then? Rogue combatants?
monster wrote:The Freedom was also suited for battling multiple targets
And the Chaos and Legend weren't?
monster wrote:and it has a pretty decent pilot.
All I'll say about that is that it is up for debate.
monster
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Erisie wrote:I'm talking from the point of view of the writing. The Freedom is repaired and is still able to obliterate anything on sight. When has an "old" machine in Gundam be so powerful before or after? It would have been much more interesting to see a "Freedom Repair" of sorts: a hastily repaired hodgepodge of pieces that Kira has to use as a last resort to defend the mansion, rather that the shiny machine that's 100% combat capable, like if nothing had happened.
Such a machine would not make any sense.
It's prohibited in weapons, which the Freedom is. And even if it is as you say, you're arguing semantics: who are Kira and his lackeys, then? Rogue combatants?
It doesn't matter who Kira is as he wasn't using using the Freedom. That's not mere semantics as it is obviously much easier to conceal something that is not being used.
And the Chaos and Legend weren't?
Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, Sting obviously had trouble against Athrun, and the Legend's ability was toned down in the atmosphere. The Legend was also going against the Strike Freedom and the Infinite Justice.
All I'll say about that is that it is up for debate.
No, that is not up for debate. Kira has proven himself to be a decent pilot. If you can't accept even that, then that is your own problem.
excalibur2008
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Erisie wrote: I'm talking from the point of view of the writing. The Freedom is repaired and is still able to obliterate anything on sight. When has an "old" machine in Gundam be so powerful before or after?
The one thing that astounds me about some Gundam shows is how unlike with more realistic space militaries some of the ones in Gundam will have their equpiment outdated in two years, hell ZZ probably has the record at what a few weeks.
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Deathzealot
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

The Freedom's NJC and its Reactor are grandfathered into the treaty thanks to it being made before the treaty was written. That is if I remember right.
monster
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Deathzealot wrote:The Freedom's NJC and its Reactor are grandfathered into the treaty thanks to it being made before the treaty was written. That is if I remember right.
Nothing was grandfathered into the treaty. The treaty specifically and clearly forbade the use of NJC in the military, regardless if it is used on new machines or existing machines. The Freedom was simply not used and hidden, which is why it never became a problem.
excalibur2008
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

monster wrote:
Deathzealot wrote:The Freedom's NJC and its Reactor are grandfathered into the treaty thanks to it being made before the treaty was written. That is if I remember right.
Nothing was grandfathered into the treaty. The treaty specifically and clearly forbade the use of NJC in the military, regardless if it is used on new machines or existing machines. The Freedom was simply not used and hidden, which is why it never became a problem.
Would Orb even be bound by the treaty? I mean the war it ends was between the Earth Alliance and the PLANTS.
monster
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

excalibur2008 wrote:Would Orb even be bound by the treaty? I mean the war it ends was between the Earth Alliance and the PLANTS.
Orb had surrendered to the Atlantic Federation during the war, and part of the treaty specifically dealt with restoring the sovereignty of the nations that had been invaded or conquered during the war. There is no way that the AF would agree to the treaty if Orb and other freed nations weren't put under the same military restrictions as both the EA and ZAFT.

In fact, as part of the postwar settlement, Orb was also prohibited by treaty from providing direct military assistance to the PLANTs. That's why Cagalli was meeting with Durandal in episode 1, although the AF had a weak claim in this case.
Erisie
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

monster wrote:The Freedom was simply not used and hidden, which is why it never became a problem.
monster wrote:It doesn't matter who Kira is as he wasn't using using the Freedom. That's not mere semantics as it is obviously much easier to conceal something that is not being used.
Its sole existence, hidden or not, was a violation of the treaty. And what do you call its continuous use during CE 73? Are you saying that Kira and his cronies are above an international convention to prohibit WMDs?
monster wrote:Such a machine would not make any sense.
Why do you say it wouldn't? If anything, it makes a bit more sense (and cooler, and more interesting for the story) than a fully-functional, fully-repaired, treaty-violating Freedom. As an observation, this is all that remained of the Freedom after its battle with the Providence: right arm and leg are gone, no weapons left.
I think this has to do, at least in part, with the idea that the Freedom is this some sort of super-powerful "special snowflake" even within the setting. Note that there aren't any MSVs or variants of either Freedom or Justice, besides their upgrades in Destiny.
monster wrote:Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, Sting obviously had trouble against Athrun, and the Legend's ability was toned down in the atmosphere.
Sting's skill (or lack of) is not the point here, and remote weapons have always had trouble in the atmosphere. Anyway, the point was that both of those machines are also suited to engage multiple enemies, meaning that there was little "toning down" of tech.
monster wrote:No, that is not up for debate. Kira has proven himself to be a decent pilot.
As I said, it's up for debate. A point of contention is the often-repeated autoaim display sequence. Add to this the dependence that the CE's machines have in programming.
Can we say, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the mobile suits' (quantum!) computers are doing all, or at least the vast majority of, the work of piloting and fighting? That there's any pilot skill on Kira's part and that he isn't just pushing a couple of buttons inside the cockpit?
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ShadowCell
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Erisie wrote:I think this has to do, at least in part, with the idea that the Freedom is this some sort of super-powerful "special snowflake" even within the setting. Note that there aren't any MSVs or variants of either Freedom or Justice, besides their upgrades in Destiny.
well, there sort of is. there's the GuAIZ Experimental Firearms Type, which seems to be a shared prototype for the both of them. it doesn't survive the war, though, so this machine in particular can't be a source of spare parts.

still, the Freedom at the end of SEED was completely trashed and yet two years later in DESTINY it's like new. i guess you could handwave it away by saying that the Three Ships Alliance came up with their own set of spare parts, since they had the Freedom and the Eternal, which was meant to support it, for several months.
latenlazy
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Does this discussion really matter? At the end of the day Kira and Freedom turned out to be the crutch that enabled a lot of cheap and bad writing in Destiny.
Erisie
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

ShadowCell wrote:well, there sort of is. there's the GuAIZ Experimental Firearms Type, which seems to be a shared prototype for the both of them.
Yeah, the EFT is a kinda-sorta MSV for both Freedom and Justice, with the important caveat that it's a monoeye. Not a full-fledged Gundam.
ShadowCell wrote:still, the Freedom at the end of SEED was completely trashed and yet two years later in DESTINY it's like new. i guess you could handwave it away by saying that the Three Ships Alliance came up with their own set of spare parts, since they had the Freedom and the Eternal, which was meant to support it, for several months.
It can be handwaved in a number of ways (consider also that there's a two-year timeskip between SEED and Destiny), but it's a lot better in a visual, narrative and thematical way to have a older/deficient machine. The best example I can think of is when people went insane for "TerminExia"'s appearance in the second season of 00.
monster
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Erisie wrote:Its sole existence, hidden or not, was a violation of the treaty.
No, it wasn't.
And what do you call its continuous use during CE 73? Are you saying that Kira and his cronies are above an international convention to prohibit WMDs?
By the time Kira used it in Destiny, the treaty was no longer in effect. Or did you forget Girty Lue and the nuclear missiles?
Why do you say it wouldn't? If anything, it makes a bit more sense (and cooler, and more interesting for the story) than a fully-functional, fully-repaired, treaty-violating Freedom. As an observation, this is all that remained of the Freedom after its battle with the Providence: right arm and leg are gone, no weapons left.
I think this has to do, at least in part, with the idea that the Freedom is this some sort of super-powerful "special snowflake" even within the setting. Note that there aren't any MSVs or variants of either Freedom or Justice, besides their upgrades in Destiny.
It wouldn't make any sense given the resources available to Lacus and Cagalli and the time they had to repair it.
Sting's skill (or lack of) is not the point here, and remote weapons have always had trouble in the atmosphere. Anyway, the point was that both of those machines are also suited to engage multiple enemies, meaning that there was little "toning down" of tech.
Sting's skill is part of the point as the pilot is part of the reason why a machine would dominate.

And we've never seen the Chaos and the Legend able to rapid fire like the Freedom and the Strike Freedom while keeping a lock on multiple targets. So no, they are not as suited to engaging multiple enemies like the Freedom, especially on Earth where the Legend's DRAGOONs are kept docked.
As I said, it's up for debate. A point of contention is the often-repeated autoaim display sequence. Add to this the dependence that the CE's machines have in programming.
Can we say, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the mobile suits' (quantum!) computers are doing all, or at least the vast majority of, the work of piloting and fighting? That there's any pilot skill on Kira's part and that he isn't just pushing a couple of buttons inside the cockpit?
The simplest evidence of Kira's skill as a pilot is to see him actually piloting his mobile suits. Those moves aren't done automatically by the machines.
excalibur2008
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Erisie wrote: but it's a lot better in a visual, narrative and thematical way to have a older/deficient machine. The best example I can think of is when people went insane for "TerminExia"'s appearance in the second season of 00.
Whereas I consider it ridiculous how it would be outdated in just 2 years.

That seems to be a pretty crappy shelf-life for military hardware.
monster wrote: It wouldn't make any sense given the resources available to Lacus and Cagalli and the time they had to repair it.
Plus its not like its the first trashed Gundam Orb managed to completely restore.
Erisie
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

monster wrote:Its sole existence, hidden or not, was a violation of the treaty.
monster wrote:By the time Kira used it in Destiny, the treaty was no longer in effect. Or did you forget Girty Lue and the nuclear missiles?
Just because the Earth Alliance decided to violate it to continue their attempts to destroy ZAFT, it doesn't mean it's suddenly invalidated, or that Kira is justified in having for two years prior a weapon of mass destruction hidden in a basement. That's not how the law works. "Everybody else's doing it" and/or "I violate the law because my actiona are righteous" are not excuses.
monster wrote:It wouldn't make any sense given the resources available to Lacus and Cagalli and the time they had to repair it.
Again, the treaty: that's reason enough to get rid of the Freedom. Or, at the very least, its nuclear powerplant. And the resources you speak of are only mentioned in the later episodes of Destiny, when we learn that Lacus has the capacity to build better MS than either side in the war: two super Gundams, plus the D.O.M.s.
Also, you're looking at things from a very in-universe point of view. When you put it in the perspective of the narrative, an older, weaker machine is more interesting than a shiny super model. See, for instance, the fight against Leatherback in Pacific Rim: the older Gipsy Danger saves the day when the newer Striker Eureka is put out of action.
monster wrote:Sting's skill is part of the point as the pilot is part of the reason why a machine would dominate.
The simplest evidence of Kira's skill as a pilot is to see him actually piloting his mobile suits. Those moves aren't done automatically by the machines.
Do we know that for certain? Kira's reprogramming of the Strike while fighting Waltfeld in the desert, together with Kira was the one putting together a Natural OS for Orb's M1s, are evidence that computers are far more important in the CE's mobile suits than any pilot input/talent.
In regards to the Extended, they're always depicted to be mentally deranged both inside and outside the cockpit, making them very unstable pilots: aces one day, trounced by grunts the next one. The Earth Alliance only uses them because people like Djibril are driven by their insane hatred of Coordinators, making them (in their eyes) a worthy means to an end.
monster
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Erisie wrote:
monster wrote:Its sole existence, hidden or not, was a violation of the treaty.
No, it wasn't.
You just switched our posts.
Just because the Earth Alliance decided to violate it, it doesn't mean it's suddenly invalidated,
Treaties work when there are people/organizations capable and willing to enforce them. When the two sides who signed the treaty are again at war with each other, the treaty no longer has any power as neither side is bound by it, hence why ZAFT deployed the Destiny and the Legend.
or that Kira is justified in having for two years prior a weapon of mass destruction hidden in a basement. That's not how treaties work.

Again, the treaty: that's reason enough to get rid of the Freedom. Or, at the very least, its nuclear powerplant. And the resources you speak of are only mentioned in the later episodes of Destiny, when we learn that Lacus has the capacity to build better MS than either side in the war: two super Gundams, plus the D.O.M.s.
The treaty does not apply to the Freedom. Again, the treaty puts no restriction on storing NJC technology. It puts restrictions on usage.

And as for the resources, they are known from SEED. Lacus has access to ZAFT's technology and Cagalli has access to Morgenroete. Either or both could repair the Freedom. The only thing unique about the Freedom is the NJC, which it still has. Actually, even the NJC can be rebuild as long as the information is stored in the Freedom/Eternal.
Also, you're looking at things from a very in-universe point of view. When you put it in the perspective of the narrative, an older, weaker machine is more interesting than a shiny super model. See, for instance, the fight against Leatherback in Pacific Rim: the older Gipsy Danger saves the day when the newer Striker Eureka is put out of action.
Violating the established setting is not a good narrative.
Do we know that for certain?
Yes, we do. See Heine's death. The machine can warn the pilot, but it is the pilot who still has to move the machine.
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Erisie wrote: Do we know that for certain? Kira's reprogramming of the Strike while fighting Waltfeld in the desert, together with Kira was the one putting together a Natural OS for Orb's M1s, are evidence that computers are far more important in the CE's mobile suits than any pilot input/talent.
Honestly there are plenty other reasons to dislike Seed and Destiny, saying that the pilots do nothing but program computers which do all the work in battles seems honestly petty, a waste of time, and many other things I could say that might be considered rude. There is plenty of evidence that the OS just enhances the machine's abilities (Like the Strike fighting Waltfeld in the desert) and it is on the pilots to actually utilize those abilities (a sword that cannot be blocked is nothing without skill to use it)

If this seems harsh, sorry i'm tired, but this just seems like extreme nit-picking.
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

Speaking personally, the OS focus in CE is something I like. Consider how difficult controlling a gigantic secondary body must be. I actually welcome that SEED initially makes it something only Coordinators can handle and that in general AI is required.

Even UC had the good sense to suggest regular moves get programmed in, like how Seabook gets told of for manually trying to grab the rifle before launch when there's a smooth pre-programmed routine.
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AmuroNT1
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

I dislike the whole OS thing because it really plays into the badly fumbled anti-racism message they attempted in CE. "Everybody is equal, we're all human! ...Except for those designer babies, they're better than you stupid Muggles in every way."
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Zeino
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

AmuroNT1 wrote: "...Except for those designer babies, they're better than you stupid Muggles in every way."

Isn't that ignoring the fact that it was the Naturals who came up with most of the mecha innovations (Phase Shift, Mirage Colloid, Beam Weaponry, Variable Backpacks, etc) in CE and all ZAFT did was steal and copy from them?
latenlazy
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Re: The Gundam SEED DESTINY Remaster Thread Mk III

AmuroNT1 wrote:I dislike the whole OS thing because it really plays into the badly fumbled anti-racism message they attempted in CE. "Everybody is equal, we're all human! ...Except for those designer babies, they're better than you stupid Muggles in every way."
Seedverse did have that fundamental problem didn't it? On one hand you have to applaud Fukuda for trying to develop themes about looking beyond our different abilities and identities to recognize our shared humanity. On the other hand...nya nya we're cooler than stupid racist Naturals!

Bit of a portrayal getting in the way of the message, unfortunately (Astray does a better job of making Naturals seem equally useful and cool).
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