Released 2024

I admit, I’m terrible at telling mechas apart, so I was never a huge fan of the series’ battle scenes. I was surprised that even the director said in his introduction that battle scenes could seem “insipid” if there were too many, and unfortunately, for me this was already too much.

Maybe it’s just me not paying enough attention, or not recalling enough from the TV series, but I wished there was better explanation of their strategies. Like, they decide to let’s save Lacus – but how? And I didn’t get a good grasp of how the antagonists’ mind-control/mind-reading abilities worked.

Foundation needed Lacus’s support to make their plan a reality; but they didn’t even try to court her in earnest before resorting to underhanded methods. In general, I found all the villains to be too blatantly villainous.

I also personally thought the cheesy love stuff, and love triangle side plots, to be a bit overdone. I get that freedom of choice to love was being used as an analogy for freedom of life, but I guess I’m just particular in my enjoyment of love stories and this wasn’t my thing. For the record, I was invested in the Murrue x Mu romance back in SEED and the Cagalli x Athrun pairing during DESTINY.

There were things to like about the screening. Obviously it was pleasantly nostalgic to re-visit these iconic characters. But the biggest crowd-pleaser was when several of them got into a full-on fist-fight.

The first Gundam SEED anime used to air on YTV in the 2000s, so I’ve watched it all the way through at least twice. As the overall plot is very complex, I definitely got more out of it during subsequent viewings. The same could be true of this film, I suppose.