Mobile Suit Gundam SEED - Vol. 1: Grim Reality (DVD, 2004)

After a year of prodding I finally gave in to pressure and sat through Gundam SEED. The writers of the most recent "Alternate Universe" in the Gundam franchise had a difficult task ahead of them: to write a new series that could stand on its own outside of the Universal Century saga (the "main" Gundam storyline) while still incorporating the human drama that made the UC series great. SEED meets with mixed results.

The storyline is standard Gundam fare: violent conflict has arisen between the Coordinators, genetically modified humans with superior strength and abilities, and their unmodified forebears, the Naturals. This boils down to the classic "earth vs. space" motif, with the Coordinators' nation, ZAFT, living in spaceborne colonies and making strikes against the Earth Alliance.

Sound familiar? Well... it is. Gundam SEED feels like it was written by two different people, with control of the series changing hands about halfway through. During the first half of the series the crew of the Archangel goes through an almost blow-by-blow retelling of the story of the original Gundam, but with ZAFT instead of Zeon and Kira Yamato instead of Amuro Ray. That could be overlooked, but there's another, larger, problem: The first half of SEED is painfully slow, largely the fault of horrible writing. Director Fukuda must love the use of flashbacks, because there's a number of them in most episodes. These aren't just a couple of lines, though: some of them go on for entire minutes. To make matters worse, many of them are repeated multiple times in individual episodes, giving the series a very heavyhanded feel. We GOT it, already. Move on and show us something NEW. A character's death is supposed to have emotional meaning - but when the entire scene is replayed multiple times in the following episode, it's all lost. Either the writers thought we wouldn't notice that they're just spitting out flashbacks instead of moving the story forward, or they thought that our memories are so bad that we need to be constantly reminded of events that happened in the previous episode. Neither assumption is true. What we're left with instead is a story that moves at a glacial pace, containing entire episodes in which almost nothing new is said.

That's not to say it's all bad. The ZAFT cast is executed far more effectively - particularly Athrun and Dearka, who are two of the only characters in the series who don't feel contrived in any way. The internal turmoil in Athrun's mind as agonizes over his battles with Kira is very well done. Rau le Creuset, the resident masked ace, manages NOT to be just another Char Aznable clone (a la Gundam Wing's Zechs) and is an effective villain, although he is also rushed.

The animation is fluid and the art is attractively rendered (and the disco guns are gone, Cartoon Network viewers). Although I don't much like CG animation in anime, here it's pulled off well enough that I never really noticed. The frequent fight scenes, unlike the story, are fast-paced and well choreographed. The only downturn is the appearance of the overpowered Freedom and Justice Gundams, which turn most battles into Gundam Wing-style "fire big guns and destroy an entire army in one shot!" affairs.

So. Is SEED better than the UC series? By and large, no. Is it better than Gundam Wing? Definitely. I did enjoy watching the series - but it could've been incredible, on par with the best of UC, if only the writing was better.