Short Answer: For a number of reasons, Gundam SEED is much better than Gundam SEED Destiny. To mention a few, Gundam SEED has more focus on its story, it is less dragging, it makes more sense, and also people see Gundam SEED Destiny as a copy of Gundam SEED.
Today were going to be talking about how Gundam SEED compares to its sequel Gundam SEED Destiny. Is one better than the other? Why do people say Gundam SEED Destiny is trash?
Main Characters Character Development
Gundam SEED
Kira Yamato
In Gundam SEED, we can see a lot of character development for Kira Yamato. He starts off as a regular college student at Orb. Just like his friends, Kira is a peaceful man and he doesn’t mind if a person is a Natural or a Coordinator. He and his friends intentionally decided to live in Heliopolis, a space colony of the nation of Orb, because they did not want any involvement with the first Alliance-PLANT war.
Kira’s personality changes a few times based on his emotional health. As the show progresses, we can see Kira change from that peaceful college student to a stubborn teen, then into a depressed teen, then into a teen who is calm and resolved.
Much of the changes in his personality are apparent as Kira Yamato is an expressive character, whether it is anger or sorrow. The words he chooses also show character growth. During the start of Gundam SEED he keeps saying that he wants nothing to do with the war, but later on in the show, he shows his resolve to stop the war.
Athrun Zala
During Gundam SEED, Athrun starts off as a soldier for ZAFT who believes that he is doing the right thing by joining the war. We can see Athrun’s belief in ZAFT during the first part of Gundam SEED when encounters his childhood friend, Kira Yamato, and he goes against orders and tries to argue with him that Kira to join the PLANTs instead of fight in the war.
After Kira Yamato killed Nicol Amalfi, a friend of Athrun Zala, Athrun shows determination to kill Kira Yamato. Both of them survive the fight and both grow from the fight. Lacus Clyne and Cagalli Yula Athha also contribute to the growth of both Kira Yamato and Athrun Zala after their fight.
Although Athrun is shown to be a character of determination in the later part of Gundam SEED, during the early episodes, we can see character growth as his views on the war changes. This change in perspective was ultimately caused by Kira Yamato and Lacus Clyne. Athrun then starts to disobey orders of ZAFT and later on join Kira and Lacus.
Lacus Clyne
Just like the Kira Yamato, Lacus Clyne starts off as a character that does not have an active role in the Alliance-PLANT war. She does however act in way that promotes peace with her message showing how Coordinators and Naturals can live together.
During the start of the show, she is also a quiet and demure girl. Even when she is shown aggression by Flay Allster, in the form of slapping her hand away when Lacus gives her hand for a handshake, she remains calm.
As the show progresses, we can see more and more of Lacus Clyne’s growth, especially the growth of her understanding of people. She even grew enough to go against her fiancé Athrun Zala because she believed that the war will solve nothing.
A great character growth moment for lacus is when her father dies. During that time she is saddened but at the same time, her determination to stop the war increases. We can see her resolve as during that time she knows what she needs to do as compared to herself in earlier episodes when she preferred to not get involved in the war. Her resolve is so great that she is not even afraid to head into the war’s front lines in order to stop it.
Cagalli Yula Athha
Cagalli shows great character growth in Gundam SEED. At the start of Gundam SEED, she is merely a mysterious girl in Heliopolis who then goes and joins a rouge militia against ZAFT. At the start we can see that she believes that her father made a mistake by allowing the Earth Forces to make the G-weapons in Heliopolis, however later on she realizes her father’s ideals.
Like Lacus, a great character growth moment for Cagalli is when her father pushes her into the Kusenagi while he remains in Orb and dies. The death of her father is also paired with the knowledge that she has a twin brother, who turns out to be Kira Yamato. Both of these shock her but later on make her a stronger character that fights for the ideals of Orb.
Gundam SEED Destiny
Shinn Asuka
Shinn is one of the two protagonists of Gundam SEED Destiny, the other being Athrun Zala. Throughout Gundam SEED Destiny, we can see that Shinn’s growth is very little compared to the Kira Yamato and Athrun Zala in Gundam SEED.
Most of the show, he refuses to grow in character because he is too stubborn to do so. Athrun Zala, being his captain, has made several attempts to teach Shinn on how to view the war in a different perspective, about what is right and what is wrong, and what it means to have power.
However, despites the words of Athrun Zala, Shinn remains the way he is. During numerous battles, he acts not on the orders of the captain of the Minerva, but of his own accord. He does however get reprimanded for his actions, but that still does not make him change or see things in a different way.
The only persons who have been seen to make Shinn listen to them are the PLANT Supreme Chairman Gilbert Durandal and his comrade Ray Za Burrel.
A special ending of Gundam SEED Destiny, shows Shinn Asuka meeting Kira Yamato. During the meeting Kira invites Shinn to come join them in terminal and Shinn accepts as he grabs Kira’s hand while tears are flowing from eyes, telling us that Shinn finally understood what Athrun has been trying to make him understand all this time.
Athrun Zala
Compared to his development in Gundam SEED Destiny, here his development is slower and redundant to his growth in Gundam SEED. To be fair, the words and plan of PLANT Supreme Chairman Gilbert Durandal do make sense compared to the previous chairman, Patrick Zala.
However, majority of what Athrun does and believes has already been seen in Gundam SEED in a sense. This is one reason why people think Gundam SEED Destiny is bad, many think that it is just a remake of Gundam SEED.
Cagalli Yula Athha
Among all the characters in Gundam SEED Destiny, no other has grown more in character development than Cagalli Yula Athha has. In Gundam SEED we see her grow from a mysterious rebellious girl to a leader of the nation of Orb. In Gundam SEED Destiny, she continues to grow with the safety and welfare of her nation in mind. She even decides to marry Yuna Roma Seiran in order to prevent another battle happening in Orb but the marriage was interrupted by Kira Yamato as he abducted Cagalli, using the Freedom.
With the help of her friends, she later realizes that marrying Yuna would have been a mistake. She realizes that it goes against what she has been fighting hard for this entire time, the ideals of her father, the ideals of Orb.
Cagalli, with the help of terminal, later reclaims control of Orb as chief representative, and with her resolve, she brings back Orb to its former glory.
At the end of the special ending of Gundam SEED Destiny, we can see Cagalli as the head of Orb, with a similar power to that of her late father. We also see Athrun Zala wearing an Orb military uniform which tells us that after the war, Athrun decided to go back to Orb and join Cagalli.
Plot
Both Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny have a very similar plot. They both revolve around a war among the Earth Alliance and PLANTs even though the cause of each war is different. Both series’ also feature a protagonist who experiences a tragic death and then enlists in the military.
However, in Gundam SEED Destiny, the main protagonist of Gundam SEED, Kira Yamato, is relatively passive compared to the other characters of Gundam SEED Destiny. This made the fans hate the series even more.
Both series’ as well have a masked character but looking at the character development of the masked characters, the masked character of Gundam SEED, Rau Le Creuset, makes more sense than that of the masked character of Gundam SEED Destiny, Neo Roanoke.
Neo Roanoke, who is actually Mu La Flaga, is even supposed to be alive because the mobile suit he was piloting, the Stike, exploded when he was using it to defend the Archangel from the positron beam fired from the Dominion during the first Alliance-PLANT war.
Both series also feature Athrun Zala starting off in ZAFT and then betraying it. They are also similar in the sense the team Kira and Athrun are on, or any battle that Kira and Athrun are in together, will always end in the favour of Kira and Athrun.
Both series also end the same way, with peace between the PLANTs and the Earth Alliance, and with the Three-Ship Alliance, later known as Terminal in Gundam SEED Destiny, stopping the war.
Conclusion
Both series are very similar except for the fact that Gundam SEED came first and Gundam SEED is less dragging and more direct in its story as it only follows one storyline.
Both stories also have exceptionally skilled protagonists but the previous main character Kira Yamato is passive in in Gundam SEED Destiny.
These are the reasons why people hate Gundam SEED Destiny. These are the reasons why people feel like Gundam SEED Destiny is just a remake of Gundam SEED.
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