Series Recommendation: Mobile Suit Gundam Seed [HD Remastered] – A New Era Of Kidou Senshi
The Seed of conflicts is sowed once again…
When the calendar changed and the world stepped into a new millennium, Gundam also made a drastic change to the franchise and produced a new series that would forever leave a mark in the history of mecha. Mobile Suit Gundam Seed is the first Gundam tv series to be animated digitally – and also the first and only Gundam timeline to receive an HD remaster, further proving that Seed’s popularity is the real deal. But is the content up to the fame?
Gundam Seed is, once again, about conflicts between natural earth-born people and genetically engineered space dwellers in the colonies of PLANT. The stigma between the Naturals and the Coordinators has been worsened ever since the Bloody Valentine incident where nukes were used on the JUNIUS 7 colony. The embers of war has been burning ever since. That is when Kira Yamato – a genius student was sucked into the whirlpool of war by an attempt to hijack the state-of-the-art Mobile Suit belong to the Atlantic Federation. Kira accidentally fell into the control of the Strike Gundam, and then begin his own war saga as a Gundam protagonist.
+ Plot: SEED’s story was kinda like a revamped version of the original 1979 Gundam story. You can clearly see the similarities between these two. Yet, with some elements from Korean Dramas, which was becoming more and more popular in the populace at the time, like the love triangle for example, and some new point of view from newer war story released after 1979, Sunrise (Fukuda, the director of SEED alongside his wife Chiaki, also SEED’s writer) perfected their success formula in that time, and perhaps even now as it’s extremely approachable even if we compare it to today’s standards.
+ Plot: SEED’s story was kinda like a revamped version of the original 1979 Gundam story. You can clearly see the similarities between these two. Yet, with some elements from Korean Dramas, which was becoming more and more popular in the populace at the time, like the love triangle for example, and some new point of view from newer war story released after 1979, Sunrise (Fukuda, the director of SEED alongside his wife Chiaki, also SEED’s writer) perfected their success formula in that time, and perhaps even now as it’s extremely approachable even if we compare it to today’s standards.
+ Animation: Gundam SEED received an HD Remaster in 2011 to celebrate its 10th anniversary, thanks to this the quality is improved significantly compared to the original version. Even so, the og was still a high standard for its time – using the expensive and difficult digital animation technique. With the HD Remaster, every frame is polished to look like a 201x series which is amazing, especially all those fix shots of people’s faces and the Mobile Suit still frames. The combat in Seed has a few repetitive patterns, but overall, the quality is very high.
+ Mechanical Design: The legendary Kunio Okawara and Kimitoshi Yamane were responsible for SEED’s MS designs. Their works bear resemblance to the classic Gundam 0079 series, inspired by them (like the Strike Gundam with the RX78-2 Gundam) but had improved by the 2000s standards, satisfied both fans that wanted nostalgia but also new fans that wanted modern touched. Many Mobile Suits Gunpla in SEED (notably, the Strike Gundam and Freedom Gundam) were still being produced years after the end of SEED, proved that its MS designs were truly pieces of art work. It also incorporate many modular mechanism such as different backpacks, equipment loadouts etc…partly for variety but also for commercial reasons.
+ Mechanical Design: The legendary Kunio Okawara and Kimitoshi Yamane were responsible for SEED’s MS designs. Their works bear resemblance to the classic Gundam 0079 series, inspired by them (like the Strike Gundam with the RX78-2 Gundam) but had improved by the 2000s standards, satisfied both fans that wanted nostalgia but also new fans that wanted modern touched. Many Mobile Suits Gunpla in SEED (notably, the Strike Gundam and Freedom Gundam) were still being produced years after the end of SEED, proved that its MS designs were truly pieces of art work. It also incorporate many modular mechanism such as different backpacks, equipment loadouts etc…partly for variety but also for commercial reasons.
+ Music: SEED was probably the first time Sunrise tried to make the OP and ED more catchy to the general audience outside of anime fans. Mr. Fukuda has invited J-Pop singers to sing OPs and EDs for Gundam SEED, for example Takanori Nishikawa (an extremely popular singer at the time) contributed his songs for Gundam SEED alongside Nami Tamaki’s debut (3rd OP “Believe”) and 4th OP “Realize” were two of the biggest example that both sides were profit through this collab. The OSTs are just as good as the OPs and EDs, to the point when those hate Gundam SEED could not say they hate the music of SEED. The sound quality are not far from behind either, as the recording technology in the early 2000s had advanced far better than those in 90s, making this another advantage for the series itself.
+ Conclusion: Gundam SEED can be regarded as an “old” series by now, but its popularity and influence is still far and wide. A modern Gundam series with beautiful animation and music and a protagonist that has quite a reputation in the fandom as well as anime community in general. And you can’t deny the amount of fame SEED still hold over Japan audience, so it’s a worthy cause to check it out for yourself.
+ Conclusion: Gundam SEED can be regarded as an “old” series by now, but its popularity and influence is still far and wide. A modern Gundam series with beautiful animation and music and a protagonist that has quite a reputation in the fandom as well as anime community in general. And you can’t deny the amount of fame SEED still hold over Japan audience, so it’s a worthy cause to check it out for yourself.
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