np man

I get that warm feeling when I see the scene where Miriallia puts the paper flowers into space, in memory of Junius Seven, and if that wasn't meaningful enough, Hoshi e no Inori is playing the entire time.

In America, you'll find nothing but hatred for her because no other Gundam has that kind of character, and on top of that, she's on the same plane of dramatic scale as all of the other characters. She plays a major role in Kira and Athrun's character development, she sings inspirational songs, and Japanese people can relate to her, because she lost her parents to war.

Gundam SEED was tailored for Japan, not America anyway. Something clicks in the mind of a citizen of the only nation to suffer a nuclear attack when nuclear weapons are set off. And when you've personally felt the loss caused by such a thing, you can't help but be emotionally affected.

"People can only understand what they've witnessed firsthand."
"And the reality of all this makes it very sad."
I get sentimental upon hearing her songs. The first one, Hoshi e no Inori, was written to help people move on after losing a loved one in war. That's exactly what it did for me and my family. My mom used to cry so much over my grandmother's death because of radiation poisoning. Now we play that song in her memory, every year on her birthday and on Mothers' Day. To shed a tear while listening to it is really an inspiring experience. It's really helped us to emotionally heal, and listening to the piano version just makes the feeling stronger.

I write these comments with great unease, like Athrun and Kira in the GS OVA about the future.

No. I'll never go there again. If I had a dying wish, it might be that tvtropes never existed, and that all the people ruined by it had never heard of it. Look it up on Wikipedia if you want. It robs people of the ability to like anything. It happened to some of my friends. They look at anime not by what's good about them, but now by what is least wrong with it. They don't enjoy things anymore. Books, personalities, anything. I beg you guys, don't look stuff up there. Not only does it bend and warp peoples opinions into nothing but hate, but it just isn't fair to whoever you're arguing against. It turns everything into a stereotype. People write things there behind the shield of anonymity, terrible things which make the subject unwatchable when you try enjoy it again. So please don't go there.

But I really can't get over how 00's plot is full of cover-ups. What it lacks in character development, it makes up for in redundancy. They meaninglessly go on and on about war, with Setsuna and Marina saying the same thing over and over again in different words, with Setsuna having the occasional flashback about his wartorn childhood. They even wrote it so that Marina pulled off a miracle with the childrens' song, which oh-so heroically gave the world's resistance the will to fight. It's like a childish fairytale through and through.
You can tell by the artwork that you're supposed to be won over by the fights, but that's for the common fan. I want a carefully thought-out plot with a deep, underlying message that takes actual thought to percieve.

On top of that, it was a flat-out mechanized Dragon Ball Z. I don't know how else to describe it. There are so many explosions that you can hardly tell what's going on, and the speeds at which the mobile suits move is ridiculous. If ANY organic life-form moved at that speed, it would be turned to a bloody chowder because of the velocity-interia pressure. The reason GS/D mobile suits "fly too slow" is because it's realistic, and any faster, and the pilots would become splattered jelly in their cockpits. Not only that, but you're flying around in an 60 metric tons of metal. Does NOBODY realize how much thrust it takes to move that?

No, I'm alive. I only kind of liked 00 though. It was well-drawn, fast-paced, and the CGI was cool, but there SHOULD be more to an anime then appearance alone.
It was FAR too skimpy on character development, and it just made me mad when they made the death scenes super-dramatic. It's as if they really, actually thought that developing some characters for two episodes and then killing them off would be sad. Give me a break. I'm not some slackjawed five-year-old. The directors obviously don't know the limits of a 25-episode run.