AoD Review: Gundam SEED Vol. #7

[Chris Beveridge]

Review (http://www.animeondvd.com/reviews2/disc_reviews/3573.php)

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In Summary:
Sometimes it's in small steps and other times it's in massive leaps, but Seed continually gets more and more interesting and fun to watch as it progresses. It's hard to believe that in barely five months we've moved through thirty-five episodes of the show. The characters have grown nicely, the action is only getting more intense and the larger plot of the full war rather than just the Archangel's escape is a big plus. More Lacus didn't hurt either, particularly the near naked sequence of her in the opening. Seed continues to evolve in an interesting and progressive way and has its hooks deep inside us.

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[guyver83]

What else... Positive!!!

[bakafoo]

I forget, but is Fllay here in these batch of episodes? More Lacus, yay!

[Sapphire]

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BakaBoobie said:
I forget, but is Fllay here in these batch of episodes? More Lacus, yay!

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Yes, she has several key scenes too. Ones that make people who hate her cheer even. (Though probably not as much as in vol. 6)

Mariela

[Fencedude]

You know, as utterly awesome as the Freedom's appearance is in episode 35, its really the scene between <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'> Athrun and Cagalli </span> that is the real highlight of the volume.

[Vicserr]

After the events of vol 6, this volume starts the snowball effect, <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>The event that took Kira to the plant and him getting his hands on Freedom Gundam</span> the Operation Spit Break strike on Alaska that mirrors the attack on Jaburo in Zeta Gundam(from a diferrent perspective) <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>and the off handed way that the EA high command just sacrifices the defenders of Joshua just so that they may nail as many Zaft units as possible with the cyclops system is just plain evil</span> and the thing is that the worse is yet to come!!!!

a very big positive for me

[joelgundam01]

Although I still haven't received this volume yet. **shakes fist at TRSI** I can still give it a positive rating (saw it on CN).

[Chacranajxy]

Gundam SEED Vols. 4 and 5 came out like half a month ago so such a quick release is insane. And very good. I really really like what I've seen of the show so far so I can't wait til' I get the time to watch these.

[B-Rad Lascelle]

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Chacranajxy said:
Gundam SEED Vols. 4 and 5 came out like half a month ago so such a quick release is insane. And very good. I really really like what I've seen of the show so far so I can't wait til' I get the time to watch these.

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My only gripe about the speedy release is that the dub feels like they rushed it out in record time for TV and its subsequent DVD release. There's been some questionable casting decisions and a little less polish than what I've come to expect from Ocean in the last year. With the proper time and care they could have really used a high profile property such as this to blow people's minds with some exceptional instead of serviceable dub quality.

Most of the principal characters who'll factor into Destiny are cast well, so I'd like to see a little more time and care spent on SEED's spinoff instead of trying to speed it out onto TV in record time. Of course, a lot of that fault lies more with Bandai than Ocean... but hey, that's life. /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif

[Coolrush]

A big positive for me. Kira and Freedom rock!

[Pepperidge]

The grade finally went up! I estimate a trend.

Were the clipshows the only thing holding volume 6 as a whole back?

[Chris Beveridge]

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Pepperidge said:
The grade finally went up! I estimate a trend.

Were the clipshows the only thing holding volume 6 as a whole back?

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Pretty much. When two-fifths of the disc is essentially recycled material, one in pure recap mode and the other with some commentary, that drags things down.

[Vicserr]

now that with this release, we caught up with the CN run(got pre-empted for Chritmas and New Year's) and I can't wait for the next eps <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>as the EF are about to unleash their new suits(Calamity, Raider and Forbidden Gundams) and Ahtrun get his hands on Justice Gundam(the 3rd op is very spoilerific) as Lacus is about to be hunted by Zaft for helping Kira get his hands on Justice Gundam</span>

and lets not forget that Justice Gundam kicks mayor a$$

also seeing the little scenes of the dead and/or the dying <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>including Nicol and Tolle(very heart wrenching)</span> that got cut off the CN run... if they are runninng basically at an Adult Swin time spot(1 AM), do adult swin type edits not Toonami type edits

at least uncut dvds are a consolation /images/graemlins/catgirl0.gif cant wait for the next batch in march and vol 10 in may....

edit: additional spoiler tagging

[Melazomah]

Spoiler tag on the dying? There are those who haven't seen it.

EDIT: And wow... that got cut, eh? God forbid that the concept of death may be introduced to the children.
Also, on the issue of "animated death," I hold immense respect for The Incredibles, Brad Bird is my (super)hero. /images/graemlins/happy.gif Yes, it's somewhat off-topic. /images/graemlins/sweat200.gif

[RommieSG]

I think it's obvious that I voted positive for this one. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

Vol. 6 dragged with the clip episodes, especially back to back, but Vol. 7 really kicked things up a notch. By the time I was finished, I was left with wanting MORE!!

Now I gotta wait until March. :p

Rommie /images/graemlins/sweat000.gif

[Vicserr]

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Melazoma said:
Spoiler tag on the dying? There are those who haven't seen it.


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Sorry... /images/graemlins/shy10000.gif /images/graemlins/shy10000.gif

I did spoiler tag stuff from future events, ppl got a chance to watch it raw, fansubbed and at CN so I guess I got carried away while throwing that barb at CN /images/graemlins/knowital.gif

[MalrocK]

Well volume 7 was even better than volume 6, which I thought would be pretty hard to do. To me the best parts were watching the characters deal <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>with the loses of Kira and Tolle. Cagilla's reaction has to be my favorite, I felt so bad for her which is why I hate knowing that she is related to Kira. The interaction between her and Athrun was great.</span> Flay continues to be one of my favorite characters. She's a character that you love, hate, and feel sorry for all at the same time. <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'> I hope she gets to the point where she can admit her feelings for Kira or something. Actually, I can't tell if she really does or doesn't but knowing that at the beginning she was just using Kira made you hate but understand her. She's such a confused character that it's hard to tell if she is just tricking herself into thinking she hates Kira. I guess that is what makes her such a great character.....</span>. Also, I've never seen <span style='color:#dddddd;background:#dddddd'>so many people explode in a Gundam show before /images/graemlins/stunned1.gif</span>

[Trey-Trey]

Just finished watching it. Drama, drama, drama... oh yah, and there's a little action mixed in as well. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Some REALLY good scenes involving people with weapons on the brink of absolute rage/sadness... phew. That scene in the "sickbay" had me about to leap out of my seat because I just knew someone was going to die.

Very good, very good.

[fujishig]

Ok, finally watched this DVD... with 8 and 9 in the queue! Yeah, I'm catching up!

If CN censored the earlier episodes, what happened during operation spit break? Did they all just fall unconcious or something?

Kira's "teleportation" seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was more than a little surprised... at first, I thought they were going to pull some Newtype teleportation thing. And geez, that's your best friend's (who's trying to kill you) fiance, for crying out loud.

How spoilerific can you get in an opening? It predicted deaths, as soon as they come out we know who the pilots of the new gundams are, and Mu La Flaga gets an upgrade soon (of course, that ending threw me off, because I was pretty sure Mu La Flaga was going to die early, since he's not in the ending at all... though neither is La Creuset).

Overall, I've marathoned the first 7 discs in a little over 2 months, and I love Gundam Seed... it's got just enough of the elements of UC Gundam to make me happy, and I'm a sap when it comes to getting emotional at even the cliched parts of this show. I'm really glad that I didn't read any of the spoilerific Newtype articles (and there were many) on this series, as experiencing it for the first time is a joy.

[Sapphire]

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Fujishig said:
If CN censored the earlier episodes, what happened during operation spit break? Did they all just fall unconcious or something?

Kira's "teleportation" seemed to come out of nowhere, and I was more than a little surprised... at first, I thought they were going to pull some Newtype teleportation thing. And geez, that's your best friend's (who's trying to kill you) fiance, for crying out loud.

How spoilerific can you get in an opening? It predicted deaths, as soon as they come out we know who the pilots of the new gundams are, and Mu La Flaga gets an upgrade soon (of course, that ending threw me off, because I was pretty sure Mu La Flaga was going to die early, since he's not in the ending at all... though neither is La Creuset).


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1. Spit Break on CN had some of the most massive edits so far - yet the easiest. Simply cut out any scene that showed a live person. The story managed to flow smoothly (which is more than I can say for other edits) - though the impact was not what it should have been.

2. When Kira first showed up on the PLANTs I recall my brother screaming "BOSON JUMP!" He still sticks to that theory to this day. That little plot hole is actually explained in the Astray manga. I know I know, cheating but what can you do?

3. OPs and EDs. My friends and I have many a running gag about SEED OPs - they reveal things, yes, but half the time you don't even get to them till the OP is pretty much done - sometimes not even till afterwards (Freedom anyone?) Someday I'll have to go through the DVDs and see if they went back and fixed some of the little quirky errors - one Archangel crewmember went missing from an OP and then showed up again later. And there were actually two intentional versions of the last OP (you'll get to that soon) - in an attempt to hide a spoiler. So they thought about it... Sometimes.

Mariela

[fujishig]

So they at least admit that people die... did they do that for the deaths in the previous eps that they didn't show? Because that was a primary motivation for the characters...

Boson Jump! lol

I remember watching the old show Lamune (the one with the talking blob on the main character's shoulder). The concept was that the main character had a lion robot, and along the way they'd fight bad robots, some of which could "turn" into the lion robot's friends. I remember it being pretty easy to spot which eps had new "friends" in them (usually the ones where they fought two robots at once, one of which would turn), but the opening had a shot of all the allies blacked out, and colored in one by one as they were found.

Always wondered if it was too complex to hide spoilers that way (although Gasaraki changed the opening for every episode, I think). Of course, openings and endings also give us a lot to look forward to.

Didn't mention this before, but man does this series have a LOT of flashbacks. I know people complained about two compilation eps in a row on volume 6, but this volume also had an ep with a lot of flashback (the review in front of the bigwigs in Alaska), and most episodes have an intro before the opening that is all flashback. I mean, I guess they save a lot of animation costs between this and recycling mecha animation (how many times will that landing Ginn lose a leg?).

[PsychoRabbitt]

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Sapphire said:
2. When Kira first showed up on the PLANTs I recall my brother screaming "BOSON JUMP!" He still sticks to that theory to this day. That little plot hole is actually explained in the Astray manga. I know I know, cheating but what can you do?


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My God... It all makes sense now.

*goes back to rewatch the series and look for giant potatoes in space*

Ruri: Baka...