Quote:
Originally Posted by 4Tran
Nah, what we see Lacus actually achieve is enough to push her into the antagonist role. I'd say that Lacus was better at politicking than Durandal, but she did have the advantage of having a stronger position to begin with.
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Wow, I've been lurking the AnimeSuki forums for the past 6 months. I'm always surprised to keep seeing this one thread pop up over and over again. Well, now I'd like to put in my $0.02.
I thought GSD was pretty good when it first came out. The series itself was very successful commercially. In fact, SEED and Destiny were what got me into watching anime, reading mangas and building Gunpla so they would always hold a spot in my heart. However, after watching through it a second time, the flaws started to stand out. The reuse of footage was ridiculous, the recap episodes were a complete waste of time, and the plot had some major holes/flaws (Impluse's Excalibur gaining a beam emitter on the point for example).
However, I still think that GSD is pretty good. Nowhere near as good a Seed but it was good, not great. Despite it's flaws, I'd agree with most of the points that people have made about the good things in GSD. It's too bad that Fukada and his wife couldn't implement the story better.
Now the thing about who's the bad guy and who's the good guy, it's all up to who you see had the right ideals. I believe Fukada had planned for Durandal to be the bad guy from the start. However, that doesn't make Durandal an antagonist.
The thing that most people forget is that the titles of protagonist and antagonist don't automatically make one character good and the other bad. The protagonist is the main character or group characters who share the same ideas and the story focuses on them.
Technically, this would make Durandal, Rey and Shinn (even though he was a puppet) the protagonists. Durandal saying that he wants "people to live a happy life" and Shinn going all googly eyed and following along. The plot in GSD was setup to present 2 trains of thought for ending violence: the Destiny Plan and Kira and companies' way. GSD was setup from the start to slowly reveal bits and pieces of Durandals true intentions with the Destiny Plan, therefore, making him the protagonist.
The antagonist is basically another character of set of characters that have differing views from the protagonists. So, Kira and crew could be thought of the antagonists since they oppose the Destiny Plan.
So, like I said earlier, it's up to the viewer to decide who they think who ultimately were the good guys and who were the bad guys. As for me, I believe that Durandal was the de facto "bad guy." This of course will mean that Kira and crew are the "good guys."
However, I know many will argue that Lacus' actions may have hidden evil intentions and that it was a power grab. It's still unclear as to whether she's the Chairwoman, a council member or an envoy by the end of GSDSE 4. Besides, Fukada and his wife have so pinholed Kira and Lacus into the goody-two-shoes role that if they did something like drastically alter one of their roles, they'd probably destroy the SEED franchise. Not to mention that they'd incur the wrath of all the Kira/Lacus fans that they built the SEED franchise off of (lol...I know many will say that GSD already destroyed it). I still can't believe that Kira and Lacus are still at the top of the Favorite Anime Characters (Japanese ones at least) lists after all these years!
Wow, that was a long ass post!! Hope I made sense!