Why is Gundam Seed Destiny so controversial?

[Aquaman OS]

He didn't attack Athrun or Sting, both of whom were fighting each other and not Kira. He also didn't fire at Minerva again, or Rey or Luna, also who weren't firing at him.

[RX-78GP04G Gerbera]

Originally Posted by monster

By the way, why are you now even complaining that they're not preaching their ideals? It seemed like you've been against their ideals from the start.

I'm not against the ideal in general (it would definitely be nice if mankind could come to a huge understanding, stop fighting, and live in total harmony with rainbows and unicorns), but how they went about trying to achieve them. Just like that, the fact that they were hiding over the two year period rather than staying out and trying to continue getting others to believe in their ideals about not fighting, considering tensions were still just as high and ready to explode, as SEED Destiny showed, just makes them, again, look a bit hypocritical or at least naive about the reality of the world.

And even after things get out of hand again and the second war starts, they never try to do anything until it actually personally affects them with the assassination attempt on Lacus. Only then do try to play mediator and preach those same ideals in the same hypocritical way; shooting at everyone who didn't listen and try to force it onto them.

At least this time around, they seemed to have decided to stay out and get more involved in the political arena (at least Lacus did) rather than try to vanish again.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Aquaman OS

He didn't attack Athrun or Sting, both of whom were fighting each other and not Kira.

But they weren't fighting when he got there.

He also didn't fire at Minerva again,

He didn't fire at any of the Alliance ships either.

or Rey or Luna

They were basically Minerva's weapons.

Originally Posted by RX-78GP04G Gerbera

I'm not against the ideal in general (it would definitely be nice if mankind could come to a huge understanding, stop fighting, and live in total harmony with rainbows and unicorns), but how they went about trying to achieve them. Just like that, the fact that they were hiding over the two year period rather than staying out and trying to continue getting others to believe in their ideals about not fighting, considering tensions were still just as high and ready to explode, as SEED Destiny showed, just makes them, again, look a bit hypocritical or at least naive about the reality of the world.

Actually, as SEED Destiny showed, the world was at peace until the Armory One incident. Again, in SEED, they were only concerned that the extremists on both the EA and ZAFT wanted to annihilate the other. They managed to stop that from happening and the governments on both sides appeared to be making efforts at peace. But beside that, neither Kira nor Lacus had any ambition of being in politics. I don't think anyone should hold that against them.

And even after things get out of hand again and the second war starts, they never try to do anything until it actually personally affects them with the assassination attempt on Lacus. Only then do try to play mediator and preach those same ideals in the same hypocritical way; shooting at everyone who didn't listen and try to force it onto them.

They didn't preach anything other than for Cagalli regarding Orb, and that was strictly about Cagalli and Orb, not about mediating anything between other nations. It wasn't until near the end that Lacus even said anything.

At least this time around, they seemed to have decided to stay out and get more involved in the political arena (at least Lacus did) rather than try to vanish again.

Well, that was because the PLANTs asked her to do so.

[Aquaman OS]

They didn't want to. Lacus and Kira only wanted to retire to live with Malchio in peace and not be a politician/soldier respectively. Athrun wanted to help Cagalli, but aside from being her bodyguard was unable to really do anything for her since her problems were out of his hands unless she wanted to start an Orb Civil War, which she obviously didn't.

I think Lacus and Kira realized with Durandal's hit attempts against them that they are too important to not be involved on the world stage. Their actions in the last war put targets on their heads so they either took their places or risked others fearing their power coming after them first. Although it's worth noting that they did set up Terminal, have Eternal on standby with a skeleton crew and maintained AA, so it's clear they were at least prepared for the possibility that they'd have to jump into action again.

Cagalli on the other hand simply lucked out in that anyone who would oppose her was conviniently killed in the Zaft invasion, solving all her problems for her. And Athrun can serve her in the Orb military, although why he couldn't do this from the start I'm not quite sure.