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Old 2012-09-24, 12:58   Link #108
Obelisk ze Tormentor
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Indonesia
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama View Post
And really I think this idea that AGE is "worse than Destiny" has to be recency bias and the Gundam Cycle at work and not to mention people just not remembering how nonsensical the narrative was by the time it ended.
I don’t think it’s bias at all. Destiny as an ovearal series is better than AGE (and I don’t even like Destiny).

Story:
Destiny's story/plot is better than AGE coz (at least) for the first half or 2/3 of the series, it’s all well-developed (characters, events & action) and still within the realm of logic. It didn’t turn silly as quickly as AGE. One example from gen 1 is: how can a ragtag group of mobile suits from the quarreling colony factions which (in the early episodes) can barely scratch a single Gafran (the weakest of Vagan grunt MSs) can put up a fight (let alone win) in the battle against a horde of Gafrans, Baqtos, Zedas, and a Vagan’s advanced (at the time) battleship? Surely AGE-1 & G-Exes alone won’t be able to make a difference in that massive battle (forgot the name of the battle). And that’s just one silliness that happened earlier in Gen 1 of the series. There’s a lot more as episodes gone by.

Action:
This is where AGE is on-par with Destiny or even excels. Destiny’s drawback is (as everybody already knows) there’s a continent of stock-footage. Still, the action itself is very good. It’s stylish, fast, and has great fight-choreography overall. AGE’s action mainly prevail in the “minimal stock footage” department which I very much appreciate it. Still, the overall action in Gen 1 is what I call as uninspired. It’s very slow and badly choreographed. Then AGE improve itself greatly in Gen 2 and Gen 3 where the action is plenty, fast, and nicely choreographed too.

OST (BGM & songs):
I know that this pretty much depends on taste, but I find myself enjoying almost every single BGM in Destiny. The score is great and memorable. The songs (OP, ED, insert) are no different. It’s one of the best in Gundam franchise. As for AGE, the BGM is forgettable (I can’t remember even a single one of the BGMs) and the only songs I enjoy out of the series are only 3 (the 1st OP, the 1st & 2nd ED). If you find this as only one man’s preference, you can compare the sales for Destiny’s OST and AGE’s OST yourselves. At least commercial success can speak for itself.

Characters:
Overall, Destiny’s characters has more “oomph” compared to the blandness of AGE’s characters. Even if some of them didn’t well-developed, most of them are consistent almost throughout the entire series (minus the final episode where almost everyone do some really questionable action). Also, most of Destiny’s charas are enjoyable to watch when they’re doing their thing compared to AGE’s. Even Shinn’s character who turned into a whiny villain for the last 1/3 of the series is not as useless and as annoying as Kio, for example. You might also want to argue that Heine Westenfluss in Destiny is the equal of Girard Spriggan in AGE. Still, Heine is meant to be a “guess star” character and he didn’t take (waste) that much valuable screen-time compared to Girard and her backstory. In short, most of the characters in Destiny serve actual purposes and treated better compared to AGE's charas.

Character artwork:
Another taste-based point. But at least here, I will say that Destiny’s characters have more complex traits compared to the simple portrayal of characters in AGE. Fair enough, right?

So, according to my opinion above, Destiny scores 4/5 points while AGE only score 1/5. That one score from AGE comes from its action which, if you compare the time they’re made, AGE hardly wins over Destiny.

Once again, all this comes from me who really really don’t like (if not outright hate) Destiny as an overall series. So, no, I’m not really biased. Most of the elements in Destiny is indeed better than AGE.
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Last edited by Obelisk ze Tormentor; 2012-09-24 at 13:13.
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