[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

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.

Well for me the cutoff point for where Seed Destiny was never really good or consistent was after the episode where Meer Campbell held the concert in episode 17. The degree to which it meandered and the characters went in cyclical development cycles after that point was absolutely staggering and there was just a lot of nonsensical fanservice like the hotsprings in the ship and the Hawke twins scenes that never really felt like it had a place in the story. Not to mention all the clip shows and stock footage that made the production a total embarassment. I hold these failings to be far greater than those of AGE which only really started to struggle and show signs of the games storyline being comrpessed into a TV series after about episode 37.

Also that thing with the Zalam/Euba, they were given beam rifles like the G-Exes which could do damage, which allowed them to close the gap on the Vagan suits using their skill and experience. The reason they sucked so bad in the Fardain arc was that they were using those ineffective weapons and thus got curb stomped. It'd be like Miyamoto Musashi trying to beat a tank with his Katana. Yeah he's one of the greatest swordsmen of all time, but the technology gap is clearly too much. I'm pretty sure this is expressly explained by either Vargas or Flit at one point before the final attack on Ambat.

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.

AGE is absolutely superior to Destiny in the action department, forget it merely being on par. Most shows are though. I don't think I've ever seen more use of stock footage in combat in a mecha series than I have in Destiny. No Gundam was ever allowed to get damaged unless it was under the right circumstances (i.e higher tier character piloting it), while at least in AGE the Gundams typically showed the stresses of combat and characters like Kio could be pressured by characters like Fram in their otherwise grunt suits so there was some actual tension in the fights even if you didn't necessarily care about the characters.

Hell Muv-Luv Alternative Total Eclipse for all it's QUALITY issues still has more exciting battles than Destiny. That was simply inexcusable, especially given the budget that Destiny was supposed to have and knowing how well Sunrise can choreograph an action sequence. You wouldn't know it if you only watched Gundam Seed Destiny though as that one barely had fight choreography so much as posing and one shot kills more often than not.

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.

I'd say both had pretty good OSTs. If there's one area the Gundam franchise has never really fallen short it's been the music. Do not care one damn about sales, only personal taste in this matter so no comment on that front other than of course Seed Destiny is going to have a more popular OST than AGE's in Japan cause the show was simply flat out more popular. If you can't remember a single song from AGE though I guess that's your own thing. I doubt you'll find many people that will find they have a similar issue though.

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 compared to AGE's charas.

No contest here yet again. I'll take Flits path of becoming a hateful person because of events in his past but eventually realizing that the grudge wasn't worth sacrificing his chance to become the savior he'd always wanted over Shinn just plain never getting what a fool he was. To me Shinn is like if they had Zeheart as the main character instead of the overly ambitious loser villain type. He just blindly follows whatever Durandal follows because he feels it'll allow him to get what he wants rather than questioning whether his plan makes any sense at all or will ever actually allow for it much like Zeheart's relationship to Ezelcant. As for the cast, about the only character I could really tolerate or sympathize with was Athrun who was caught between loyalties for most of the show yet wanted to make sure he made the right choice, whereas at least AGE had the likes of Abis, Woolf, Grodek, Flit, Asemu and Fram. Not nearly as many intriguing characters as say 00, but certainly more than Destiny.

Shinn by comparison to AGE's Asuno family seemed to flip flop between being portrayed as a reasonable level headed pilot who could help change the flow of the battle he was in to a raving bug-eyed revenge obsessed madman whenever Kira was in the scene seemingly just so Kira could be portrayed as clearly the better man. That doesn't strike me as consistent...now that I think of it neither do things like Talia sacrificing herself with Durandal for no good reason despite having a son to look after and despite always showing to have been a fairly level headed captain that puts duty before relationships...especially ones that are long over. It's too bad though that Fram basically ended up similar to Talia in that despite her convictions she ultimately ends up sacrificing herself along with her madman commander who then loses it over her death moments later and ends up dying in regret anyway. Just doesn't feel like either of character needed to die so I will give that it's a problem that both series share at times.

I can also agree though that Spriggan was certainly a Heine, but it feels like she got more of a real backstory than Heine even if she was mostly a throwaway character of the arc. About all we learned about Heine was that Athrun greatly respected him and he was voiced by T.M Revolution and then he died really fast without accomplishing much because goddammit he was in the grunt suit facing a Gundam and that show followed the rule of Main character in Gundam>Minor character in Gundam>Minor character in grunt suit>no name in grunt suit to the letter regardless of how much skill the person was ostensibly supposed to have.

At least in AGE characters like Abis, Flit and Asemu didn't betray their skill level just because their suit was getting a little old and they were up against the big fancy new Gundams. There were limits to what they could do, but they could still do things. Plus most importantly AGE doesn't consistently retcon it's characters deaths where convenient just because people happened to like those cast members in the past.

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.

No contest here again, I will take AGE's varied if sometimes goofy looking designs over Seed Destiny's same face droopy eyed weird expression ones because at least most of them stand out. I think that show has aged worse than any other than perhaps Gundam Wing in terms of how ugly the artwork looks when watching it today.

Also by my standards the characters in Destiny's portrayal was pretty damn simplistic and one note...far more than the majority of the major characters in AGE's with perhaps the exception of Kio.

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.

You are biased clearly, but that's okay That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. I've stated my reasons and plan on sticking to them for now though.