[Dean_the_Young]

Originally Posted by Wesley84

Short fights as you've pointed out. However if I had to watch stockfights of mechas and battleships fighting vs. characters standing around with hundreds of dramtic pauses between sentences...

Six of one, half a dozen of another, I know. Destiny made much more of an impression on me than Seed (not least because I saw them in reverse order after I got sick of the Seed dub when it came out, and only watched the sub later), with the dozens of flight MS that kindly just hovered there, not really aiming, waiting for the latest cool-dramatic-pose attack (tm). For 00, short but better is a relief from Destiny, which is a very simple reason for liking it.

Except for Ali, who is Setsuna's storyboard bitch, I agree.

I wouldn't use that term myself, but it looks like Ali gets his own action next episode. For the moment, his moments have all been with Setsuna, with only snipits of him out of the cockpit.

Actually Seed's backstory made the situation a little more complicated than any of that. Destiny certainly took alot of things for granted and over simplified global politics. Seed, not so much. There were economic reasons for why there was a war, and the whole Natural/Coordinator thing was simply one aspect of it, even if it served as a rallying cry for some people.

True, and I admit I was talking more of Destiny than Seed (though Destiny largely magnified the overlookable parts of Seed). Seed had some interesting political dynamics, such as a Eurasia-AF rivalry, South America and Australia declaring for ZAFT, etc., but the series was more about following the travel of Kira and Co, and the politics was reserved for sidestories until jetissioned in Destiny.

(Though why, why, did they feel compelled to make a blatant political statement of genocidal American religious fanatics? Could you be any less subtle?)

Seed was about war escaluating out of control, while Destiny was about...Strike Freedom?

Pretty much, though I'd say Seed's biggest point was of Kira getting all the girls, including Cagelli, while trying to survive.

OO presenting a standing balance of power, rather than a large-scale war is interesting, but the show doesn't really use it much as it should. Especially since I'm dying for Graham, Sergei, Soma, and Patrick to be in a room together.

And that, my friend, is the marvel of good directing. The staff has been making the Powers be so attractive, and have been steadily increasing the tempo of the drive inter-power cooperation since the beginning, wanting us to anticipate the shear awsomeness of all of them in the same room. That is what directing should do; I remember how people kept waiting for Kira to meet some of the other ZAFT pilots, and BAM meeting Dearka was a good moment. Compare that to a throw-away meeting between Shinn and Kira in Destiny, which served no purpose later on...

The individuals don't seem too interested in working things out though. They're happy being Meisters. That's the problem. I think the absent of social skills is simply an excuse to keep any interesting discussions about their beliefs from happening.

The fact they don't really believe anything before launching their global crusade is what pisses me off the most.

Hm? It's pretty clear that most of the Meisters have pretty basic beliefs, albeit too uniform. Setsuna believes in Gundam as opposed to God, and wants to become the Gundam (and by extension, the manifestation of Schenberg's ideals). Lockon wants to prevent any terrorist attacks from happening in the future, after paying the cost now. Allelujah doesn't want there to be a need for any more kids like him. They are all manifestly anti-war from personal experiences, not from some deep driving philosophy.

Tieria is Veda's love slave, likely born and raised in CB like Felt.

Really, it's the rest of the Ptolemy crew that doesn't have a clear motivation. Sumeragi has a mystery reason for leaving the Union military, but not joining CB. I'd be more interested with her in the Union with a dark past, like Graham, rather than in CB. (As a matter of fact, I even wrote a drabble based on that WI, though it was extremely mediocre.)

Not too sure about this one since I detach myself from characters that I hate so their special little emo scenes tend to only matter to me as far as substance is concerned. Louise's was one of the best in series, bar none, but Setsuna murdering his parents and him not caring about it, well, apathy is as apathy does.

This is a taste judgement, more than a ability judgement. Louise's scene was good because it masterfully combined tricks such as proper application of background movement, sound effects, the shaking camera with ominous music when Saji was racing through the hospital, and the like. Setsuna's scene was supposed to give us an inkling as to why he suddenly gets such an out-of-(established)-character reaction when seeing Ali. Different mechanics, different purpose.

As for the shift in attitudes towards character amongst the audience, I don't really like it myself. To suddenly feel bad for Louise, while not trying to understand her in the first place annoys me.

It's a testament to the director's ability to not only direct the show, but to at the same time direct audience who is the just as involved in a presentation as any character. If you are resistant to such techniques, fine and good, so am I. But I can still appreciate the meistro-finese involved; Neena went from adored to hated in an episode and a half, Setsuna had almost everyone's support to beat the Thrones hard (even if few actually expected him to), Mason's death directly led to more than a few people cheering when Graham sliced off the arm of those evil, ominous Thrones...

You might not personally like that style, but that doesn't make it any worse in regards to quality. I personally detest art, but I can still appreciate the fine strokes and subtle hues of a DiVinci painting, even if I can't name it. I can still appreciate a good action-thriller, even though those aren't my kind of book. A 00 weakness may be its main character characterization, but it's also balanced out by the rival characters, who have gotten much more focus thus far. (For example: compare Graham's lines for the first five episodes, and then the lines of all the Meisters combined out of their suits. It's telling.)

This is actually an annoyance. I'd rather know nothing than wait to learn something. Especially since they like to re-use flashbacks GSD-style without actually telling us anything new.

Considering how 00 has had so few in-series flashback films at this point (the clipshow episode, which at the same time gave new information as to CB's makeup) and just last episode with the Saji-Louise flashback (which actually gave us a new one as to how they met), it's not really fair to say that. By episode 18, Destiny had had a lot, lot more, and most of those were much longer in duration and really didn't put any new info in. Compare the most common flashback of 00, of Setsuna shooting his mother, to Shinn and his family's death. Or the battle stock footage, including the overly intricate Impulse launch twirling sequence.