I'm playing Front Mission 1 and it feels so wrong when I dismantle an enemy it's basically just a walking coffing that can't do shit and there is nothing to do but to murder them.
In Front Mission 3 doing it usually results in enemy pilots giving up and you being able to salvage enemy parts for money or your own use.
I know seed is homosexual space opera, but it would be so cool if they spent screen time discussing how kira's dismantling skill actually lets them harvest enemy parts and profit from it.
Probably because it's too easy for him since he can do it effortlessly with Freedom's power and if he finds an opponent he can't disable he'll go for the kill so he's not exactly letting it handicap him when it comes down to it, although he does let Shinn defeat him rather than go for the kill so he does stick to it that one time.
Angel Down is just really weird. >Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him >Kira DOES go for a kill shot at one point, but Shinn dodges it using OPEN GET >Kira doesn't go for a kill shot at the very end
The second point could be excused as an animation error, but then we enter the even weirder territory of the show itself being an unreliable narrator.
I'm going to chock that up to an error, or even more understanibly just a wrong interpretation since you can't even see that without a frame by frame which was not something the animators would intend. Because not only does Kira go back to non lethal again, but he continues to do do with Shinn for the rest of the show.
The show's narration is consistent with that too as Shinn tells Rey Kira fought exactly according to their predictions (which was that he'd never attempt a wienerpit shot) and Durandal later tells Shinn and Athrun that Shinn never could have defeated him if Kira had been properly trained not to show no mercy in battle because he's such a genetically perfect soldier he'd never lose without that handicap.
>Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him
Shinn was set as ZAFT hero by Durandal after the battle of Berlin. If Kira kills him, Terminal will be the enemy of ZAFT.
Terminal might personally be ZAFT's enemy but the rest of the world doesn't have much opinion on them yet. Given Durandal edited the Berlin footage to make it look like Shinn personally saved the day there Kira killing him means Durandal could blast that footage all over the planet and demonize them as a LOGOS force that killed Shinn in revenge for Berlin. While if all he has is footage of Kira being he usual nonlethal self and no Orb forces helping him and tries that at least they could try and counter that they were doing their usual trying to save everyone shtick because look Kira is deliberately not trying to kill him.
Unfortunately the Seiran's ruin that all in the next few episodes by actively having Orb help Djbril which means Durandal can do just that in the finale not that it really matters at that point anyway. But I can see their logic.
I know people say that war is decisive and if Kira wasn't prepared to go full scorched Earth on Zaft and bear any burden they gave him he never should have fired a shot. And that Kira thinking otherwise is naive, perhaps rightfully so. But on the other hand that is arguably the right choice to make in the setting because doing otherwise led to everyone almost dying in Seed.
The self-righteousness. At least Kio is consistent about doing something to avoid people getting killed in the battlefield (even if it has unintended consequences).
As a character, he doesn't have any principles, or a reason to fight except some nonsense Lacus fed him, which makes things all a bit too easy for him when both ZAFT and the Earth Alliance are in a campaign of mutual genocide, rather than fighting for their respective causes.
Compare him to Amuro or Kamille. There is no sacrifice, no cost to him for what he does.
There's no way to safely and quickly disable a battleship, so he doesn't hesitate to go for the kill. Kira never actually says that he's not going to kill people or that killing people is even wrong, he just stops doing it when he can avoid it. He never complains about his allies when they continue to kill all of their enemies, and he typically goes for the kill whenever it would be his life or theirs. Angel Down is actually a huge aberration, as
Angel Down is just really weird. >Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him >Kira DOES go for a kill shot at one point, but Shinn dodges it using OPEN GET >Kira doesn't go for a kill shot at the very end
The second point could be excused as an animation error, but then we enter the even weirder territory of the show itself being an unreliable narrator.
points out.
Now Kio, that little shit is everything that people complain about with Kira and more. He blocks shots aimed at his enemies by his allies, but not shots aimed at his allies by his enemies. He actually deserves the complaints, but I would argue that Kira doesn't.
>and he typically goes for the kill whenever it would be his life or theirs. Angel Down is actually a huge aberration, as
Angel Down is just really weird.
>Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him >Kira DOES go for a kill shot at one point, but Shinn dodges it using OPEN GET >Kira doesn't go for a kill shot at the very end
The second point could be excused as an animation error, but then we enter the even weirder territory of the show itself being an unreliable narrator. points out.
Not really. Freedom/Justice had plenty of advantages against the druggie pukes, but never went for the kill. They know they're dangerous foes and have battery-powered machines: just use Waltfeld's trick on them and turn the dipshits into soup when they're bugging out.
I liked that both 00 and G-Witch dispensed with their "insane super-soldiers in hideous Gundams" fairly quickly, and that they were actual characters.
Here's the thing though. Seed's battles are TOO big for their not be massive causalities all the time on both sides. This isn't usually him sticking to smaller sorties where he sometimes has to take out one guy or two like say Loran did. Seed battles have hundreds of grunts exploding all the time and if there's not an easy way to sink battleships safely maybe just don't then? You don't need to have Kira cutting down battleships all the time either. Typically they should be sticking int he back and just carrying suits with some supporting fire. Beat enough grunts and let them sale away or get taken out by others. This is the problem. They want Kira to do EVERYTHING and having him do EVERYTHING doesn't add up right.
>They want Kira to do EVERYTHING and having him do EVERYTHING doesn't add up right.
It's a power fantasy, same as an isekai. The whole conflict spins around his character.
At least with the guys Kira's personally disables Destiny actually makes an attempt to show that rare exceptions like Heine aside, all of the pilots Kira disables always somehow survive no matter how improbable. When Neo's checking the damage after the first Crete battle it's reported that while Freedom did alot of damage, everyone he shot down was retrieved safely. At Angel Down the Zaft landship also reports that the Babi squad they sent after Freedom all returned to the ship combat unable. And of the many named pilots that Kira disables, which in Destiny is basically the entire cast at one point (not counting Stella in Destroy which was a deliberate kill) only Heine died anyway and that was mostly due to his own poor judgement of continuing to try to attack Kira while damaged.
Kira really is that good for the most part in terms of keeping people alive.
Wouldn't disabling battleships actually be easier than Mobile Suits? You only need to destroy the turrets and engines and it'll just be a helpless hulk floating in space. Probably easier than blasting all the limbs off a small moving target like a Mobile Suit.
>There's no way to safely and quickly disable a battleship
Citation fricking needed.
What does Athrun do to the Minerva at the end of SEED Destiny? What does Kira do to the trio of Nazca-class ships trying to take out the Eternal when the Strike Freedom debuts? Your assertion is absurd. Especially considering in the webm anon linked Kira is already behind the Agamemnon-class and could've shot its engine block with a few lower-power beams to kill its engines but instead opts to split it half in the most overkill way possible. >Angel Down is actually a huge aberration
No it isn't and you anons need to stop whining about it. What
Angel Down is just really weird. >Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him >Kira DOES go for a kill shot at one point, but Shinn dodges it using OPEN GET >Kira doesn't go for a kill shot at the very end
The second point could be excused as an animation error, but then we enter the even weirder territory of the show itself being an unreliable narrator.
fails to note is that the climax of Angel Down takes place over the course of a few very tense seconds, giving Kira a matter of moments to prepare to kill the Freedom's NJC and mount some kind of defense/counter to Shinn's oncoming charge, while keeping an eye on the Archangel as it tries to get away. He didn't have almost 20 years to watch and re-watch the sequence of events and go "well, here the optimal move would've been to do X, but he did Y instead". That he did what he did is impressive enough, even if he did, decisively, lose. >I would argue that Kira doesn't
No, there's grounds to complain. Disabling is harder than killing because a dead enemy will not retaliate but a damaged one can still come after you (Rau mentions this in the 8th fleet battle), so effectively disabling an enemy MS requires a higher degree of skill to do. That's why your average soldier kills their enemies. Yet despite this, Kira likes to pretend that he's "not special", or "above average", but "just a single human being" when his actions and capabilities prove this to be note only hypocritical, but if not hubris, ignorance.
>the climax of Angel Down takes place over the course of a few very tense seconds, giving Kira a matter of moments to prepare to kill the Freedom's NJC and mount some kind of defense/counter to Shinn's oncoming charge, while keeping an eye on the Archangel as it tries to get away. He didn't have almost 20 years to watch and re-watch the sequence of events and go "well, here the optimal move would've been to do X, but he did Y instead". That he did what he did is impressive enough, even if he did, decisively, lose
I don't agree because we've seen Kira make crazy precise hits before with fraction of a second to react before several times, including several times earlier in Angel Down, such as when he bullseyes two BABI's from an upsidedown position while twisting in mid air, then casually sidesteps and shoots off another BABI's head coming at him from behind while talking to AA. And against Shinn himself where despite Shinn tossing out a distraction by causing minor cosmetic damage to Freedom's shoulder that actually causes Kira to look away for a moment he still manages to react in time to dodge a near point blank shot, another saber swing and then counter with a disabling slash from an awkward angle in barely a second, the only thing actually catching him off guard was Shinn launching the damaged flyer into him when his back was turned, presumably because he wasn't aware Impulse could do that and Kira still manages to block it in time even if it still knocks him out of the air.
With all that, I'd say it's makes perfect sense for Kira to have plenty of time to choose how he was gonna counter in those few seconds of Shinn flying at him and he deliberately choose not to kill him.
Not sure why people always forget this part of the equation; sure, he COULD have allowed a nuclear reaction, but that'd just kill himself, where shutting it down gives him a far greater chance of survival. Shutting it down wasn't about consideration of the enemy, it was simple self preservation. Never mind that it's unclear whether a full on nuclear reaction would have affected the Archangel.
11 months ago
Anonymous
That wasn't, Kira's final attack being a stab to Impulse's head when he could have aimed lower at the wienerpit and made it a double KO (that Kira would have survived but Shinn wouldn't have) was.
11 months ago
Anonymous
The Impulse was coming at him almost horizontal, so hitting the wienerpit would have been essentially impossible unless Kira cam teleport his beam saber hits.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Kira HAS made impossible hits like before. If he could disable Impulse at the angle he did earlier in the fight he could hit the wienerpit in that final stab. All he'd need to do is lower Freedom's saber arm a little bit and Shinn is dead.
The self-righteousness. At least Kio is consistent about doing something to avoid people getting killed in the battlefield (even if it has unintended consequences).
As a character, he doesn't have any principles, or a reason to fight except some nonsense Lacus fed him, which makes things all a bit too easy for him when both ZAFT and the Earth Alliance are in a campaign of mutual genocide, rather than fighting for their respective causes.
Compare him to Amuro or Kamille. There is no sacrifice, no cost to him for what he does.
A little nuance in the conflict would've gone a long way: >ZAFT should be fighting a defensive war that turned sideways >Earth Alliance should be hanging by a thread because of internal conflict among its members
And, more important: >the extremists on each side should've been a minority, not the bulk of their respective forces
Instead of that, this happens.
Not really. Kira attacking both sides in SEED Destiny just does more to piss everyone off. ZAFT in particular has every right to attack Orb since for all their nonsensical talk about being a neutral nation, they also helped escalate the war between the EA and ZAFT by helping the former build its own Mobile Suits and during Destiny itself decided to ally with the obviously genocidal racists again.
Kira and Orb are directly responsible for Djibril using Requiem to genocide a few extra PLANTs than otherwise would've been destroyed because of their false equivalence of ZAFT and the EA being equally bad
>because of their false equivalence of ZAFT and the EA being equally bad
Given ZAFT also resorts to attempting mass death with genocide weapons they were entirely correct on that front.
11 months ago
Anonymous
In SEED, yes, but wasn't Durandal being a good boy until after the first Requiem attack?
11 months ago
Anonymous
He was pretending to be a good boy, but given he immediately repaired Reqiuem, and had a Genesis II built even before that, that was always his endgame.
The entire world was willing to side with ZAFT aside from fricking Orb who had been slurping the EA until 5 seconds prior
Nobody sided with Zaft, the whole world was too confused by the absurdity of the Destiny Plan to do anything but ask if he was serious and the only people we see are the one village Zaft helped early in the show where the one girl is the only supporter of it, solely because she thinks they owe Zaft, and everyone else thinks she's nuts. The only people that actually seemed eager for the plan was Plant itself and even then a large bunch of forces including Yzak and Dearka defected so even they weren't aligned.
11 months ago
Anonymous
The entire world was willing to side with ZAFT aside from fricking Orb who had been slurping the EA until 5 seconds prior
>There is no sacrifice, no cost to him for what he does.
Uh lots of people die on Kira. It's not like he's totally unscathed from war just because his pink GF lived atop a bunch of other dead people. You want a cost to Kira's actions? Flay. If he'd killed Rau back in Mendel when he had several chances to then he wouldn't have killed her in the end.
Basically, they are at Shinn side.
Story change if you are fighting at Kira side.
This game make it if you play Shinn side, than Kira side action are really bad and are terrorist.
Ironically, they becomes terrorist at end while Kira side become legal one(Orb)
Basically it's >nooo how dare you use power to do whatever you want on personal scale against those who use power to do whatever they want on disastrous strategical scales, you can't just come and start BTFOing our epic exchange of violence noooo
As
Because it's not done out of any personal belief or sense of right, wrong or possibly redemption. It's done just as way to make him style people harder. He doesn't struggle for it because he believes life is sacred he's just so OMG BEST that he can casually disable every player on the field and doesn't even NEED to kill.
You ever watch/read Kenshin or Trigun? Where the hero takes a moral stand against killing and as a result makes every fight for himself more challenging. Because even if the hero is so strong he COULD turn his enemies into paste without much an effort the battles are less about that and more about him overcoming the ever narrowing hold he has on his personal ideals and values and if he were to fall to the other side it would result in either the death of what he's trying to protect or the sacrificing of his ideals and soul. That's interesting. Kira doesn't have that.
said, Kira is blank as frick so it's just boring to look at, but I still don't get those recurring "criticisms," maybe aside from risks that the resulting power vacuum would give rise to more weak factions overall, quantitatively and qualitatively
>maybe aside from risks that the resulting power vacuum would give rise to more weak factions overall, quantitatively and qualitatively
You think the writing is that smart? You think the actions of Kira/Lacus would ever have any sort of negative consequence?
Because it takes away a lot of the weight from "war bad" message, pretty much every Gundam protagonist has a phase where they have to accept that they have to kill in order to end the war, wether they like it or not.
This is all thrown away the moment Kira gets the Freedom, since he gets the ability to easily to incapacitate his enemies without killing them
I think Kira applying the no-kill rule sort of could've reinforced the anti-war message if he had a rival who is like a mercenary who is happy to kill for personal gain, thus becoming a polar opposite of the more moral Kira, and becomes somewhat of an anti-hero later on.
Everyone else who is a soldierpilot and even those that aren't are already accepting of killing on the battlefield (even Lacus is to an extent), the only difference you could have is introducing someone who is basically a psychopath who relishes killing but then that character would be hard to bring back as an anti-hero unless you're basically okay with having a complete reversal of his character.
Everyone else who is a soldierpilot and even those that aren't are already accepting of killing on the battlefield (even Lacus is to an extent), the only difference you could have is introducing someone who is basically a psychopath who relishes killing but then that character would be hard to bring back as an anti-hero unless you're basically okay with having a complete reversal of his character.
I think they've already got that with Shinn, who isn't a psychopath who gets off on killing but he is someone who has a personal grudge against the enemies he fights and thinks they're all scum that deserve to die and if you notice his fighting style is near the opposite of Kira because he almost exclusively makes wienerpit kill shots and the few times he doesn't get a kill on the first hit he usually attacks again to make sure he does. The only time he doesn't is with Stella in Gaia, where Athrun orders him not to destroy it and this pisses Shinn off though this was a good call once he sees who's inside.
Everyone other pilot in the show pretty much has no preference either killing of not killing but not going out of the way to ensure one of the other.
Because it's not done out of any personal belief or sense of right, wrong or possibly redemption. It's done just as way to make him style people harder. He doesn't struggle for it because he believes life is sacred he's just so OMG BEST that he can casually disable every player on the field and doesn't even NEED to kill.
You ever watch/read Kenshin or Trigun? Where the hero takes a moral stand against killing and as a result makes every fight for himself more challenging. Because even if the hero is so strong he COULD turn his enemies into paste without much an effort the battles are less about that and more about him overcoming the ever narrowing hold he has on his personal ideals and values and if he were to fall to the other side it would result in either the death of what he's trying to protect or the sacrificing of his ideals and soul. That's interesting. Kira doesn't have that.
Differences between Vash and Kira are surface levels, they still are superhumans who CAN just vaporize normal people with no effort, it's not relatable or interesting either way.
Now I didn't watch Samurai X or any related material, so I don't know if it's just a dude who refuses to kill, or some other take on batman where he's functionally still superhuman but it's written off as "lots of training wow"
The latter. Kenshin was trained by the world's best swordsman in that guys personal over the top sword style so he's basically a superhuman warrior (although he's not the only one in the setting) but after killing a frick ton of people during the war he realized none of it actually changed anything and also he accidentally killed his wife because a guy blinded him and his first instinct was to murderise everyone in the vincinity including her. So he started using a dull sword and not killing people anymore
>they still are superhumans who CAN just vaporize normal people with no effort
A character has a flaw if said trait is an active obstacle for them. Vash or Kenshin could kill their way out or trouble, but don't because of their principles. Kira doesn't have that because he has no goddamned fricking principles except "i fight because the pink haired girl tells me im strong and war is bad".
>relatable >Overrated concept >arguing about kira's ethics
You either relate to characters or indulge in power fantasy, you can't have both, homosexual.
Ok, why should I care about Vash's sad sob story, when he's literally nuclear power plant, that can destroy planets? Just because some woman who could have been a mother to him died because of that? She would die anyway of old age and he would keep living for thousands of years.
The whole premise is moronic and intrigue wears off after we learn that Vash's source of skill is him being an ayylien.
Same as Kira, why should I care about his ethics, if he's fricking superman in a robot?
How would they behave if they COULDN'T do crazy shit they pull? Would Vash still refrain from killing, if his reflexes weren't 1000 times faster than human's? We will never know, because shit writing.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Same as Kira, why should I care about his ethics, if he's fricking superman in a robot?
But Anon, his strengths are not what makes him who he is. He said so himself.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>makes him who he is
Who is he even? What is his personality?
At least assrun is closet gay dumbass who wants to be kira, but just can't, while shin is little b***h homie with sister complex.
Kira is literally Gundam, piloted remotely by Lackus.
11 months ago
Anonymous
He's an ordinary civilian who got caught in a war he had no business getting into and forced to fight a side because he wanted to protect this friends. He didn't want to kill but will kill if he needed to. He's not a moral homosexual who preached about peace to his enemies or allies about not killing their enemies, that's his personal choice and he has never forced it unto someone else. He had experienced the worst side of war and lost friends and had to face the fact that he couldn't save everyone. And oh, the death battle between him and Athrun traumatized him, which made him lean more in his 'no kill' principle.
Reading your posts make me think that you're only parroting what Destiny haters are saying about Kira in Destiny and you don't even understand Kira's journey from the beginning of SEED.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>an ordinary civilian who got caught in a war >turns out to be super turbe special coordinator who suprasses coordinators as much as the surpass naturals
I like Destiny more than Seed because it has cooler Gundams and Luna, but writing and story general in both is just dogshit and treating it as anything but dumb fun power fantasy is moronic.
You are moronic.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Ignoring most of my post and resorting to insults, I see. Typical of braindead SEED haters. Pretty sure you didn't expect to see someone cal your bullshit here.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Ignoring most of my post
What about you ignoring MY post?
Fricking moronic AND disingenuous. >muh haters
Seed and Destiny are the better gundam shows, people thinking tomino's slop is anywhere near are more moronic than you are.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Can't even reply without resorting to insults.
And why should I take you seriously?
11 months ago
Anonymous
>He's an ordinary civilian
"Ordinary" my ass. He's shown as a prodigy from the first moment. An ordinary civilian that can program and pilot the Strike with ease isn't ordinary. Amuro at least had to go through a manual.
>because he wanted to protect this friends
It would be nice if the show had bothered to develop the relationship with said "friends", rather than just having the audience accepting it as a given. They act very cold and distant towards him
>and lost friends
One "friend" and an ex-girlfriend. Big whoop. Athrun lost Rusty, Miguel, Nicol and both parents during the war.
>the death battle between him and Athrun traumatized him
Not traumatized enough that he wouldn't be piloting again. Nah, that's fixed thanks to Lacus and that worthless plot device blind priest.
We see more of his physical injuries during his stay at Lacus' than whatever "trauma" he might've had from the event. Once again, we see Athrun more personally affected by it.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>You forgot to mention that Kira's parents are also dead, too. Blue cosmos saw him, Cagalli and their parents as high value targets.
11 months ago
Anonymous
As far as Kira is concerned, his parents are Haruma and Caridad.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Kira is the Ubermensch of the Ubermensch. Remember this fact.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Everything you said about Kira's character applies only to the first half of SEED, wherein he is a character with some meat to him. After his duel with Athrun he basically hits his limit and has a mental break and abdicates all personal thought and decision making to Lacus, at which point he ceases to have any character besides what Lacus does (deliver empty platitudes about peace).
At one point in Destiny he's almost about to contemplate the rightiousness of his actions and basically goes to Lacus and says "Please re-brainwash me, I'm getting back my capacity for independant thought" and she duly spouts some empty bullshit that he obligingly nods along to.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Same as Kira, why should I care about his ethics, if he's fricking superman in a robot?
Because it's those ethics that make him human. It's those epics that make his battles and struggles meaningful. We care about someone with an ideal or a goal. We care about the status of someone's sense of personal being. To have the power in your hand to annihilate anything and struggling to NOT use it instead while focusing on on ideals is the epitome of human virtue.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>americans take this shit seriously 60 years later
It's so easy to be HOOMAN when bullets can't scratch you.
This is why Blue Cosmos is depraved. Coordinators are named so because they're to guide humanity, not replace them. Their sterility was intentional. They are hardwired to be unable to go a few generations without Natural wiener. The plan was to have Coordinators breed with Naturals until by some point, everyone's functionally a Coordinator. A Coordinator's very purpose in life is to contribute their DNA to Naturals.
Just imagine how utterly bitter and envious someone has to be over Coordinators. They take a look at pic and decide to fill it with bullets instead of their cum. To use their peashooter instead of their pee-shooter. Imagine this hot ass, intelligent and athletic girl comes begging for your babies because those Coordinators can't make fertile offspring with her. What insane butthurt drives a man to deny this Coordinator girl whose vegana is genetically sculpted to be a perfect fit for his dick? >Me so jelly this girl beat me in sports/grades/etc that even though she's spreading her legs for me, me run away with my virginity intact
I can't even call it gay, there's Coordinator men too. The recently deceased Shinzo Abe would strangle all of Blue Cosmos for not dropping their guns and dropping their pants. Unbelievable
One thing we see with Shinn in Destiny is that it really doesn't matter whether you kill or not when you're so OP most of the enemies aren't a threat to you. Shinn in Impulse cleans up just as effortlessly as Kira, just that his stock footage of him downing 12 Windam's in one shot has him kill shot them.
Worse Impulse doesn't even have the excuse Freedom does of being 5 times as powerful as most of the other mobile suits. It's not that much stronger than the stuff it's fielded against so it should be like the Strike in early Seed. Any arguement that Kira's no kill rule makes him boring went out the window when Shinn just flew into a formation of 30 Windam's and killed 29 of them (Neo being the only one who could actually dodge) without even the slightest bother beyond being annoyed there were so many it would take awhile.
It's one thing in the original seed where he's still willing to kill but it looked especially moronic in Destiny
It's the type of thing which wouldn't be as egregious if it occurred at the end of a series which it practically was for SEED
Because it's not done well obviously. If Kira wants to spare his enemies that's fine, but his decisions should also have consequences. Spare an enemy and he'll either lay down arms or come back with stronger and nastier. We should have seen examples of the latter.
Also, another issue is the fact that he's doing it in the middle of a fricking battlefield half the time. All that does is just leave his victims completely helpless against enemies who won't be as merciful. If it was just Kira himself against whoever, then that's fine.
>If Kira wants to spare his enemies that's fine, but his decisions should also have consequences.
Precisely. He does the disabling shit because the Multi-Lock Full Burst Mode beamspam styling looks cool in Fukuda's head and is just there to make his protagonist look cool and "good". If Kira had to make an effort with the machine to pull that stunt, or he was shown to be in mortal danger to follow a personal philosophy, things would be different. Instead, he pushes a button on a panel to sweep the battlefield.
Kira IS supposed to be making an effort with his beam spam disable and it's not as easy as just pushing the "disable everything" button but the animation gets that across poorly because of how lazy it is. Some lines of dialogue in Destiny and the model kit summaries mention that Kira's actually supposed to be really skilled to make Freedom do what it does and any idiot can't just jump into it and let the computer do all the work.
>the animation gets that across poorly because of how lazy it is
Seed and Destiny both have an issue where the show constantly TELLS us things, but rarely puts in effort in demonstrating them.
>Kira should have been a girl and have Athrun be her rival/love interest.
Why does one negate the other? Do an honest outright homosexual relationship, not just pointless bait-and-switch for the fujoshi crowd.
>I feel bad about having to killed some people >Ok, here's a machine that means you don't have to kill people.
Some of the laziest fricking writing I've ever seen in my life and as soon as the targets aren't person shaped he suddenly doesn't give a crap about killing large numbers of people. He comes off as a moron who stops thinking of people as people when the number killed by one shot gets high enough. You could forgive it if it led to cool fights, but 90% of the fights in SEED are stock footage shitfests that make Wing look good.
It's just /m/'s eternal seething for Kira, since he's the best MC, with the best GF, from the best show(s).
And now that SEED Freedom is coming, people will accept that more.
Because it doesn't come from a place of redemption or actual care for people's lives, he's just riding high on his own self-righteousness and the power of his suits. It's why the moment someone actually skilled/powerful runs up against his ideals, killing is immediately back on the table.
Actually people have done the math and pointed out that technically more people survived because of Kira's intervention than if he'd just let Minerva blow up everyone up, it's just that Heine died when he wouldn't have and people care more about him than a thousand or so EA and Orb guys.
In the first battle where the Archangel intervenes your probably right. In there second one the MS's were saved but the actual ships were getting sliced & diced which had more people on it. The Freedom & Cagalli crying just pissed Shinn off more. EA on the other hand got away with it other than the Windams because Shinn was too busy committing a hate crime against ORB.
That's still more people alive than if Minerva just blew up the entire fleet with it's cannon. Some of the Orb ships survived and most of the guys on the flagship were able to evacuate.
Rapid-fire guns are for shooting down incoming missiles. It might do a tiny bit of damage if it hits the non-phase-shift-armored parts or if it hits the grenades or rockets that grunts carry.
What bothers me about Kira’s pacifism is that the whole thing feels very selfish. His entire reason for doing it is because he doesn’t want to kill anyone, there’s nothing deeper than that. He just doesn’t like killing which in of itself is fine but in the context of the rest of the show it feels ridiculous. You can argue he doesn’t want to kill his own people but I sure as hell don’t remember that ever being mentioned in the show and the only reason he gives Lacus before getting the Freedom is ‘I’ve killed so many people’. In comparison to the other pacifists of the series, his reasoning just feels very ‘me me me’. No one ever questions him on it either, at least not that I remember. He just starts deliberately missing the wienerpit and the Archangel crew barely say a word. Compare to that fricking Kio of all people and the DIVA crew constantly chew him out for it. Even his reasoning makes more sense, as silly as it is because he’s seen that life on Mars is awful and everyone is slowly dying of space aids plus the war has been going on for like 100 years at that point. He also seems to pick and chose who he kills at random. Fair enough if it’s people like Rau who don’t deserve to live or Durandal but he still cleaves battleships in half
While Kira doesn't give a great justification for starting it it fits with the overall message of the war in Seed which was that it gradually just becoming a war of payback that eventually turned to near genocide shown from stuff like the Zaft guys slaughtering the surrendering EA guys at the one base because they were mad about Alaska, to Patrick Zala wanting the genocide of all Naturals because a few terrorists killed his wife.
Kira at least is making less people joining up wanting to kill everybody on the other side because their friend or brother was KIA. It's not just empty talk either as he felt that same rage when Tolle died
Because Kira is the most ridiculous fantasy idea of a guy who can effortlessly dispatch his foes and hold a moral high ground of pacifism despite being by far the most threatening combatant on any battlefield he shows up in.
I get he's a moral ideal of not letting superiority get to your head, but it's fricking wild how effortlessly he does his routine, it would be a lot more plausible if it still resulted in people getting injured and surviving to grumble about it. There needs to be a whole infirmary scene of people from all factions just going "man frick that Yamato guy he's a dick."
Yeah his entire crusade in Destiny is running on the idea that Durandal is secretly scheming something and he and his pals are the only ones that see though his nice guy facade. And then it turns out he's exactly right when Durandal no longer needs to play nice and starts killing his own guys and using the same genocide weapons he'd spend all show decrying.
This isn't without cause mind you, Kira knows this because Durandal put a hit out on him early in the show that nobody else knows about or believes.
The problem is the way they treat it is that LOGOS is somehow equivalent to ZAFT despite LOGOS being openly genocidal the entire show yet barely getting any of Archangel's attention other than the Berlin thing
That mostly comes down to most confrontations with LOGOS being moments where Team Kira can't do anything. Or in the case Orb where they had to choose between inadvertently helping LOGOS to protect Orb from Zaft or letting them take over.
Thing with the LOGOS witchhunt is that while it seems good in theory, in practice it just caused unrest and violence on Earth while most of the main LOGOS heads were untouched and it also gave Durandal a scapegoat to blame all his enemies on. Athrun and Meyrin try to escape, they're working for LOGOS. Team Lacus tries to attack Requiem to stop it from blowing up Orb, nah they're just LOGOS remnants. Even though Durandal knows full well they aren't he can effective accuse anyone with any influence and power to be a threat to him to be LOGOS and there's little they can do about it.
Based on the premise that only the highest authority in ZAFT could have access to state of the art ZAFT mobile suits. A couple dozen episodes before Lacus hands him a state of the art ZAFT mobile suit.
But then it turns out he was right all along anyway at the end of Destiny
At the end of Destiny his stated intent is to do absolutely nothing to try and resolve the racial tensions that keep boiling over and to just keep coming in swinging his dick only after the violence has broken out again, forever more.
Yeah but in the end, Kira was correct in his assumption. Fukuda even confirms in one of his latest interviews that yes, Durandal sent those guys.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Even if it was obvious that it was Durandal, it would be nice for the show to actually confirm shit like that. Especially since this is the same show that will beat other points over the viewer's head via copious flashbacks.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I think that mostly came down to Kira only confronting Durandal a total of once and by then bringing it up wouldn't have mattered in the slightest. Although that in itself was also kind of evidence of Durandal's guilt because if he had truly not ever meant Kira any harm at first and the whole show was Kira just attacking his guys over and over without cause then Durandal almost certainly would have said something to that effect. Instead his reaction is "Look I know you're mad but hear me out" and tries to sell him on the Destiny Plan which would fall in line with Durandal trying to kill him to stop him from interfering with it, and Durandal trying to talk his way out of the fallout from that.
I always suspected part of that may have stemmed from Destiny being one of the first Gundam shows to have major online feedback as it was airing, which the staff had been reading. Since literally everyone called Durandal out as secretly the villain almost immediately based on his voice design and attitude, they might have just thought they sold it on that alone and never realized they forgot to actually establish this.
>Based on the premise that only the highest authority in ZAFT could have access to state of the art ZAFT mobile suits
And that Durandal introduced a fake Lacus claiming to be the genuine article at the exact same time that the real Lacus was supposed to have been killed. Durandal is the clear and obvious person to have ordered the hit, and the only reason that anyone pretends otherwise is to try and make Kira and Lacus look irrational.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Basically. Could someone theoretically have stolen those MS's and equipment? Yeah. Could someone other than Durandal want Lacus Clyne dead? Yeah. But would that someone also be aiming for a stealth kill on Lacus Clyne with no evidence or trace of her at the exactly the same moment Durandal is unveiling a fake version under his control? Very unlikely.
11 months ago
Anonymous
It wasn't at exactly the same moment it was several episodes later. And when Athrun asks about exactly why he's doing it he offers the fairly coherent explanation that everyone in CE is bloodthirsty chimps and Lacus is the only one they'll listen to calls for de-escalation (which is what Meer was doing at the time) from. Which should be absurd, but due to SEED's general terrible writing is instead entirely true.
11 months ago
Anonymous
It was an episode or two before the attack actually, although timeline wise it was barely a day after, maybe even that night.
>And when Athrun asks about exactly why he's doing it he offers the fairly coherent explanation that everyone in CE is bloodthirsty chimps and Lacus is the only one they'll listen to calls for de-escalation
Which is a decent excuse at the time, but he later uses Meer for his own propaganda purposes. And of course he's going to say that to Athrun. "I know the real thing would never accept my plans so I made a fake I have total control over" isn't exactly going to inspire the guy to join up with him.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Furthermore, Athrun knows where the real Lacus is. Is he that gullible to believe Durandal only has good intentions with his phony Lacus?
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Is he that gullible to believe Durandal only has good intentions with his phony Lacus?
Unironically yes. Kira outright calls out the fake Lacus thing and all Athrun does is dodge the question.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I don't think he's completely gullible he just wanted to give Durandal a chance, to a very high degree because he desperately wants Zaft to be in the right to validate that his father didn't really ruin everything about it. Eventually even Athrun had had enough, but by then Kira and co have already been defeated and sent packing so Athrun has nobody to back him up when Durandal finally turns on him.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>he just wanted to give Durandal a chance
Shouldn't the phony Lacus set up a whole parade of red flags about Durandal?
>because he desperately wants Zaft to be in the right to validate that his father didn't really ruin everything about it
I repeat my question: why? His only nagging suspicion came from a bunch of terrorist extremists, who have nothing to do with the present state of ZAFT or its government.
In hindsight, things would make perfect sense if they were the other way around: Athrun goes to back to ZAFT and gains Durandal's trust because he suspects that, behind the veneer of peace and prosperity in ZAFT, he is up to no good after being introduced to "Lacus Clyne".
>At the end of Destiny his stated intent is to do absolutely nothing to try and resolve the racial tensions that keep boiling over and to just keep coming in swinging his dick only after the violence has broken out again, forever more.
One of the big reasons Destiny even kicks off into a second war is because three of the main four from SEED just sat on the sidelines and let things get out of hand again. Athrun certainly makes an effort at the beginning, but then does nothing for the Clyne Faction OR ZAFT once he rejoins the latter.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>One of the big reasons Destiny even kicks off into a second war is because three of the main four from SEED just sat on the sidelines and let things get out of hand again.
This isn't the argument you think it is. You're telling me that the peace and security of the entire Earth sphere rests solely on the actions of those four individuals?
Certainly that's what the story eventually went with, but it's utterly dumb writing to have a whole war being indirectly caused (and eventually stopped) by your main characters because they are so powerful and influential that the universe spins around them.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Mess up both government's entire infrastructure because they don't do what you want >Don't explain anything and just frick their days >Leave without taking responsibility for your actions because you'd rather stare out solemnly at the beach
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Mess up both government's entire infrastructure
Stop lying. Governments on either side were pretty much intact, to the point they were able to sign an armistice after the war's end. Azrael was merely the head of Blue Cosmos, not of the whole Earth Alliance. And most of the damage was made in the shootout between ZAFT and the EA.
All the Three Ships Alliance did was shoot down the nukes, kill a handful of maniacs in dangerous mobile suits (Rau, the druggies) and destroy a hidden superweapon. Athrun didn't even have to kill his Chairman father.
11 months ago
Anonymous
> That isn't reasonable as an argument > It's true, but it's not reasonable so you weaken your argument by saying it despite it being true
11 months ago
Anonymous
Learn how to write a proper retort, instead of doing the greentext nonsense like a tourist. The Plebbitor spacing is a tell.
Try again.
11 months ago
Anonymous
the whole thing is absurd. imagine if uc went the route of having the titans showing up because bright, amuro and char didn't have the "power" to stop them, and it was just them who single-handedly defeat them in battle, with kamille just buzzing around the battlefield as a pest.
00 at least has the excuse that CB and the wars were part of aeolia's plan to unify mankind. the skittle squad was an unintended consequence of it, and the aliens showed up too early.
11 months ago
Anonymous
The implication seemed to be that because they just left, other super influential and powerful people (Djbril and Durandal) stepped in. So while the universe seems to run on the idea that a single person can be super influential it's not necessarily only Kira and Lacus.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>The implication seemed to be that because they just left, other super influential and powerful people (Djbril and Durandal) stepped in.
Honestly, I'm not really seeing cause/effect at work here. While you can argue that Lacus is such an influential figure in ZAFT that Durandal went through all the trouble of crafting a phony for propaganda purposes, and the real one stepped to actual leadership eventually, what could have they possibly done to prevent the reappearance of Blue Cosmos? Or the radicals that dropped Junius Seven? This assumes they all had their own agendas, rather than the implication that everyone was an unwilling pawn on Durandal's game all along
Even Cagalli is shown as completely at the mercy of the Seirans, with little actual political power other than going to Durandal to beg him to stop using Orb refugees to develop weapons.
11 months ago
Anonymous
I guess you could say they should have kept their little squad going around looking for Blue Cosmos remnants or disgruntled Zaft guys. Though as far as Durandal and Blue Cosmos, given the fact that he seemingly knew about LOGOS all along or at least very early on he probably could have nipped it in the bud before it became a huge thing and the only reason he didn't was because he wanted Djbril to unleash his crazy genocide so he'd have an excuse to take over and push the Destiny Plan. Although even Durandal seemingly didn't expect Djbril to fire Reqiuem based on his reaction, I think he was expecting to wrap things up in Orb with them needing to surrender to Zaft and then on to the Destiny Plan.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Although even Durandal seemingly didn't expect Djbril to fire Requiem based on his reaction
I rewatched the sequence and there's this scene, where Durandal calmly looks sideways at the Council member, only to get furious a split-second later. Seems to indicate that everything was still part of his master plan.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Although even Durandal seemingly didn't expect Djbril to fire Requiem based on his reaction
I rewatched the sequence and there's this scene, where Durandal calmly looks sideways at the Council member, only to get furious a split-second later. Seems to indicate that everything was still part of his master plan.
>The whole bit about Requiem
I wonder if there is a possibility that he knows about the weapon but decided to stay mum since Aprilius One and by extension the PLANT Supreme Council would've been vaporized but the battle ended up changing the trajectory and even more people died instead.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>it's utterly dumb writing
the whole thing is absurd. imagine if uc went the route of having the titans showing up because bright, amuro and char didn't have the "power" to stop them, and it was just them who single-handedly defeat them in battle, with kamille just buzzing around the battlefield as a pest.
00 at least has the excuse that CB and the wars were part of aeolia's plan to unify mankind. the skittle squad was an unintended consequence of it, and the aliens showed up too early.
>the whole thing is absurd
Bingo.
>Mess up both government's entire infrastructure
Stop lying. Governments on either side were pretty much intact, to the point they were able to sign an armistice after the war's end. Azrael was merely the head of Blue Cosmos, not of the whole Earth Alliance. And most of the damage was made in the shootout between ZAFT and the EA.
All the Three Ships Alliance did was shoot down the nukes, kill a handful of maniacs in dangerous mobile suits (Rau, the druggies) and destroy a hidden superweapon. Athrun didn't even have to kill his Chairman father.
TSA didn't even kill two of them, even if Raider was a free kill for Yzak due to the timing and circumstances.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>rests solely on the actions of those four individuals?
In that way it's more consistent than UC's "sure shonen super heroes save the day every time, but otherwise realpolitik"
It's the execution of it. Kira gets his no-killing machine and that about ends it. Which isn't all that bad in SEED, Kira just stops being a character til he meets Rau at the end. It gets worse in Destiny because Destiny is just one big bowl of "Kira's right". That Ideal of Kira is never challenged in any real way. It goes from eye-rolling to infuriating.
Will Shinn's new suit be derived from the Destiny or Impulse?
I feel like the Destiny is the suit identify with him more but also it would have baggage if he's still feeling guilty about the whole ZAFT drone thing
If Kira did it in the Strike you wouldn't hear a peep from me. After all, only 2 possibilities would show up; the show would either be forced to ascend to the altar of stock footage that would make '60s and '70s /m/ shows blush in second-hand shame, or the animators die at their workdesks trying to give us around a total of 150 minutes of action, on the level of the remaster's Strike Rogue VS ZAFT pursuit fleet for the Eternal for the last third of the show.
Out of all the anime studios out there, Sunrise is among the only ones that could pull it off. Not only Bandai is a rich corporation, but Sunrise has like 10 different sub-studios under them. Put everyone to work in that one project and send the boring parts to subcontractors.
Because your argument loses all credibility when piloting a nuclear powered death machine which violate every international rule of conflict in that universe.
Like people had said everyone had violated the anti nuclear laws at that point and team Kira were the last to do so by which point it would be pointless to criticize them and only them for it.
He still kills people. Typical shitters or avoidable situations he tends to spare people but sufficiently holy shit situations like a frickhuge Destroy Gundam blowing up everything he kills.
That's not really a negative there. Would have very irresonpsible of him to just go "well I can't disable her so I guess I'll just let her blow everyone up"
It is a negative though, because it highlights that Kira only disables people when it's easy and that as soon as things get tough that he'll forego that and kill someone. Which he never feels anything about doing afterwards. It means that Kira isn't disabling people because of any moral stance, but simply because he finds it convenient. A character like Vash in Trigun or Basara in Macross 7 might be more infuriating because of their explicit objections to killing, but the fact they won't kill in a lot of cases where it seems like a simple solution to tough situations gives them a solid, defined character and the hoops they go through to avoid killing as well as the emotions they express when confronted with the idea of killing create good drama. It makes them memorable. As opposed to Kira, who is just doing whatever is simplest essentially.
What's the issue? If Kira can get away with it he'll spare you. If you're evil or dangerous schizo he'll kill you. That's a based attidude and literally the same as Zeta Amuro.
What's the issue? If Kira can get away with it he'll spare you. If you're evil or dangerous schizo he'll kill you. That's a based attidude and literally the same as Zeta Amuro.
Kira only breaks his "rule" twice, once against Rau who professed the desire to kill everyone (and who was only in the position in the first place because Kira spared him earlier) and Stella who about to vaporize him Shinn AA Minerva and the entire city of Berlin so he had to make a tough call.
Otherwise Kira will stick to it, so long as it's only his own ass on the line or his ally group that understand the chance they're taking. That's why he never kills Shinn, even after Angel Down despite him proving impossible to disable. Or why he doesn't immediately jump to killing Neo and Sting in Berlin when they pin him down and he needs the Orb guys cover, or even Stella at first at all until she proved unstoppable and was in a position where either he killed her or everyone died.
It's certainly a better chance than Vash nearly letting an entire town get killed because he couldn't stomach the thought of killing someone even as evil as Legato.
Also, some battleships. He also did try to kill Shinn during their duel. Those aside, Vash displays far more emotion and conflict over the choice to kill and the decision to not kill costs him far more on a frequent basis, which is a lot more compelling than Kira because not killing costs Kira nothing and killing doesn't faze him. It's just convenience for him, not an actual moral stance. At least as actually portrayed.
Yeah but like people have been saying that's questionable because after one supposedly lethal slash that you can only see by freeze frame he never does again, even in their rematches.
11 months ago
Anonymous
And I'd question that interpretation, because you can clearly see Kira swinging for the midsection. You do not need to freeze frame and capture one specific frame to tell that's a lethal shot if it lands. He also barely gets any more attacks in, and the best example people usually claim during that duel is "well he didn't stab the wienerpit", which as presented he probably couldn't anyway. It's conceivable he could, but it's not definitive by any means.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>the best example people usually claim during that duel is "well he didn't stab the wienerpit", which as presented he probably couldn't anyway. It's conceivable he could, but it's not definitive by any means.
That however is backed up by him continuing to go non lethal in their rematches even though Shinn is even more powerful and had already defeated him once. Something that even Shinn points out when he passes up the chance to kill him in Orb.
11 months ago
Anonymous
That was also a different battle where Shinn was presented as far less of a threat, even with a more powerful suit. So why would Kira need to kill him?
11 months ago
Anonymous
Because he still wasn't able to get any disabling hits on him and he was attacking Orb. If there's any situation where Kira would go "Well screw it I can't disable him so killing time" it would be that but he doesn't do it.
11 months ago
Anonymous
He wasn't able to get any disabling shots on the Destiny, but it hardly matters when Shinn doesn't present a credible threat to him anyway and the fight is done in maybe a few minutes at most, after which Shinn retreats. At no point is Kira presented with any need to kill Shinn because Shinn is a weak opponent to him personally, and he barely presents a bump in the road in Kira's mission to save Orb.
11 months ago
Anonymous
>Shinn is a weak opponent to him personally
This is the guy that nearly killed him before
11 months ago
Anonymous
So what? Just because you nearly killed someone before doesn't make you automatically dangerous now, and Shinn never scratched Kira in that next battle, while Kira knocked Shinn around a few times.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Shinn didn't damage Kira at Angel Down until near the end anyway but he still pushed him into a corner by dodging and blocking all his shots which he was still mostly doing here minus the sword catch.
11 months ago
Anonymous
He was still putting pressure on Kira throughout with Kira unable to effectively damage him despite numerous landed shots because of the parts swapping. Which is a far different picture to Orb. At no point in that battle does Shinn present as a credible threat, and it's done almost immediately anyway.
This is the actual answer. Kira goes for non lethal disables so he can both be the top dog constantly dunking on everyone else, but also keeps characters alive for plot or popularity reasons.
>but also keeps characters alive for plot or popularity reasons.
That's well and good but it's not like Tomino was mercing characters every episode. Well, Shrike Team not standing. It's pretty easy to keep your main cast alive without calling attention to how sloppy it is.
So many people committed potential war crimes all around that blaming any one person would be opening a can of worms and it was probably better to just call it even since all the guys that schemed them died. Though Mu does owe Shinn and apology or at least explaination
>Why is Kira avoiding killing people controversial?
It is indeed strange, given that Tekkaden in IBO were also seen sparing people by chopping off the limbs of mobile suits during battle, and yet I've never seen them get shit for it.
I mean that's not really the same thing and just more than mobile suits in IBO's universe were nigh impossible to blow up so they could wreck them in ways the pilots survived, although plenty still got mulched.
The only time they deliberately spared people where fellow human debris they were trying to recruit, or when the enemy pilots specifically would surrender to them.
Amuro had no issue killing in Zeta once he got back in the fighting. The times he tried to spare lives was once when he tried to capture a Dodai (by avoiding a generator hit so he went for the legs) and during Dakar, also avoiding generator hits to keep damage in the city to a minimum. He never made it a moral issue.
Beams on generators = bigger explosions. That's pretty much how it's been since MSG ep 1. It's when you get into physical ammo that it seems to get iffy on how big the explosion can be. Some don't explode at all while others become AOE grenades. Amuro in early Zeta was using the Rick Dias a lot, so he kept switching between its clay bazooka and its beam pistols. While in Dakar he had the Dijeh, which adds in a proper beam rifle but gives him that double bladed beam naginata.
It erodes Gundam's core message and exists purely so he can style harder instead of delivering any kind of meaningful message.
Which kind of sums up SEED as a whole.
Kira disabling Mobile Suits can work... but this is Cosmic Era. If he disables a ZAFT suit, some Earth Alliance pilot will take the opportunity and kill the ZAFT pilot inside, and vice-versa.
>For me it's Kamile's AIEEE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE DIED IF YOU DIDNT MESS WITH ME
From Kamille's perspective if you come out onto the battlefield you're signing up to die and you should've stayed home
He doesn't enjoy killing people but he's not naive enough to think that war ends without killing which is why he decides Haman needs to die immediately after connecting to her. Even when he killed people like Jerid he was upset about it.
Kamille knows the instant those mooks sortie that they will have no chance against him, will engage him anyway, and get demolished in return after achieving nothing. So it's more frustrating when they unhesitantly take action anyway, like their sole goal is more senseless bloodshed, even if it has to be their own.
It probably helps that he's fighting both of them so they'd hopefully be too disabled to finish each other off. So we did have that situation with Heine where rather than back off he kept trying to fight with one arm and got killed by Stella.
Don't understand why Kira doesn't kill, he outright killed Miguel and oopsie Nicole, he went past that line RIGHT from the beginning, just kill you pussy.
IIRC, part of it was Kira trying to avoid more cycles of pointless revenge after Athrun tried to Aegis Akbar him in retaliation for the Nicol/Tolle shitshow. But it's kinda forgotten by the end of SEED, especially since Kira explicitly killing Rau was arguably in revenge for Flay.
I'm playing Front Mission 1 and it feels so wrong when I dismantle an enemy it's basically just a walking coffing that can't do shit and there is nothing to do but to murder them.
In Front Mission 3 doing it usually results in enemy pilots giving up and you being able to salvage enemy parts for money or your own use.
I know seed is homosexual space opera, but it would be so cool if they spent screen time discussing how kira's dismantling skill actually lets them harvest enemy parts and profit from it.
>harvest enemy parts and profit from it.
This would fit Lowe's character in Astray
>Astray
Anime when?
>results in enemy pilots giving up
You can also smoosh them.
Probably because it's too easy for him since he can do it effortlessly with Freedom's power and if he finds an opponent he can't disable he'll go for the kill so he's not exactly letting it handicap him when it comes down to it, although he does let Shinn defeat him rather than go for the kill so he does stick to it that one time.
>let Shinn defeat him
Spicy take.
Angel Down is just really weird.
>Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him
>Kira DOES go for a kill shot at one point, but Shinn dodges it using OPEN GET
>Kira doesn't go for a kill shot at the very end
The second point could be excused as an animation error, but then we enter the even weirder territory of the show itself being an unreliable narrator.
I'm going to chock that up to an error, or even more understanibly just a wrong interpretation since you can't even see that without a frame by frame which was not something the animators would intend. Because not only does Kira go back to non lethal again, but he continues to do do with Shinn for the rest of the show.
The show's narration is consistent with that too as Shinn tells Rey Kira fought exactly according to their predictions (which was that he'd never attempt a wienerpit shot) and Durandal later tells Shinn and Athrun that Shinn never could have defeated him if Kira had been properly trained not to show no mercy in battle because he's such a genetically perfect soldier he'd never lose without that handicap.
>Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him
Shinn was set as ZAFT hero by Durandal after the battle of Berlin. If Kira kills him, Terminal will be the enemy of ZAFT.
>If Kira kills him, Terminal will be the enemy of ZAFT.
Terminal is already ZAFT's enemy. That's the whole point of Angel Down.
Terminal might personally be ZAFT's enemy but the rest of the world doesn't have much opinion on them yet. Given Durandal edited the Berlin footage to make it look like Shinn personally saved the day there Kira killing him means Durandal could blast that footage all over the planet and demonize them as a LOGOS force that killed Shinn in revenge for Berlin. While if all he has is footage of Kira being he usual nonlethal self and no Orb forces helping him and tries that at least they could try and counter that they were doing their usual trying to save everyone shtick because look Kira is deliberately not trying to kill him.
Unfortunately the Seiran's ruin that all in the next few episodes by actively having Orb help Djbril which means Durandal can do just that in the finale not that it really matters at that point anyway. But I can see their logic.
I know people say that war is decisive and if Kira wasn't prepared to go full scorched Earth on Zaft and bear any burden they gave him he never should have fired a shot. And that Kira thinking otherwise is naive, perhaps rightfully so. But on the other hand that is arguably the right choice to make in the setting because doing otherwise led to everyone almost dying in Seed.
This, really. Also there's his blatant hypocrisy.
There's no way to safely and quickly disable a battleship, so he doesn't hesitate to go for the kill. Kira never actually says that he's not going to kill people or that killing people is even wrong, he just stops doing it when he can avoid it. He never complains about his allies when they continue to kill all of their enemies, and he typically goes for the kill whenever it would be his life or theirs. Angel Down is actually a huge aberration, as
points out.
Now Kio, that little shit is everything that people complain about with Kira and more. He blocks shots aimed at his enemies by his allies, but not shots aimed at his allies by his enemies. He actually deserves the complaints, but I would argue that Kira doesn't.
>and he typically goes for the kill whenever it would be his life or theirs. Angel Down is actually a huge aberration, as
>Shinn is arguably dangerous enough at this point to justify actually killing him
>Kira DOES go for a kill shot at one point, but Shinn dodges it using OPEN GET
>Kira doesn't go for a kill shot at the very end
The second point could be excused as an animation error, but then we enter the even weirder territory of the show itself being an unreliable narrator. points out.
Not really. Freedom/Justice had plenty of advantages against the druggie pukes, but never went for the kill. They know they're dangerous foes and have battery-powered machines: just use Waltfeld's trick on them and turn the dipshits into soup when they're bugging out.
I liked that both 00 and G-Witch dispensed with their "insane super-soldiers in hideous Gundams" fairly quickly, and that they were actual characters.
Here's the thing though. Seed's battles are TOO big for their not be massive causalities all the time on both sides. This isn't usually him sticking to smaller sorties where he sometimes has to take out one guy or two like say Loran did. Seed battles have hundreds of grunts exploding all the time and if there's not an easy way to sink battleships safely maybe just don't then? You don't need to have Kira cutting down battleships all the time either. Typically they should be sticking int he back and just carrying suits with some supporting fire. Beat enough grunts and let them sale away or get taken out by others. This is the problem. They want Kira to do EVERYTHING and having him do EVERYTHING doesn't add up right.
>They want Kira to do EVERYTHING and having him do EVERYTHING doesn't add up right.
It's a power fantasy, same as an isekai. The whole conflict spins around his character.
At least with the guys Kira's personally disables Destiny actually makes an attempt to show that rare exceptions like Heine aside, all of the pilots Kira disables always somehow survive no matter how improbable. When Neo's checking the damage after the first Crete battle it's reported that while Freedom did alot of damage, everyone he shot down was retrieved safely. At Angel Down the Zaft landship also reports that the Babi squad they sent after Freedom all returned to the ship combat unable. And of the many named pilots that Kira disables, which in Destiny is basically the entire cast at one point (not counting Stella in Destroy which was a deliberate kill) only Heine died anyway and that was mostly due to his own poor judgement of continuing to try to attack Kira while damaged.
Kira really is that good for the most part in terms of keeping people alive.
>They want Kira to do EVERYTHING
YAMATO! Deflect the Tannhauser away from the Burger Town!
Anon, you do know that Modern Warfare 2 came out twelve years ago, right?
shut the frick up anon you're making me feel old
Turn A's release in 1999 is closer to MSG's release than it is to today.
SEED’s release will be closer to MSG than the present in two or three years.
Most anons here weren't alive when MSG was out (and certainly didn't watch it live on Japanese tv if they were) so that doesn't quite hit as hard.
Wouldn't disabling battleships actually be easier than Mobile Suits? You only need to destroy the turrets and engines and it'll just be a helpless hulk floating in space. Probably easier than blasting all the limbs off a small moving target like a Mobile Suit.
>There's no way to safely and quickly disable a battleship
Citation fricking needed.
What does Athrun do to the Minerva at the end of SEED Destiny? What does Kira do to the trio of Nazca-class ships trying to take out the Eternal when the Strike Freedom debuts? Your assertion is absurd. Especially considering in the webm anon linked Kira is already behind the Agamemnon-class and could've shot its engine block with a few lower-power beams to kill its engines but instead opts to split it half in the most overkill way possible.
>Angel Down is actually a huge aberration
No it isn't and you anons need to stop whining about it. What
fails to note is that the climax of Angel Down takes place over the course of a few very tense seconds, giving Kira a matter of moments to prepare to kill the Freedom's NJC and mount some kind of defense/counter to Shinn's oncoming charge, while keeping an eye on the Archangel as it tries to get away. He didn't have almost 20 years to watch and re-watch the sequence of events and go "well, here the optimal move would've been to do X, but he did Y instead". That he did what he did is impressive enough, even if he did, decisively, lose.
>I would argue that Kira doesn't
No, there's grounds to complain. Disabling is harder than killing because a dead enemy will not retaliate but a damaged one can still come after you (Rau mentions this in the 8th fleet battle), so effectively disabling an enemy MS requires a higher degree of skill to do. That's why your average soldier kills their enemies. Yet despite this, Kira likes to pretend that he's "not special", or "above average", but "just a single human being" when his actions and capabilities prove this to be note only hypocritical, but if not hubris, ignorance.
>the climax of Angel Down takes place over the course of a few very tense seconds, giving Kira a matter of moments to prepare to kill the Freedom's NJC and mount some kind of defense/counter to Shinn's oncoming charge, while keeping an eye on the Archangel as it tries to get away. He didn't have almost 20 years to watch and re-watch the sequence of events and go "well, here the optimal move would've been to do X, but he did Y instead". That he did what he did is impressive enough, even if he did, decisively, lose
I don't agree because we've seen Kira make crazy precise hits before with fraction of a second to react before several times, including several times earlier in Angel Down, such as when he bullseyes two BABI's from an upsidedown position while twisting in mid air, then casually sidesteps and shoots off another BABI's head coming at him from behind while talking to AA. And against Shinn himself where despite Shinn tossing out a distraction by causing minor cosmetic damage to Freedom's shoulder that actually causes Kira to look away for a moment he still manages to react in time to dodge a near point blank shot, another saber swing and then counter with a disabling slash from an awkward angle in barely a second, the only thing actually catching him off guard was Shinn launching the damaged flyer into him when his back was turned, presumably because he wasn't aware Impulse could do that and Kira still manages to block it in time even if it still knocks him out of the air.
With all that, I'd say it's makes perfect sense for Kira to have plenty of time to choose how he was gonna counter in those few seconds of Shinn flying at him and he deliberately choose not to kill him.
> he deliberately choose not to kill himself
Not sure why people always forget this part of the equation; sure, he COULD have allowed a nuclear reaction, but that'd just kill himself, where shutting it down gives him a far greater chance of survival. Shutting it down wasn't about consideration of the enemy, it was simple self preservation. Never mind that it's unclear whether a full on nuclear reaction would have affected the Archangel.
That wasn't, Kira's final attack being a stab to Impulse's head when he could have aimed lower at the wienerpit and made it a double KO (that Kira would have survived but Shinn wouldn't have) was.
The Impulse was coming at him almost horizontal, so hitting the wienerpit would have been essentially impossible unless Kira cam teleport his beam saber hits.
Kira HAS made impossible hits like before. If he could disable Impulse at the angle he did earlier in the fight he could hit the wienerpit in that final stab. All he'd need to do is lower Freedom's saber arm a little bit and Shinn is dead.
The self-righteousness. At least Kio is consistent about doing something to avoid people getting killed in the battlefield (even if it has unintended consequences).
As a character, he doesn't have any principles, or a reason to fight except some nonsense Lacus fed him, which makes things all a bit too easy for him when both ZAFT and the Earth Alliance are in a campaign of mutual genocide, rather than fighting for their respective causes.
Compare him to Amuro or Kamille. There is no sacrifice, no cost to him for what he does.
Do you think we'll live long enough for it to get fan translation?
Indont know why people suck this off. Its lame
What's lame? The fact that anyone can see right through Kira's hypocrisy?
Its not hypocrisy though. All those guys complaining about kira did far worse things than him. Amuro did the slare people shit in Zeta as well
A little nuance in the conflict would've gone a long way:
>ZAFT should be fighting a defensive war that turned sideways
>Earth Alliance should be hanging by a thread because of internal conflict among its members
And, more important:
>the extremists on each side should've been a minority, not the bulk of their respective forces
Instead of that, this happens.
Not really. Kira attacking both sides in SEED Destiny just does more to piss everyone off. ZAFT in particular has every right to attack Orb since for all their nonsensical talk about being a neutral nation, they also helped escalate the war between the EA and ZAFT by helping the former build its own Mobile Suits and during Destiny itself decided to ally with the obviously genocidal racists again.
Kira and Orb are directly responsible for Djibril using Requiem to genocide a few extra PLANTs than otherwise would've been destroyed because of their false equivalence of ZAFT and the EA being equally bad
>because of their false equivalence of ZAFT and the EA being equally bad
Given ZAFT also resorts to attempting mass death with genocide weapons they were entirely correct on that front.
In SEED, yes, but wasn't Durandal being a good boy until after the first Requiem attack?
He was pretending to be a good boy, but given he immediately repaired Reqiuem, and had a Genesis II built even before that, that was always his endgame.
Nobody sided with Zaft, the whole world was too confused by the absurdity of the Destiny Plan to do anything but ask if he was serious and the only people we see are the one village Zaft helped early in the show where the one girl is the only supporter of it, solely because she thinks they owe Zaft, and everyone else thinks she's nuts. The only people that actually seemed eager for the plan was Plant itself and even then a large bunch of forces including Yzak and Dearka defected so even they weren't aligned.
The entire world was willing to side with ZAFT aside from fricking Orb who had been slurping the EA until 5 seconds prior
>Loran acting out of character
?
Loran didn't hesitate to kill when shit escalated near the end, up until that point there was no need to be more violent or fight seriously
>There is no sacrifice, no cost to him for what he does.
Uh lots of people die on Kira. It's not like he's totally unscathed from war just because his pink GF lived atop a bunch of other dead people. You want a cost to Kira's actions? Flay. If he'd killed Rau back in Mendel when he had several chances to then he wouldn't have killed her in the end.
>Uh lots of people die on Kira.
TWO people: his girlfriend, and some random kid from back at Heliopolis he barely interacted with.
Wow why are they so mad at Kira? It's because he's cooler than them haha
Basically, they are at Shinn side.
Story change if you are fighting at Kira side.
This game make it if you play Shinn side, than Kira side action are really bad and are terrorist.
Ironically, they becomes terrorist at end while Kira side become legal one(Orb)
Basically it's
>nooo how dare you use power to do whatever you want on personal scale against those who use power to do whatever they want on disastrous strategical scales, you can't just come and start BTFOing our epic exchange of violence noooo
As
said, Kira is blank as frick so it's just boring to look at, but I still don't get those recurring "criticisms," maybe aside from risks that the resulting power vacuum would give rise to more weak factions overall, quantitatively and qualitatively
>maybe aside from risks that the resulting power vacuum would give rise to more weak factions overall, quantitatively and qualitatively
You think the writing is that smart? You think the actions of Kira/Lacus would ever have any sort of negative consequence?
I mean, at least this angle could be SRW-suitable, but I haven't seen it used in SEED-included games I've played
Because it takes away a lot of the weight from "war bad" message, pretty much every Gundam protagonist has a phase where they have to accept that they have to kill in order to end the war, wether they like it or not.
This is all thrown away the moment Kira gets the Freedom, since he gets the ability to easily to incapacitate his enemies without killing them
I think Kira applying the no-kill rule sort of could've reinforced the anti-war message if he had a rival who is like a mercenary who is happy to kill for personal gain, thus becoming a polar opposite of the more moral Kira, and becomes somewhat of an anti-hero later on.
Everyone else who is a soldierpilot and even those that aren't are already accepting of killing on the battlefield (even Lacus is to an extent), the only difference you could have is introducing someone who is basically a psychopath who relishes killing but then that character would be hard to bring back as an anti-hero unless you're basically okay with having a complete reversal of his character.
I think they've already got that with Shinn, who isn't a psychopath who gets off on killing but he is someone who has a personal grudge against the enemies he fights and thinks they're all scum that deserve to die and if you notice his fighting style is near the opposite of Kira because he almost exclusively makes wienerpit kill shots and the few times he doesn't get a kill on the first hit he usually attacks again to make sure he does. The only time he doesn't is with Stella in Gaia, where Athrun orders him not to destroy it and this pisses Shinn off though this was a good call once he sees who's inside.
Everyone other pilot in the show pretty much has no preference either killing of not killing but not going out of the way to ensure one of the other.
Because it's not done out of any personal belief or sense of right, wrong or possibly redemption. It's done just as way to make him style people harder. He doesn't struggle for it because he believes life is sacred he's just so OMG BEST that he can casually disable every player on the field and doesn't even NEED to kill.
You ever watch/read Kenshin or Trigun? Where the hero takes a moral stand against killing and as a result makes every fight for himself more challenging. Because even if the hero is so strong he COULD turn his enemies into paste without much an effort the battles are less about that and more about him overcoming the ever narrowing hold he has on his personal ideals and values and if he were to fall to the other side it would result in either the death of what he's trying to protect or the sacrificing of his ideals and soul. That's interesting. Kira doesn't have that.
Differences between Vash and Kira are surface levels, they still are superhumans who CAN just vaporize normal people with no effort, it's not relatable or interesting either way.
Now I didn't watch Samurai X or any related material, so I don't know if it's just a dude who refuses to kill, or some other take on batman where he's functionally still superhuman but it's written off as "lots of training wow"
The latter. Kenshin was trained by the world's best swordsman in that guys personal over the top sword style so he's basically a superhuman warrior (although he's not the only one in the setting) but after killing a frick ton of people during the war he realized none of it actually changed anything and also he accidentally killed his wife because a guy blinded him and his first instinct was to murderise everyone in the vincinity including her. So he started using a dull sword and not killing people anymore
and then he went to hongkong and got aids and died
Seisou-hen isn't canon. Frick off.
>they still are superhumans who CAN just vaporize normal people with no effort
A character has a flaw if said trait is an active obstacle for them. Vash or Kenshin could kill their way out or trouble, but don't because of their principles. Kira doesn't have that because he has no goddamned fricking principles except "i fight because the pink haired girl tells me im strong and war is bad".
>relatable
Overrated concept.
>relatable
>Overrated concept
>arguing about kira's ethics
You either relate to characters or indulge in power fantasy, you can't have both, homosexual.
Define "relating" first.
Ok, why should I care about Vash's sad sob story, when he's literally nuclear power plant, that can destroy planets? Just because some woman who could have been a mother to him died because of that? She would die anyway of old age and he would keep living for thousands of years.
The whole premise is moronic and intrigue wears off after we learn that Vash's source of skill is him being an ayylien.
Same as Kira, why should I care about his ethics, if he's fricking superman in a robot?
How would they behave if they COULDN'T do crazy shit they pull? Would Vash still refrain from killing, if his reflexes weren't 1000 times faster than human's? We will never know, because shit writing.
>Same as Kira, why should I care about his ethics, if he's fricking superman in a robot?
But Anon, his strengths are not what makes him who he is. He said so himself.
>makes him who he is
Who is he even? What is his personality?
At least assrun is closet gay dumbass who wants to be kira, but just can't, while shin is little b***h homie with sister complex.
Kira is literally Gundam, piloted remotely by Lackus.
He's an ordinary civilian who got caught in a war he had no business getting into and forced to fight a side because he wanted to protect this friends. He didn't want to kill but will kill if he needed to. He's not a moral homosexual who preached about peace to his enemies or allies about not killing their enemies, that's his personal choice and he has never forced it unto someone else. He had experienced the worst side of war and lost friends and had to face the fact that he couldn't save everyone. And oh, the death battle between him and Athrun traumatized him, which made him lean more in his 'no kill' principle.
Reading your posts make me think that you're only parroting what Destiny haters are saying about Kira in Destiny and you don't even understand Kira's journey from the beginning of SEED.
>an ordinary civilian who got caught in a war
>turns out to be super turbe special coordinator who suprasses coordinators as much as the surpass naturals
I like Destiny more than Seed because it has cooler Gundams and Luna, but writing and story general in both is just dogshit and treating it as anything but dumb fun power fantasy is moronic.
You are moronic.
Ignoring most of my post and resorting to insults, I see. Typical of braindead SEED haters. Pretty sure you didn't expect to see someone cal your bullshit here.
>Ignoring most of my post
What about you ignoring MY post?
Fricking moronic AND disingenuous.
>muh haters
Seed and Destiny are the better gundam shows, people thinking tomino's slop is anywhere near are more moronic than you are.
>Can't even reply without resorting to insults.
And why should I take you seriously?
>He's an ordinary civilian
"Ordinary" my ass. He's shown as a prodigy from the first moment. An ordinary civilian that can program and pilot the Strike with ease isn't ordinary. Amuro at least had to go through a manual.
>because he wanted to protect this friends
It would be nice if the show had bothered to develop the relationship with said "friends", rather than just having the audience accepting it as a given. They act very cold and distant towards him
>and lost friends
One "friend" and an ex-girlfriend. Big whoop. Athrun lost Rusty, Miguel, Nicol and both parents during the war.
>the death battle between him and Athrun traumatized him
Not traumatized enough that he wouldn't be piloting again. Nah, that's fixed thanks to Lacus and that worthless plot device blind priest.
We see more of his physical injuries during his stay at Lacus' than whatever "trauma" he might've had from the event. Once again, we see Athrun more personally affected by it.
>You forgot to mention that Kira's parents are also dead, too. Blue cosmos saw him, Cagalli and their parents as high value targets.
As far as Kira is concerned, his parents are Haruma and Caridad.
Kira is the Ubermensch of the Ubermensch. Remember this fact.
Everything you said about Kira's character applies only to the first half of SEED, wherein he is a character with some meat to him. After his duel with Athrun he basically hits his limit and has a mental break and abdicates all personal thought and decision making to Lacus, at which point he ceases to have any character besides what Lacus does (deliver empty platitudes about peace).
At one point in Destiny he's almost about to contemplate the rightiousness of his actions and basically goes to Lacus and says "Please re-brainwash me, I'm getting back my capacity for independant thought" and she duly spouts some empty bullshit that he obligingly nods along to.
>Same as Kira, why should I care about his ethics, if he's fricking superman in a robot?
Because it's those ethics that make him human. It's those epics that make his battles and struggles meaningful. We care about someone with an ideal or a goal. We care about the status of someone's sense of personal being. To have the power in your hand to annihilate anything and struggling to NOT use it instead while focusing on on ideals is the epitome of human virtue.
>americans take this shit seriously 60 years later
It's so easy to be HOOMAN when bullets can't scratch you.
>GRAphic DESIGN is My. PA$$ION
This is why Blue Cosmos is depraved. Coordinators are named so because they're to guide humanity, not replace them. Their sterility was intentional. They are hardwired to be unable to go a few generations without Natural wiener. The plan was to have Coordinators breed with Naturals until by some point, everyone's functionally a Coordinator. A Coordinator's very purpose in life is to contribute their DNA to Naturals.
Just imagine how utterly bitter and envious someone has to be over Coordinators. They take a look at pic and decide to fill it with bullets instead of their cum. To use their peashooter instead of their pee-shooter. Imagine this hot ass, intelligent and athletic girl comes begging for your babies because those Coordinators can't make fertile offspring with her. What insane butthurt drives a man to deny this Coordinator girl whose vegana is genetically sculpted to be a perfect fit for his dick?
>Me so jelly this girl beat me in sports/grades/etc that even though she's spreading her legs for me, me run away with my virginity intact
I can't even call it gay, there's Coordinator men too. The recently deceased Shinzo Abe would strangle all of Blue Cosmos for not dropping their guns and dropping their pants. Unbelievable
One thing we see with Shinn in Destiny is that it really doesn't matter whether you kill or not when you're so OP most of the enemies aren't a threat to you. Shinn in Impulse cleans up just as effortlessly as Kira, just that his stock footage of him downing 12 Windam's in one shot has him kill shot them.
Worse Impulse doesn't even have the excuse Freedom does of being 5 times as powerful as most of the other mobile suits. It's not that much stronger than the stuff it's fielded against so it should be like the Strike in early Seed. Any arguement that Kira's no kill rule makes him boring went out the window when Shinn just flew into a formation of 30 Windam's and killed 29 of them (Neo being the only one who could actually dodge) without even the slightest bother beyond being annoyed there were so many it would take awhile.
Why are Kira and Athrun acting like two gayass bros who are that close to each other, apart from the fact that they are designed by a fujoshi artist?
Well, they returned to being bros at the end of SEED so they have an excuse.
>hrun acting like two gayass bros who are that close to each other
Think, anon. If it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, what is it?
It's one thing in the original seed where he's still willing to kill but it looked especially moronic in Destiny
It's the type of thing which wouldn't be as egregious if it occurred at the end of a series which it practically was for SEED
Because it's not done well obviously. If Kira wants to spare his enemies that's fine, but his decisions should also have consequences. Spare an enemy and he'll either lay down arms or come back with stronger and nastier. We should have seen examples of the latter.
Also, another issue is the fact that he's doing it in the middle of a fricking battlefield half the time. All that does is just leave his victims completely helpless against enemies who won't be as merciful. If it was just Kira himself against whoever, then that's fine.
>If Kira wants to spare his enemies that's fine, but his decisions should also have consequences.
Precisely. He does the disabling shit because the Multi-Lock Full Burst Mode beamspam styling looks cool in Fukuda's head and is just there to make his protagonist look cool and "good". If Kira had to make an effort with the machine to pull that stunt, or he was shown to be in mortal danger to follow a personal philosophy, things would be different. Instead, he pushes a button on a panel to sweep the battlefield.
Kira IS supposed to be making an effort with his beam spam disable and it's not as easy as just pushing the "disable everything" button but the animation gets that across poorly because of how lazy it is. Some lines of dialogue in Destiny and the model kit summaries mention that Kira's actually supposed to be really skilled to make Freedom do what it does and any idiot can't just jump into it and let the computer do all the work.
>the animation gets that across poorly because of how lazy it is
Seed and Destiny both have an issue where the show constantly TELLS us things, but rarely puts in effort in demonstrating them.
Because taking toy commercial seriously is stupid.
I still stand by the belief that Kira should have been a girl and have Athrun be her rival/love interest.
Athrun's attitude and obsession with Kira would make sense.
It already does. Athrun is gay for Kira
>Assram
>Kira should have been a girl and have Athrun be her rival/love interest.
Why does one negate the other? Do an honest outright homosexual relationship, not just pointless bait-and-switch for the fujoshi crowd.
not going to debate about that, but seed has the best ops/eds.
>I feel bad about having to killed some people
>Ok, here's a machine that means you don't have to kill people.
Some of the laziest fricking writing I've ever seen in my life and as soon as the targets aren't person shaped he suddenly doesn't give a crap about killing large numbers of people. He comes off as a moron who stops thinking of people as people when the number killed by one shot gets high enough. You could forgive it if it led to cool fights, but 90% of the fights in SEED are stock footage shitfests that make Wing look good.
It's just /m/'s eternal seething for Kira, since he's the best MC, with the best GF, from the best show(s).
And now that SEED Freedom is coming, people will accept that more.
Because it doesn't come from a place of redemption or actual care for people's lives, he's just riding high on his own self-righteousness and the power of his suits. It's why the moment someone actually skilled/powerful runs up against his ideals, killing is immediately back on the table.
was it ever confirmed that kira is a newtype?
He's not a Newtype, he's just wild beets
They don't call them Newtypes in CE, but yes.
Isn't it just called spatial awareness or some shit in CE
Because in Destiny he turned up & caused such a shitshow that more people died because of it while pretending to be the hero.
Actually people have done the math and pointed out that technically more people survived because of Kira's intervention than if he'd just let Minerva blow up everyone up, it's just that Heine died when he wouldn't have and people care more about him than a thousand or so EA and Orb guys.
In the first battle where the Archangel intervenes your probably right. In there second one the MS's were saved but the actual ships were getting sliced & diced which had more people on it. The Freedom & Cagalli crying just pissed Shinn off more. EA on the other hand got away with it other than the Windams because Shinn was too busy committing a hate crime against ORB.
That's still more people alive than if Minerva just blew up the entire fleet with it's cannon. Some of the Orb ships survived and most of the guys on the flagship were able to evacuate.
what's the point of outfitting a ship with guns that can't even scratch a ms
Rapid-fire guns are for shooting down incoming missiles. It might do a tiny bit of damage if it hits the non-phase-shift-armored parts or if it hits the grenades or rockets that grunts carry.
ah that makes sense
What bothers me about Kira’s pacifism is that the whole thing feels very selfish. His entire reason for doing it is because he doesn’t want to kill anyone, there’s nothing deeper than that. He just doesn’t like killing which in of itself is fine but in the context of the rest of the show it feels ridiculous. You can argue he doesn’t want to kill his own people but I sure as hell don’t remember that ever being mentioned in the show and the only reason he gives Lacus before getting the Freedom is ‘I’ve killed so many people’. In comparison to the other pacifists of the series, his reasoning just feels very ‘me me me’. No one ever questions him on it either, at least not that I remember. He just starts deliberately missing the wienerpit and the Archangel crew barely say a word. Compare to that fricking Kio of all people and the DIVA crew constantly chew him out for it. Even his reasoning makes more sense, as silly as it is because he’s seen that life on Mars is awful and everyone is slowly dying of space aids plus the war has been going on for like 100 years at that point. He also seems to pick and chose who he kills at random. Fair enough if it’s people like Rau who don’t deserve to live or Durandal but he still cleaves battleships in half
While Kira doesn't give a great justification for starting it it fits with the overall message of the war in Seed which was that it gradually just becoming a war of payback that eventually turned to near genocide shown from stuff like the Zaft guys slaughtering the surrendering EA guys at the one base because they were mad about Alaska, to Patrick Zala wanting the genocide of all Naturals because a few terrorists killed his wife.
Kira at least is making less people joining up wanting to kill everybody on the other side because their friend or brother was KIA. It's not just empty talk either as he felt that same rage when Tolle died
Because Kira is the most ridiculous fantasy idea of a guy who can effortlessly dispatch his foes and hold a moral high ground of pacifism despite being by far the most threatening combatant on any battlefield he shows up in.
I get he's a moral ideal of not letting superiority get to your head, but it's fricking wild how effortlessly he does his routine, it would be a lot more plausible if it still resulted in people getting injured and surviving to grumble about it. There needs to be a whole infirmary scene of people from all factions just going "man frick that Yamato guy he's a dick."
He does let it get to his head though, he unilaterally sticks his nose in things because He Knows Best.
But then it turns out he was right all along anyway at the end of Destiny
Yeah his entire crusade in Destiny is running on the idea that Durandal is secretly scheming something and he and his pals are the only ones that see though his nice guy facade. And then it turns out he's exactly right when Durandal no longer needs to play nice and starts killing his own guys and using the same genocide weapons he'd spend all show decrying.
This isn't without cause mind you, Kira knows this because Durandal put a hit out on him early in the show that nobody else knows about or believes.
The problem is the way they treat it is that LOGOS is somehow equivalent to ZAFT despite LOGOS being openly genocidal the entire show yet barely getting any of Archangel's attention other than the Berlin thing
That mostly comes down to most confrontations with LOGOS being moments where Team Kira can't do anything. Or in the case Orb where they had to choose between inadvertently helping LOGOS to protect Orb from Zaft or letting them take over.
Thing with the LOGOS witchhunt is that while it seems good in theory, in practice it just caused unrest and violence on Earth while most of the main LOGOS heads were untouched and it also gave Durandal a scapegoat to blame all his enemies on. Athrun and Meyrin try to escape, they're working for LOGOS. Team Lacus tries to attack Requiem to stop it from blowing up Orb, nah they're just LOGOS remnants. Even though Durandal knows full well they aren't he can effective accuse anyone with any influence and power to be a threat to him to be LOGOS and there's little they can do about it.
Based on the premise that only the highest authority in ZAFT could have access to state of the art ZAFT mobile suits. A couple dozen episodes before Lacus hands him a state of the art ZAFT mobile suit.
At the end of Destiny his stated intent is to do absolutely nothing to try and resolve the racial tensions that keep boiling over and to just keep coming in swinging his dick only after the violence has broken out again, forever more.
Yeah but in the end, Kira was correct in his assumption. Fukuda even confirms in one of his latest interviews that yes, Durandal sent those guys.
Even if it was obvious that it was Durandal, it would be nice for the show to actually confirm shit like that. Especially since this is the same show that will beat other points over the viewer's head via copious flashbacks.
I think that mostly came down to Kira only confronting Durandal a total of once and by then bringing it up wouldn't have mattered in the slightest. Although that in itself was also kind of evidence of Durandal's guilt because if he had truly not ever meant Kira any harm at first and the whole show was Kira just attacking his guys over and over without cause then Durandal almost certainly would have said something to that effect. Instead his reaction is "Look I know you're mad but hear me out" and tries to sell him on the Destiny Plan which would fall in line with Durandal trying to kill him to stop him from interfering with it, and Durandal trying to talk his way out of the fallout from that.
I always suspected part of that may have stemmed from Destiny being one of the first Gundam shows to have major online feedback as it was airing, which the staff had been reading. Since literally everyone called Durandal out as secretly the villain almost immediately based on his voice design and attitude, they might have just thought they sold it on that alone and never realized they forgot to actually establish this.
>Based on the premise that only the highest authority in ZAFT could have access to state of the art ZAFT mobile suits
And that Durandal introduced a fake Lacus claiming to be the genuine article at the exact same time that the real Lacus was supposed to have been killed. Durandal is the clear and obvious person to have ordered the hit, and the only reason that anyone pretends otherwise is to try and make Kira and Lacus look irrational.
Basically. Could someone theoretically have stolen those MS's and equipment? Yeah. Could someone other than Durandal want Lacus Clyne dead? Yeah. But would that someone also be aiming for a stealth kill on Lacus Clyne with no evidence or trace of her at the exactly the same moment Durandal is unveiling a fake version under his control? Very unlikely.
It wasn't at exactly the same moment it was several episodes later. And when Athrun asks about exactly why he's doing it he offers the fairly coherent explanation that everyone in CE is bloodthirsty chimps and Lacus is the only one they'll listen to calls for de-escalation (which is what Meer was doing at the time) from. Which should be absurd, but due to SEED's general terrible writing is instead entirely true.
It was an episode or two before the attack actually, although timeline wise it was barely a day after, maybe even that night.
>And when Athrun asks about exactly why he's doing it he offers the fairly coherent explanation that everyone in CE is bloodthirsty chimps and Lacus is the only one they'll listen to calls for de-escalation
Which is a decent excuse at the time, but he later uses Meer for his own propaganda purposes. And of course he's going to say that to Athrun. "I know the real thing would never accept my plans so I made a fake I have total control over" isn't exactly going to inspire the guy to join up with him.
Furthermore, Athrun knows where the real Lacus is. Is he that gullible to believe Durandal only has good intentions with his phony Lacus?
>Is he that gullible to believe Durandal only has good intentions with his phony Lacus?
Unironically yes. Kira outright calls out the fake Lacus thing and all Athrun does is dodge the question.
I don't think he's completely gullible he just wanted to give Durandal a chance, to a very high degree because he desperately wants Zaft to be in the right to validate that his father didn't really ruin everything about it. Eventually even Athrun had had enough, but by then Kira and co have already been defeated and sent packing so Athrun has nobody to back him up when Durandal finally turns on him.
>he just wanted to give Durandal a chance
Shouldn't the phony Lacus set up a whole parade of red flags about Durandal?
>because he desperately wants Zaft to be in the right to validate that his father didn't really ruin everything about it
I repeat my question: why? His only nagging suspicion came from a bunch of terrorist extremists, who have nothing to do with the present state of ZAFT or its government.
In hindsight, things would make perfect sense if they were the other way around: Athrun goes to back to ZAFT and gains Durandal's trust because he suspects that, behind the veneer of peace and prosperity in ZAFT, he is up to no good after being introduced to "Lacus Clyne".
>At the end of Destiny his stated intent is to do absolutely nothing to try and resolve the racial tensions that keep boiling over and to just keep coming in swinging his dick only after the violence has broken out again, forever more.
One of the big reasons Destiny even kicks off into a second war is because three of the main four from SEED just sat on the sidelines and let things get out of hand again. Athrun certainly makes an effort at the beginning, but then does nothing for the Clyne Faction OR ZAFT once he rejoins the latter.
>One of the big reasons Destiny even kicks off into a second war is because three of the main four from SEED just sat on the sidelines and let things get out of hand again.
This isn't the argument you think it is. You're telling me that the peace and security of the entire Earth sphere rests solely on the actions of those four individuals?
Certainly that's what the story eventually went with, but it's utterly dumb writing to have a whole war being indirectly caused (and eventually stopped) by your main characters because they are so powerful and influential that the universe spins around them.
>Mess up both government's entire infrastructure because they don't do what you want
>Don't explain anything and just frick their days
>Leave without taking responsibility for your actions because you'd rather stare out solemnly at the beach
>Mess up both government's entire infrastructure
Stop lying. Governments on either side were pretty much intact, to the point they were able to sign an armistice after the war's end. Azrael was merely the head of Blue Cosmos, not of the whole Earth Alliance. And most of the damage was made in the shootout between ZAFT and the EA.
All the Three Ships Alliance did was shoot down the nukes, kill a handful of maniacs in dangerous mobile suits (Rau, the druggies) and destroy a hidden superweapon. Athrun didn't even have to kill his Chairman father.
> That isn't reasonable as an argument
> It's true, but it's not reasonable so you weaken your argument by saying it despite it being true
Learn how to write a proper retort, instead of doing the greentext nonsense like a tourist. The Plebbitor spacing is a tell.
Try again.
the whole thing is absurd. imagine if uc went the route of having the titans showing up because bright, amuro and char didn't have the "power" to stop them, and it was just them who single-handedly defeat them in battle, with kamille just buzzing around the battlefield as a pest.
00 at least has the excuse that CB and the wars were part of aeolia's plan to unify mankind. the skittle squad was an unintended consequence of it, and the aliens showed up too early.
The implication seemed to be that because they just left, other super influential and powerful people (Djbril and Durandal) stepped in. So while the universe seems to run on the idea that a single person can be super influential it's not necessarily only Kira and Lacus.
>The implication seemed to be that because they just left, other super influential and powerful people (Djbril and Durandal) stepped in.
Honestly, I'm not really seeing cause/effect at work here. While you can argue that Lacus is such an influential figure in ZAFT that Durandal went through all the trouble of crafting a phony for propaganda purposes, and the real one stepped to actual leadership eventually, what could have they possibly done to prevent the reappearance of Blue Cosmos? Or the radicals that dropped Junius Seven? This assumes they all had their own agendas, rather than the implication that everyone was an unwilling pawn on Durandal's game all along
Even Cagalli is shown as completely at the mercy of the Seirans, with little actual political power other than going to Durandal to beg him to stop using Orb refugees to develop weapons.
I guess you could say they should have kept their little squad going around looking for Blue Cosmos remnants or disgruntled Zaft guys. Though as far as Durandal and Blue Cosmos, given the fact that he seemingly knew about LOGOS all along or at least very early on he probably could have nipped it in the bud before it became a huge thing and the only reason he didn't was because he wanted Djbril to unleash his crazy genocide so he'd have an excuse to take over and push the Destiny Plan. Although even Durandal seemingly didn't expect Djbril to fire Reqiuem based on his reaction, I think he was expecting to wrap things up in Orb with them needing to surrender to Zaft and then on to the Destiny Plan.
>Although even Durandal seemingly didn't expect Djbril to fire Requiem based on his reaction
I rewatched the sequence and there's this scene, where Durandal calmly looks sideways at the Council member, only to get furious a split-second later. Seems to indicate that everything was still part of his master plan.
>The whole bit about Requiem
I wonder if there is a possibility that he knows about the weapon but decided to stay mum since Aprilius One and by extension the PLANT Supreme Council would've been vaporized but the battle ended up changing the trajectory and even more people died instead.
>it's utterly dumb writing
>the whole thing is absurd
Bingo.
TSA didn't even kill two of them, even if Raider was a free kill for Yzak due to the timing and circumstances.
>rests solely on the actions of those four individuals?
In that way it's more consistent than UC's "sure shonen super heroes save the day every time, but otherwise realpolitik"
It's the execution of it. Kira gets his no-killing machine and that about ends it. Which isn't all that bad in SEED, Kira just stops being a character til he meets Rau at the end. It gets worse in Destiny because Destiny is just one big bowl of "Kira's right". That Ideal of Kira is never challenged in any real way. It goes from eye-rolling to infuriating.
Without Neo who will lead the next generation of druggies?
Some Challia Bull clone
Will Shinn's new suit be derived from the Destiny or Impulse?
I feel like the Destiny is the suit identify with him more but also it would have baggage if he's still feeling guilty about the whole ZAFT drone thing
%3D
Kira's forceful pacifism was cool. He was a chad who forced his beliefs on others.
If Kira did it in the Strike you wouldn't hear a peep from me. After all, only 2 possibilities would show up; the show would either be forced to ascend to the altar of stock footage that would make '60s and '70s /m/ shows blush in second-hand shame, or the animators die at their workdesks trying to give us around a total of 150 minutes of action, on the level of the remaster's Strike Rogue VS ZAFT pursuit fleet for the Eternal for the last third of the show.
Out of all the anime studios out there, Sunrise is among the only ones that could pull it off. Not only Bandai is a rich corporation, but Sunrise has like 10 different sub-studios under them. Put everyone to work in that one project and send the boring parts to subcontractors.
Because your argument loses all credibility when piloting a nuclear powered death machine which violate every international rule of conflict in that universe.
Like people had said everyone had violated the anti nuclear laws at that point and team Kira were the last to do so by which point it would be pointless to criticize them and only them for it.
He still kills people. Typical shitters or avoidable situations he tends to spare people but sufficiently holy shit situations like a frickhuge Destroy Gundam blowing up everything he kills.
That's not really a negative there. Would have very irresonpsible of him to just go "well I can't disable her so I guess I'll just let her blow everyone up"
It is a negative though, because it highlights that Kira only disables people when it's easy and that as soon as things get tough that he'll forego that and kill someone. Which he never feels anything about doing afterwards. It means that Kira isn't disabling people because of any moral stance, but simply because he finds it convenient. A character like Vash in Trigun or Basara in Macross 7 might be more infuriating because of their explicit objections to killing, but the fact they won't kill in a lot of cases where it seems like a simple solution to tough situations gives them a solid, defined character and the hoops they go through to avoid killing as well as the emotions they express when confronted with the idea of killing create good drama. It makes them memorable. As opposed to Kira, who is just doing whatever is simplest essentially.
Kira is based. Vash is a hypocrite
I like both.
What's the issue? If Kira can get away with it he'll spare you. If you're evil or dangerous schizo he'll kill you. That's a based attidude and literally the same as Zeta Amuro.
Kira only breaks his "rule" twice, once against Rau who professed the desire to kill everyone (and who was only in the position in the first place because Kira spared him earlier) and Stella who about to vaporize him Shinn AA Minerva and the entire city of Berlin so he had to make a tough call.
Otherwise Kira will stick to it, so long as it's only his own ass on the line or his ally group that understand the chance they're taking. That's why he never kills Shinn, even after Angel Down despite him proving impossible to disable. Or why he doesn't immediately jump to killing Neo and Sting in Berlin when they pin him down and he needs the Orb guys cover, or even Stella at first at all until she proved unstoppable and was in a position where either he killed her or everyone died.
It's certainly a better chance than Vash nearly letting an entire town get killed because he couldn't stomach the thought of killing someone even as evil as Legato.
Also, some battleships. He also did try to kill Shinn during their duel. Those aside, Vash displays far more emotion and conflict over the choice to kill and the decision to not kill costs him far more on a frequent basis, which is a lot more compelling than Kira because not killing costs Kira nothing and killing doesn't faze him. It's just convenience for him, not an actual moral stance. At least as actually portrayed.
Yeah but like people have been saying that's questionable because after one supposedly lethal slash that you can only see by freeze frame he never does again, even in their rematches.
And I'd question that interpretation, because you can clearly see Kira swinging for the midsection. You do not need to freeze frame and capture one specific frame to tell that's a lethal shot if it lands. He also barely gets any more attacks in, and the best example people usually claim during that duel is "well he didn't stab the wienerpit", which as presented he probably couldn't anyway. It's conceivable he could, but it's not definitive by any means.
>the best example people usually claim during that duel is "well he didn't stab the wienerpit", which as presented he probably couldn't anyway. It's conceivable he could, but it's not definitive by any means.
That however is backed up by him continuing to go non lethal in their rematches even though Shinn is even more powerful and had already defeated him once. Something that even Shinn points out when he passes up the chance to kill him in Orb.
That was also a different battle where Shinn was presented as far less of a threat, even with a more powerful suit. So why would Kira need to kill him?
Because he still wasn't able to get any disabling hits on him and he was attacking Orb. If there's any situation where Kira would go "Well screw it I can't disable him so killing time" it would be that but he doesn't do it.
He wasn't able to get any disabling shots on the Destiny, but it hardly matters when Shinn doesn't present a credible threat to him anyway and the fight is done in maybe a few minutes at most, after which Shinn retreats. At no point is Kira presented with any need to kill Shinn because Shinn is a weak opponent to him personally, and he barely presents a bump in the road in Kira's mission to save Orb.
>Shinn is a weak opponent to him personally
This is the guy that nearly killed him before
So what? Just because you nearly killed someone before doesn't make you automatically dangerous now, and Shinn never scratched Kira in that next battle, while Kira knocked Shinn around a few times.
Shinn didn't damage Kira at Angel Down until near the end anyway but he still pushed him into a corner by dodging and blocking all his shots which he was still mostly doing here minus the sword catch.
He was still putting pressure on Kira throughout with Kira unable to effectively damage him despite numerous landed shots because of the parts swapping. Which is a far different picture to Orb. At no point in that battle does Shinn present as a credible threat, and it's done almost immediately anyway.
>It's just convenience for him
So?
>it's not a moral stance
It is. You're just a moron who thinks it has to be some epic realization
You're thinking way too hard, the director would never have one of the protagonists killed, at least not without his wife's approval back then.
This is the actual answer. Kira goes for non lethal disables so he can both be the top dog constantly dunking on everyone else, but also keeps characters alive for plot or popularity reasons.
>but also keeps characters alive for plot or popularity reasons.
That's well and good but it's not like Tomino was mercing characters every episode. Well, Shrike Team not standing. It's pretty easy to keep your main cast alive without calling attention to how sloppy it is.
"defeated"
Dearka and Yzak should get gundams again in the film.
Dearka and Yzak, raising natural children not theirs.
Mwu got away with literal war crimes and has 0 repercussions for it
Motherfricker never even apologized to Shinn
Just following orders.
So many people committed potential war crimes all around that blaming any one person would be opening a can of worms and it was probably better to just call it even since all the guys that schemed them died. Though Mu does owe Shinn and apology or at least explaination
>"At least he wasn't racist"
>Why is Kira avoiding killing people controversial?
It is indeed strange, given that Tekkaden in IBO were also seen sparing people by chopping off the limbs of mobile suits during battle, and yet I've never seen them get shit for it.
I mean that's not really the same thing and just more than mobile suits in IBO's universe were nigh impossible to blow up so they could wreck them in ways the pilots survived, although plenty still got mulched.
The only time they deliberately spared people where fellow human debris they were trying to recruit, or when the enemy pilots specifically would surrender to them.
Tekkadan used it to take parts and ransom people. This is infinitely a better motivation than 'I don't want to kill but I still must fight'.
Amuro in Zeta.
Amuro had no issue killing in Zeta once he got back in the fighting. The times he tried to spare lives was once when he tried to capture a Dodai (by avoiding a generator hit so he went for the legs) and during Dakar, also avoiding generator hits to keep damage in the city to a minimum. He never made it a moral issue.
I feel like they're in general pretty inconsistent with the whole generator thing
Beams on generators = bigger explosions. That's pretty much how it's been since MSG ep 1. It's when you get into physical ammo that it seems to get iffy on how big the explosion can be. Some don't explode at all while others become AOE grenades. Amuro in early Zeta was using the Rick Dias a lot, so he kept switching between its clay bazooka and its beam pistols. While in Dakar he had the Dijeh, which adds in a proper beam rifle but gives him that double bladed beam naginata.
>He never made it a moral issue.
kira didn't either. He avoids killing if it's convenient but if he has to he'll do it
What? He was literally shooting the backpacks to cripple mobile suits. Zeta even showed Kamille trying it but failing and killing a guy
It erodes Gundam's core message and exists purely so he can style harder instead of delivering any kind of meaningful message.
Which kind of sums up SEED as a whole.
>It erodes Gundam's core message
to sell toys? It did that very well
>woosh
Kira disabling Mobile Suits can work... but this is Cosmic Era. If he disables a ZAFT suit, some Earth Alliance pilot will take the opportunity and kill the ZAFT pilot inside, and vice-versa.
For me it's Kamile's AIEEE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE DIED IF YOU DIDNT MESS WITH ME
not his problem
>For me it's Kamile's AIEEE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE DIED IF YOU DIDNT MESS WITH ME
From Kamille's perspective if you come out onto the battlefield you're signing up to die and you should've stayed home
He doesn't enjoy killing people but he's not naive enough to think that war ends without killing which is why he decides Haman needs to die immediately after connecting to her. Even when he killed people like Jerid he was upset about it.
Kamille knows the instant those mooks sortie that they will have no chance against him, will engage him anyway, and get demolished in return after achieving nothing. So it's more frustrating when they unhesitantly take action anyway, like their sole goal is more senseless bloodshed, even if it has to be their own.
It probably helps that he's fighting both of them so they'd hopefully be too disabled to finish each other off. So we did have that situation with Heine where rather than back off he kept trying to fight with one arm and got killed by Stella.
it's been over 20 years, /m/. pls just let it the frick go
> pls just let it the frick go
When are you going to let you spamming yet another Plebbit/Twatter woe-jack excrement?
Don't understand why Kira doesn't kill, he outright killed Miguel and oopsie Nicole, he went past that line RIGHT from the beginning, just kill you pussy.
IIRC, part of it was Kira trying to avoid more cycles of pointless revenge after Athrun tried to Aegis Akbar him in retaliation for the Nicol/Tolle shitshow. But it's kinda forgotten by the end of SEED, especially since Kira explicitly killing Rau was arguably in revenge for Flay.
So how's your camping here, Kaihedgie?
Killing is bad