Went the Cinema on Saturday to see Gundam Seed Freedom.
So to give some context before I add my thoughts. I never finished watching Seed and I have never seen Destiny. I did generally enjoy Seed up until the character Flay started to play a more prominent role in the series. And, while I understand why they portrayed her that way, just something about her really irritated me to the point of just dropping the series. Plus I do tend to prefer the stuff based and set around the original settings (I think 008th MS Team is probably my favourite of the lot).
So this means that about 70% of the cast meant nothing to me. Hell even the main girl, Lacus, was barely introduced at this point.
So I went to see it with a few mates, the last time I went to see an anime at the Cinema was Monoke Hime (would love to see more of the older Miyazaki classics at the Cinema).
On the whole, I really enjoyed the film. The CGI for the mechs was well done and didn't stand out too much. I am sure some of the earlier character stuff would have had more of an impact if I had actually seen the rest of the series (such as Kira and Lacus relationship). But in general I was there to watch the mechs beat the crap out of each other.
So there where a couple of downsides. Some of the action was confusing to watch. The main issue is that I am used to the Gundam's being fairly rare in univers and the main enemy mechs being things like the Zaku. So when both sides have Gundams it could be difficult to see who was who (except the blue and white one, that's always the good guy).
There was also some fanservice in there as well which I am not used to in a Gundam series (I believe some of the later series are a bit more egregious with this) so it looked out of place. The worst one was Lacus' flight suit in the end fight. Everybody else has a decent uniform flight suit, some armour plates here and there where it would make sense. Not Lacus though. She gets something that makes the plug suits from Evangelion look baggy and loose. Look, don't get me wrong, I am not generally against fan service and I know it something that seems to happen a lot in anime. But this just stood out because of everything else looking (i don't want to use the word grounded in a mech series, but) grounded.
Anyway, it did do one job well, it got me wanting to go and watch some Gundam Series. Might give Iron Blooded Orphans a shot, nothing like Child Soldiers and the Horrors of War to wash the fan service away...
After I have watched Girls Und Panzer Der Movie
). Close to the end though!
