Releana was hated by a lot of commenters.

 

Do you want us to count up the Kira/Lacus haters as well?

Geez dude, you fixate on completely pointless shit.

 

Oh, I remember Kira, Kira was the character which made me stop watching Gundam altogether. Releana I could tolerate, Kira I could not. Kira kept me from becoming a Gundam fan. Kira made me move on to other anime with mecha, ones I enjoyed far more, like Patlabor. Oh, that was also a show that was on Toonami (Well, on their 'online' thing.)

I actually liked Releana before she became queen, it wasn't until her stupid 'peace at all costs' bullshit that I started to dislike her. However, despite that, I still enjoyed the Gundam Wing, it is a heavily flawed show, with lots of problems, like the exposition dumps, but it was still engaging. I really enjoyed the space-war politics aspect of it. As an adult, when I rewatched it, that stuff became my favorite part of the show. Is it the best Gundam show? Probably not, is it the worst? I have no idea, but I like it just as it is. I really enjoy the English dub, especially with David Kaye, I enjoy the villains most. (Not Zechs, Zechs is kind of terrible, especially after he loses his mask), but the Villains like Treize, Treize I love. I love his personality, and his organization. Gundam Wing had other things to keep me going, keep me entertained and enjoying it, despite it's flaws. Almost to the point where I can ignore the flaws, but Gundam Seed, Gundam Seed had Kira, Kira was much harder to ignore, not when he's the god damn protagonist. I've seen Gundam Wing from Operation Meteor, to Endless Waltz somewhere between 5 and 10 times in my life. I'll gladly watch it again at some point. I couldn't make it more than 4 episodes into Gundam Seed because of Kira. Which is saying something, because I outright despised Shinji, but I actually watched the whole show, and the movies (Not the new ones, but the original ones). Shinji, this is a giant robot anime, just get in the god damn robot already. People are dying. LOL I some how made it through 26 episodes of that shit, but I couldn't make it through 4 of Seed because of Kira. Again, I watched 52 episodes of Wing, with all it's flaws, and the movie, at least 5 times. I actually liked it even more watching it as an adult, than I did watching it as a teenager back in 2000.

I absolutely love Gundam Wing.

 

Actually, Wing was a failure in Japan. The reason for the two clipshows halfway through is because they were doing a writer change at that point in time, so the clipshows were there to stall for time. The reason Bandai brought Wing to America first for Toonami is because it was the cheapest series to license as Sunrise just wanted to recoup any costs they could with the show. The whole reason Endless Waltz exists is because Japanese audiences were left underwhelmed with the finale of Wing as it never told them anything about the characters they had been watching over the last year.

Now in America, yes, Wing was a success because it was the first main stream Gundam show. America is the whole reason Wing is even merched the way it is. If it wasn't for Toonami, Wing would be as commercialized as X.

 

IIRC, the large bishounen quantity did raise the show's profile quite significantly with the female demographic in Japan, though. But seeing as they weren't the target audience, Bandai really wasn't ready to capitalize on that.

Similar to Tiger and Bunny. Huge fujoshi audience due to Kotetsu and Barnaby, but most of the SHFiguarts merch got clearanced, or relegated to P-Bandai.

 

To be a bit fair to Kira, I personally think the majority of the bad rep Kira Yamato got as a character among the western fans was mainly caused by all of the "protagonist-centered morality" shillings he got throughout Destiny, where he was portrayed as a preachy "know-it-all" beam-spamming messiah who was always right in everything. That, and I guess he wasn't as popular in the West because audiences there were more first exposed to Gundam MCs that have stoic and headstrong personalities such as Heero and Domon, so Kira's return to the "status-quo" for Gundam MCs was more jarring among western folks.

But as someone who had watched SEED, I don't actually mind Kira that much for the most part in the original SEED. His character at the very least was sincere in a natural way, as a Coordinator civilian got suddenly shoved into this central position in the war that he never got a chance of being prepared for, and he has no choice but to improvise and make things up as it goes along to survive. Kira in SEED was weak-willed, naive, and pacifistic to a fault, but he had a strong sense of obligation which thrust him into the plot, and his naiveté disappeared as he was forced to go through more and more desperate circumstances. Not only that, but his weak will allowed Flay to override his pacifistic nature to have him turn into something that he swore to never become. But it was also this pacifistic nature and sense of obligation which allowed him to rise above the cycle of hatred to try and bring peace to the world. In other words, he wasn't the most well-written Gundam MC ever and he's not a character for everyone, but I can still see why people like Kira Yamato's character in SEED.

The writing for him does start to went "bananas" a bit in the back half when Lacus chooses him as her "knight" and gifts him the Freedom Gundam, and he gets a little preachy. But it's far from the worst thing ever because he's frequently goaded into those tirades, rather than trying to shove his viewpoints down everyone else's throats.

Then, SEED Destiny came out, and on boy... SEED Destiny screwed his character HARD. The Kira Yamato in SEED Destiny had barely any doubts and interesting inner conflict, and the doubts that he actually did have never impacted the plot in any significant way. He was the greatest, most undefeatable pilot on the battlefield ever and his Strike Freedom (in all of his gaudy gold-colored inner frame glory) never even sustained any valid oppositions and challenges throughout the series.

...WHAT THE HELL, and WHY?!?

Even in situations where it seems like Kira can finally catch a break (Such as Kira got to reunite and reconcile with Athrun at Orb after what they went through, Lacus entrusting him with the Freedom, etc.), Kira was never perfect. Even when he got his original Freedom in SEED, he can barely fight evenly against the Earth Alliance's Biological CPU pilots without Athrun's help, and defeating Rau pushed Kira both physically and emotionally to his breaking points. How the hell did this guy go from a "pretty good, but not invincible" pilot to an "undefeatable beam-spamming god"? In SEED Destiny, he was completely right all along, and everything that went wrong in the show would absolutely never happen if everyone and anyone had just FREAKIN' listened to him from the start to finish. Kira in Destiny came across as a preachy know-it-all, and with no planned character arc for him in place, after the sudden series restructure where he “takes over” Shinn’s role as the main character, he remained a flat, boring and invincible character who was always in the right for the rest of the series. And that's where I think the Kira hate mostly comes from. He's too perfect and self-righteous in Destiny, and the show actively validates everything Kira did like he's the goddamn center of the universe. Other people may hate him just because they don't like pacifist characters, and as that is a matter of opinion, I can respect that.

 

Unfortunately, Gundam Seed Destiny’s version of Kira bleeds into the first show with the remastered version. The biggest example of this being when they won’t even allow Kira to have the moral ambiguity of killing Nicol. Originally, Kira does a defensive stance with the Strike when the Damaged Blitz charges at him. Nicol dies horrifically when the Strike’s sword is embedded into the Blitz’s cockpit. As it is now in the remastered version, Kira heroically retreats as Nicol stupidly runs into his sword. The funny part about this change is that it wasn’t even that bad for Kira originally. He was acting in self-defense when the Blitz was lunging at him. However, Jesus Yamato can never be seen in a compromising light so now it’s Nicol’s own fault that he died.

 

Take the L, my guy. You've made a handful of posts that contain nothing digestible and prove nothing more than that you have a personal vendetta against the series, but it's making you look foolish now.

 

I'll have to take you at your word on most of that, since I never finish SEED. I've never really liked the other Gundam shows as much as Wing. I did like G-Gundam, MS 8th Team, 0080, 0083, OG Gundam, and a few other Gundam things, but you're right, him being a protagonist was a drastic change from the characters I was used to in G-Gundam, and Wing. Maybe if I had watched the OG Gundam first, I would have liked it better, I quite frankly don't know. But, what I do know is that Gundam Wing is in the west our, 'first Gundam', it is what set the standards in our heads of what to expect from Gundam, and the other shows were drastically different than Wing, and G. Two shows that shook up the status quo from the previous versions, and I think going back to the status quo so soon was probably a mistake. Maybe they should have kept playing the older Gundams, like Zeta, or X instead. I did enjoy the OG Gundam universe/saga stuff. Not so much the protagonists, but I really liked the supporting characters, it had enough supporting characters for me to latch on to. Like, I absolutely like Char better than Zechs. Watching Seed, it was like watching a really lame version of the OG Gundam, and even at the time, I had known there were many other Gundam shows to watch, that I could be watching instead. But, no, CN had to get this one. I think by the time it aired on CN, I had already started watching other anime mecha shows, like Patlabor, which I liked SO much better than anything Gundam. I loved it better for the cast, a cast I could latch on to, and like. A cast that did their jobs, and worked well enough as a team, but also had unique personalities making one wanting to watch them interact with each other even more. I'm just not that big of a Gundam fan to begin with, but I really did like Wing and G, and most of the OG Gundam stuff. Toonami really should have focused on airing more of those.

 

Wing is a show I loved when it came out but then in 2016 I rewatched it with an open mind and found it quite appauling. It's not the worst Gundam series ever (that's AGE and Destiny), but it's soundtrack and the Deathscythe are its only saving grace in my book.

 

This is my exact opinion on Kira. I liked him decently enough in SEED (even as a dub watcher, and experiencing Matt Hill's acting that everybody seemed to hate. Matt's voice made him sound "normal"), especially when he was stuck in the Strike, because that machine's limitations forced him to be scrappy and cunning.

I really like the insinuations made early on that Kira won most of his fights not through piloting skill, but because his specialization as a kinematics student saw him through. He didn't have trained battle tactics, but he knew how to make his machine move far better than his opponents, which gave him that last bit of edge needed to scrape out a victory. Plus there's the implications that Morgenroete was using the student projects to open-source the development of the GUNDAM OS, and Kira possibly realized this early on, which let him fine-tune his machine on the fly, whereas his opponents were stuck with the clumsy factory settings.

He lost that "by the skin of his teeth" edge when he got the Freedom, but the proto-Extendeds still put up an admirable fight (Raider even decapitated Freedom in one of its first sorties).


And then, as you say, because of Destiny's hacky writing, that earnest, well-meaning, scrappy kid suddenly becomes the unassailable arbiter of peace and one-man-army's his way to world peace, practically solo, with a machine that's so stupid hax that it almost literally has a "push this button to win, forever" feature. I kinda get taking that angle when they tried to pretend he was the antagonist/rival of the series, with Shinn's nasty attitude projecting those qualities upon him. But when the series shifted course after the halfway point and made Kira the hero again, they forgot to dial him and Lacus way back, and they became sanctimonious and preachy, except were played entirely straight, instead of as strawman hate-sinks.

 

He was talking about G, or he wouldn't have said Wing was an attempt to go back in the direction of Original Gundam. Victory WAS the direction of Original Gundam. G was the one that went in a completely different direction for the first time.

But anyway, Wing's main selling point now is nostalgia, which many people around the world including me still have for it. But on its own, Wing is not great, to say the least.

 

Gundam Wing is to Gundam as Final Fantasy VII is to Final Fantasy. It may not be the best or greatest, but in pockets of the world it's most fondly remembered as a gateway to their respective medium, franchise or genre.

Hell I just bought one of the 1/144 Heavyarms model kits from Target this weekend purely because of the nostalgia.

 

In the very least, I still dig all the songs done by Two-Mix for the series.

 

Yeah, but VII is still one of the best FFs while Wing is one of the worst Gundam series.

 

Wing didn’t age well.

 

Dude we get it, you don't like it. But you're just a broken record with no tune. Have a point.