Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom

It turns out that The Primevals isn't the only movie with an epic production history. 

Mobile Suit Gundam was cut short after only 43 episodes during its 1979 run. It's now one of the staples of the anime world, with multiple spin-offs in every format imaginable. One of its most popular spin-offs, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, was supposed to have a movie as early as 2006, shortly after the run of its sequel series, Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny. Unfortunately, series head writer Chiaki Morosawa was in constant poor health and ultimately passed away in 2016. A few years later, Morosawa's husband and series director Mitsuo Fukuda got her script together with the help of SEED novel writer Liu Goto.

This is the end result, which premiered in Japanese theatres in January, had a two-night US run in May, and is now on Netflix and Hulu.

In a typical Gundam series, humans have established space colonies and often wage war on Earth and in space using humanoid mobile suits. The protagonists, including SEED's Kira Yamato, have super-special mobile suits called Gundams. A few years after Destiny, Kira leads a team of mobile suit pilots, which includes Destiny's protagonist Shinn Asuka, to defend world peace on behalf of the peacekeeping organization COMPASS. In the SEED universe, war has been waging between genetically-modified Coordinators and the aptly-named Naturals. Kira, himself a Coordinator, is naturally sick of it all.

The Empire of Foundation allies with COMPASS to deal with the terrorist group Blue Cosmos. Unfortunately, Foundation's Prime Minister Orphee Lam Tao sets up COMPASS for a False Flag Operation during the pivotal sortie. Tao is a Coordinator, as is most of Foundation's leadership, and they want to implement a new world order based on their genetic superiority. He even wants fellow Coordinator and COMPASS president Lacus Clyne, who is also Kira's love interest, to love him or else. Kira and his friends have to get it together to stop Tao before he nukes the world into submission with his Requiem space laser.

Did everybody get all that?

Once again, this is an anime film that requires you to have kept up with the story thus far. Those who have never watched the TV show, or even finished either of its seasons, will certainly be lost. There's a tangible amount of understandable material, such as the "Destiny Project" that the namesake season's Big Bad Durandal wanted to implement, and this movie's villains want to finish. A lot of the new characters are actually cases of "remember the new guy?" syndrome. Col. Michael, the leader of Blue Cosmos, is spoken of like a holdover villain from the TV show. But he's actually a Living MacGuffin that was introduced in this film; he doesn't even fight the heroes. 

Those unfamiliar with either TV season will find the heroes decently compelling. Kira and Lacus get some nice romantic moments in the first act, some surprisingly decent melodrama when new character Agnes tries to get in between them, and they share a Gundam together in the final battle. Lacus gets her best solo moment when she repeatedly resists Tao's literally hypnotic charm. Kira also confronts his former rival turned friend, Athrun Zala, in a gloriously over-the-top act two punch out which sees Shinn clobbered when he tries to stop them. The secondary couple, Captain Murrue Ramius (also the film's narrator) and hotshot pilot Mu La Flaga, have a few nice moments too. It was funny to see Team Kira hijack Murrue's ship, Millenium, while several armadas openly fail to stop them.

Now for the villains. Tao's nice guy act is very convincing, especially when he feigns indignation over COMPASS's alleged betrayal. Eventually, we realize how much of an entitled creep he is. Lacus showing sympathy for him in his last moments is a bit excessive, but that's validated by one last moment between him and his lieutenant, Ingrid. Aura, the seemingly young Queen of Foundation, turns out to be older and crueler than she looks. Amongst the Black Knights, Foundation's Royal Guard, we have the smug snake Shura Serpentine and the obnoxious Redelard Tradoll. Neither of them will be missed. Finally, we have Agnes, who turns to their side for selfish reasons. Still, you'll want to pity her a bit more than Tao.

What else does it have? The film has about three extended battle scenes. The opening battle is a good way to show Team Kira do what they do best. The anti-Blue Cosmos operation gets really scary when Shura mentally attacks Kira and drives him to cross a Demarcation Line. It gets especially nightmarish when nukes get involved, and the film doesn't shy away from showing civilians and soldiers getting flash-fried by either the nukes or Requiem. The final battle was pretty cool, but it was a bit incomprehensible as nearly all of Team Kira's Gundams adopted the same color scheme. Which was which? That aside, the Mobile Suit animation was pretty well done. Series composer Toshihiko Sahashi provides a decent score for this outing, though it was surprisingly hard to hear it properly at times. 

This is not an easy entry point into the "Cosmic Era" of Gundam lore. Fortunately, both seasons of the anime are ready to watch on Netflix if you want to get in there. I never watched anything past SEED's first half, largely due to its initial timeslot getting messed up, but I still had memories of what I saw. I was still invested in this film's central drama even amongst the piling up subplots and massive cast. I even got used to the newer dub cast's* performances pretty quickly. All in all, I found Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom a good finale for this part of the franchise. Do come prepared, though.

* For those interested, the series was initially dubbed in Canada, while a new American cast took over for the HD Remastered Edition a few years ago.