how Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and SEED Destiny misunderstands eugenics (and how 0079, Zeta, and ZZ nailed it)
(note; unless i specify otherwise, i'm using 'Gundam SEED' as a catch-all for the combined 100 episode run of both Cosmic Era shows)
Gundam SEED is built around the idea of genetic modification on steroids, where huge populations of Coordinators (Spacenoid stand-ins, living in the Cosmic Era's equivalent of the Sides, the PLANTs) are genetically modified in-vitro to be immune to disease, to be stronger, smarter, and kind of better at everything than unmodified Naturals (Earthnoid stand-ins who are just normal-ass Earth people). i feel like this core setup, and the way the show handles it, falls into the trap of treating the arguments of eugenicists seriously, when there's absolutely no reason to give them an inch on anything, something that the early UC understood all too well.
for one thing, Gundam SEED fails to actually address any of the really pertinent questions gene therapy raises, especially since SEED doesn't just feature genetic engineering as a plot device like G-Witch and ZZ, it bases an entire faction around its use and makes it the driving force of the show's core conflict. the show does not, for example, broach the extremely thorny topic of how genetic modification will affect the marginalised. many current pushes for genetic modification are pushed by insane eugenics groups, and the show never addresses whether, for example, the PLANTs try to gene edit out autism, or screen for any kind of genetic markers for being gay or trans. it doesn't ask whether there is any validity to the search for genetic explanations for these things, as contemporary eugenics organisations such as Autism Speaks insist. would non-white Coordinator parents be pressured to bump their kid's skin up a couple of shades to reduce the impact of racism and colourism on their lives? we see from the forced-labour camps the Alliance sets up in North Africa during Destiny that the CE is a world where racism is still very much a cultural force, and yet SEED never addresses how that interacts with Coordinators, despite a lot of the roots of modern genetic research (undoubtedly something that has led to a lot of positive medical advances) nonetheless lying in the 'scientific racism' of the early 20th century. an unfavourable reading might even point out that since we never see any of this stuff addressed or treated as a problem (for example, we don't meet any queer or neurodivergent Coordinators), SEED accepts that these are indeed qualities for which there are genetic markers, and it's not worth examining that the PLANTs bin them. that is a slightly unfair reading because the lack of those kinds of characters among Naturals suggest it just wasn't something the writers felt they could include for whatever reason, but then I would argue that if you're not able to address these things then you have no business writing a science fiction story where an entire core culture is built around genetic modification in the first place.
i'm not arguing that any stories about genetic modification are, by definition, eugenicist; G-Witch features it in the form of Suletta herself, and Notrette's patented brand of Tasty Tomatoes. the difference is that the show doesn't feature an entire society built from the ground-up around genetic engineering, which makes the comparisons to fascists less immediate, and even then G-Witch takes the time to address that Suletta herself feels like her only value is as a tool, precisely because she was genetically engineered to fulfil a specific purpose. it comes closer to grappling with the real dark side of these ideas in a 25 episode run than SEED did in 100.
instead, the framing of genetic modification in SEED as creating people who are, unambiguously, better at absolutely everything, and whose main obstacle is jealousy from unmodified people, accepts at face value the premise that to be superior due to your genetics is possible. by doing this, and also ignoring any of the real concerns marginalised people had at the time, and continue to have to this day about the possible uses of genetic modification, the show comes off as validating eugenicists. while SEED hedges on the details, i would argue that by accepting this as a basic premise to begin with, the show has already validated an extremely noxious worldview.
that being said, the Coordinators do experience significant problems with fertility, with birthrates collapsing in the third generation and requiring interbreeding with Naturals to sustain their population. the show does not assert that genetic modification makes the Coordinators into flawless ubermensch, and clumsily attempts to argue for a middle ground between fascistic genetic purity and a degree of equality between Naturals and Coordinators. imo the issues the PLANTs end up having is because SEED isn't like, actively trying to write a treatise on why eugenics is good, instead, the writers chose a hot-button issue to address and then badly fumbled it, in the process treating seriously and partially validating ideas that are in the real world just a flimsy cover for racial hatred and other bigotries. to my mind, it's saying that eugenics works to a point and then starts to break down, but i think the idea that it can work up to any kind of point is giving it a lot more credit than it really deserves.
my core frustrations with that are a) that SEED is actually pretty good when it shunts that stuff into the background, e.g. in the first half of Destiny, and it's frustrating watching the show fall back into being about this shit and neglecting the stronger elements like the solid character work with Shinn and Athrun, and b) previous Gundam shows already staked out a strong position that what SEED takes as a given is actually total horseshit. the show's themes would be frustrating enough if they didn't exist as part of a franchise which has previously gotten this issue more or less right, with the highly combat-effective Coordinators being an obvious stand-in for the UC's Newtypes. the Zabis hijack the idea of Newtypes from Zeon Deikun and treat being a Newtype as a matter of genetics because it made their fascist spacenoid supremacy sound semi-legitimate and scientific. meanwhile, the text of 0079, Zeta, and ZZ insists that to be a Newtype is something almost impossible to define quantifiably. characters who are stated in-universe to be Oldtypes nonetheless experience Newtype visions, and the defining factor in developing Newtype abilities is nothing to do with being a pure-blooded Spacenoid, but about the simple fact of existing in space and allowing that to change the way you interact with the world. to my mind, the early UC's position is that while capable of providing miracles like the Sides, science is also too often invoked as a rhetorical device to retroactively justify existing dehumanisation and hatred by making it sound objective and logical, leading to Zeon seeing Earthnoids as so inhuman that killing billions of them in Operation British was acceptable to them. SEED doesn't just lack an interesting take on this core element of the UC (like Iron-Blooded Orphans' focus on how this creates avenues for labour exploitation through the stigmatisation of the Alaya-Vinjana system), it fails to understand it by accepting such a retroactive justification as part of its core premise, something that sticks out really badly because the CE shows are so interested in being a modern update of 0079 and Zeta.
my animosity towards the character of Kira in particular is that he's emblematic of these thematic and worldbuilding fuckups, cut as he is from the eugenic cloth. SEED Destiny's best moments were early on when Athrun seriously questioned Kira on his beliefs for the first time, after Kira insisted that Athrun betray ZAFT over nothing more than a hunch. and yet, Kira is vindicated, and his worldview of peace at all costs, while initially challenged by Shinn and Athrun in Destiny, is treated seriously by the show's end. Destiny's conclusion is that Kira, due to his superior genetics, simply knows better, and that we should sit down, shut the fuck up, and let our families be vaporised by nuclear murderbeams if that's what our genetically pure overlords think is best, even if the best evidence Kira has to support his worldview is little more than a hunch, wisdom granted by his superior genes. again, i don't think SEED understands that this is what it's saying; Kira talks the talk about equality between Naturals and Coordinators, it's just that the text of the show is so muddled and poorly written that it ends up saying the opposite. taken along with all of the other ways in which his character ends up screwing with the elements of SEED that i find legitimately compelling and interesting, it's difficult not to really hate him, and to find SEED as a whole deeply frustrating and disappointing.
SEED Freedom does so little to develop any of these ideas that it's honestly barely worth mentioning. having spent 100 episodes ceding ground to the eugenics shit, Freedom mostly just plays in the space that was created for it. it's much more concerned with bullshit comphet and assassinating the blackened, charred remains of Shinn's character than it is with grappling with the fact that "hey the show kept saying eugenics works do we maybe want to examine that a little in our legacy sequel". bad movie for a variety of reasons, but mostly unconnected from what im on about here.
Makes you wonder what could have been if the director had the courage to actually tackles the issue they presented in the first place. Instead of having the characters scream bloody murder at each other in each bloody fight.
Athrun was more interesting character when he was in the opposing side. When is it going to be Kira's turn to go the deep end.
I'm not exactly a Seed fan. Yes, I own the gunpla, yes, Cagalli, Athrun and Badgiruel are my favorite characters, yes, I enjoy the series up until Kira gets the Freedom. But I will still mock the rain puddle depth of the characters, all of them being as dumb as a bucket of shrimp, irresponsible, outright pathetic when compared to anyone from Wing, nowhere near as fun or as well-written as Turn A they rip off, and by heavens, I want to smash every single one of Lacus' Haros to pieces.
And I only watched Destiny once because I couldn't stomach Cagalli's character assassination a second time. Or Gladys', literally, in the very last second. Like, ma'am, you have a kid. What are you doing dying on an exploding asteroid? :/
So you can imagine I wasn't exactly refreshing Gogoanime every two seconds to see if the movie had dropped. Eventually, it did and I got around to watching it, and although I had already spoiled myself with plot summaries and recorded scenes, this movie somehow managed to miss even my wacky expectations. I was promised wtf scenes, and I got them, but at x1.2 speed which just left me confused and checking my speed settings all the time.
So, let's get into this, with spoilers and all.
Though honestly, what's there to spoil? It's just the last episodes of Destiny all over again, which itself was recycling Seed's finale. If you have seen Destiny, imagine reading a retelling of its finale on Wattpad with a five-year-old and a fourteen-year-old collaborating. The five-year-old handled the plot while the fourteen-year-old handled the romances. That's Seed Freedom in a nutshell.
To be a little more specific, the plot is basically a new bunch of bad guys, Accords, who are super Coordinators able to read and manipulate minds, wanting to implement the Destiny Plan because... reasons. They were all grown by Walmart Mariemaia who Benjamin Button'd herself because... Tuesday. And she's the queen of a kingdom now, somehow, which has the brilliant name of "Foundation."
"Kingdom of Foundation." Why don't you have it run by Prime Minister CEO while you're at it? Seriously, this physically hurts if you speak English. -_-
Anyway, the Earth Alliance and ZAFT are still trying to kill each other because it's Seed and while people can genetically manipulate their offspring to be superior and even reverse age now, they still haven't figured out how to grow brains yet, which is why Cagalli launched Seed's version of the Preventers, called Compass, which is basically Kira beam spamming everyone into submission like he always does because it's forbidden by law to put the words "Seed" and "originality" in the same sentence. The Accords use the conflict to make it seem as though the Earth Alliance blew up their Kingdom of Stupid Name via nuke so that they can then retaliate with Requiem because, again, originality is not allowed in this movie. Oh, and the Accords are also racist, because duh, everyone is.
Does this all serve a grander scheme? Why, of course! Do you think it's so that they can stage a successful coup on the PLANTs to gain more allies?
Actually no, that just happens to coincide.
The far grander scheme is to pinch Kira's girlfriend!! -_- I kid you not, as soon as they fire those nukes on themselves, they pull a Lady Une and make a dramatic escape with Lacus straight to space within 5 minutes tops, just so that Orphee, the leader of the Affronts To My Intelligence and a visual cross between Athrun and Cagalli, can repeatedly get rejected by Lacus since Baby Queen Abysmal Eye Shadow hardcoded being horny for Lacus into his DNA, but her love for Kira overrides her own genetic coding finding Orphee attractive (since Lacus was apparently also created by Queen Baklava For Brains while her mom wasn't looking?), so Orphee just ends up growing Shinji levels of sexually frustrated with Lacus, which, given how Lacus' (and every female's, honestly) lip fillers make her look like a blowup doll in various scenes, especially when she forms an "oh" with her mouth, I can almost understand why hearing her say no is unexpected.
Too crass? That's what you get for making me watch a zoom-in on Lacus' giant butt in a cat suit in the finale.
It doesn't culminate in him choking her out, but Orphee does try to force himself on her and the fact that Lacus doesn't knee him in the balls right then and there makes the whole scene pointless. It's very reminiscent of a fourteen-year-old fanfic writer thinking a woman talking her almost-rapist out of his action is the height of female empowerment. It's not. And this wasn't written by a fourteen-year-old. Fukuda says there were over a hundred drafts for this movie. And they settled for this? Lacus should have used that unearned Seed mode and gone Corin on Orphee's nuts.
(Go watch Turn A if you have no idea what I'm talking about. It's Seed but better. Which is an embarrassment, since Seed came out right after it.)
At this point it's pretty clear that our fourteen-year-old has infiltrated the plot with her romances, because we can't have a mere final battle with giant robots and pink explosions, it has to mean something!
And in this case, that meaning is a battle for Lacus' love!
Same, Cagalli. -_-
So it's time now to look at the romance side of this movie, just so that you can understand why my brain started dripping out of my nose by the 1 hour mark already.
Every single character arc in this movie is relationship drama. Every. Single. One. From Kira to Lacus to Orphee to Ingrid to Agnes to even Luna and Shinn. If characters interact, it's always in the context of the same freaking love triangle. No variation.
So let's go through the list. First, we have Orphee, who we've established wants to get into Lacus' pants. Ingrid, the blue-haired Accord chick, is saddened by this because she wants him to get into hers instead, which, given how this Village Of The Darned refer to Mini Me as their mother, is... Freudian to say the least. Baklava For Brains either didn't code her right or is a sadist, I guess. Next, we have Kira, who is in Lacus' pants, but thinks Lacus prefers Orphee and starts whining about it because the movie can't make up its mind on how it wants to portray their relationship. It's clearly established that them living together alone and acting like husband and wife is anything but platonic, but when Lacus and Orphee have their shoujo sparkle moments of intense, sexual attraction, Kira acts as though he isn't her boyfriend, when it's abundantly clear that he's seen her naked on the daily for the past year or so.
The movie adds the new character, Agnes, to the mix here, who looks like a pink Misa Misa (alas, without the hidden intellect) and has the hots for her commander, Kira, taking every opportunity to hit on him, even going so far as to try to plant one on him while Lacus is "hiding" around the corner.
....She's not even trying.
And you know, you just know a fourteen-year-old wrote this because we hear nothing of the 152 regulations that hitting on your superior officer go against, never mind any consequences, because... brilliant writing. That they dare to give Agnes Flay's voice is such an insult to me, considering how her writing was freaking Mark Twain level compared to this Post-It note version we're getting here.
Kira ultimately rejects her and Agnes, who previously mocked Luna for settling for whatever came along (which had me laughing real loud because where is the lie?), falls into Walmart Yzak's arms a mere two seconds later because he told her she's pretty and proceeds to spend the rest of the movie as a bad guy because that's what happens to a woman scorned: both self-esteem and the IQ start hitting the negatives.
There are also Murrue and Mwu, and while they don't have drama, they are pretty much reduced to their relationship to each other. You think you were gonna get any personality out of the veteran captain of the Archangel? Pfff, not with Becky writing. Have Murrue jumping, straddling and kissing Mwu on the bridge in front of everyone instead.
The only girls who aren't strangled by a relationship are Meyrin, who barely says three lines but gets to be a pilot now for some reason, Cagalli, who is, weirdly, the best character in the movie, and Ehehe. (You will know exactly who I mean once you watch it.)
Out of those three, Cagalli is the only one actually in a relationship and, lo and behold, her and Athrun are unexpectedly handled well! They even use that they are dating in their fight against Walmart Yzak, which leads to that famous lewd Cagalli fantasy of Athrun's. Cagalli even gets to react to that! (She's not pleased. lol)
The funniest part is that we didn't even know Walmart Yzak is allergic to girl cooties, so this was Athrun full-on trolling him with Seed's version of the Sexy Jutsu.
Look at Athrun having a sense of humor. Look at Cagalli consistently making every scene she is in better. :)
I'm honestly surprised that the best characters in this movie end up being Athrun and Cagalli, with the former being the most badass and the latter the most relatable and best-written, complete with personality and crowning moments of awesome, given how they had been handled in Destiny.
Took them 20 years, but they finally made up for it. Now, if only the rest didn't suck so bad. :/
Because the rest is pretty much Kira and Lacus angsting over not deserving each other for almost two hours because they apparently never sat down and talked about their feelings and relationship, so the merest hint of rejection or competition sends them spiraling into a depression that becomes a galactic conflict for reasons beyond intelligence. Like, picture Shinji and Asuka in a stable relationship act like Shinji and Asuka in Eva, without any depth and in dumb. That's the level of Huh???? the relationship was written with. It makes no sense at all.
Why are you two so insecure? Why is all it takes one comment from random people to make you question your year-long relationship??
Agnes, Ingrid and Orphee are there to provide an external source of conflict because the relationship itself is full of gaping holes so we can't focus on that, and because Becky is fourteen, the best she can manage is contrasting Kira's and Lacus' lip service pure love with evil horniness. Even though it's heavily implied that they've boinked, too.
Okay, I'm being mean to my fictional Becky here. I have actually seen digital manhwa that have this exact same love story, so it's not like you can't write them as an adult and make money with them. I just had irrational expectations, I guess, after Flay hopped over that low bar.
The cherry on top of this sad puddle of melted brain matter is Fukuda saying in an interview that he viewed Kira as having an obsession with Lacus in Destiny, so this was his attempt to fix that. Sir? You catapulted their relationship right past toxic and straight to the acid pit from MK II.
I had to sit through two hours of "Gundam Seed - Get All These Drama Queens Freaking Therapy, But Not For War Trauma, But For Their Psychotic Relationship And Self-Esteem Issues."
Because not being in a relationship with the person you want in this movie results in emo exits to the left (seriously, count them), incessant temper tantrums and desperate clutching from heartbreak. We also get to wade through Kira's emo episode as the movie's emotional turning point, whining that Lacus doesn't love him because he can't make her happy and that he's good for nothing, which Athrun thankfully beats out of him quickly in good ol' Beavis and Butt-Head fashion, lest they have to go through Kira's character development in Seed again, too. And no, Kira still hasn't learned how to throw a punch properly. Athrun destroys him.
I read in a lot of reviews that people cheered at this scene, but I had to check my speed settings because the movements were all so fast. The pacing is really abysmal in this movie and I don't mean in a plot kind of way, but in a "my cat hits my keyboard and keeps fast-forwarding scenes until I stop it" kind of way. There are so many scenes that feel like I've accidentally hit increase speed, especially in fight scenes, and I'm utterly confused because letting a scene breathe was never an issue in Seed. We all remember Kira bawling his eyes out every five minutes and either muting the audio or dying from laughter because the VA just sounded severely constipated. Here we get sequences like Kira's Freedom getting destroyed, Shinn's Justice getting wrecked, a nuke going off, the Archangel being blown to pieces, and if any of it was supposed to make me emotional then it utterly failed because not even the characters react to these events with how fast we have to get to the next scene. Never mind people practically teleporting from one location to another, except for Kira who takes longer than Goku to get somewhere.
Seed Freedom is a very weird mix of dragging and speed-running and I don't get why. You had 20 years, man. In fact, even the movie knows it's paced awfully, which is why it keeps giving you the location every time, to increasingly ridiculous degrees.
Anyway, back to the plot and romance. So, Athrun snaps Kira out of his funk with a good walloping. What's next? The rescue mission, of course, which is supposed to be the scene that fixes Kira's and Lacus' relationship by proclamation of their true love for each other! Yay, emotional payoff for this relationship I was totally invested in and not groaning through.
Well, truth be told, I can't stand kumbaya Kira and Lacus in Destiny, so this movie not making me want to scream at my screen whenever I saw them is a feat.
Too bad Becky heard me, because she presents us with the following, which somehow manages to be the most mind-bendingly dumb exchange in the entire movie, which honestly requires a superpower at this point to pull off.
Kira, if she slits Lacus' throat, her vocal chords are gonna be the least of your worries. Why is the only one with a functioning brain in there Kisaka? Who, by the way, owns super Coordinator mind reader like it's nothing, despite being a Natural, because ovaries.
Just, ugh.
So after Kira and Lacus get to tell each other "I love you!" with dramatic catches thrown in despite no need for them, making things just awkward, we rush off to the final battle and it's like Fukuda took 5 episodes that were supposed to be the finale and condensed them into three, while cutting half the transitions. There's colorful pew pew, Shinn hilariously weaponizing his stupidity, things exploding, people dying, Yzak and Dearka pushing new gunpla sales, Mwu outright breaking the last remnants of my brain, Lunamaria and Agnes having a girl fight, Murrue ramming a space ship into another one because screw logic, and finally, rolled into this erratic nonsense burrito is Kira defeating Orphee with the power of Lacus' love and her being able to use the Force now, while Horny For Pink is still screaming about wanting to get into her pants and Ingrid still wants him to get into hers instead.
Thankfully, they both die and rid me of their presence.
The saving grace really are Athrun and Cagalli, who rely on actual skill and brains in their fight, and thus end up the best part of the movie by a landslide.
...And then there's Mwu tanking a Requiem shot to the face without issue and deflecting its beam with its puny shield to destroy various targets and Requiem itself because dinosaurs.
Dang it, D.J., stop writing the script for the movie and go back to your noodle pictures. I have a hard enough time reining Becky in as it is.
The happy conclusion is everyone smooching or reaffirming their relationship status otherwise, while Lacus blathers over the ending song with her and Kira as two human shaped blobs ready to get nasty on the beach.
Hooray.
So what's the verdict?
Gundam Seed Freedom sucks. And I don't even mean that as a movie, but as a Seed movie. If I previously thought Seed's characters had the depth of a rain puddle, then Freedom threw a maxi pack of paper towels on all of them.
You get a gigantic cast, with various well-established characters with pasts, and, somehow, only Athrun and Cagalli resemble themselves. The rest are bulldozed to single word characteristics like dumb, horny emo, or rude.
For instance, there are two separate occasions where Compass fights a Destroy, and Shinn doesn't care. Stella even gets a cameo, going full Tokomon teeth in his mind at the Evil Dumbass Brigade trying to infiltrate it, but do you think her traumatic death would warrant a reaction when he has to face the mobile suit she piloted when she was killed before him? Naaah.
Kira starts the movie with something resembling a personality, but that gets quickly flushed down the toilet by the time he and Lacus go through the same scene for the 8th time.
Murrue? Don't get me started on Murrue. Murrue spends the entire movie in heat. Funnily enough, she's finally wearing a bra when Archangel gets hit, so no more gainaxing boobs. But she's worse than the horny teenagers.
Everyone else you know and love is just there. I don't remember Sai even getting a line. Miri does, one. Dearka and Yzak exist and it's a big, fat whatever. You'd think they could have put some of them on the ships' bridges, so that we could get cool discussions, right? Yeah, no, have two new characters instead, one of whom is voiced by freaking Jiraiya. No, not Jiraiya's VA, but Jiraiya, because that man doesn't vary his voice one bit.
As someone who used to watch Naruto, it drove me bonkers. Especially when the female VAs put in the effort to blow everyone out of the water. Props to Cagalli's new VA especially who manages to capture the original's stresses and pauses perfectly. I knew right away it was Cagalli despite the different voice. Kudos.
Another positive thing are the backgrounds of the movie. I'm pretty sure a sizeable chunk of the budget was invested in those. They all look gorgeous.
Those visual feasts sadly make the wonky characters stand out more though. Movements down to the very mouth flaps look really choppy, 3D Gundams are always a bad idea, please stop doing that, and often enough the animation quality dips noticeably.
This movie is also in love with potato noses so huge, Gerard Depardieu would laugh at them. It's especially weird 'cause half of those are on Coordinators. You know, the designer babies? Did dogs and pigs go extinct in the Cosmic Era that they need to sniff for truffles themselves now?
It's also a complete crime that the movie ends with no one having kicked Orphee between the legs. Or in the face. He taunts Kira so many times with the line that all he's good for is fighting that I kept yelling at my screen for Kira to please just display that and introduce a bat to Orphee's face.
Not even Shinn gets to throw a punch his way, and that boy is allowed to wave a sword at a person. But in a manner that makes me wanna tear my hair out.
That's a saber, you moron. You don't hold sabers with two hands. Coordinator, my foot. You deserve getting your butt kicked just for that. Though I went full panda facepalm when Yzak With Hair Horns started doing cart wheels during their fight.
Just. Throw a brick at my head, it's less painful.
Then we also have the gem that is the dance scene between Pinky and Horny For Her, which cracked me up specifically, because it's supposed to be this beautiful~ smooth~ charming~ skilled waltz the super Coordinators perform that makes Kira so sad, and I'm dying of laughter because I'm an avid Ballroom e Youkoso fan and if there is anything that series taught me, it's a) the man's hand goes where the bra strap is, so Orphee fails at a basic hold already and b) that's the most pathetic throwaway oversway I've ever seen. Total beer keg.
If Kira knew the first thing about dancing, he would have been sassing Blond Athrun instead of getting all mopey, like actual Athrun did to Discount Yzak. Would have improved the movie by x1000 actually if Kira had gotten the same amount of brain cells as his sister and friend and spent the two hours snarking at all the fanfic nonsense instead of acting like he got gut punched all the time.
Alas, we can't have nice things. What we get after 20 years and over a hundred drafts is a movie about Kira's and Lacus' love story that's literally no different from a Wattpad fic. It glues itself to the surface level of the concept and pulls it off as if the entirety of the two prior series doesn't exist, while making sure to give it no substance at all. Sure, they throw in names and reuse plot points that anyone who has seen the series knows, but they end up as mere Easter eggs. There is no taking advantage of established backstories or past events. Not even a nod. Creating a sense of continuity or closure?
Not in this movie.
Another thing is this bizarre tug-of-war between prudish and sexy Lacus. There's no opening anymore in which she can float naked across our screen, so the movie needs to push her boobs in our faces in a different way, I guess, but she's still a "pure" character so it just ends up being... weird. She won't kiss Orphee and probably whip herself every night for ever considering it, but she'll prance around naked on the beach with Kira and go all Golden Boy with how she's shown riding those wing attachments for the Freedom. Like, make up your mind, movie.
I understand why Fukuda wouldn't want to sully Lacus' "purity" (outside of teenager's minds >_>), but I really wish that she had just kissed Orphee. Just, give me something to work with here. You can't drag out "No! I don't love you! I love Kira!" for two hours by recycling the same exchange over and over. If she had kissed him, there would have been a point to all the relationship drama at least. But like this, it's just boring and inane because we're stuck at the setup and never move to a build up or climax, much less a resolution.
So yeah, outside of the Cagalli and Athrun scenes, this movie really didn't do it for me. I actually recorded my reaction for my own amusement because I thought I'd have a blast hate-watching it, but it's just me going "good grief" increasingly loudly as the movie goes on and pausing to check my speed settings.
Oh, and me losing my mind at Kira and Lacus keeping their motorcycles in their living room. Who on Earth does this???
Foundations of Mendel - Durandal in Context of His Biography and World
The goal of this write-up is figuring out how Durandal's disparate backstory bits fit in with both each other and the chronology of the Cosmic Era as a whole. It's my attempt at taking the retcons presented in Freedom and turning them back into a coherent narrative. (As a side effect, I also recap a lot of important lore that was not directly mentioned on the show.)
I begin far before Durandal was even born, because I think the tumultuous context of the Cosmic Era is fundamental to the emotional development of the show's adult cast. I'm basing everything here on the official timeline, which was initially published around 2004 (in MSV, for example) and reprinted as recently as 2012 in "Gundam SEED Mechanics and The World". The timeline is translated on the Gundam Wiki here, but I'll recap everything I deem important.
Lore that is not taken directly from the timeline or the anime itself will be marked either with its source or clearly labeled as speculation.
~*~
In the year CE 15 George Glenn releases the blueprint for how to make Coordinators. Initially, the practice is outlawed. The first generation of Coordinators is born in secret, mostly to wealthy parents who can afford both the treatment and the secrecy required. Siegel Clyne, Patrick Zala and Aura Maha Khyber all belong to this generation. They grow up on Earth, hiding their genetic type from their peers.
The public view on Coordinators doesn't change until CE 29, when George Glenn brings back Evidence 01, the space whale fossil. Confronted with the knowledge that intelligent alien life exists for certain, religious organizations lose influence on public ethics, thus resulting in their objections towards 'violation of the natural order' being rejected. Fueled by the thought that humanity would have to compete with a much wider universe, the creation of Coordinators booms and becomes commonplace.
This is also where space station Mendel marks its beginnings. It's a research hub centered around genetics, one of the facilities where parents would turn in order to have their children modified. The first secretly born Coordinators are all between 5 and 14 years old by this point, and for the first time more of their kind are created outside of covert efforts. None have reached adulthood yet.
And it won't be until around CE 40 that a significant enough number of the earliest Coordinators enters the workforce and begin having children. This shifts public opinion and puts a damper on the wide-spread enthusiasm. It becomes apparent that the adult Coordinators have a significant skill gap that sets them apart from their Natural peers. The fears and anxieties caused by this observed reality sees to it that Blue Cosmos once again finds mainstream appeal
It's now, in the year CE 41. Gilbert Durandal is born. I think this makes it very likely that his parents were some of the first Coordinators, still born in hiding. While it's still possible that he is first generation and made by Natural parents around this time by sheer coincidence, I think the fact that Aura finds his genetics fascinating enough to want to study them also speaks for him being second generation rather than directly modified.
Then in CE 44, when Durandal is 3 years old, the first set of PLANT colonies (Aprilius) is completed. The PLANTs are named as such because they were intended as manufacturing plants that should help the Earth by outsourcing a lot of production to space. They wind up being pretty much exclusively staffed by Coordinators since their abilities make it easier for them to effectively work in space. They're forbidden from producing their own food, thus keeping the workers totally dependent on Earth.
I think it's interesting to keep in mind that colony living as a wide-spread phenomenon is incredibly young in the Cosmic Era, even as opposed to the Universal Century which already had millions of people living in space in UC 20.
While there are around 10 million Coordinators by CE 45, a sizeable amount of them still lives on Earth. Hatred against Coordinators continues rising and terror attacks on the PLANTs are common. This is the social climate Aura experiences during her formative teenage years.
At the same time, dissatisfaction with the Coordination process is very commonplace as well. The (rich) people who shell out for designer babies are unhappy about even the slightest variation in their orders (let alone actual emergencies as they may occur in any pregnancies). The researchers at Mendel are at theirs wits end.
Trying to solve this perceived "problem", Ulen Hibiki works on the artificial womb. But he lacks funding, leading him to accept Al da Flaga's request to make a clone of himself in exchange for more money for his research.
Thus, in CE 46, Rau le Creuset is born.
As mentioned, at this point the seclusion of Coordinators living in the PLANTs is by circumstance rather than design. The founding of an actual organization of Coordinators is not until CE 50, when Siegel Clyne and Patrick Zala found the Zodiac Alliance. In its conception the Zodiac Alliance is a movement for autonomy of the PLANTs, including a right to make their own food. It is not well-received by the powers that be and driven underground pretty much immediately.
With that, we arrive at CE 53. Exactly 20 years prior to the events of Destiny, all the key players we know have moved to their starting positions and the plot threads we are familiar with begin unraveling.
The scene is Mendel. Ulen Hibiki, one of its best researchers. Aura Maha Khyber, also on Mendel although presumably working for a different company. She is engaged in a fierce rivalry with Hibiki. (Freedom Novel) 8 year old Rau, undergoing a secluded and strict education to become Da Flaga's heir. (SEED Novel) And Gilbert Durandal, 12 years old... also on Mendel, about to meet Aura Maha and change both their lives.
(I am guessing on the year number - technically this could have also happened a year later, when Durandal is 13.)
Why Durandal came to Mendel is a mystery. Did his parents work there? Was he specifically coming there as a test subject? Or was his genius intellect big enough that he was coming there to work? Either way, his intellect is noticed by Aura and found to be exceptional. She begins studying his genes. (Freedom Novel)
Having grown up in these troubled times, Durandal was already trying to think of ways to use science to improve the world and bring about peace. The Destiny Plan is born here, as the naive dream of a tween. And "maybe we can use our newfound genetic expertise to give everyone a life that makes them happy" is perfectly reasonable as the dream of a kid who has immense intelligence but not yet attained true emotional maturity. And maybe it would have remained as such a dream, if not for Aura.
Aura, at this point 29 years old, decides that actually the tween is CORRECT and we should absolutely structure the world around the tween's ideals! (Freedom Novel)
Maybe Aura is inspired in her fervor by the precarious point in history that they are in. George Glenn is assassinated either briefly before or briefly after Aura and Durandal meet. Making matters worse, Earth is faced with a pandemic of a new strain of influenza, which kills Naturals left and right but to which Coordinators are immune. Rumors spread that Coordinators engineered the illness, further escalating tensions. With things turning upside down this way, Aura may well have felt that she was on the cusp of a new era and given her the resolve to try and shape that era for what she felt is the better. We can only speculate.
Either way, the end result is that in CE 54, Aura actually convinces a whole team of researchers of her and Durandal's idea and begins creating a mediator master race for the new world they envision: the Accords.
Aura, just like Hibiki, is hurting for funding. Where Hibiki took money from the earth elite Da Flaga, Aura seeks her money from the Coordinators living on PLANT. She works on devising an anti-aging treatment as it is becoming increasingly apparent that the second generation of Coordinators is incredibly infertile and thus concerns are rising about the aging workforce. (Freedom Novel) (While this is the reason we are given in the text, the oldest Coordinators would only be around 40 at this point and the second generation around 20. The realization of second generation infertility would be very very recent.)
Further, Aura's relative, the Emperor Mihar Khyber from Earth, is sending significant support to her project. (Freedom Novel)
(My personal conclusion is that these circumstances led to Aura's labs being far better off financially than Hibiki's at this point, further worsening relations between the two.)
Then, in CE 55, Mendel sees its own little baby boom.
Via Hibiki gives birth to Cagalli. The first successful artificial womb gives birth to Kira. Lacusmama gives birth to Lacus. Aura gives birth to Orphee. An unknown researcher gives birth to Ingrid. (There is also a white haired baby in the movie screenshot, but Shura is two years too young to be the baby depicted. Mysterious!)
This is where I want to once again reiterate my belief that the Accords were carried to term rather than born from artificial wombs. Rau goes through great pains to tell us that an incredible amount of fetuses died in the attempt to get even a single live birth out of the artificial womb. It's absolutely nuts to think that Aura, two labs over, had successfully made three live births from artificial wombs just a few months before Kira was born.
The much less lorebreaking explanation is simply that Aura and Hibiki just had wholly different goals and priorities to start with. (Fukuda himself has stated at a live event that Aura's claims of Kira being a 'failed Accord' are nonsense, as Hibiki was never aiming to make an Accord at all.)
Where Hibiki was trying to create a Coordinator that is 100% accurate to the genetic settings input by himself, Aura was much more focused on creating babies that had psychic abilities. It stands to reason that mild variations caused by natural pregnancy weren't a big obstacle.
In the same year, genetic modification is once again banned on Earth. From here on out, the only new Coordinators would be second and third generation Coordinators born to Coordinator parents. The creation of new Coordinators seems to have basically stopped entirely - if some secret births are happening, they do not impact canon significantly enough to ever be brought up.
Unfortunately neither the ban on making new Coordinators nor Mendel's scientists successfully developing a vaccine for the pandemic satisfy Blue Cosmos. They launch a terror attack on Mendel, as it is the epicenter of genetic research.
Ulen Hibiki loses his life in the attack. Aura gets exposed to an overdose of her own anti-aging drug prototype and begins a painful months-long process of gradually aging in reverse until her body turns into that of a child. (Freedom Novel) Kira, Cagalli and Lacus are all brought away to their respective families. Durandal, now 14 years old, seemingly gets through the attack with no lasting injuries and decides to remain on Mendel, making more Accords with the now tiny Aura.
Around this time (presumably by CE 57), things start heating up for the Da Flaga family. Rau is introduced to the Da Flaga main house (and Mu) as the new heir. It is implied that it is then that Da Flaga finds out that Rau suffers from short telomeres. (SEED Novel) This essentially means that his cells are the same age as Al's cells - middle-aged. Rau will die around the same time as Al, making him completely useless as a successor. It's possible that this prompts Al to call up Mendel labs to order a second clone - if Rey is born around this year that would make him around 16 by the time of Destiny, matching the timeline pretty well. Before Al can find out whether or not Rey suffers from the same defect as Rau, he is burned alive within his mansion. Rau has decided to do a little righteous arson in retribution for having been discarded.
With Rey now born, he winds up living a sad shadow existence on Mendel. In one lab, there's Rey, growing up isolated and alone. In another, Aura and Durandal merrily keep making siblings for Orphee and Ingrid and raising them all carefully (as specimens and tools). Knowing they were only separated by a few buildings sure is a terrible irony....
The last Accord (Redelard) is born in CE 60, when Durandal is 19 years old (and Aura is 35 going on 11). I feel like it puts a great amount of context to Durandal's messiah complex to consider how much his teenage years were fully dominated by Aura and her reinforcement. An idea for creating a simple utopia is something you might grow out of as you learn more nuance, but it's hard to learn that nuance when you have an accomplished older researcher constantly telling you you're right and literally making designer humans for you. I believe that at this point, Durandal is still fully convinced of the Destiny Plan (Masterrace Edition).
The Destiny novelizations feature a scene from when he and Talia were still dating, in which he gets all starry-eyed telling her about how he truly believes science will save the world and everyone in it. With the retconned-in knowledge that at that point he's hiding half a dozen of genetically-engineered children from Talia, the scene takes on an even more sinister tone... And yet his enthusiasm and desire to do good are sincere.
The scene should take place sometime around this time. We don't know when Durandal and Talia started dating, but I imagine it's a year or two after Redelard is born. After all, Durandal and Talia already break up in CE 63 - when Durandal is 22 and Talia is 18. (Omake Quarters)
At the time of this scene, there are 7 children who think of Durandal as their father - but he doesn't think of them as his children, both because they were made when he was too young to be a father and because they are not genetically 'his'. It's such bitter, bitter irony. Aura certainly created a mess for everyone involved when she decided that making custom babies for a 13 year old boy was a reasonable thing to be doing.
I tend to think of CE 63 as the big turning point year for Durandal's life another way as well. In my opinion, it is the year in which Aura and the Accords move to Earth.
This picture appears to have been taken in a colony, so it must have been while all of them were still on Mendel. The Accord's sterile-looking outfits support that assumption. If you ask me, Redelard looks about 3, while Orphee and Ingrid could feasibly be 8. Durandal could easily be 22. Going with those ages would place the image squarely into CE 63. In my interpretation, this picture is a commemorative goodbye photo, taken specifically as a keepsake.
(Since the picture shows Durandal wearing his chairman outfit (that he shouldn't be wearing until a decade later), it's hard to take the clothes Aura and Durandal wearing seriously as indicators of timeline. They appear to have been chosen solely for being their most iconic looks. However, I'm still choosing to interpret the fact that Aura donned her queen garb here as supporting evidence towards this headcanon.)
My more relevant reasoning for Aura moving to Earth at this point is that it solves a major timeline conundrum: it gives an explanation for why Rau doesn't know about the Accords (as confirmed by Fukuda at a live talk session). If Aura and the Accords had still been living on Mendel while Durandal befriended Rau, it'd have been odd for Rau to not find out about them. But if Aura has already left for Earth, then Durandal has a much easier time lying by omission.
Besides, Aura has good reason to want to hide out on Earth. Due to her connections to a royal family, she's guaranteed to have a safe and comfortable living - and it gives her opportunity to amass more power and influence. Once the Mendel labs ceased being needed (for producing more Accords), why wouldn't she leave them behind to try and advance her plans elsewhere?
I think that Rau and Durandal met shortly after Aura left. The exact year is hard to pin-point, but I assume it's been the same year (CE 63) and CE 65. This would make Rau between 17 and 19 years of age, matching his appearance in the flashbacks.
Why would Rau return to Mendel at this point? Funnily enough, Freedom provides a plausible answer to this!
With Aura gone, Durandal is presumably the new head of her previous research team. This also leaves him as the person in charge of whatever is left from her anti-aging program. Rau, who is literally dying of accelerated aging, has every reason to try and check out this research. It's plausible that the pills Durandal custom-makes for Rau are roughly based on the same medication that de-aged Aura.
The de-aging itself is likely not an option for Rau as a) it seems to have left Aura incapable of ever going back to becoming an adult and b) it is unknown whether or not her physical transformation actually extended her lifespan at all.
Further supporting this idea is the fact that Rey only goes symptomatic during the events of Destiny (Destiny Novel), when he is approximately ~16 years old. Being genetically identical, Rau might not have experienced any seizures or migraines until he was a teenager. His symptoms would make it necessary to seek out treatment in order to be able to continue his career unhindered.
Over their time as doctor and patient, Durandal goes intrigued with Rau. And how could he not? Rau is the shadow-side of everything that Durandal had venerated. Durandal had been creating designer babies with good intentions, but now one such created child is staring at him with hatred in his eyes.
For the first time removed from Aura's direct influence and confronted with a person entirely unlike anything he'd seen before, Durandal can mature for the first time.
Seeing Rau teaches him about the unhappy byproducts of ambitions, and it also shows him that Coordinator supremacy is a load of bullshit. Rau is a Natural, a terminally ill one at that, but he's blending in with Coordinator society without issue. Between that and the first-hand knowledge that Naturals like Ulen Hibiki were also able to keep up with Durandal and Aura just fine, Durandal's view shifts more strongly. Coordinators may be all-rounder talents, but a Natural (when doing what they have aptitude for) would not lose to them. Unlike Aura, who is stewing in anti-Natural sentiments, Durandal is open to seeing the talents of others and adjusting his ideas accordingly. The rift forms.
Sometime into Durandal and Rau's friendship, they find Rey who's still been isolated in a different laboratory. Rey would be between 6 and 10 years old at the time. Testament to the trust between them, Rau leaves raising Rey to Durandal. Durandal, now well into his 20s, is now actually of an age to be having children and also actually loves the person the child is tied to. It makes Rey fundamentally different from Orphee.
Then in CE 68, Mendel has to close down due to a bio-hazardous incident. (I am fond of the theory that Rau is the cause of that incident and that's why he told Durandal to take Rey and move to the PLANTs beforehand.)
In CE 69, the existence of a ZAFT military is made public knowledge. Some of the Junius colonies are converted for food productions as PLANT takes real steps towards autonomy. By then, most Coordinators have fled Earth to the PLANTs.
The first PLANT-Alliance war begins CE 70. It continues into CE 71, the year Gundam SEED is set. Rey, then 13 years old, enters the military academy to follow in Rau's footsteps.
Meanwhile Aura is plotting on Earth, still believing Durandal to be fully on her side. She seems to be sorely mistaken.
When Durandal tries to enact his new version of the Destiny Plan (notable not featuring a masterrace) in CE 73, he never once calls on Aura for assistance. It stands to reason that he has emotionally and materially abandoned Aura and the Accords after meeting Rau. Fukuda himself has questioned whether Durandal was truly on Aura's side. (Live Talk Event)
Further, fandom friend made the pretty salient point that Durandal personally handpicked Shinn as his ace. Shinn is a super-pilot notable for fighting purely on instinct and thus being impossible to defeat with psychic abilities. He's the perfect anti-Accord weapon. Had Durandal won, would he have had Shinn wipe out Aura and her children? We cannot know, but it's definitely possible.
The Durandal we see on the show earnestly believes that the Destiny Plan will be an equalizer between Naturals and Coordinators, bringing out Naturals' full abilities and allowing them to compete fairly. He does not seem to hold any specific Coordinator-supremacist view. Some of the most important people in his personal life (Rau and Rey) are Naturals. This is fundamentally at odds with the picture of him that Aura tries to paint.
Durandal on the show wishes for Kira's death so no 'Ultimate' remains to imitate. By the same reasoning, he would want to get rid of the Accords so they cannot inspire greed and jealousy that would lead to more suffering like Rau's.
That's why I say that taking what Aura says about him at face value wholly destroys the character as had been established prior.
But laying out the backstory like this, I think we can peace it all back together into a consistent character. Was this the intended read? I do not know. It's the read I am going with anyway.
Despite being a nihilistic murderous maniac, Rau le Creuset did manage to change one man for the better. Even if 'better' only means 'slightly less deranged' in this case, I appreciate it on a thematic layer. Even a man who thinks of himself as wholly unlovable, as destruction incarnate, can bring about positive change simply by existing and being loved in spite of it all.
This answers so many questions but there is still an underlying one. How Mu La Flaga, Rau Le Creuset, Rey Za Burrel and Kira Yamato (in Destiny) have new-type powers? Like each of them have connections to each other, true but the four collectively dont make sense. Hell, nothing about Kira being the Ultimate coordinator explains how he was able to sense Neo as Mu in the mids of battle.
*Unless Ulen did more than just modify his son's DNA as believed and intended, and actually used La Flaga DNA during his conception for UNKNOWN reason*
imagine during the third book where percy gets his final recommendation letter. he is approached by a god or goddess who asks him to reconcile past relationships. because to move forward, you can't let the things of the past hold you back. so percy gets closure with the side characters from the pjo og series. clarisse, nico, thalia, and rachel. and it just gets progressively more intimate until he has to confront one final person: the ghost of luke castellan.
All the years of of the ATLA fandom favoring Zuko & Iroh over the GAang trio has payed off cause after watching NATLA season one, I've concluded the show writers definitely fleshed them out so much the dynamics of the Fire Nation Royal Family more than the original did in its s1.
And OZAI?!
OH MY GHAD, OZAI!!
Bloody Worst Parent of the Century OZAI from ATLA actually became more than the one dimensional faceless Big boss Aang needed to defeat by the end of the show. (Idk how to feel about that btw. Very conflicted on this)
And the conquering of Omashu by AZULA...
Power move girl.. Just please dont be too harsh on dear ol Bumi.
So really, my only complaint is that its only 8 episodes long when season 1 of ATLA was 20 episodes but I get it. Gotta do what works
And Boy, did they work. Everyone that work on this show, I mean.
Final words, my opinion of the show sums up to
"Love the additions, peeve about the changes, wish it was more than 8 episodes"
PS: Please more of Katara, Sokka and Aang. I need the kids cast for the main trio to shine more.
I love Zuko to death but those three are the core of Atla. You did great netflix but you can still do better. Renew for S2!! Thank you for reading me rant!
The only reason percy wasn’t like luke was because luke existed.
percy saw what luke did to everyone around him and immediately knew that it was wrong. he agreed with him, but not with the way he was doing it. that’s the whole point. then, after luke had betrayed his friends, percy was done with him, because loyalty, right? it’s his thing. but was he? i reread the last olympian recently and every interaction with “luke” consisted of percy feeling conflicted about fighting his friend.
it only made sense for a character like luke to be in this story. what would percy be without him?
"You'll fail to save what matters most in the end," cue little 9-year-old me who always thought this line was about Luke.
And now all I can think about is little Percy thinking the same and blaming himself. Like maybe, if he'd been able to save Luke- from Kronos, from the gods, from himself- then none of this would have happened.
"Maybe if I'd gotten back sooner, if I'd said something different, if I'd said the right thing, then maybe-"
And the answer is always going to be no, it wouldn't have changed anything. The person Luke needed wasn't Percy, it wasn't Annabeth, it wasn't even his mom who could no longer take care of him. And honestly? It may not even have been Hermes.
But it doesn't matter.
Because Luke made his decisions. He dug his own grave and had to lie in it. He was angry and upset and he knew what he wanted to do would hurt people, and he did it anyway. His actions had disastrous repercussions. And no one knows that better than Luke, himself.
But it still doesn't change that they all feel like they failed him- Hermes, May, Chiron, the trio, Thalia, the Hermes cabin, everyone. Everyone and anyone who loved Luke, who'd spent time with him, who had bled with him, who'd laughed with him- they'd all lay awake and night and wonder if maybe, the thing that mattered most in the end, was Luke.
“why don’t they ever suspect Luke why don’t they realize it’s Luke why are they so quick to suspect Clarisse and not a Hermes kid”
guys, Luke is the perfect child. Thats the whole point! He gave his offerings he said his prayers he went on his quest he proved his loyalty to Chiron, to the gods, to his dad. And he did it all with a smile. They have no reason to suspect luke! Luke is the best of them!
Ares could’ve come to that meeting waving a big sign that said “LUKES THE LIGHTNING THIEF” and they still wouldn’t have believed him.
Because they also don’t want it to be Luke.
They love Luke. Luke takes care of them Luke protects them Luke is everything they want in an older brother. It doesn’t matter how blaringly obvious the writers get about who the real thief is. They will ignore every sign, every red flag, every warning, until Percy is dying of poison deep in the forest and Luke is gone.
Everyone’s talking about the extra Pearl disproving the ‘you shall fail to save what matters most in the end’ part of the prophecy but I never thought that it was about Sally. In the end she was saved (just not by Percy), so even though we think it’s about her at one part in the story, it’s not actually referring to her. It’s referring to Luke. He’s what matters most in the end, he officially joins Kronos around this time, and he wasn’t saved- not by Percy or anyone else
Do you wanna hear what I think is my most unpopular PJO opinion? (don't get me wrong, I have some that would get me on lists, but this one is likely the one that would get the least traction):
Generally, demigods like quests.
(Insert booing noises here.)
Let me make my arguments:
We've all taken Annabeth's statement that campers train for the opportunity to fight monsters like the Minotaur to be a sign of how naive and headstrong she is. And... it is, but where did we get the impression that she was also the only one who thought like that?
Luke
Ironically enough, Luke's the biggest proof there is for my theory. Let's see how Luke talks about his quest.
Let’s just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn’t allowed any more quests.
Two things jump out here. While it's possible that "Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests" refers to putting his foot down and not allowing the gods to demand any, given Annabeth's attitude (and the likelihood of that holding much water with the gods), it's even more likely that it's the campers who aren't allowed to go. Luke certainly believes that he ruined things for the others by causing the ban.
Then, at the forest with Percy:
I trained, and trained, and trained. I never got to be a normal teenager, out there in the real world. Then they threw me one quest, and when I came back, it was like, ‘Okay, ride’s over. Have a nice life.’
“The heck with laurel wreaths,” Luke said. “I’m not going to end up like those dusty trophies in the Big House attic.”
Let me remind you that Luke is 19 here. There's no way Chiron and Mr. D could be holding him against his will at Camp the way they were, for example, with Annabeth and Percy at the beginning of the book. Annabeth also says that other counselors were in college, lending credence to the fact that, especially when they were older, they were free to come and go.
This is not Luke saying that he doesn't want to be stuck at camp. He's saying he doesn't want to end up on the shelf.
“You’re wrong. [Kronos] showed me that my talents are being wasted. You know what my quest was two years ago, Percy? My father, Hermes, wanted me to steal a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides and return it to Olympus. After all the training I’d done, that was the best he could think up.”
“Where’s the glory in repeating what others have
done? All the gods know how to do is replay their past. My heart wasn’t in it. The dragon in the garden gave me this”—he pointed angrily at his scar—“and when I came back, all I got was pity.
His complaint with the quest? It was not "my dad used me as a tool" or "he put me in danger" — it was "the one he chose showed that I'm an afterthought to him". It was "he gave me no glory or recognition".
Also, "After all the training I’d done, that was the best he could think up"? Sounds a lot like quests weren't so much errand runs as rewards or shows of recognition by the gods.
But that's not the only interesting thing to happen in that conversation!
Percy
After a while Luke said, “You miss being on a quest?”
“With monsters attacking me every three feet? Are you kidding?”
Luke raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I miss it,” I admitted. “You?”
Mister "I never wanted to be a half-blood" himself! (Almost as if characters are meant to change throughout a story... huh.) And let's remember this is Luke he's talking to — the only person he revealed his prophecy to. He has a history of trusting him over anyone else. There's nothing in this scene that points to him being anything but honest.
Putting aside Percy's hero complex that will have him harassing the Oracle so it will give him a quest because he's unable to stand by the sideline as his friends are in danger, how other people have pointed out that Percy was the one to propose and sometimes even force himself into most of his quests — I never saw anyone mention his admission that he liked them, at least the first one. Now, of course, it's undeniable that he does eventually get tired of it, but... to what extent, really? In TLO, he says he's ready to kick back and enjoy himself, but that's in reference to the Great Prophecy. It doesn't have both capitalization and the word great in it for nothing.
Then in Staff of Hermes:
If he was delivering a message in person from the gods, it was bad news. If he wanted something from me, it was also bad news. But seeing as he’d just saved me from explaining myself to Annabeth, I was too relieved to care.
Sure, he doesn't want a quest, but it's still preferable to a difficult conversation with his girlfriend. It's only when they really start to pile up and interfere seriously with his normal life (by, say, making him miss most of a year) that he puts his foot down.
But his is ultimately an unusual case, because others aren't as affected by their own quests.
"Except for how they're risking their lives!" you say, but...
How dangerous are normal quests?
Because all signs point to Percy's being an outlier. For starters, as a powerful child of the Big Three, he attracts more monsters than your regular demigod, and that's without taking into account the gods who hate him for it.
Then there's the fact that Kronos's rise has stirred up monster activity
“I saw a lot out there in the world, Percy,” Luke said. “Didn’t you feel it — the darkness gathering, the monsters growing stronger? Didn’t you realize how useless it all is?"
As well as brought older, stronger monsters out of the woodwork.
"The stirring of monsters." Dr. Thorn smiled evilly. "The worst of them, the most powerful, are now waking. Monsters that have not been seen in thousands of years..."
Not to mention that most of Percy's quests that we've seen involved jumping straight into a scheme by an ancient, powerful titan by the moniker "the Crooked One".
Compare them to The Stolen Chariot. That was... fun, all in all. An afternoon visit to the zoo. Got him out of class early. What if that's the standard for a quest?
However, the biggest argument for quests being usually pretty simple is, once again, Luke. Let's go back to that first quote.
Let’s just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn’t allowed any more quests.
So, quests were more or less normal two years before TLT, before they were forbidden, like the chariot races, because it was judged unacceptably dangerous. So, it could be that Luke's was the last in a recent string of injuries (possible — he said himself that already the world was becoming "darker" by the time of his quest) and/or it was considered to be bad enough in itself to justify ending quests entirely. Whatever the explanation, for all the "yeah, we make a shroud whenever someone goes on a quest" rituals, Luke's injury had to have been grisly by their standards.
Like. Not to diminish it, but. It's a scar across the face. It doesn't even seem to have affected his eyesight.
Everything points to...
That your average camper, before Kronos, would have either volunteered or been selected by the gods (probably their parent) to go on quests as recognition of their skills and a chance to earn glory. OH, and don't forget a chance to be a hero. That's important. After all, you don't wanna end up in the Fields of Asphodel because your life was too boring, do you?
TL; DR: The attitude towards quests and even probably the experience surrounding them are much different than we treat them in fandom.
Why was Percy the only one sleeping on the floor of the Hermes Cabin in the show?
Not sure if this is just me, and admittedly it is still early days, but one thing the show seems to be missing that the book did so well is "all the Gods are terrible parents", and nowhere is this more noticeable than when comparing the Hermes cabin in book to show. Percy comes in to the Hermes cabin and got a sleeping bag on the floor. In the book, it was a struggle to fit him in because of the number of kids already sleeping on the floor. It was a big thing that so many kids were stuck there because their parents wouldn't claim them. In the show, he appears to be the only one on the ground (which is a little ridiculous and honestly just looks particularly cruel to Percy - ah yes, you specifically are on the ground).
From the very start the Hermes cabin is presented as over-full in the books. It's the place where kids go when their godly parent just doesn't bother claiming them, or is a minor god so they don't have a cabin of their own. It is an enormous plot point of the series, being what turns Luke, Chris, Ethan and so many others who spent enough time there against the gods. It is the physical symptom and proof of their lack of care, and one of the biggest reasons Percy sympathises with the half-bloods who turned to Kronos to a certain extent.
The TV show doesn't show that. Percy being the only one on the floor seems to imply the impermanence of his situation; it suggests a fast turnover of people getting claimed and moving on that more people haven't piled up in the cabin. And despite his worry and everyone's warnings he might not get claimed, he does so in a single week, and we never see anything to the contrary to suggest that isn't the usual experience. There is no evidence of overcrowding that should have been so easy to add to the show with a few extra sleeping bags on the floor and someone (perhaps Chris who I believe was unclaimed until he returned to camp in BotL) mentioning how long they've been unclaimed in the Hermes cabin.
This was a bit of a rant about a show I've been otherwise really enjoying, but I don't understand how something that seems so obvious didn't happen. And it's not like the producers or set designers just didn't think about it; after all Percy didn't have a bed. Or that they're not pushing the fact everyone had godly-parent issues; a lot of episode 3 was about how Annabeth never sees Athena, and they talked about how there was a chance Percy would never be claimed as though it was common. And if they're trying to make Percy seem more isolated and desperate to find out who his father is, wouldn't seeing loads of kids stuck on the floor have more impact than 'just you will be there for a short while until a bed come free'?
The over-crowded Hermes cabin was such a massive feature of the book series, to the extent that Percy's eventual demand of the gods (claiming their kids and minor gods cabins) entirely encapsulated all the problems with Cabin 11 that ignoringing it in a show that is otherwise presenting the essence of the story so well... just seems bizarre.
Luke Castellan is NOT the Voldemort of the series KRONOS is. You are supposed to sympathize with him and his childhood and the way people treated him. You are supposed to think about what he says. You are supposed to be conflicted about weather or not you agree with his choices. Because he is RIGHT. He’s not the end all be all villain like the Joker or Voldemort he’s borderline sympathetic and overtly correct in his beliefs
