Holy Recap Batman!

Rau Le Creuset narrates a brief over view of the series up to Phase 13 in the first part. We elarn a lot of other stuff that happened, his reason for striking the Heliopolis colony and their briefing about the Gundams. The major piece of info we learn is how the ZAFT forces responded to The Bloody Valentine incident. Neutralize Earth's nuclear reactions casting the world into economic and cultural despair and ruin.

The second part has him narrate a history of George Glenn, the first coordinator. An amazing individual in academics, science and athletics George Glenn gave hope to the entire planet. His gift to them was revealing his status as a coordinator and leaving the method to make more coordinators.

Most interesting part of the episode was how Glenn envisioned himself as coordinating mankind's evolution to be all that they can be. Therefore he was a coordinator of humanity's evolution.

Get Your War On.

This episode is pretty much just straight battle. The ZAFT forces, spearheaded by the four stolen Gundams, bring havoc and destruction to the 8th Orbital Fleet of the Earth Alliance. Four ships are taken out of battle within the first six minutes and it doesn't get any better for the Earth Alliance.

Harbored in the back for protection the Archangel sits waiting to descend to Earth. While the Ginn and Gundams have a field day with the Earth Federation cruisers and mobile armors Murrue Ramius, captain of the Archangel, requests, and gets permission, to go to Earth, which would stop the massacre of the 8th Fleet.

Yzak Joule, in the Duel Gundam, fueled by the injuries he siffered at the hands of Kira and the Strike Gundam, seeks out the Archangel for revenge. Shortly after Kira and Mu launch from the Archangel to fend off the Gundams long enough for the Archangel to enter Earth's atmosphere. The Duel and Strike end up facing each other down while entering the upper reaches of the atmosphere. To vent his frustrations at being constantly bested by Kira, Yzak takes aim at a shuttle full of refugees from Heliopolis and guns the shuttle down before Kira can intercept the shot.

End episode.

While the battles set up a great episode the key scenes happened on the calm of the Archangel between Flay and Kira. Flay hugs and kisses Kira and opens up a vulnerable side to him, furthering her working her charms on Kira to manipulate him.

Transition.

That was the theme for this phase. Faced with the opportunity to live on Earth all the main characters decided to stay aboard the Archangel and face the ZAFT threat. While ZAFT sends a team of about a dozen mobile suits to attack the 8th orbital fleet. Phase 13 should be interesting as Kira and Athrun are set to duel again.

Good. Started out with a complete recap of Phase 10. I didn't miss much.

The episode starts with a court-martial hearing for Kira's action in the previous Phase ending with a verdict of execution. However since he is not military personnel he is told to think through his actions more carefully in the future. Fair enough.

The Archangel is on its way to meet with the 8th Fleet and safety for the first time since leaving Heliopolis. However all is not well in this neck of space. The second half of Rau's team is hot on their tail.The Blitz Gundam, Duel Gundam and Buster Gundam are sent to attack the Archangel in the ten minute window when they get in range of the Archangel and before the 8th Fleet gets in range of the Archangel.

Kira and Mu intercept the attacking Gundams who peel apart with the Duel going after the Strike, Buster taking on Mu La Flaga and the Blitz heading towards the Archangel. The best part of this battle is watching the Archangel battling the cloaked Blitz Gundam. Knowing its weaknesses the Archangel lays down a barrage of attacks that render the Blitz unable to gain the upper hand.

While the clock ticks down Mu readily handles the less agile Buster Gundam and Kira holds his own against the Duel Gundam. That is until he is sent a distress signal that the Blitz has broken through the defensive barrage. Something snaps within Kira, while the words of Flay, who has snapped after her father's death, run through his mind. He breaks through the Duel Gundam's defense and slices his beam saber into its torso causing the other Gundams to pause and retreat.

The Phase ends with the twinkling lights of the 8th Fleet signaling the Archangel.

Overall it was a good episode with what I hope to be a major plot element set forth in Flay's breakdown. Could be interesting to see how she manipulates Kira into avenging her father's death.

Not seen and a VCR error caused recording issues, ass. Here's the synopsis from the official page:

By threatening Lacus's life, the Archangel crew have saved themselves from Le Creuset's forces, but they're troubled by their own craven tactics. Flay is inconsolable after witnessing her father's fate, and blames Kira for failing to save him.

Learning that Lacus is engaged to his childhood friend Athrun, Kira decides to make amends by helping her escape from the Archangel. With the aid of his friends, Kira arranges to hand Lacus over to her fiancé. The Coordinator idol is returned to her people, but Kira again rejects Athrun's pleas to change sides, and the two old friends part ways as sworn enemies.

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[Via Engadget.]

Once this episode got going it got pretty good. An advance fleet sent by the Earth Alliance fleet is sent to meet the Archangel. Aboard this advanced fleet is an Earth Alliance minister, and father to, Flay Allster, a vocal anti-coordinator civilian aboard the Archangel.

Rau Le Creuset, sent to search for the missing Lacus Clyne in the last episode, stumbles upon this meeting and sends his soldiers to destroy the Earth Alliance fleet. The inferior technology of the Earth Alliance is no match for Athrun in the Aegis Gundam and a complement of Jinn mobile suits.

The crew of the Archangel, knowing there is no way out, take battle stations and send Mu La Flaga and Kira out to battle. Before reaching the Strike Gundam Kira promises Flay everything will be okay. Wrong move, nothing ever works out in Gundam lore.

The help from the Archangel is too little too late. The entire advance fleet is destroyed sending Flay to seize Lacus Clyne to use her as a bargaining chip. Which they do as a last resort when the ZAFT forces close in on them.

This has been one of the smoothest episodes of SEED yet. No slow character story instead it's incorporated into the main plot.

I'm slowly picking up the DVDs of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series. The animation sucks, the speech is very Japanese to English translation and it's a lot longer and slower.

But on the up side I got to see the Gundam Hammer. More importantly I get to see a lot of the story that was edited out for the movie trilogy. While the movies flow better and feel more unified seeing the original story is a positive thing.

This episode served one purpose. It explained the back story to a few of the groups in the SEED storyline. It mentioned Blue Cosmos and how they have anti-Coordinator views. It also explained the difference between ZAFT and PLANT. ZAFT is the military of PLANT.

That's it. Nothing else happened save the Archangel getting a radio transmission from an Earth Alliance fleet.

My Bloody Valentine. This episode explained a lot of the back story as to the hatred between the PLANT/ZAFT and the Earth Alliance. Basically the Earth Alliance destroyed a PLANT colony, killing over 200,000 coordinators.

Rau and Athrun testify before the PLANT supreme council about the destruction of the neutral Heliopolis colony, ultimately laying the blame on its destruction on the Federation. The council then debates what the best course of action is. While this meeting is taking place the Archangel goes to steal supplies from the debris zone that once was the destroyed colony. The display quickly cuts between three scenes: the meeting of the PLANT supreme council, the Archangel crew getting supplies and a flashback to the destruction of Bloody Valentine.

The episode ends with Kira destroying a ZAFT mobile suit in what I believe to be his first taking of life.