Not seeing Phase 5 of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED I was shocked that they made it to the Earth Federation base Artemis and safe harbor. Now this was the best story episode of the series so far. We catch how tense the situation in the Earth Alliance is.

Unlike the unified alliance in the original Gundam it's a loose alliance between different geographical areas on Earth. Much like the Zeon rivalry between the siblings in the original Gundam this weakens the Earth Alliance as the Eurasian Federation tries to take over the Archangel and Strike Gundam.

The Zaft ship tailing the Archangel successfully sends in the stealth Blitz Gundam piloted by Nicol Amalfi, who is seen as a coward by his fellow pilots. During the battle Kira fends off Nicol while the two other Gundam's destroy the Artemis base. uring the chaos of the battle the Archangel and Strike Gundam manage to escape and set sail on open space.

No review for Phase 05 of SEED as I was out at the Orioles game and I missed it. I'll assume it was slow moving and the battle between Kira and Athrun was a draw.

This was a completely pointless episode. I thought Phase 3 set up the fight between between Kira and Athrun for this episode, but no. That'll be happening in Phase 5. Phase 4 was a continuation of a huge theme in the Gundam mythos. "Why do we fight?"

To paraphrase Mu La Flaga it's hard to find anyone who fights for no reason. Kira realizes his reason to fight. Not to kill the enemy, but to protect. Kira's "normal" friends decide that they are tired of having him come in and save them so they volunteer to serve on the ship.

The episode ends with Kira catapulting off to face Athrun.

Phase 3 of Gundam SEED picks up where 2 left off. The Whitebase Archangel breaking into the colony. This distracts Rau Le Creuset long enough that Kira is able to fire a blast from the Strike Gundam that destroys one of Rau's suit's arms and blows a hole in the colony wall, thus beginning the slow destruction of the colony. Rau flees as the Archangel stops to pick up the Gundam.

Back on the Zaft command vessel Rau sends his elite squad to destroy the Archangel and the Gundam. Both to prevent the weapon from escaping and to avenge his defeat.

We get some power play and some angst back at the colony. It is revealed that Kira is a "coordinator," SEED's version of a New Type, and that irks the remaining Federation soldiers who point their guns at him. Anyway that's all settled neatly and Kira agrees to pilot the Gundam.

The battle action for the scene has a group of Rau's elite pilots going to take out the Archangel and Gundam in the colony. In an effort to protect the colony the Gundam is equipped with a close combat weapons system while the Zaft forces are equipped for a stronghold assault.

The battle wages, and the colony is destroyed, disintegrating out from under the keel of the Archangel. Kira is sucked out into the cold of space setting up a battle between him and his friend Athrun Zala for Phase 04.

Nothing really happened in this episode of Gundam SEED. The first part was to establish Kira as some sort of prodigal pilot of mobile suits, a new type, but in this series they are man-made genetically engineered humans called coordinators.

A little bit of the back story between Kira and the Zaft pilot, and friend, Athrun Zala is revealed. The adversarial relationship between Rau Le Creuset and Mu La Flaga (Are they just making up weird sounding names or what?) is examined for the first time.

The big reveal was the phase shift armor for the Gundams. Turns them from a drab grey to the wonderful designs of the Gundam lore, specifically the blue, red and white of the hero Gundam.

Other than that, nothing happened in this episode.

I'll be reviewing Gundam SEED every week (hopefully). The first striking realization was that this will be a retelling of original Gundam, and by being so may be the first alternate universe Gundam I like.

Some of the similarities that aren't very subtle:

1. The space alliance name is Zaft, four letters beginning with a Z, much like Zeon.
2. The much larger Earth Federation is fighting a staelmate war with the technologically superior Zaft Alliance.
3. The main protagonist, Kira Yamato, is a teenage whiz kid, like Amuro.
4. The opening episode takes place on a neutral colony where the Earth Federation is prototyping their first mobile suits.
5. The key Zaft bad guy, Rau Le Creuset, so far wears a mask, like Char.
6. Rau leads a daring raid on the colony to steal the Earth Federation mobile suits.

Some other notes that I noticed. Infantry style mobile suit usage. No more super robots taking on an infinite number of disposable enemies. Projectile weapons have returned, the basic weapon of the Zaft suits are machine guns. A lot of the episode dealt with backstory that will be explained. Good Gundam is as much about the human characters as it is the mobile suits, if they fill in the character back stories this could be good.

The animation is good. A nice mixture of hand drawn and computer generated. However the character art, at least for the children/teens, is that washy clean look most examplified by .hack//sign. I much prefer the rougher character art, it seems more real.

All in all I enjoyed this episode, hopefully it continues to get better.

Bought a new toy today.

Since I already have the Gundam, have a somewhat action pose.

I've been itching to get these for a while now, I finally broke down and bought them. They are SDized ships and mobile suits from Char's Counterattack.

Here we have the Londo Bell flag ship Ra Cailum and 5 mobile suits. The blue one is a AMS-119 Geara-Doga (Rezin Custom), next is a standard mass produced AMS-119 Geara-Doga, in front and in white is Amuro's RX-93 Nu Gundam, next up in a light green/blue is RGZ-91 RE-GZ Zeta Gundam, and lastly is a MSN-03 Jagd-Doga (Quess Paraya Custom).

This is the Neo-Zeon flagship Rewloola and a compliment of 5 mobile suits. Starting on the left are two mass produced Federation RGM-98 Jegans, in front we have Char's MSN-04 Sazabi, next is another mass produced AMS-119 Geara-Doga, and rounding this out is Gyunei Guss' custom MSN-03 Jagd-Doga.

To make up for my horrible purchase of Journey to Jaburo I decided to buy myself a make up gift, a RX-78-2 Gundam.

How can that not be the coolest thing ever?

I picked up a used copy of Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo the other day and it is utterly horrible. The Gundam is slow, its weapons are weak, and the only saving grace is the great implementation of trusters.

Its graphics are on par with the other Gundam games, it's just the horrible controls can not make up the difference.