And I'm back with my reviews and comments for Episodes 21 thru 25.
Athrun wakes up in his room at the whichever-ZAFT-base-Minerva-is-at-this-week base... with Meer in bed with him. My exact words were, "Oh NO f**kin' way!" Then Lunamaria Hawke knocks on the door. Much teenage deer-in-headlights awkwardness ensues for Athrun, followed by annoyance and frustration. Meer wants to live the "full" lifestyle of her idol Lacus Clyne, and that includes being all romantic with Athrun, but he's not having that. And Lumamaria being all jealous and obsessive with Athrun, and he reacts to her as if what he does with any other girls is any of her business... you've really got your hands full, Athrun. But I'll get back to you later in this post, kid. *gives Athrun a scolding look*
So the new ZAFT/FAITH member mystery pilot with the golden hair is Heine Westenfluss, who's also been assigned to the Minerva with his nifty looking GOUF Ignited. Talia wonders what Durandel's up to, putting yet another FAITH member on her ship. Heine, for his part, is very friendly and outgoing, trying to get his new teammates to loosen up, and it even rubs off on Athrun a bit, who's really gotten a stick up his posterior... oh wait, I was going to get back to Athrun later. *gives Athrun another scolding look* I want to like Heine, but I feel like he's really just a watchdog for Durandel for some mysterious purpose.
Meanwhile, Stella is on a rocky beach somewhere, dancing in her absent-minded way, laughing and enjoying the sight of the ocean, which seems to be a regular thing for her. Shinn Asuka happens to be nearby, out for some R&R and sees her fall off a cliff into the water. She can't swim, so he jumps in and rescues her, telling her she's not going to die. The "die" word triggers her mind control and she totally freaks out, until he uses the word again (not realizing what he's doing) and she calms down. However, they're stuck in a spot they can't climb out of, and with Stella unable to swim, Shinn activates a rescue beacon. They have some bonding, Stella clearly displaying her mental trauma and amnesia with her answers to Shinn's questions, not knowing what "Father" and "Mother" means. Shinn has really taken to Stella, and he promises to protect her. I'm soooooo getting a Four Murasame/Rosamia Baddam vibe from this girl - the mentally broken orphan girl, manipulated and turned into a war machine by the big, bad, evil military, and our "hero" (sorry, I still can't think of Shinn as a central hero in this series yet, despite a couple of heroic acts recently) is falling for her in a way. Howver, I've noticed that after this point, when he or anyone else says the word "die" around Stella... she doesn't freak out anymore. She also gives Shinn a seashell as a personal momento. Awwww how sweet!
And her meeting Shinn has other effects on her personality/programming as well...
Athrun shows up with a rescue boat to pick up Shinn and Stella, and back ashore they drive back to the docks/base in a ZAFT jeep. En route they meet Auel and Sting, and Stella rejoins her "brothers," but is sad and upset that Shinn isn't going with her, since he promised to protect her. Shinn says they'll meet again, somewhere, somehow. I'm.... slowly starting to like Shinn more. He's still an angry jerk more often than not, but his interactions with Stella show that, like he did with his sister before she was killed, Shinn has a good heart, deep down somewhere inside his anger and pain.
Djibril is chewing out the Atlantic Federation president for not doing enough to put down the various rebellions around the world and be more aggressive against ZAFT/PLANTs. The President points out that Phantom Pain is under Djibril's control, and that he should let them handle it. Djibril decides to also drag the Orb military (now obligated as part of the new world treaty alliance) into the conflict and have them help with wiping out the ZAFT forces supporting the local rebels in the Black Sea area. The orders are passed through channels, and Yuna is more than happy to order his military into the fray, much to the chagrin of the Orb military officers.
On the John Paul Jones, the naval flagship of the Earth Forces' task force rallying to invade the Black Sea, the Phantom Pain Gundam pilot trio are back, resting up in their energy/regeneration/brainwashing tanks to prepare for the coming battle. Stella is hysterical when the doctors try to take a handkerchief Shinn used to bandage her injured ankle when she fell in the water. Neo Roanoke talks about the trio's lack of memories, how they only need to do their jobs and defeat the enemy. Stella is afraid of death, and in order to not die, she has to defeat the enemy, period. Neo's comment, "Are we happier with memories, or are we happier without them? I think about that from time to time," gives me pause... I very much suspect he's a clone of Mu La Flaga (and not the real deal) with a different programmed personality and memories. As this batch of episodes proceed, my curiosity about him and Rey Za Burrell grows. And Stella wakes up later, not knowing what this strange handkerchief she has is...
The Orb fleet arrives and joins up with their Earth Forces' allies, with Yuna on board barking orders and making a clown of himself. He's such a wimp. Barfing at sea, sleeping in ridiculous looking pajamas while hugging a giant pillow, and so on. I don't know whether to despise this guy or laugh at him. That cool Orb admiral/captain/whatever is back, clearly not liking what they're doing and what's happening to their nation, but he's putting hopes that Cagalli and the Archangel will come through for them. Good for you, whatever your name is!
And there's Miriella again! She's at the Suez canal area, shooting photos as part of her investigative photojournalist gig, but I also suspect she's part of an intelligence/resistance movement, too.
The Minerva sets sail to face the invading Earth Forces' fleet trying to retake the Black Sea. Athrun is shocked to hear that part of the fleet belongs to Orb. Prior to the battle, Athrun and Heine have a nice talk, bonding and discussing both their desires not to have to fight anyone, no matter what nation they're from. But they both accept that they're soldiers in a war, and they have to fight or die. *sigh* Athrun, Athrun, Athrun.... I'm still getting back to you later. *gives Athrun another scolding look*
Neo orders the Orb fleet to take point and lure the Minerva out and into Neo's regular Earth Forces' fleet. Yune is far too eager to please his new allies. "That'll be very pretty," he says of the coming battle. The Orb captain/admiral/whatever and his officers are -not- happy.
Captain Talia Galdys orders the Minerva to launch its mobile suits and go into battle. The fighting's getting started, and she orders Minerva's Tannhauser BFG to fire at the Orb fleet. It's about to discharge when suddenly it's shot through and blown up by a beam rifle blast... coming from Kira's Freedom Gundam! The Archangel also shows up, clearly intent on intervening in and stopping this battle before it becomes a bloodbath. Cagalli takes off in her Strike Rouge, announcing herself to everyone and ordering the Orb forces to stop fighting and go home. Kira doesn't think Cagalli could've stopped this if she were still home in Orb or not, but Lacus is sympathetic to Cagalli, saying that Cagalli's heart is clearly seeing things now that she couldn't have in her situation back at Onogoro. Cagalli is holding fast to both her own and her father's ideals - to not only keep Orb out of any fighting, but to put a stop to anyone else fighting, as well.
The Orb forces hesitate, and Neo demands an explanation from Yuna, why she's out here and ordering the Orb fleet to stop, warning that things will get nasty for them if they don't fight. Meaning, of course, that the Earth Forces will shoot any "allies" in the back who hesitate to fight on their behalf. Hey, they enslave and murder CIVILIANS with no hesitation, what's a few more soldiers on top of that? Sheez... Yuna freaks out, trying to make excuses, saying it's not Cagalli's voice. The cool admiral/captain/whatever doesn't believe it... but he orders his ships to fire... and crosses his fingers that the Freedom will save the day. It does, 'cause it's that awesome and Kira's that good.
The Earth Forces then launch their own attack on the Minerva, and things get crazy. Heine is out there in his GOUF Ignited, having a fight with Stella's Gaia Gundam that has a lot of grin-inducing homages to Ramba Ral's Gouf fighting with Amuro Ray's Gundam from the original series.
Yuna orders the Orb forces to resume their attack on the Minerva to save face with their allies, as well as to attack the Archangel, too, the "source of their nation's confusion."
And Cagalli... poor Cagalli... has an emotional breakdown, frozen in battle as things go horribly, horribly wrong all around her and there's nothing she can do to stop it. A speech of her father's (that we saw in the Shinn-narrated recap episode) is remembered/played over the battle, Lord Uzumi's words of warning about what would happen if Orb went down the path of taking sides coming frightfully true. I felt sorry for Cagalli for her lack of spine and spirit and submitting to Yuna's demands.... then felt good for her being back with the Archangel and trying to do what's right. But now I feel sorry for her again.
Murrue Ramius, however, has other plans for Minerva's fate and flies to its rescue.... Talia is baffled. First the Archangel forces take out Minerva's Tannhauser, then protects it from the Earth Forces. "Could they really be here for the absurd purpose of stopping this battle?" Why yes, Talia. You've got that right, absurd as it might be.
During the battle, Athrun tries to contact Kira but can't get through. Andy Waltfeld is back in the field, piloting a custom-colored Zeta Gundam-esque Murasame - AWESOME!
Kira shoots or slices arms off of Shinn's Impulse, Heine's GOUF, Stella's Gaia... Kira really has the whole "disarmament" philosophy down very well. *ducks the flying tomatoes*
But in the confusion, Stella goes bonkers, flying at Freedom, but Heine's GOUF gets in the way - he wants a piece of Kira too - and Heine is killed when the Gaia's wing-blades slice through his GOUF's waist and cockpit. Athrun is shocked... and so am I. Heine was such a good guy, and I got the feeling that he and Athrun were starting to become "brothers" in a sense... and boy, Heine didn't last long. I'm surprised, considering he was in the opening credits for quite a little while.
When all is said and done, pretty much everyone -not- on the Archangel is angry at them for their interference in the battle, including (and especially) Athrun, for Heine's death. He thinks they're making a mistake, trying to achieve their goal the wrong way. Athrun decides he wants to talk to them and resolve it, and find out what's going on. Using his authority as a FAITH member, he strikes out on his own, going ashore and bumping into Mirialla. Mirialla seems a bit distrusting of Athrun since he's back in ZAFT now, but because he's doing this own his own, she agrees to put him in touch with the Archangel. As he's out and about, he's being secretly tailed by Lunamaria...
Kira and Cagalli meet up with Athrun and Mirialla after receiving Mirialla's coded message. There's a lot of anger and heartache on all sides of their meeting, from Athrun angry that Kira interfered in the battle and got a friend killed, and wanting Cagalli and the others to go home to Orb and end the alliance treaty, while Cagallia and Kira can't understand why he's re-joined ZAFT and defending Durandel, who's using a fake Lacus for propaganda purposes and may have tried to assassinate the real Lacus. Athrun is shocked at this, and promises to look into it. Kira is untrusting of Durandel and the PLANTs, though, until they get some answers. Athrun's also angry at Kira for preaching "no killing" but having taken lives in the past anyway. Ouch... Kira agrees, and says he doesn't want to kill anyone, but he has to try to stop the fighting. Athrun tells him and Cagalli to go home to Orb. His last words to Cagalli, after seeing the ring he gave her on her finger: "There are certain things that I can understand, but not accept. You know what I mean." Ouch again...
And watching this whole painful meeting is Lunamaria, who's snooping in on their talk with surveillance equipment. Is she tailing Athrun because of her crush, or professional curiosity... or was she ordered to follow him by Talia and see what he's up to?
Alright, Athrun is really starting to piss me off at this point. I've been trying to understand and even defend his back-treading behavior up until now, but you've all been telling me I'm wrong, that he's indeed lost and repeating his character growth from SEED. Well, I'm starting to agree now. His behavior the last few episodes, culiminating in this meeting with Kira and Cagalli, just has really turned me off his character. I can understand him going to the PLANTs to try to get a handle on the situation there, but he should've come right back home to Orb - minus the new ZAFT uniform and the "special authority" he's hardly even touching. He's gone back to being angry and confused about where he should be and what he should be doing. Durandel seemed to want Athrun (and the Minerva) to be this war's Archangel, bringing the good fight and some sanity to this out-of-control conflict, but so far, Athrun's just being the good little soldier, following orders from home, back to the usual fighting and killing like everyone else does in war. If he's truly looking for a way to end the conflict (and particularly, get Orb out of it), I'm not seeing it at all. And his harsh words when he left their meeting... it feels like the final nail in the coffin of his friendship and his love and the good things we saw him find back in SEED. He's going back down a dark, lonely road... and he doesn't have to. *sigh*
Kira, for his part, I'm unsure what to think of right now. I believe and even support his sincerity in wanting to end the war and prevent further bloodshed. I can even fully understand and even agree with his distrust of Durandel, as much as I adore Durandel as a philosopher and speaker. But... I'm starting to detect a hint of self-righteousness in Kira. Cagalli, however, seems to have gotten her spine back, being "kidnapped" from her wedding by Kira and taking a stand for Orb's original ideals of peace and neutrality... but she's lost her heart in the process, said heart having been ripped out by Athrun.
I'm feeling very uneasy about these three... and really upset with Athrun.
Meanwhile, back on the Minerva, intrigue is afoot. We see Rey Za Burrell copying files from a computer onto a disc (or vice versa)... then he accesses -another- computer in another room... then he visits Talia in her office. After that, Arthur is sending Rey and Shinn out on a recon mission, having received a tip (from Rey? Or did Rey get said tip from someone else?) on an Earth Forces research facility in the area at a place called Lodonia.
Shinn and Rey take their Gundams to the facility, which turns out to be a gruesome scene that looks like it was haunted by the ghost of Josef Mengele. It's also rigged with explosives to be destroyed, having just very recently been abandoned. When they get inside the lab, however, Rey has a violent seizure that cannot be explained. The Minerva crew is called in to disarm the bombs and secure the facility, with lots of shock and anger and fear reactions going around among them. The facility is full of dead children, and even a few brutally murdered scientist types, the kids in collars and scrubs, killed in various bloody ways, tanks full of brains... it's horrifying. Talia checks out the records and sees that this is where the Earth Alliance carried out its "Extended" project. The Extended are Normals who have had their bodies and minds enhanced and manipulated with drugs and surgery and other means, who exist only to fight. The first successful crop of Extended were the three Druggie pilots from SEED... the second successful batch are the three current Gundam pilots, Auel, Sting and Stella. The children who were interred there, in addition to the gruesome modifications forced on their bodies, were also put through rigorous combat training, and the ones who couldn't keep up or compete were butchered by the others... Shinn's pointing out that Blue Cosmos saying genetic manipulation is wrong, but then doing this stuff to children, is so hypocritical. Right on, Shinn.
I was so horrified by these scenes. Seriously, I watched this episode yesterday evening, and last night I had a gruesome and very disturbing dream involving a lab or facility full of imprisoned and traumatized and tortured kids.... it really bothered me to my core. The Earth Forces turning civilian populations into slave labor is bad enough, but -this-, kidnapping and violating children to turn them into freakish killing machines... *shudders in horror*
During their exploration of the chambers of horror, Rey has a flashback of himself as a young boy... with Rau Le Creuset... and Gilbert Durandel, the two talking about something... I'm wondering if Durandel, being a DNA analyst, created Rey as another clone of Mu La Flaga's father, or perhaps a clone of Rau himself (clone of a clone), and if Durandel was a co-conspirator with Rau in some capacity... I've been getting more and more suspicious of Durandel, especially after his last meeting with Athrun. I'm thinking Durandel may indeed be some sort of mastermind behind a lot of the events happening - even the Break the World incident and attempted assassination of Lacus, but he means what he says about wanting to expose and stop Logos and put an end to bloody wars. He's just going about this in a very sneaky, underhanded way. Hmm... so many burning questions now, and what possible-Mu-clone Neo Roanoke has to do with all of this too...
On the John Paul Jones, the Extended trio (now that I have a simple term to refer to them as
) are doing their thing, when Auel and Stella accidentally use each other's block words (Auel's is "mother," it would seem), and they start arguing, after Stella asks about the lab in Lodonia, which is "the place they lived at before." Auel gets angry, saying, "How the hell can I be calm?! Mother is at the laboratory!" And when he says "die" and makes Stella go wonky, she remembers another word that's become important to her since her chance meeting with Shinn: "protect." She boards her Gaia and breaks out of the ship, going to the Lodonia lab, with four words on her lips: "Lodonia. Lab. Mother. Protect."
The Minerva detects the incoming Gaia, and Shinn and Athrun take off in their Gundams to intercept it. They have a fight, with Shinn really beating up the Gaia, slicing a gap open in its cockpit hatch. The Gaia is crashed on the ground, and Shinn looks into the exposed cockpit, and sees an unconscious Stella. Dunh-dunh-DUNH!
And a few miscelleanous comments to wrap this post up:
The Archangel has a imitation hot springs room! Neat! And Lacus is cute, squirting water at Cagalli to try to cheer her up.
Cagalli has kept on wearing the ring Athrun gave her - at least up until their last meeting. I wonder if she'll be wearing it after that?
Speaking of rings... whatever happened with that ring Lacus gave Kira near the end of SEED, that was floating up in his helmet at the end of the series?
I'm not too crazy about the latest opening credits song on Episode 25. However, we do see lots of characters naked in it. Have I ever mentioned that Murrue Ramius is hot?