25 MS in 2 minutes!!! or not...

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Dark Duel
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25 MS in 2 minutes!!! or not...

You know how the Kira Yamato fans hail their hero as having "defeated 25 ZAKUs and GOUFs in 2 minutes", based on what that fat ZAFT Captain said before getting his ships crippled in Ep35.

Well, I think that's been debunked as a myth fairly conclusively.

Why? Well, there are two problems with his statement:

The first problem arises from the fact that on-screen evidence shows 17 mobile suits destroyed.

So maybe the other 8 were destroyed off-screen, right? Maybe, but there's a second problem. I timed the battle - from the moment the SF launches until the fat captain says his little deal about "25 in 2"...58 seconds go by. Not the 120 necessary for 2 minutes, but less than half.

Out of curiosity, I went and had a look at the whole mobile suit battle, starting from the moment the Gaia launched.
During the first part of the battle, which lasts a little over 2 minutes, you have 9 MS destroyed - 5 by Kira in the Aile Strike Rouge, 4 by Andy in the Gaia.
Then, the Aile Strike is recovered, and almost 2 full minutes go by before SF launches, and takes out its 17 MS in 58 seconds.

For the whole MS BATTLE - meaning, from the Gaia's launch to the fat captain's comment, you have 26 and as many as 28 MS destroyed in a five-and-a-half-minute-long battle.
22 of those kills can be attributed to Kira, 5 of them in the Strike.

Oops. So much for "25 ZAKUs and GOUFs in 2 minutes."

Just something I found which I wanted to point out.
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Toxicity
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Have you ever watched DragonBall Z? In that show, it takes 20 episodes for 5 minutes to go by, so watching the TV show, whether it be DBZ or Gundam, with a stopwatch in your hand isn't always the best way to judge how much time is going by in the action.

Another Good example of time flying or slowing down is in Gundam Wing when Zechs fights Heero in the HeavyArms. From the time they start going at it to the beginning of the second portion (right after the commercial halfway through the show) around three hours go by.
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I guess another example for time inconstancy in Seed would be Kira's departure from PLANT (L-5) to Alaska on Earth. According to the time line, it toke Freedom 3 days to get to Alaska yet to the viewers it looks like it only took a few hours or even minutes.
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Ascension
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Actually, that makes him sound better than the dialogue suggests. 17 in 58 seconds gives him a much better kills per second rate than 25 in 2 minutes. If I were a Kira fanboy (one who could do math...) I would be crowing right now.
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Dark Duel
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25 kills in 120 seconds = 1 kill per 4.8 seconds.
17 kills in 58 seconds = 1 kill per 3.4 seconds.
// ART THREAD // NOT ACCEPTING REQUESTS

"You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down. Tells you she's hurting before she keens. Makes her a home."
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Recon 5
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Umm... the famous kill count is taken verbatim from the captain of the ZAFT ship, who was probably referring only to the Strike Freedom when he said those words.

If the fanboys were duped, then in- universe the poor captain was duped too.
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Dark Duel
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Recon 5 wrote:Umm... the famous kill count is taken verbatim from the captain of the ZAFT ship, who was probably referring only to the Strike Freedom when he said those words.

If the fanboys were duped, then in- universe the poor captain was duped too.
Or, he was dumb as toast. Either way, I'm cool with it - All I did was point out the issue.
// ART THREAD // NOT ACCEPTING REQUESTS

"You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down. Tells you she's hurting before she keens. Makes her a home."
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Koshernova
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I thought Kira didn't kill his enemies ^^;

Anyhow, I agree with Toxicity, there's usually artistic license employed for stuff like this. This is but a minor stretch really, whereas the DBZ stuff is a real problem: all the dialogue and action we see in six episodes could not POSSIBLY have happened in five minutes (I ought to check the manga and see if that looks more plausible).
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Black Knight
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Kosh wrote:I thought Kira didn't kill his enemies ^^;
That's unless he really wants to...he makes obvious exceptions for the likes of Le Creuset, Stella, and Durandal.

If there's not one of those Laws of Anime (eg, a wooden sword can cut anything) about time not being forced to pass at the normal rate...there should be.
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Koshernova
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All I'm saying is it's a typical bit of freedom that is very, very prevalent in any shounen anime (Saint Seiya and Rurouni Kenshin come to mind). All things considered, a minute of lost time is not the same as stretching five minutes over 120 real minutes.

And I must say I liked that Kira tried not to kill his enemies, I wish he were more consistent with it. It made sense, when you had a lot of Gundam pilots who claimed to hate killing yet didn't try to fight in a different manner.
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"17 kills in under a minute!" sounds more über, acually :D
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Kosh wrote:I thought Kira didn't kill his enemies ^^;
Well, in the words of Thundermuffin (who stole them from DBZ): "They're alright! I can see their parachutes!"
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Well, if you're spamming a battlefield ALL by yourself with such a MS with a bunch of enemies in front or to the side of you, with your only allies being BEHIND you, then it's not TOO farfetched to think that he'd at least be able to disable a lot of MS in a short amount of time. In fact, any pilot with such a MS could if they hit their targets right.
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If the captain says it's 25 machines in two minutes, then yes, we should probably assume the remaining handful were dispatched offscreen. If we see Kira take out 17 mobile suits in less than one minute of screentime, then picking up the spare hardly seems like a challenge, and there's no ironclad Law of Anime that demands every single shot fired in a battle has to be played out in real time in front of the viewers. Sorry, I don't think this counts as a debunking. :-)

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Dean_the_Young wrote:
Kosh wrote:I thought Kira didn't kill his enemies ^^;
Well, in the words of Thundermuffin (who stole them from DBZ): "They're alright! I can see their parachutes!"
That's actually an even older reference back to the classic 80s GI Joe cartoon, where Cobra pilots never, ever, EVER died.
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SNT1
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Furthermore, when Kira did his infamous Strike Freedom 13-hit spam, it only showed 8 MSes being hit presumably by DRAGOONs and/or beam rifle fire (green beams), so I doubt Kira would shoot 2 railguns + chest cannon for nothing, and given his extremely high accuracy, I doubt he missed targets, either. So that's already 3 to 5 offscreen kills.

In any case, if he had offscreen kills when Strike Freedom launched (which is, 58 seconds), it can be argued that a right response could be: "25 MS in under a minute?"

Either way, this just proved Kira and Strike Freedom is more awesome :lol:
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Heecarl_Reez
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Oh man,that is the last episode i watch destiny..
Can't argue about the time in anime..If you ever watch DBZ,or Captain Tsubasa,you wouldn't be surprised at this.On Tsubasa itself,the 90 minutes soccer match,could be finish on 6 month time,seriously,not counting the time when flashback occurs.so for time dissonance..
So Kira shot 25 enemies on 2 minutes?...let's believe it.at least it's not 50,or 100 enemies...

and it was displayed,after ZAFTy(Destiny) glorious episode at Heaven's Base!!!
A treat for Kira fans surely...
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Wingnut
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I feel the need to point out here that the line and scene in question was yet another homage to the original Gundam and Amuro's battle with 12 Rick Doms outside Side 6 that was witnessed by Camron Bloom.
The captain of the Chivvay class said something similar about the Gundam shooting down 9 Rick Doms in only a couple minutes on its own.
During the battle the other pilots (Sayla, Slegger, and Kai) downed 3 of the Rick Doms and Amuro got the other 9 on his own.
Like with Kira, Amuro only downed 6 on screen, leaving a trio getting shot down that we didn't see.

Thus the off screen kills for Kira in this battle is a totally plausible explanation here.
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razgriz
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ill go with offscreen kills too, i mean i know that they enjoyed using stock destruction footage but sheesh, the animators maybe had a limit as to the number of times the same mobile suit can get blown up the same way :wink:
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Considering I've seen short clips and screenshots of Strike Freedom decimating surrounding enemies in just a few seconds, I don't see how this is totally impossible for him to do. It's like taking the BFG 9000 in DOOM 2 and killing enemies in very large groups in an instant because your weapon is simply that good, and you still have ammo left over to go kill some more. Yeah... My unorthodox analogy probably doesn't tide any arguments, but they're my two cents, heh.
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