Fukudas best work

[Seto Kaiba]

It was conclusive but it felt like Zeta's ending for being abrupt, the original episode 50 at least. The treaty at the end, Lacus returning to the PLANTS, Shinn's defeat, Durandel gone.

You call it abrupt, but that's actually a very typical sort of ending for a mecha anime.

It's relatively rare for a mecha anime to have the protagonist(s) involved in the geopolitics (or astropolitics) of the conflict. Usually, the protagonist of a mecha series is someone young and fairly far down the chain of command. They're junior officers, NCOs, or civilians who fell into the cockpit of an unattended robot and got drafted. They're on the sharp end of things and focused on the immediate conflict. When the final battle ends, their role in the story is over and so politicking that actually ends the conflict officially usually happens offscreen or in a quick montage that establishes peace is returning to the world.

You see this kind of quick post-conflict resolution all the time. Like in Code Geass, once Lelouch is dead Nunnally is crowned Empress offscreen and Britannia makes peace with the UFN and all is well. Or in Macross Delta, once Chancellor Brehm's plan is foiled and the Delta Wave System's shrine is damaged to the point of inoperability the Windermere forces pull out and strike a peace treaty with the New UN Gov't offscreen. Most of the major Gundam titles end this way. Once the Big Bad is dead the conflict just stops, a peace accord of some kind is reached, and the cast go their separate ways. IMO, the version that seems the most abrupt and out-of-nowhere is the one at the end of Macross II: Lovers Again, where in the space of maybe half a dozen cuts the story goes from Ingues's mobile fortress blowing up over Macross City to the up-to-that-point genocidally xenophobic Mardook having already signed a peace treaty with the UN Gov't.

But the ending also feels rushed, and anticlimatic, Zeta's ends with Kamille beating the badguy but gets a psychic attack that cliffhangers the show.

Yes, but there were plans for an imminent continuation already in progress... Gundam ZZ, and technically Char's Counterattack spun off from that too.

While DESTINY could've lead into another series about Athrun, Kira and Shinn don't feel like they had complete character development and didn't find all the answers. I guess the complaint is that the ending was a little too neat

Remember, at the time Destiny was in development and production Fukuda et. al. still thought they were going to be directly following the series up with a movie to tie up the loose ends and provide closure to the remaining characters.

But a capable creative team will nevertheless ensure that the current story has a definite ending to it in case they don't get a sequel... which paid dividends in the case of the Cosmic Era, as Destiny failed to meet Sunrise's expectations and future Cosmic Era plans were scaled back. Can you imagine how much more infuriating Destiny's kind of weak ending would be if it were also a cliffhanger for a potentially Coming Never movie?

[yugioh54]

Destiny ending did have impact, it was well directed but the main heroes felt invincible and it was anticlimatic, nice epilogue for the heroes. The way Durandel and Rey got there endings was fitting. But I think a more cliffhanger ending might've been better for the lore. Even episode 50 didn't give a good, there's more story type of ending. They had to create new characters for the movie instead of keeping some alive from Destiny. ZZ despite being bashed as the worst of Tomino's Gundam series had alot of good elements and when they did bring back the MSG and Zeta characters it was well done(Sayla, Hayato, Haman,Kamille), Zeta feels overhyped in comparison. Char's Counterattack was a weird movie that reversed Amuro and Char's character development, also was based on a gundam novel Tomino wrote and modified. Destiny with a Zeta like Cliffhanger might've been a commercial failure but they could've made a compilation movie and added new ending that would be better then final plus, maybe pause the war and make a sequel to Destiny. Like chars counterattack I do believe that Kira and Lacus could just disappear from the frontlines like the 08th MS team and let the new chairman and Cagalli run COMPASS and the alliance in general. That's how a new CE continuation could happen, but I do believe there will be something like Frozen Teardrop continuation happening soon. The movie did too well to ignore ANY CE production, maybe Liu Goto or some of the SEED writers would be up for it. But SEED got shafted of anything besides merchandise after Destiny, but FREEDOM revived interest. But maybe some mangas and light novels are in the picture, another OVA.

[Mafty]

That being said, Destiny's Final Plus extended ending is a mixed bag

Spoiler

One the one hand Shinn is able to move on and join Kira and Company, on the other with every opponent defeated it's not clear what they will fight for now.

Freedom does at least show what will happen following the series end. Plus the positive reviews may mean more projects even if it's like 00 and in written form. (on a side note compared to the 00 movie how did Freedom do?)

As for Kira and Lacus

Spoiler

I'd assumed they were merely having some alone time, not they'd fled society forever.

[Seto Kaiba]

Destiny ending did have impact, it was well directed but the main heroes felt invincible and it was anticlimatic, nice epilogue for the heroes.

That's a very common complaint for Gundam SEED in general.

Namely, that many plot developments in the Cosmic Era as a whole feel anticlimactic because Kira Yamato's incredibly thick plot armor and amazing Super Coordinator abilities take him into Mary Sue and Boring Invincible Hero territory and destroys the tension of any situation he's in. That his plot armor also seems to extend to cover his friends doesn't help either. It's the source of the number one joke/meme about the series... the invincibility (and preachy self-righteousness) of Kira "Jesus" Yamato. Shoot him down and he'll be back in three days with a new MS to curb stomp you.

Nothing demonstrates this quite as well as the Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom movie. Not only is Kira so overpowered he can fight and win entire battles without any support at all while also sparing his opponents lives, the only way they could inject any tension at all into the story was for there to be another group of hostile Super Coordinators even more Super than him. Even then, they can't manage to actually defy the trope, and Kira once again suffers a superficial defeat that's barely an inconvenience to him and comes back with a new Gundam to curbstomp the enemy.

But I think a more cliffhanger ending might've been better for the lore. Even episode 50 didn't give a good, there's more story type of ending. They had to create new characters for the movie instead of keeping some alive from Destiny.

That's normal for a non-compilation movie, though.

Fukuda et. al. went into Gundam SEED Destiny riding high on the almost unprecedented-in-the-franchise success of Gundam SEED, but by the time the series entered its final story arc they had to be well aware that the series was underperforming. They did the smart thing - the safe thing - by ensuring the series had a proper ending rather than banking on a third series order from MBS or approval for a movie.

Look to other non-compilation movies and you'll see much the same. They typically introduce a new antagonist, who in some way serves to wrap up any lingering plot threads and draw the story to a close. Macross Delta did this recently with the movie Absolute Live!!!!!! that followed on from the compilation movie Passionate Walkure. They wrote in a new antagonist to drive a resolution to the romance plot from the series and resolve the dangling "Who is Lady M?" plot thread and the missing character development for Mirage.

Destiny with a Zeta like Cliffhanger might've been a commercial failure but they could've made a compilation movie and added new ending that would be better then final plus, maybe pause the war and make a sequel to Destiny.

That would only have worked if the series were performing up to expectations, which would have made the movie or a third season a virtual certainty and made such a tactic patently unnecessary.

If the series is already underperforming, the studio would have no reason to expect a compilation movie to do better.

Like chars counterattack I do believe that Kira and Lacus could just disappear from the frontlines like the 08th MS team and let the new chairman and Cagalli run COMPASS and the alliance in general. That's how a new CE continuation could happen, but I do believe there will be something like Frozen Teardrop continuation happening soon. The movie did too well to ignore ANY CE production, maybe Liu Goto or some of the SEED writers would be up for it. But SEED got shafted of anything besides merchandise after Destiny, but FREEDOM revived interest. But maybe some mangas and light novels are in the picture, another OVA.

I don't doubt that we'll probably see some manga titles, maybe an ONA or something, to spackle over the many plot holes in the movie and tie it into the end of Destiny more completely.

That said, I think Freedom will likely end up being the end of Kira and Lacus's story and likely the CE narrative as a whole. Sunrise knows how to let go of a story once it ends, and after investing so much into the denouement of the SEED storyline I think they'll move on to other works rather than risk ruining the solid and satisfying conclusion they've reached.

(Not to mention that Kira's the main draw for the series in Japan, so without him any Gundam SEED title is not likely to do well... e.g. Gundam SEED Destiny. In a situation like that, retiring the main character and retiring the setting are practically the same thing.)

[yugioh54]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/intere ... rt/.217083

In a followup post, Fukuda noted that series like the first Mobile Suit Gundam anime and Space Runaway Ideon were also toy anime productions.

ガンダムやイデオンも昔の作品は大抵おもちゃ企画ね。

— 福田 己津央 (@fukuda320) October 20, 2024
Most of the older works like Gundam and Ideon were developed for toys.

What is a bit unclear about Fukuda's initial post, though, is if the director is referring to toy sales or viewership numbers when speaking about cancelation. However, when fellow director Taiki Nishimura asked Fukuda if the OVA series of Cyber Formula was created because of its cancelation, Fukuda noted it was partially due to high sales of home media and albums.

メインスポンサーと局の数字は取れなかったけれど、音楽とビデオは買ってくれるファンが多かったので、クライアントがついたというわけで。

— 福田 己津央 (@fukuda320) October 20, 2024
Nishimura: So Cyber_____ was indeed canceled. It didn't feel that way when I was a high school student watching it…but was that the reason it was later expanded into OVAs?

Fukuda: Although we didn't get the numbers from the main sponsors or the stations, we had a lot of fans buying the music and home video releases, so we got clients.

Fukuda concluded his thoughts about anime cancellation in a post on October 21:

打ち切られたと言っても、作品が面白かったから時代を超えて残ってるわけで。私らは打ち切り上等、くらいの感じ方だけど、表むき子供向けアニメが細々やってた時代と今は、捉え方が全然違うと思う。

— 福田 己津央 (@fukuda320) October 20, 2024
Even though it was "canceled," it persisted over time because it was interesting. I feel cancellation is fine, but the way it is perceived now is completely different than it was back when anime aimed at children was unimportant.

[Seto Kaiba]

In a followup post, Fukuda noted that series like the first Mobile Suit Gundam anime and Space Runaway Ideon were also toy anime productions.

ガンダムやイデオンも昔の作品は大抵おもちゃ企画ね。

— 福田 己津央 (@fukuda320) October 20, 2024
Most of the older works like Gundam and Ideon were developed for toys.

Fukuda is either misinformed or engaging in some revisionist history there...

The Sunrise creative team that developed the original Mobile Suit Gundam series were determined NOT to create a glorified toy commercial like the contemporary super robot shows. They wanted to do something more in line with the serious sci-fi storytelling of Space Battleship Yamato instead of just shilling robot toys. That's a big part of why the Zaku is the only enemy mecha in the first third of the series. The creative team made the deliberate decision to avoid toy-driven robot show tropes like the "Monster/Enemy Robot of the Week". Gundam's mediocre ratings and low merchandise sales forced some strategic changes to avoid cancellation, which is why the series suddenly switches to introducing a new Zeon MS every episode or two around the halfway point.

They did sell toys, but they were not developed to sell toys. It was a much less cynical era where creators were trying to tell interesting stories worth telling, not simply maximize the profit from plamodel sales like it was when Fukuda piloted Destiny into a ditch and got future plans canned as a result of slow gunpla sales.

Even though it was "canceled," it persisted over time because it was interesting. I feel cancellation is fine, but the way it is perceived now is completely different than it was back when anime aimed at children was unimportant.

Pretty sure the way cancellation is perceived hasn't really changed from then to now... commercial failure is commercial failure. In this age of major franchises, cancellations simply have a better press agent.

It's harder to GET cancelled because shows are so much shorter now. With most shows being only one cour, they're often too short to even be worth cancelling. Twelve episodes isn't enough time for ratings to drop far enough to really have that conversation or enough time to consider a retool for a series that isn't doing well. You don't get to cancel and check out ignominiously anymore... now you either succeed or fail right out of the gate.

These days, if you're getting cancelled you're almost certainly getting cancelled in development or pre-production rather than after initial broadcast. Whether it's because your last show underperformed to the point the sponsor has withdrawn funding, because the source material is embroiled in a legal dispute, or because the source material is the center of a massive scandal and everyone quits because nobody wants to deal with reputational damage by association.

[MythSearcher]

Fukuda is either misinformed or engaging in some revisionist history there...

I think the concept of his is that the "project" was toy oriented as it was sponsored by a toy company.
Which is not entirely wrong because without the sponsorship there would not have been the anime.
How the Sunrise staff scam their way out of it is entirely another story of its own, but the project itself is stemmed from a toy project.
I mean, even the supposed documentary manga(Don't know about the English name but the Japanese is roughly "Men who created Gundam") that depicts the events that happened put a lot of emphasis in how Tomino tricked the sponsor into thinking they are making toy ads from the beginning of the planning phase(which actually is also very incorrect because Tomino was not in the beginning planning phase at all and was only named as a planned director, he was still working on Daitan3 and didn't join the planning until about half a year into it.)

And Fukuda is talking about it like that likely to justify his own toy oriented productions.
Cyber Formula is toy oriented, it is basically produced like robot shows. There were plastic models and techni-4WD produced for it at the time(Plamo is produced by Takara), no idea how popular those were but I surely wanted to buy a few of those without any luck until later other companies like Aoshima made more detailed and expensive kits aiming at a high age group. Reading Wikipedia, it seems like the sales was not good and hence GPX was axed into 37 eps. from 50 due to Takara dropping out of sponsorship.
And from the looks of it he is being defensive in that tweet.

[Seto Kaiba]

I think the concept of his is that the "project" was toy oriented as it was sponsored by a toy company.
Which is not entirely wrong because without the sponsorship there would not have been the anime.
How the Sunrise staff scam their way out of it is entirely another story of its own, but the project itself is stemmed from a toy project.
I mean, even the supposed documentary manga [...]

Which still wouldn't be accurate... if we're being honest with each other.

Just having a toy company as a sponsor for an anime doesn't mean that anime was developed to sell toys. There's a big difference between a series that's supported by merchandise and a series that's developed for toys. A series that's supported by merchandise is a series that's selling on its own merits but also has merchandising to capitalize on the show's popularity and increase its profit margin. A series that's "developed for toys" is a show that exists principally if not exclusively to drive sales of a specific branded toy line. It's very different in concept and execution, like the difference in content between a normal Gundam series and Build Fighters, with the latter being very much a story built around a merchandise line in the most blatant sense possible.

Sunrise was pretty upfront with its own management and its sponsors about its plans for the project that became Mobile Suit Gundam. From its inception, the director of planning and the creative team were interested in making a serious space opera-type story like Space Battleship Yamato and were developing the series accordingly. It was not developed to shill for a toy line, it was developed as a more mature story meant to be sold on its own merits to a smaller audience and was merely supported with some merchandising including plamodels. Clover green-lit this despite the risks based on their confidence in Sunrise's staff after the last few successful titles. Their main feedback was a request to switch the premise from space fighters to robots because they felt that would sell better... but at no point was selling toy robots the show's main objective.

And Fukuda is talking about it like that likely to justify his own toy oriented productions.

Which is why I flagged it as a distortion of the facts at best.

Cyber Formula is toy oriented, it is basically produced like robot shows. There were plastic models and techni-4WD produced for it at the time(Plamo is produced by Takara), no idea how popular those were but I surely wanted to buy a few of those without any luck until later other companies like Aoshima made more detailed and expensive kits aiming at a high age group. Reading Wikipedia, it seems like the sales was not good and hence GPX was axed into 37 eps. from 50 due to Takara dropping out of sponsorship.
And from the looks of it he is being defensive in that tweet.

Cyber Formula was, yes, a series developed around shilling for a toy line. It's a product of a very different development philosophy both in terms of time and concept, and aimed at a younger audience.

Of course, it owes far more of its success to the talented toy and mechanical designer Shoji Kawamori than it ever will to Mitsuo Fukuda.

[MythSearcher]

Which still wouldn't be accurate... if we're being honest with each other.

I am just trying analysis his mindset when making that comment.

Cyber Formula was, yes, a series developed around shilling for a toy line. It's a product of a very different development philosophy both in terms of time and concept, and aimed at a younger audience.

Of course, it owes far more of its success to the talented toy and mechanical designer Shoji Kawamori than it ever will to Mitsuo Fukuda.

The toy sales seems to be pretty bad though, so I wouldn't say its success is more towards Kawamori at least for the original series. I am not saying the credit should go to Fukuda, but the entire crew all contributed to at least the popularity of the show.

The cars look cool and spaceship like at least back then, but most of the cars in the first series are too toy like even when I was a kid and the anime itself was pretty popular(Takara pulled from being sponsor because the toy sales were bad, not because of low ratings.) The designs from Super Asurada onwards are more serious and F1 like for a while at least for the few main characters(until the later more gimmicky liquid metal transformation I guess)

The original series have a pretty different tone than later ones, they have a conspiracy, a syndicate trying to utilise Asurada in military applications, and actually have the plot to carry that on with few failure attempts. Later series was focused on actual racing and even in Saga the conspiracy was basically just about doping to win the race, which is pretty lame compared to the almost Terminator like future depicted in the original series if Asurada was captured...

[Mafty]

Seto Kaibawrote ,Just having a toy company as a sponsor for an anime doesn't mean that anime was developed to sell toys. There's a big difference between a series that's supported by merchandise and a series that's developed for toys. A series that's supported by merchandise is a series that's selling on its own merits but also has merchandising to capitalize on the show's popularity and increase its profit margin. A series that's "developed for toys" is a show that exists principally if not exclusively to drive sales of a specific branded toy line.

Totally, look at 0080 for example, it's a dark, tragic war story, that still has some of the most intricate mech designs in Gundam. The new designs are clealry part of a sales line, but it dosen't detract from the story or the characters at all

Spoiler

Plus the battle scenes are patricularly brutal, especially the final one.

[Seto Kaiba]

Totally, look at 0080 for example, it's a dark, tragic war story, that still has some of the most intricate mech designs in Gundam. The new designs are clealry part of a sales line, but it dosen't detract from the story or the characters at all

Spoiler

Plus the battle scenes are patricularly brutal, especially the final one.

Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket is one of the better examples of that within Gundam.

That was the OVA that dared to call the audience out on its habit of being more interested in the "cool robots" than the serious story about the sheer inhumanity of war that the writers were trying to tell.

Fukuda's self-serving distortions of the facts aside, if you look back through the history of the Gundam franchise there's a very clear point where Sunrise first crafted a Gundam story specifically to drive sales of a merchandise line. That point is Mobile Fighter G Gundam. Mobile Suit Victory Gundam was hit hard by the Law of Diminishing Returns as the fourth Gundam TV anime and eighth Gundam series overall. The slowing sales of plamodels led Bandai to reject Sunrise's next series pitch and start making demands about what the next Gundam series must include. Bandai demanded a kid-friendly series aimed at a younger audience, and that it be based on fighting games (Street Fighter 2 had come out the previous summer and taken Japan's arcades by storm). Those demands heavily shaped G Gundam's story and setting, built around the plans for a new gunpla line marketed to younger customers.

[yugioh54]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2 ... ed/.217427

Director Mitsuo Fukuda, producer Hisakazu Naka, and Sōichirō Hoshi, voice of Kira Yamato, were in attendance at the stage greeting for the commemorative screening. They revealed that screenwriter Chiaki Morosawa and Shigeru Morita wrote the scenario while planning for Gundam Seed Freedom. In addition, Fukuda stated that the script for SEED FREEDOM ZERO was completed 20 years ago. The storyboards were nearly half finished, and the oldest storyboards actually predate those of Gundam Seed Freedom. He added that 20 years ago, SEED FREEDOM ZERO was originally planned as an original video anime (OVA), but the staff has not yet decided how it will be presented now.

[Seto Kaiba]

Oh boy! We're getting a prequel to the completely unnecessary sequel that went nowhere and added nothing of meaning or value to a story that was already well past its use-by date!

Sunrise's shilling for new Gundam spinoffs is starting to read like Harmony Gold's shilling for new soon-to-fail Robotech sequels.

[yugioh54]

I'm baffled that it was written by Chiaki Morosawa and Shigeru Morita and might actually be good, Fukuda did not invite any of the staff writers from SEED and DESTINY to write FREEDOM, also Shigeru Morita wrote the pretty good Stargazer ONA. The fact it was boarded and written as an after DESTINY project gives us a better idea how FREEDOM could've been. I like the fact this could go either way, but this could also be just a check in on the cast or a completely riveting side story. The problem with FREEDOM is that it felt like it was influenced by later sunrise mecha story wise, like the Code Geass movie. I excepted something more after watching CROSS ANGE from Fukuda (matter of opinion) Grendizer U and FREEDOM didn't cut it, Granted this project is basically an unanimated chapter of the CE, as pointed out on the forums Fukuda might not have had the heart to change Morosawa script so we got a safe movie. While Destiny has its detractors, it's refreshing to know there was some exploration in the post Destiny CE. I also feel this will be much better project and something I thought would happen instead of the movie.

[Rubybro]

Oh boy! We're getting a prequel to the completely unnecessary sequel that went nowhere and added nothing of meaning or value to a story that was already well past its use-by date!

Sunrise's shilling for new Gundam spinoffs is starting to read like Harmony Gold's shilling for new soon-to-fail Robotech sequels.

Gotta shill new gunpla kits somehow.

I don’t mind that Gundam is primarily a merchandise advertisement these days, but they openly don’t care about telling a decent coherent story to give meaning to any of it. Just blind consoomerist nonsense that bleeds out into other franchises like Code Geass.

Though its also fine to like things in spite of their flaws. Its hard to care about the new flavor of the week, “ultra special uber gundam EX” when its just the same eye rollingly bland “boy meets girl” plot that seems to be par for the course in most mecha.

God forbid we have some light romance or some actual sci fi mystery on the level of Halo’s Forerunners in the bungie games. The Geass civilization was the only thing in anime that came somewhat close that. Where its just my head-canon that they had some kind of extrasolar empire, some major cataclysm caused it to collapse or rapture itself onto a higher plane of existence, and somehow ended up reseeding the world into its current form with the knowledge of geass falling into obscurity to prevent history from repeating itself. With phenomenon like the ragnarok connection and thought elevators only being the tip of the iceburg for what their technology was truly capable of.

[Seto Kaiba]

God forbid we have some light romance or some actual sci fi mystery on the level of Halo’s Forerunners in the bungie games. The Geass civilization [...]

Mitsuo Fukuda didn't work on Code Geass, though... and he's not highly placed enough to have any real influence over the rest of Bandai Namco Filmworks.

As a director, Mitsuo Fukuda only really has a few titles to his name and they're mostly merchandise-driven titles aimed at younger audiences. That's what he's good at. He's the guy you call if you want a series with an uncomplicated story that'll drive toy sales. His success with Gundam SEED was unexpected, though his only real job there was to craft a modernized version of the original Gundam series for a new generation. He pulled that off quite handily, and then dropped the ball almost immediately with Gundam SEED Destiny because trying to modernize Zeta Gundam requires a lot more nuance and subtlety.

He's not the guy you call if you want a deep, complex story with romance, hidden meanings, or ontological mysteries. When he tries to do that, what we get is creepy incel garbage like Cross Ange or Gundam SEED FREEDOM.

Of course, he's best known for his work on Gundam and Gundam itself is not a title you go to for romance or ontological mystery. It is, and always has been, all about man's inhumanity to man and the horrors of war. Despite the sci-fi trappings of spaceships and giant robots it's still very much grounded in the here-and-now and the horrors the protagonists face are products of Humanity's self-destructive impulses rather than external forces. There's no deeper mystery to EVIDENCE 01 in Gundam SEED. The one and only artifact proving the existence of alien life is just a bit of set dressing meant to justify the existence of Coordinators in a context other than wealthy people creating designer babies because why not. Even when the Gundam franchise does start getting a bit existential, it's still Human awfulness at the root of it (e.g. the Black History of Turn-A Gundam).

If that's the kind of thing you're after, then you need to go to other franchises and creators that actually DO that kind of thing. Like Shoji Kawamori's Macross, Mamoru Nagano's Five Star Stories, etc.

[Rubybro]

God forbid we have some light romance or some actual sci fi mystery on the level of Halo’s Forerunners in the bungie games. The Geass civilization [...]

Mitsuo Fukuda didn't work on Code Geass, though... and he's not highly placed enough to have any real influence over the rest of Bandai Namco Filmworks.

As a director, Mitsuo Fukuda only really has a few titles to his name and they're mostly merchandise-driven titles aimed at younger audiences. That's what he's good at. He's the guy you call if you want a series with an uncomplicated story that'll drive toy sales. His success with Gundam SEED was unexpected, though his only real job there was to craft a modernized version of the original Gundam series for a new generation. He pulled that off quite handily, and then dropped the ball almost immediately with Gundam SEED Destiny because trying to modernize Zeta Gundam requires a lot more nuance and subtlety.

He's not the guy you call if you want a deep, complex story with romance, hidden meanings, or ontological mysteries. When he tries to do that, what we get is creepy incel garbage like Cross Ange or Gundam SEED FREEDOM.

Of course, he's best known for his work on Gundam and Gundam itself is not a title you go to for romance or ontological mystery. It is, and always has been, all about man's inhumanity to man and the horrors of war. Despite the sci-fi trappings of spaceships and giant robots it's still very much grounded in the here-and-now and the horrors the protagonists face are products of Humanity's self-destructive impulses rather than external forces. There's no deeper mystery to EVIDENCE 01 in Gundam SEED. The one and only artifact proving the existence of alien life is just a bit of set dressing meant to justify the existence of Coordinators in a context other than wealthy people creating designer babies because why not. Even when the Gundam franchise does start getting a bit existential, it's still Human awfulness at the root of it (e.g. the Black History of Turn-A Gundam).

If that's the kind of thing you're after, then you need to go to other franchises and creators that actually DO that kind of thing. Like Shoji Kawamori's Macross, Mamoru Nagano's Five Star Stories, etc.

For the record, no idea who this guy is and I don't pay attention to most authors names due to authors from asian countries generally being quick to show no faith in their own works and abandon it/move onto the next work immediately after. Especially in the case of anything with an anime art style. Though I do remember how cringe Cross Ange was. That anime wasn't any good at all and didn't even finish the first episode.

As for gundam being strictly human PVP only, it doesn't always have to be the case. The writer simply needs to have faith in their work and take it seriously. Which anime just happens to not give a shit about because "sex sells" > literally everything else to them. For example, Homeworld wasn't about a stagnant and non adaptive sentient grey goo event looking to consume the galaxy, yet Cataclysm/Emergence is still regarded by many as a cult classic and the actual Homeworld 2 over Homeworld 2 proper. You go from controlling an actual military fleet in the main games, to a kitchen sink bottom of the barrel mining guild in Cataclysm and they go through an arc over the course of the story to earn their status. Going from a mining vessel to a warship by the final battle thanks to all the upgrades they'd researched along the way.

[Seto Kaiba]

For the record, no idea who this guy is [...]

Then why are you commenting on a thread about Mitsuo Fukuda's filmography?

[Rubybro]

For the record, no idea who this guy is [...]

Then why are you commenting on a thread about Mitsuo Fukuda's filmography?

I like talking about code geass.

[Seto Kaiba]

I like talking about code geass.

Fair enough, though it's recommended to do it in topics related to Code Geass.

Mitsuo Fukuda, the Bandai Namco Filmworks director, didn't work on it so it's not really related to him.