gundam seed destiny special 3

Feeling rather masochist, I went and downloaded the Japanese raw (i.e. no subtitles) of the 3rd part of GSD compilation special. Watched it all last night, all 90 minutes of it (yeah, this time it was just in one part and not two). Am finding that I pick up more phrases from the raw than I do from watching it subtitles. I think I just get lazy and not bother listening when there are subtitles...or perhaps I'm too busy reading them? Excuses.

The director surrendered to pressures from Athrun/Cagalli fans (who affectionately call themselves AsuCaga fans). The interaction between Meyrin and Athrun, and Mia and Athrun for that matter, were cut massively. The Athrun and Cagalli reunion went better than in the anime; although I'm proud to say the only thing I picked up in that entire conversation was Cagalli saying "It's hard" ==;

I've also discovered in the order of comprehensibility: Stellar > Murrue > Rey > Kira > everyone else > Athrun > Talia.

...Yeah, in the dialogue between Murrue and Talia, I could only understand Murrue's side of the conversation ==;;;; And I didn't understand a single word of Athrun's monologues ==;

Everything else went the same way. Because it's more condensed, I think a lot of issues were made clearer: what spurred Stellar to go crazy, how Stellar's death translated for Shinn, how Shinn defeated Kira (in this special it was made to look like the ultimate strike was timely rather than skilful, although timeliness is also a handy skill). Andrew fans will be displeased to find that his battle scenes are cut in order to maximise Strike Freedom's ==;

( The reeeeaaaaaalllllllly looooooooong version )

Shinn sounds more and more like Hikaru from Host Club ==;