(no subject)

[mayoraasei]

Okay, as episode 34 comes out (Impulse vs Freedom fight), the forums are flooded with Shinn bashing, and feeble Kira bashing on the parts of Shinn fans.

I haven't seen the episode yet, so I'll just comment on everything I've seen thus far.

Firstly, let me do Shinn first:
He is not an irrational, cocky, bloodthirsty bastard who is trigger happy and joined the war so that he could kill people. Contrary to popular belief, Shinn joined the war to protect, just as Kira did. He wanted to prevent people from going through the grief that he did. This is the exact reason why he was so attached to Stellar: because he saw under her bloodstained hands someone who is incredibly fragile and childishly innocent, and he wanted to stop the war tainting her any further. Her fear of death reminded him of his family's death, and so the promise to protect her.

He is narrow-minded, but that stems from his trauma: he knows he can't afford to grieve for everyone, and so he limits himself to caring for only those he knows. It's a difficult feeling to understand because it hasn't been drawn out like the typical mope-tale in your typical shoujo manga. Remember this: Shinn is one mightily angsty character, and don't assume otherwise just because he didn't get the screen time to mop up his tears. He had gone through a time of enormous loss and grief, and only recovered by turning it into anger and intense dislike for Orb. He doesn't want to feel that loss or grief again, and so his narrow field of sensitivity. But when he has the chance, he does care - remember Shinn going out of his way to free prisoners? He's not an abstract person, so he only does what's in front of him - and so you might call him short-sighted.

He is anti-authoritarian, and we can interpret that as also stemming from the trauma. He doesn't trust authority, especially one that will hurt those he cares about - and so, his contempt in front of Talia after he was freed.

Personally, I feel his derision of Athrun is justified. I'd feel terribly pissed off if someone who was supposed to some legendary war hero had come to be my superior, then proceeded to do nothing but sulk in his room all day while I ran around the battlefield trying to defend my ship. Shinn believes that Athrun's not giving it all, and it angers him when others who have tried harder have died or become injured, while Athrun is selfishly engrossed in his own internal debate. But Shinn has become cocky, because he's entrenched in the belief of his own invulnerability to normal regulations.

As for Shinn being immature, Kira was immature throughout Gundam SEED - which resulted in various berserker scenarios that ended with him "killing" Andy. The director still has the chance to develop Shinn's character, but he needs to be quick about it....

Now, about Kira:

He was never a whiny crybaby-ala-Shinji-Asuka who now acts like he's some sort of invulnerable hypocritical God trying to force his ideals on everyone else just because he's OMG Za Ultimate Coordinator11!!!11111!!!

I find it funny that most people who complained that Kira was a wuss are guys ==;;; Here we go, male macho-ness at its height.

Kira does not act like he's God, simply because he doesn't have the ego to do that. Yes, he has become complacent about his skills because he hasn't met a decent match so far, but that's a far cry from the arrogance of pretending to be God.

He is not hypocritical - or rather, there are no such thing as a non-hypocrite (ie. there's always exceptions to the rule). He tries to achieve what he believes in, which, incidentally, is "reduce the number of casualties to a minimum", and which is, frankly, not the same as "absolutely no one is to be killed".

He ransacked Destroy (let's not argue whether or not he knew that the pilot was going to die as a result of that comparatively minor explosion) because what he saw was an extremely dangerous homicidal criminal controlling a frighteningly efficient weapon of mass destruction; who has levelled several cities in Western Eurasia, and is refusing to stop with the demolition despite being cornered. This, being Kira and not Shinn, he cares about those civilians who were needlessly caught up in the madness. So Kira does the one logical thing - stop the madness. This is in line with his policy, which I have always interpreted as "I won't kill if I don't have to kill". At that time, he decided that if he did not kill, then thousands more people would die, and it was a fair price to be paid.

I have a hypothesis for why Kira did not, at all, try to kill Shinn in their recent confrontation, given my above reasoning. Remember Nicol? Kira was extremely shaken after killing Nicol because he knew that Nicol was Athrun's friend. Now, enter Minerva with Shinn by its side. Kira knows Athrun is on Minerva. This makes him deduce that Shinn (against all excuses of sanity) might possibly be very close to Athrun!! Is Kira going to rush in and hack at Shinn as he pleases, knowing that Athrun is watching this from Minerva?!! Is he going to be able to bring himself to give Athrun the same grief again? (Ahem, let's forget about Heine, because that wasn't directly because of Kira) This, added to the fact that he has to watch out for AA, keep an eye out so that his impulsive sister doesn't launch - and possibly even distracted by wondering if Athrun is on the battlefield in another MS.

Of course, with credit to Shinn and Rey, Kira's loss was largely a result of Shinn and Rey's careful tactical planning, their surprise elements, and also Kira's own sense of complacency about his domination on the battlefield.

Okay, that's enough ranting. I'll leave the rest to when I get 34 ==;;;;



Uh, did you mention something about studying....? @__________+;;;;;;;;;;