kalvasflam

You really can't compare anything to Stellar when she's in Destroy. Destroy leveled 3 cities on it's own. That thing is also quite big and has lots of barrels...

Cagalli was on street level blocking civilians for Destroy's attacks. So I don't think this round counts.

Also...Shinn you're so misguided...I bet he's gonna blame Freedom for all of his problems. The only thing in his mind is vengence. (I only say this because Kira is only gonna cause him more problems in S-Freedom, and Athrun in I-Justice). I bet he's gonna mention his family (not Kira's fault, they were caught in a crossfire), Heine (not Kira's fault, Heine should have been paying attention), and then Stellar (not Kira's fault, Shinn was the one who gave her back to EA in the first place, thereby condemning her to her fate). If it wasn't for Kira, Destroy would have made Shinn as toasty as Anakin. And the girl is a psycho, Kira did everybody a favor by taking her out. But, most likely, Shinn won't see it that way. I only say this because I know what's going to happen and with S-Freedom and I-Justice coming, it's not hard to see. Athrun warned Shinn and he didn't listen. Now look where we are.

When Kira chop off Neo's Windam, he signal Murrue to pick him up. How does Kira know Neo is Mwu?

There is another star-war copy-cat in this ep. Kira use his light saber to defect incoming beam weapons just like the jedis. I didn't recall the light saber used this way in any previous gundam series

Take a wild guess on how Kira knows it's Mu....

Actually, they've been using the beam-saber-blocks-beams since SEED...Kira seems to be the only one who's crazy enough to do it.

Ok, I can buy it if we take the Stella part away, and yeah, I forgot about cagalli saving civies... it's very easy to overlook an MS that hasn't really done anything at all in the GSD series.

Of course Shinn is single minded, his mind is on the fact that he needs a girl friend to show up the boss. How else do you explain him not remembering Stella killing the orange haired dud. He probably won't even realize it's his fault that countless civilians have died. And all will be forgiven. In reality, Shinn would be facing the death penalty for what he did.

The episode is indeed full of plot holes, thankfully I never made the mistake of assuming GS series had any real plot. But on the other hand, it was nice to see things get blown up.

I don't know how you can reason that Stellar is as good as Kira.  When she was in Gaia, Kira batted her away as easily as he moved through everyone else.  When she was in the most massively over-powered mobile suit ever with barriers that deflect any attack while Kira was getting triple teamed by her, Sting, and Neo, Freedom still didn't sustain any damage; the best you can say for her is she was also undamaged, which is more a virtue of her MS deflecting everything that came at it than her own piloting skills.

So far, we've seen Kira completely own Shin once (episode 23), and we've seen Shin go toe to toe with Kira while he's in seed mode and Kira's not (episode 28).  In episode 32, we saw him charge at Kira and swipe at Freedom a few times with his beamsaber, never once coming even close to landing a hit.  Aside from one slash at Destroy with his beamsaber while he was going one on one with Stellar (ie, not getting attacked from three sides), Shin didn't do any better against her than Kira did, and he's never done anything to show that he's better than Kira is one on one.  I don't think there's any reason to put anyone but Kira at the top of the hierarchy.

I also don't really know about putting Athrun that low, but I really can't come up with anything to argue against it.  I think it's still just good will from the job he did in SEED that I feel like he should be higher, since I have to admit he's not really shown anything in Destiny.

In any case, we haven't been shown anything to suggest that Kira's not the best MS pilot in the whole damn Cosmic Era world, and particularly not that he's lower than someone who has never so much as scratched Freedom in three confrontations so far.

All I can say is read very very carefully my initial assumptions:

Based on the last time we see these pilots fighting in their most recent MS:

This means Stella (in Destroy) vs Kira (in Freedom). The episode was mostly Kira vs Stella, followed by Shinn vs Stella.

So, all the other stuff doesn't count really. And if you think about it, if Kira can't even touch Destroy while Shinn did, that should tell you something. Use deductive reasoning, Kira focuses on Stella for what ten minutes of the show, and has nothing to show for it. Shinn comes in, and damages Destroy enough to see Stella in less than two minutes. Do the math. And let's see, who was in seed mode while not being able to touch Stella and who wasn't in seed mode while slicing up the armor in front of the cockpit?

The only way you get around that is by saying Impulse is a better MS than Freedom. Is that what you're implying?

After watching the episode, I think it's time for a new hierarchy of pilot skills. This is based on the last time we see these pilots fighting in their most recent MS:

Kira = Stella (they couldn't beat each other, while Stella was not messed up)

Shinn > Stella (when Stella was not messed up)

3xMurasame pilot > Sting

Sting = Athrun

Kira > Athrun

Kira > however many number of Murasame pilots they throw at him

Cagalli still useless, she launched several times, and as far as I can tell has done nothing

So, new hierarchy:

Shinn > Kira/Stella > 3xMursame pilots > Sting/Athrun > Cagalli

Oh I didn't forget one last important pilot/group, it's called EA. EA is represented mainly by Neo and his merry band of Windams.

Let's see, Neo is in charge, he sees Stella can't touch Freedom, but he sees Freedom's mothership in firing range. This is the place where the Freedom's pilot get his food and water, not to mention a comfortable bed and a hot spring. So instead of depriving him of the one thing that has sustained him, Neo continues to have Stella fire uselessly at Freedom. And of course, there is the band of Windams that basically sat back and did NOTHING.

So this act of stupidity leads to the ultimate insult: Cagalli > EA

sounds like an interesting episode, but if what you guys are saying is true, what the heck happened to these Murasame pilots? Did they get replaced by superduper alien clones? Too bad it'll take another 4 hours to download.

I really didn't think they did all that good in the previous outings. I'm sorry, but to the guys who said that they did a ton of damage to the Minerva, it was laughable what they actually did. Because the numbers they had in that episode, they should've sunk the Minerva without breaking a sweat.

I think the problem is like others have said, the EA totally suck

It's too bad, Shinn is growing a little too arrogant for his own good, his problem is not being faced with a tough decision where his actions will have an immediate and terrible consequence.

i.e. he watches Destroy blow away ZAFT troops, knowing it's Stella, then having the balls to kill her because it's the right thing to do. So far, his decisions have been relatively straight forward and fairly free of conflict. Kill his immediate enemy. That would force him to reflect a little.

Seem like the I hate Shinn crowd has gotten the writers attention during the last round of feedback poll

as for the autopsy, remember when Tony said there wouldn't be one, cause everyone wants to hush it up? You know why (uses his best Peter Griffith voice) because Jack is really an alien, and an autopsy would reveal that. So, they already have a fake Jack body prepared... ehehehehe...

Next season should be interesting, they should have CTU, but to a much smaller degree.

Happy ending for everyone but Jack.

And Audrey too I guess, but I don't like Audrey that much, so who cares.

Heck, there is even a happy ending for Mandy. Oh wait... seem to be forgetting someone... oh yeah, Behrooz, no happy ending for him cause someone in LA is still driving around with Behrooz in the back of a van. Don't know what to do with him.... well, may be they'll let him out next season.

Wonder what next season will be like. I wonder who will make the call to Jack, if Tony or Michelle stays, then it's likely, but if those two follow through and leaves. Then it'll be likely up to Chloe to call Jack, cause Palmer probably won't be able to do it.

actually, it seem like they are making things up as they go along. I swear it almost seem like they're polling their audience to see what's popular and then make the up the new episodes down the line to reflect viewer opinion.

Not enough Shinn, ok, we focus on Shinn

Not enough Kira, ok, here is Kira

Athrun is getting too much press, let's knock him down a bit

Cagalli is too whiny, ok Shinn shots at her

etc etc....

Yeah, especialy since more and more signs are pointing that Neo is Mwu. They could have made Jibril into Jamitov and Blue Cosmos into the Titans, but they opted to make him into a little girly man with a cat.

I'd say the worst person SEED had was Patrick Zala, the guy was willing to fire GENESIS at Earth despite the fact he'd beaten the Alliance's space fleet and a good number of ZAFT forces were in the line of fire. But even Patrick didn't go gassing whole colonies because some people there didn't agree with him. I guess Azrael was the closest thing SEED had to Scirocco, his group made the last three GAT-x units, and most likely the Dominion, and he let loose the Peacemaker unit against PLANT not Yakin Due, nuking either one would have ended war, but he opted to attack the target with civilians.

Patrick Zala is more like a Ghiren Zabi. The parallel is quite amazing, although he didn't kill his son, like Ghiren who managed to kill his dad.

GSD is at best a very watered down version of Zeta, although it's storyline differ in several aspects from Zeta, enough so that it constitutes its own story line. But the problem with the entire story seem to be that they can't decide who to focus on, one week it's the Kira/Athrun show, the next week it's the Shinn/Stella show. I think they're trying to weave several things in at once, but even if they bring off a good ending, the middle episodes (from 10 on) have been a bit lacking. At least the first few episodes were good setups.

And if the spoilers are true, Athrun's destiny will forever be someone who can't make up his mind which side he is on. The guy has defected so many times and fought on so many sides that you need a scorecard to keep track of who he is currently fighting for and why. To me, that's kind of poor character development.

They combined Bask, Jamitov, and Scirocco into this person called Neo... unfortunately, they found out a bit late that this was a big mistake. They should've just settled for a Scirocco.

Call me a throwback, but GSD has no villian that is equal to Scirroco in sheer intelligence and capability, hell, it doesn't even have a villian that's cruel like Bask. The best they've come up with is Dullindal, and Jibril.... and while Dullindal might still amount to something, it's become obvious that Jibril is just another loser.

Agreed on the power of Destroy, I'm glad they're finally demonstrating what little Stella can do. I mean come on, the other two used guns, this one was using knives to slice up people. She is vicious, and with Destroy, her true psychotic colors are showing. they should've gone after a major ZAFT base with that thing.

The only thing Destoy needs is a frigging beam chain saw, and it'd fit perfectly.

Uh oh, AA crew now has a case of mission creep....

moved from preventing Orb troops from engaging in combat and preserving Orb ideals to assaulting the Destroy (which as far as I can tell doesn't even have an Orb pilot)

how fun.

The duels were lots of fun too watch. Sidious was really entertaining, especially how he offed the three jedis that went along with Windu. Probably the worst of the duels was the first one, Dooku seem to go down really fast as previously suggested, this guy would've beat the crap out of Maul, and did beat up the other two, and the way he went, it was just no style. I was disapponted that he didn't even use many force powers.

It was also kind of entertaining to watch yoda and kenobi go through some of the clones. Sidious hit it on the head when he called Yoda the little green freak, because that's exactly what he was when he beat down all the clones. It wouldn't have been out of place if Yoda was laughing hysterically as he was chopping down the clones.

Just saw the movie... and the best I can say is oh well, at least it was just a matinee showing.

The good thing about the movie is the special effects, as if there is any surprise there. I could probably rewatch the movie a few times just to see the special effects. Not enough of the vehicles like Graham said. The opening sequence where the two fighters skimmed around the star destroyer was very nicely done. The level of details were great, and I wish they showed more of the battles. The fighting and the duels (since people didn't talk much during duels) was great.

Now, having praised the movie. They may as well have made it an animated feature. The acting was horrible. Ewan did a fair job as Obi Wan. But everyone else was horrid. I mean Jar Jar did a better acting job than the actors, and you guessed it, I liked him because he didn't talk. In all fairness, it wasn't their fault really, it was the poor dialogue all around.

Story wise, may be it was just me, but I almost cheered for Sidious when he was wiping the floor with the jedis, Mace was at best an arrogant bastard. At worst, he is the kind of good guy you secretly hope would just die. He flipped his mind really quick from you're going to be jailed to I have to kill you because there is no justice.

What else, the story just didn't feel like it had any emotional impact, I listened to the audio book, and the novelization was better done. But that's what I expected. When Anakin sliced up Mace, the emotional impact just didn't carry through in the acting at all, it was like oh, Anakin turned to the dark side... ok, that's nice.

It was the best of the three prequels, but doesn't hold much of a candle to the frst three episodes. Not even ROTJ which was horrid thanks to the Ewoks.

Behrooz? Who is that? is that one of Marwan's terror minons?

Oh, I know, he was the driver on the getaway car from last night.

If Mandy could cook, I'd marry her....

of course, after I take the precaution of putting a bomb permenantly on her that is directly tied to my own vital signs. i.e. if I expire, so does she.

This episode was actually quite nicely done. Still feel very rushed, but I can see how some time real world events can turn that way. I'm surprised Jack hasn't cracked yet, because it's a lot for one guy to handle in a 24 hour period no matter what support mechanism he has.

On the other hand, I'm of the opinion that Marwan need to survive, and that this day need to be extended into the next day (for next season). Something that I was really hoping for in season two.

Finally... if given a choice, would you take Marwan's rent a terrorist as back up or the CTU red shirts/field officers? At this point, I'm leaning toward the former given that the latter seem to be utterly ineffective.

The Arch Angel didn't help that much,, but it did fire a couple of blast next to the ORB ships to stop them from advancing closer to the Minvera. Even a single blast is consider help.

As for Rey's arm,, do you know why???, The ORB carrier was already sinking at the time,,order to abandon ship was given, everyone was abandoning ship, the Carrier was no longer attacking. But Rey and the Tristans was still shooting. They were disable because they were attacking a dead horse in a way. Shinn was jumping around disabling Ships at the time.

Come on what's with the hate,, if they were just protecting ORB why save the Minvera at all, wouldn't that end the battle super quick, along with lots more ORB soldier and ships surviving? Cagalli did try to talk to the ORB fleet once more to ask them to stop, but Shinn greeted her with a bunch of missiles before she can say much. And even after that she still blocked a raid from an team of Murasame that was about to attack the Minvera, her talks fail but the attack was delayed.

So with all this,, you really can't say the "The Minerva survived a fleet engagement by itself". Any bit of help is help, especially when you are in desperaty need of it.

Anyway,, I don't want this to go any longer since ep 30 will be releasing in 2 days,, so lets just leave the ep 28 debate to rest for now.

Kira's exact contributions to Minerva: disabled three Murasames, diabled Chaos.

Damage Kira did to Minerva: Wrecked Savior, blew up one Tristan, disabled Rey.

Now, that's actual damage done, what else? Tried to put down Shinn on numerous occasions, forcing Athrun to engage him so there is no repeat of Heine. Hence distracting Athrun from defence of Minerva. Tried to kill Shinn again when he was slicing apart Orb fleet, hence further endangering the Minerva.

In terms of help, Kira helped EA/Orb just a bit more than Minerva. AA did do more. But if they are truly intent on helping, they could have pull along side Minerva, and communicated their intentions. Which you'll note, none of the crew really did. Thankfully, Murrue was not that stupid.

As for Orb carrier sinking, it wasn't sinking fast enough. Ever hear of this physical phenomenon called momentum. It works like this, if you drive a car, and then let up on the gas, the car will slow, but it's momentum will still carry it far along unless someone hit the brakes. Same concept here. That carrier was still on a collision course, it was before Shinn sliced apart the bridge, so odds are the ship might have still been steerable. And Minerva didn't look like it could fly, if you were running Minerva would you take the chance? That would be awfully stupid.

The problem is Kira and company didn't have a clear objective, as in they didn't know what the hell they were doing. They wanted to protect Orb's ideals, and protect Orb troops. Those are conflicting objectives. To best protect Orb ideals, they need to get Orb to withdrawl. To best protect Orb troops, they should've sunk Minerva. So, what they opted to do was halfway, meaning, they tried to do both and did neither very well.

This doesn't take away from the fact Minerva got some help from AA, but they were also significantly hurt by AA.

As for ep 29, it wasn't clear where Dullindal stood, he was arguing against Klueze about fate. Klueze's idea is mankind is fated to wipe themselves out. On the other hand, his argument against fate also puts him against Kira/Lacus, after all, if you believe in fate, that's what brought those two together. You might say he could think Lacus is a part of the problem, and she is fated to keep causing trouble, and he is trying to change that fate. But again, very unclear what he is about, he's got a potential to go either way still. AA itself is a problem just because they do cause confusion on the battlefield, no one knows for sure what they do. Given what they've done so far, Dullindal wouldn't be unjustified in wanting to having AA removed in a pure military sense.

There is no doubt having a larger crew is more helpful. Especially true given the fact that Minerva seem to see far more damage that Archangel ever did. I mean episode 28 essentially had Minerva crippled. Probably 90% of its weapons inoperable, and so forth. Don't think AA ever saw that much damage, probably the closest it came was during the last epsiode in Seed.

heh heh, chibi minerva, how cute, do they have chibi AA too somewhere?

Besides that though, there is a question of logistics.  Minerva probably has better overall logistical support than AA.

That might be due to the fact that Minerva is not as automated as Archangel. Archangel never seems to have a crew larger than 50 people (heck there are probably only 20-some ppl on Archangel in Destiny). Minerva feels like there are at least 75-100 people on that ship.

By logistical support, I meant having a network of bases where you can draw resupplies, new MS, and so forth. Doesn't have anything to do with the amount of personnel on board.

Although it is a good point that AA probably have fewer people.

GL actually did carry quite a few MS. Let's see, at least 5, or 6 if you count the MA as an MS. But that ship is more or less like an AA class minus positron gun.

One wonders just what is the capacity for MS on both the Minerva and AA.

I think the largest number I ever saw Minerva carry was 5. AA had 4 at one point. Although if you look at Dominion, I think it had at least 6 to 8 judging from Seed. I get the feeling though that Minerva is never at its full complement, I wonder why... may be it's because they know that additional complement would be essentially like a bunch of red shirts.

Besides that though, there is a question of logistics. Minerva probably has better overall logistical support than AA.

why would stealing gundams be ridiculous... this is anime. After all, if you ratioed the number of stolen gundams vs unstolen gundams in the seed series, you come out with something like 1.3 to 1. It isn't so bad.... I read somewhere that someone considered stealing gundam to be a viable military strategy too. Right up there with flanking maneuvers, and blitzkreigs.

heck, if you start counting nonspecials like Murasames as gundams, then basically you'd start ending up with a ratio of 1 to 10000 (stolen vs unstolen). So, need less to say security is improving. heh heh

Everyone has weaknesses somewhere. May be Marwan just figured that the Chinese guy would be the most trustworthy of the bunch.

Ha ha, he doesn't know us Chinese people very well, we'd be more than happy to sell him out for room and board at the White House.

Like I said before though, this whole season was going a little too fast. I mean the best thing about season one is how it was on slow burn for a long time. This season, it seem like every episode had a body count attached. I hope they go a little slower for season five. I like the chess match that was in season one a little more than the fast pace action of season two. Now, if they only stay with Marwan as the main bad guy.... then all will be well.

By the way, anyone else looking forward to Heller's son getting tasered, needeled and generally being loved to death by Richards next week?

Heard about it, there was a link somewhere, but Fox will be crazy to let 24 go.

On the other hand, there is supposed to be a good chance that Tony/Michelle won't last very long due to external circumstances. So, they better grab a closet now before its too late.

The plots are flipping a little too quickly in this season. They need to have slowed things down, the consulate infiltration thing should've started about three hours earlier. The situation seem very rushed, now, I know it's supposed to simulate real life, but they're doing too good a job here.

The movie was not too bad for a hollywood piece of entertainment. After all, you don't really expect historical accuracy from a movie like this.

I wish they could've done the battle at the Horns of Hattin in much more dramatic fashion, although in reality, Saladin pretty much killed the idiot crusader forces by taking command of the sole source of water in the area. But the movie had to portray at least one Christian as a good guy. And Bloom's character was an idiot, all he had to do was say yes and he could've had it all, not to mention spare the war.

Historically, Saladin was a pretty fair guy, sure, he was a zealot in his own right, but the Muslims during that era was the most sophisticated around, the envy of the world if you will. Saladin was a good strategist, and was known just as much for his charity as his warrior spirit. I don't actually recall him making a deal with the Christian defenders, but generally said when Jerusalm was under Muslim rule but all faiths were welcome, something the movie didn't really mention.

What really took the Muslims down and gave Europe such a jumpstart into the age of enlightenment was the Mongols. They ripped through the middle east like a force of nature. They were an entirely different story. Nobody stopped the Mongols except themselves. For all practical purposes, the Mongols used tactics that were almost a millenia ahead of their time, mobile tactics, and if you really want to call it that, they used essentially blitzkreig tactics. It was all pretty interesting from a military prespective. Saladin, had he been alive probably couldn't have stopped the Mongols, heck, the WWII generals got a lot of their inspirations from what the Mongols did. The reason that the Mongols eventually got reduced to the dustbin of history was due to cultrual reasons rather than anything else. They were co-opted by all the cultures they conquered, and all their own internal wars. The only real fight they lost to the outsiders was Aun Jit, think I spelled that right, and that's because they were really really outnumbered by the Mamelukes.

I think the Muslims are probably still sore at the Mongols about the stuff that happened a thousand years ago.... it set them back by a lot.