Official Gundam Seed Destiny Thread

[azrael]

What irritates me about the newer Zaft pilots are their apparent lackadaisical or straight up disrespect for Athrun. Isn't Athrun an ace pilot with a reputation among Zaft like how Char was to Zeon? I remember if anyone saw Char, Zeon pilots would wet their pants in excitement. Same thing happened with Anavel Gato and other Zeon pilots. I would have expected Athrun to pimp slap the poo out of Lunamaria when she was poking fun at him and asking if he was going to turn tail and run right before they launched to stop the colony drop.

But those ZAFT pilots have never seen Athrun in action. Along the lines of "different generation" (even though they really aren't far apart in age). The disrespect is along the lines of "what can you do?" (which they found out quickly). This generation of pilots never saw the war, so they don't quite understand Athrun. From Athrun's POV, I'm sure his character is saying, "You kids don't know what you're getting into. You haven't seen what I've seen. Tease me all you want but when your guts are all over the cockpit and you're crying for mommy, don't look to me for help." Until this generation of pilots has seen what Athrun has seen, or matured a bit, Athrun will see them as kids who have yet to learn history's mistakes. It's that level of maturity that this generation of pilots will have to work up to.

[Graham]

Wow !

Just started browsing through this post as I am a big gundam seed fan just to notice that Graham is actualy buying gundam toys too...

Graham, I tought you hated gundam, did the "borg" assimilate you too ?

I don't actually hate Gundam. Hate is too strong a word and I don't feel that strongly about it one way or another.

It would be true to say I dislike a great deal of Gundam (MSG, Z, ZZ, G, X, W, EW, Turn A). Mainly I don't like the mecha designs and characters from those shows.

There is some Gundam I do actually quite like (V, 0080, 0083, 08MST, CCA, F91, Sentinel). The jury is still out on SEED (which I'm giving another chance) and Destiny (which I've just started watching).

My problem is that I'm addicted to military robot toys (and in the past models), so from the 1980s until now I have actually bought a lot of Gundam stuff, but mostly during those slow periods when there is not many Macross toys or models being released. Obviously in the last 5 years, I haven't been buying much Gundam due to the flood of Macross merchandise from Yamato, Bandai etc, which is only now just starting to slow down.

I'm never able to sustain my interest in Gundam for very long though, so whereas I would never dream of getting rid of my Macross stuff, my Gundam toys and models tend to get thrown out, given away or sold off on ebay every couple of years.

Graham

[Graham]

Getting back on topic, anybody know in which episode does Athrun start to pilot the Saviour Gundam?

I'm liking that they have made the CIWS guns on the Destiny Gundams a more realistic calibre, i.e. 20mm. One thing that annoyed me about the Strike Gundam from SEED was that the two head-mounted CIWS guns were listed as being 75mm multi-barreled cannons. I'm sorry, no matter how hi-tech you go, it would be impossible to fit guns that size into the head of a Gundam, but 20mm is a more realistic proposition.

Graham

[Anubis]

What irritates me about the newer Zaft pilots are their apparent lackadaisical or straight up disrespect for Athrun.  Isn't Athrun an ace pilot with a reputation among Zaft like how Char was to Zeon?  I remember if anyone saw Char, Zeon pilots would wet their pants in excitement.  Same thing happened with Anavel Gato and other Zeon pilots.  I would have expected Athrun to pimp slap the poo out of Lunamaria when she was poking fun at him and asking if he was going to turn tail and run right before they launched to stop the colony drop.

But those ZAFT pilots have never seen Athrun in action. Along the lines of "different generation" (even though they really aren't far apart in age). The disrespect is along the lines of "what can you do?" (which they found out quickly). This generation of pilots never saw the war, so they don't quite understand Athrun. From Athrun's POV, I'm sure his character is saying, "You kids don't know what you're getting into. You haven't seen what I've seen. Tease me all you want but when your guts are all over the cockpit and you're crying for mommy, don't look to me for help." Until this generation of pilots has seen what Athrun has seen, or matured a bit, Athrun will see them as kids who have yet to learn history's mistakes. It's that level of maturity that this generation of pilots will have to work up to.

They all spoke highly of Athrun as a great ace amongst themselves when they weren't sure if it was him or not, but once they knew the truth his whole "I'm Alex Dino. Grrr." thing made them poke him a little so he would drop the act, which he finally has.

Athrun's rep is known, but the rumor spread that he cut and went to Orb. He wasn't around for any new pilots to look up to him, but they did hear of him. That's who they wanted to see in fact, not that Alex Dino sulking guy.

The Savior hasn't been even mentioned in the show yet, though I'd imagine within a few episodes it'll be there. A gift from Chairman Dullindal.

Edited November 25, 2004 by Anubis

[DarkPhoenix]

I posted a review of those pretties earlier, if you didn't see it the first time and want to see how nice the Force and Sword Impulses are. 

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=11519

Thanks for posting the link to the review.

I picked up a Sword Impulse MSiA yesterday, but still couldn't find a Force Impulse anywhere as all the shops in HK had sold out, so I broke down and ordered one from HLJ.

Happy to report no real QC problems with either my Sword or Blast Impulse MSiA. The Blast Impulse has a bit of a balance broblem with those big guns and I wish the figures had more sideways ankle articulation, but those are my only gripes.

I'm quite impressed that Bandai has started using some screws on these toys. Overall I'm very happy with these toys (this from someone who swore he would never buy another MSiA again).

Can't wait for the Destiny ZAKU MSiA toys coming out next year, they look so nice. Hopefully, the GQ line will prove popular and we will see some GQ Destiny Zakus. That would be even nicer than MSiA.

Graham

Welcome!

I'm rather impressed with Sword Impulse if only for the one MAJOR improvement over the Sword Strike Gundam.. or, hell, MOST MSiA's. Its large beams and swords are made of hard material so they won't droop under their own weight.

How is Blust/Blast (Is this like the Aile/Air thing Strike's packs had?), anyways? I don't plan on getting it, but I am curious as to what material they made its big guns out of. I plan on picking up Blitz and Gaia, so I'm curious if they learned their lesson and are making the heavier, warpage-prone weapons out of the harder material in general now or if Sword Impulse is the exception.

[Graham]

How is Blust/Blast (Is this like the Aile/Air thing Strike's packs had?), anyways? I don't plan on getting it, but I am curious as to what material they made its big guns out of. I plan on picking up Blitz and Gaia, so I'm curious if they learned their lesson and are making the heavier, warpage-prone weapons out of the harder material in general now or if Sword Impulse is the exception.

I checked the packaging and thankfully it is written as 'Blast Impulse'. Blust Impulse just sounds so silly .

The barrels of the two big long-range beam cannon are the normal MSiA soft PVC . However, the hinged opening covers on the top of the barrels (where the beam javelin handles are stored) are made of hard ABS, which sort of acts as a stiffener for the barrels and should help to prevent or slow down warpage.

I'd definitely recommend the Blast Impulse as IMO it looks extremely cool with the black chest coloring.

Graham

[DarkPhoenix]

I checked the packaging and thankfully it is written as 'Blast Impulse'. Blust Impulse just sounds so silly .

The barrels of the two big long-range beam cannon are the normal MSiA soft PVC . However, the hinged opening covers on the top of the barrels (where the beam javelin handles are stored) are made of hard ABS, which sort of acts as a stiffener for the barrels and should help to prevent or slow down warpage.

I'd definitely recommend the Blast Impulse as IMO it looks extremely cool with the black chest coloring.

Graham

Was kind of afraid of that. Hopefully the ABS piece does as you say and braces it. Gaia has a rather large sniper-rifle styled beam rifle, and Blitz has that big weapon system for its right arm so I'm hoping they will be ABS or mostly AMS. Otherwise I'll have to ring up Bob and get some information on Enzyte.

[Magnus]

I just got in the Blast Impulse and Saviour MSIA's

Blast Impulse is definetely the best of the three QC wise - an excellent figure, very stiff joints. The Blast pack is also pretty cool, but baaaaack heavy! It's hard manuevering Impulse's hands onto the grips of the large blasters when they're deployed, but that's a minor nitpick.

Definetely a cool figure, especially with the aforementioned Beam Javelin holders in the cannons.

Saviour is great too: the thing about Impulse is that compared to previous Seed MSIA's its tiny. Saviour is on par with them though, and is a great figure! The Transformation is easy, and no pieces fall off. I'd definetely recommend getting this figure.

[Bob_Coffee]

Seing as i havent piped in on my opinons on ep 6 yet, i figure might as well now.I really liked the ep, seing the zaku's beat the crap out of the gundams was a great delight. i really do get the feeling phase shift aside these zaku's in general are far far better than your adverage CF suit. Yzak's custom zaku beats the pants off duel, and azuran did a good amount of damage himself.

Also Seing as Minerva and the ZAFT forces broke the colony into 3 peices, i wonder how big the drop is going to be? i assume, its not going to be UC level damage, but i think it'll be enough to start the whole anti-cordinator attude amoung the EA again, and start things up.the pacing is so much better than SEED's was, lets hope they keep up the momentium.I have a feeling freedom is going to be showing up soon(like with in the next 4 eps),unless kira is going to pilot a ghetto suit for a few eps, cause it looks like from the end of ep 6 he's going to be reentering the pictures.

looking forward to ep 7 =D

[Graham]

Just wondering why the Impulse Gundam was designed without beam sabers as standard equipment when recent mass-produced suits like the Strike Dagger, Dagger L and Windam all have beam sabers as standard equipment?

This means if Impulse is not equipped with either a Force, Sword or Blast mission pack, it has no melee weapons except it's folding knives. And let's face it, those folding knives while looking good for doing cool anime poses are pretty useless when facing other mobile suits armed with beam sabers, beam axes or polearms, that is unless your opponents is extremely imcompetent.

This was a deficency of the original Strike Gundam, so I just find it surprising that it wasn't rectified for the more modern Impulse.

Graham

[azrael]

I have a feeling freedom is going to be showing up soon(like with in the next 4 eps),unless kira is going to pilot a ghetto suit for a few eps, cause it looks like from the end of ep 6 he's going to be reentering the pictures.

Eventually it will show. Speculation is pointing to by the end of the 1/4th point of the series, we will see Freedom again.

Just wondering why the Impulse Gundam was designed without beam sabers as standard equipment when recent mass-produced suits like the Strike Dagger, Dagger L and Windam all have beam sabers as standard equipment?

Simple. Impulse is a prototype. It's designed to enter combat yet it is still a concept mech. Don't expect it to have all its bells and whistles all at once.

[DarkPhoenix]

Just wondering why the Impulse Gundam was designed without beam sabers as standard equipment when recent mass-produced suits like the Strike Dagger, Dagger L and Windam all have beam sabers as standard equipment?

This means if Impulse is not equipped with either a Force, Sword or Blast mission pack, it has no melee weapons except it's folding knives. And let's face it, those folding knives while looking good for doing cool anime poses are pretty useless when facing other mobile suits armed with beam sabers, beam axes or polearms, that is unless your opponents is extremely imcompetent.

This was a deficency of the original Strike Gundam, so I just find it surprising that it wasn't rectified for the more modern Impulse.

Graham

I think it doesn't have beam sabers by default because it's not meant to go into combat without one of the weapons packs. Two of the three have melee beam weapons (Force's standard beam sabers, Sword's anti-ship beam sabers and beam boomerangs, which also seem intended to double as dagger-ish weapons) and the third (Blast) isn't meant to get into melee range anyways. The daggers are most likely just intended as an absolute last-ditch weapon for when they've drained the primary battery, thus losing the power to the weapons packs. That's all Kira ever used HIS for, that I know of.

[Druna Skass]

I'm wondering if we'll see some kind of SEED mode use packs for the Strike Rouge and possibly Impulse (provided of course that Shin has that ability).

Oh and anyone know where I can download some episodes, I've been having to rely on the MAHQ summaries to find out what the hell is going on since San Francisco State is scared of the riaa and I can't get a damn though though P2P sites with my conection there.

[azrael]

I think it doesn't have beam sabers by default because it's not meant to go into combat without one of the weapons packs. Two of the three have melee beam weapons (Force's standard beam sabers, Sword's anti-ship beam sabers and beam boomerangs, which also seem intended to double as dagger-ish weapons) and the third (Blast) isn't meant to get into melee range anyways.

Blast does have a Beam Javelin (and I've seen the lineart for Blast so for sure all Silhouette packs have some sort of beam-melee weapon). And the MSiAs also have the javelins.

http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/seed-destiny/zgmf-x56sy.htm

Shinn will probably have SEED mode, but he needs a reason to go into it. Shinn hasn't been placed in that situation yet.

Oh and anyone know where I can download some episodes, I've been having to rely on the MAHQ summaries to find out what the hell is going on since San Francisco State is scared of the riaa and I can't get a damn though though P2P sites with my conection there.

If SF State has blocked Bittorrent (Go to Animesuki.com) and all other P2P apps and other stuff, you're SOL. You're only choice after that would be newsgroups.

[F360°]

isn't there a anime club there,, you can try asking them, i'm sure they will burn couple of eps for you.

[Graham]

Or the HK bootleg DVD of eps 1-4 is out. I'm sure there are several places online you could order it.

Graham

[Anubis]

I think it doesn't have beam sabers by default because it's not meant to go into combat without one of the weapons packs. Two of the three have melee beam weapons (Force's standard beam sabers, Sword's anti-ship beam sabers and beam boomerangs, which also seem intended to double as dagger-ish weapons) and the third (Blast) isn't meant to get into melee range anyways.

Blast does have a Beam Javelin (and I've seen the lineart for Blast so for sure all Silhouette packs have some sort of beam-melee weapon). And the MSiAs also have the javelins.

http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/seed-destiny/zgmf-x56sy.htm

Shinn will probably have SEED mode, but he needs a reason to go into it. Shinn hasn't been placed in that situation yet.

Oh and anyone know where I can download some episodes, I've been having to rely on the MAHQ summaries to find out what the hell is going on since San Francisco State is scared of the riaa and I can't get a damn though though P2P sites with my conection there.

If SF State has blocked Bittorrent (Go to Animesuki.com) and all other P2P apps and other stuff, you're SOL. You're only choice after that would be newsgroups.

I say Shinn will hit SEED Mode when he meets Kira, looks at the Freedom, remembers it was Freedom shooting at the ground, looks at Kira, and then tries to kill him.

That sucks about schools blocking P2P and bittorrent. Ruins the point of even having a T connection. What about IRC or a different fileshare like Shareaza? Nothing works?

Edited November 26, 2004 by Anubis

[Graham]

I think it doesn't have beam sabers by default because it's not meant to go into combat without one of the weapons packs.

That makes sense I guess.

Graham

[Bob_Coffee]

Just watched ep7, good stuff the colony drop did alot more damage than i expected, not quite UC levels, but how it showed the distruction in various parts of the world was nice. including massive title waves.As expected Lord jibril the blue cosmos guy is going to use this to start anti-cordinator conflict, even more intresting,is the fact he has the footage of the ZAFT sepreatist(if the end of ep6 is any indecation and the flashbacks in ep7,its safe to say, the ZAFT sepreatist, are leftovers from the war still loyal to Azuran's dead father) as they were doing the whole colony drop thing.

Plant of cource sends aid to earth, and minerva lands and decides to head for ORB. about the zaku,Damn its actually pretty damn strong, it survived reentry mainly intact. Impluse of cource cheated and used the traditional gundam staple of using the shield to protect yourself during reentry. in the middle of the ep, Azuran talks to lumeria. Lumeria of cource is well aware of azurans reputation, and seems to actually respect him more after he showed her up on target practice and dropped the whole Char-like alas thing. after that cagali appeares, says some stuff then Shin decides to bitch and whine again. the ep ends with kira and lacus on the beach, of the island with the orphans. Ep8 should be intresting with shin returning to orb. and the likelyhood of kira sans mobile suit showing up. the funny thing tho, ive noticed,so far in all the scenes kira has appeared in, he hasnt said a damn thing.:/

Another intresting note, is theres a scene back at plant in this ep, of the chariman, and a girl in shadow who appears to have the same slioquette as lacus(clone?).

overall looking forward to ep 8 entitled "junction".

[Anubis]

OK, so the 2nd lacus from the opening and ending is going to show up soon. Can't wait to see wether she's a clone or an imposter, and more important, what they have her do.

[azrael]

OK, so the 2nd lacus from the opening and ending is going to show up soon. Can't wait to see wether she's a clone or an imposter, and more important, what they have her do.

Actually, she shows up in this episode. No dialogue though. The dialogue we hear from Lacus this episode is from the "with Kira" Lacus.

One thing about the footage of the Zala-faction GINNs. All that footage was from before Girty Lue entered the combat area. The Girty Lue did not get to Junius 7 until after Dearka and his team already set up the operation on Junius 7. Which reminded me of something from ep. 5. Jibril was quite ready to start something but the rest of the BC council decided to take a wait-and-see reaction. After they left, Jibril took that response a tad negatively. And now he has footage of the GINNs setting up Junius 7 to fall.

[F360°]

For ep 7,, all i can say is , Moving targets,BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM.. , every one looks at Athrun .

And kira spoke for the first time,, "I know" or somthing like that.

[Graham]

Just wondering given that the technology for N-Jammer Cancellers already exists, why don't the new MS in Destiny, like the Impulse feature nuclear reactors as their power source? Why go back to using short endurance batteries? is it a cost issue?

Same question applies about Trans-Phase Armor. If it's superior to Phase Shift, why don't the newer MS have it?

Graham

[Bariaburu Faita]

Just wondering given that the technology for N-Jammer Cancellers already exists, why don't the new MS in Destiny, like the Impulse feature nuclear reactors as their power source? Why go back to using short endurance batteries? is it a cost issue?

Graham

At the end of Gundam Seed, that technology was outlawed. Won`t be long before they show up again though.

[Graham]

Ah I see. Thanks. I'm still only up to ep # 34 of SEED, so I didn't know about the technology being banned.

Graham

[Anubis]

Ah I see. Thanks. I'm still only up to ep # 34 of SEED, so I didn't know about the technology being banned.

Graham

The Trans-Phase Shift was developed by the Alliance and was used on the Raider, Forbidden, and Calamity Gundams. Zaft didn't have it, that's why their own Gundams (Freedom through Impulse) have the original Phase Shift.

As part of the peace treaty (made after the show ends) the Mirage Colloid and N-Jammer Canceller became illegal items.

Seed Destiny has no mention of N-Jammers themselves yet though. Maybe they'll mention soon wether the ones on earth were disabled. I would imagine those would have been taken offline somehow after the war, but would still be used around PLANT so someone doesn't try to set a nuke off.

I only got to skim the Ep. 7 this morning. I liked how they showed the individual fragments that didn't burn up do their own damage. Not one HUGE impact, but a bunch of smaller ones, creating pretty widespread destruction that way. The Zaku also did the "hide behind the shield" bit, as you see it leaning in shoulder first, with Athrun worried about the leg damage affecting his descent.

Bless the designers for having Zaku's at the forefront in this show.

It would be really cool if Lowe and co. were at Orb too when the Minerva gets there, and some of the Astray people get some screen time. Some Zaku sparring would be nice as well. The Archangel should be in one of Orb's docks as well.

BTW Graham, don't forget the Astray manga. It fills a few plot holes in addition to just being pretty good. The 3 Astray Girls (Cagalli's friends) get a good deal of time in the manga as well. Gold Frame rocks.

[Magnus]

I love Seed! You know a show is good when the preview for the next ep shows no MS action, yet you're still eagerly awaiting it.

From what i've read, the 4 new Gundams in Destiny can all have power 'beamed' to them by their mother ships - if you notice in their startup sequences, the "N" in the G.U.N.D.A.M. acronym is replaced from "Nuclear" to "Network". We just haven't seen this feature used in the show yet.

The only niggling point I have about Destiny right now is ZAFT's use of Gundams. Mainly, why? They weren't the ones who created the Gundams in the first place, why would they want to so blatantly use an EA design, especially when they've created their own version of a Gundam - the Zaku? It just doesn't really seem to make much sense. I think I would've preferred Chaos, Gaia, Abyss, and especially Impulse to have been created by the Earth Alliance -

That way you could see a design progression in the EA suits - Buster to Calamity to Abyss. Blitz to Raider to Gaia and so on. Sword Impulse looks a hell of a lot like Sword Calamity.

Also, from the way things are happening in the story, I have a feeling that the Saviour Gundam will have been produced by ORB.

[Anubis]

Nope, the Savior also has a ZGMF- prefix so it's Zaft made as well.

Who knows why? Easiest explanation is because someone has to make the show's Gundams. Have to go with suspension of disbelief as far as Zaft crafting their own Gundams. Maybe they had a "everything you can do we can do better" thought pattern for it.

A Gundam is required by law to have the recognizable characteristics. Except in G-Gundam, where everything was a Gundam.

[azrael]

That way you could see a design progression in the EA suits - Buster to Calamity to Abyss. Blitz to Raider to Gaia and so on. Sword Impulse looks a hell of a lot like Sword Calamity.

The dots don't quite connect for "Buster to Calamity to Abyss. Blitz to Raider to Gaia and so on."

It's more like Duel+Buster+Strike to Calamity to Dagger (Long Dagger, Buster Dagger, Gunbarrel Dagger) to Dagger L to Windam.

Blitz to Forbidden to Forbidden Blue to Deep Forbidden.

ZAFT's Gundams follow the trend from ZAFT's MS.

BuCUE + LaGOWE to Gaia

GOOhN + ZnO to Abyss

GINN + CGUE + GuAIZ + Providence to Chaos (However, Chaos lacks the DRAGOON system and replaces that with wireless gunbarrels, which is a great improvement vs. the EA wired gunbarrels on Moebius Zero, Gunbarrel Striker, and Exus).

DINN leads to Saviour.

Nope, the Savior also has a ZGMF- prefix so it's Zaft made as well.

Yep. Magazine previews indicate that Saviour won't show till episode 9 or 10 (forgot which). It will be a present from Gilbert to Athrun. Also next week's episode is suppose to show that ORB has slowly been making deals with EA....If that is, ORB is playing quite a game playing both sides.

[wolfx]

GINN + CGUE + GuAIZ + Providence to Chaos (However, Chaos lacks the DRAGOON system and replaces that with wireless gunbarrels, which is a great improvement vs. the EA wired gunbarrels on Moebius Zero, Gunbarrel Striker, and Exus).

I think the X-Astray aka Dreadnaught lies somewhere in there as well...possibly next to providence.

Apart from Gundam evolutions, its kinda funny how the initial Gundam prototypes were mass produced into the Daggers aka "replace head use same body" and then dumb it down further by removing phase shift and a beamsaber. Daggers were from Strike, and there were Duel-mass productions in Destiny ep 2 or 3 which had guncannon-shoulder-cannons.

PS: Someone refresh my memory, Kira rewrote the whole OS for Naturals to pilot MS....but shortly after that the EA attacked ORB with Daggers and the 3 crazies....so I guess the EA already had an OS to pilot MS's? I had the impression that Kira made the OS and without it, the EA were fish in a barrel...weird that it just occured to me.

[Anubis]

The EA wasn;t sitting idle on its own OS, just like ORB was developing their Astray OS.

The Original 5 gundams were barely pilotable by the naturals. Mwu said the test pilots were barely able to move them, just like the trouble shown with the Astray girls barely able to move the Astrays before Kira gave them a hand with the OS (Lowe's crew in the Astray manga also gave a hand).

The EA was finalyl able to finish their OS which allowed them to mass produce the Daggers, and the crazy trio's Gundams. Since the new natural-OS was still new, the Daggers were the best they could probably manage at the time. Now they've had two years to improve more, they will crank out mass-production models like the Windam.

Nobody's been idle in their development.

As for ORB, they played both sides during thee first war, staying neutral. They helped the EA develop the original 5 gundams (why Cagalli's father agreed to that I don't know, maybe to help level the playing field since Zaft was starting to win, but it ended up a decision that bit them in the ass when the EA invaded ORB). They also maintained ties with Plant. When the EA invaded, ORB could have requested Zaft support to bail them out, but they didn't since that would only draw them in deeper. ORB's best chance at survival has been to be buddy-buddy with everybody. The EA is cannabalistic though (took over South America for cooperating with Plant), and are in a position to exert some pressure on ORB. The reason Cagalli went to ORB in the first episode of Destiny was because the EA was complaining to them about the people emmigrating from Orb to Plant, an end result being their expertise kind of ported ORB tech over to Zaft. The EA as usual bitched about it. ORB has had to maintain a hard balance to stick it out on it's own like they have.

[azrael]

Apart from Gundam evolutions, its kinda funny how the initial Gundam prototypes were mass produced into the Daggers aka "replace head use same body" and then dumb it down further by removing phase shift and a beamsaber. Daggers were from Strike, and there were Duel-mass productions in Destiny ep 2 or 3 which had guncannon-shoulder-cannons.

PS: Someone refresh my memory, Kira rewrote the whole OS for Naturals to pilot MS....but shortly after that the EA attacked ORB with Daggers and the 3 crazies....so I guess the EA already had an OS to pilot MS's? I had the impression that Kira made the OS and without it, the EA were fish in a barrel...weird that it just occured to me.

The Dagger-Ls are decendents of the original Daggers. The 2 cannons you see on those Dagger-Ls are striker packs, so-to-speak (mission-variable armaments). Duel's mass-produced Daggers are the Duel Daggers (or Long Daggers as the were originally called).

http://www.mahq.net/mecha/gundam/index.htm

And as we move down the line, the Windams are the decendents of the Daggers.

Concerning the OS, lots of stuff gets mentioned in the Astray mangas. Not to mention notes from the producers that doesn't get heard much. In fact, the treaty stuff, no N-Jammer Cancellers and nukes of any kind, that was a note from the producers. In fact, all those notes that Mark Simmons put up on the official site, that's all material from the producers. Not much of that stuff is mentioned in the series. It's a good idea if you read other forums and info sites (like Gunota) from time to time.

As for ORB, they played both sides during thee first war, staying neutral.

Word from the grapevine indicates that ORB will actually be siding with EA instead of staying neutral this time.

[Anubis]

As for ORB, they played both sides during thee first war, staying neutral.

Word from the grapevine indicates that ORB will actually be siding with EA instead of staying neutral this time.

After a kinda successful Colony Drop by Zala faction extremists, that might be plausible for Orb to take Earth's side this time as a result, with popular opinion overriding anything Cagalli would be able to do to stop it.

The BC will kick the propoganda machine into overdrive, stir up all kinds of anti-coordinator hatred, and Plant will be in a pretty pickle. I would imagine after this drop a lot of the coordinators remaining in Orb might bolt and take off for Plant fearing for their safety. That wouldn't leave a good impact on Orb either.

[Anubis]

A partial list of the damage from the colony fragments that was either said or shown.

In a nutshell: all over the world (as if watching the light show wasn't enough to know that.) As Shinn pointed out: the coordinators are basically screwed. Enough important places to piss everyone off. Combine this with the footage of the rouge Ginn's and the flare motors.

Rome

Shanghai

Gobi Desert

Quebec

Philadelphia

Part of the Great Wall of China

Northern Atlantic (New York was shown flooded)

Greece (right on the Parthenon)

and kind of harsh: The orphanage Kira, Lacus, and co. were living at.

[Druna Skass]

(why Cagalli's father agreed to that I don't know, maybe to help level the playing field since Zaft was starting to win, but it ended up a decision that bit them in the ass when the EA invaded ORB).

Uzumi wanted to steal the Alliance's MS tech to upgrade ORB's defence forces. Basicaly he didn't want ORB to be left behind in the arms race.

As far as I know the Red Frame still has it's orginal OS, Lowe just has his outdated computer pluged into it helping him pilot it.