/m/ — Why did SEED not take off/fail in the west? Not counting Des

>>23869769
Can you seriously not come up with your own spam anymore?

>>23873416
That's a thread about Wing, this is a thread about SEED.

Because it sucks.

No team of good guy gundams.
It only aired on saturdays as opposed to playing all week long.
UC kind of soured newcomers on the show

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I haven't seen it so removing anything I've heard about crappy writing: I just really don't like the look of the mechs. I think it's an ugly aesthetic with weird design choices, and I have no desire to look at them for a bunch of episodes of an anime.

>>23873409 (OP)
Define the west. Do you mean just Europe, Europe, NA, SA and Australia, just NA, just SA or just the US? Because SEED has wildly disparate levels of popularity depending on region and individual country.

>>23873409 (OP)

>Didn't have action scenes every episode.

>Protagonist who fights even though he doesn't want to isn't a very popular archetype in the West.
Kira gets over it eventually but people won't stick for 20+ episodes until that.

>No nostalgia for the original Gundam
SEED was basically a MSG reboot, but people outside of Japan aren't attached to MSG in the first place.

The biggest reason is how it aired. It ran in that weird time when toonami was dying but adult swim had not yet taken off. Being relegated to just Saturday nights was a death sentence.

>>23873687
>SEED was basically a MSG reboot, but people outside of Japan aren't attached to MSG in the first place.
People in Japan aren't attached to MSG either, unless they were some weird otaku who was still clutching onto it even though their peers grew up and moved away from anime in general. Watching chuubas, it's actually interesting to learn how most of them only know Gundam from SEED, and the SEED Freedom movie mogging every single UC movie in terms of revenue shows that SEED is more relevant to audiences in the modern day than UC is.

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>>23873755
I am 37 and I still haven't seen SEED, but I've seen all of Zeta like three times.

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>>23873620
the only suit I don't hate is the Strike Dagger and that's only because it's a discount GM

>>23873782
>Jew
>ucfaggot
CHECKS THE FUCK OUT!

>>23873409 (OP)
it happened right as Anime hit a bit of a downturn in the US commercially that took a couple years to start turning around and that derailed Gundam in particular to such a degree that it took ages to recover as a franchise in the West

>>23874093
>strike dagger cannot use strike packs
>dagger can use strike packs
What were they thinking?

>>23873409 (OP)
Because:

1. UC Gundam is just World War 2 in space, but told from the Japanese perspective that "war is bad" and 'look how tragic war is!' style of writing. UC Gundam is not popular in the West. Seed is just a retelling of UC Gundam with some extra twists added in. Therefore Seed is not popular in the West.

2. Seed is overly focused on character drama first. Action is secondary. The drama is also very sappy and borderline soap opera.

3. Seed pilots cry a lot and are really feminine.


Meanwhile Americans:


1. Do not consider World War 2 a "tragedy" like Japan does. Americans view World War 2 as a generally righteous and necessary war. And they love stories that celebrate and honor heroes. That's why so many WW2 movies and stories have been made in the West.

2. Americans want a greater emphasis on action. Writing is still important, but action can't be ignored. Americans love action movies and explosions.

3. Americans generally do not like feminine male war heroes.

---------------

This is why Gundam Wing was so popular in the West. The first 15-ish episodes of Gundam Wing are packed with almost everything Americans love. The last 15 episodes of Gundam Wing have a similar vibe as well.


No other Gundam has replicated that formula. Not because it's hard, but because Bandai is a Japanese company, and the Bandai Executives prioritize Japanese tastes first.

It's a double edged sword. What's popular in Japan isn't always popular in America.

The reserve is also true. Unpopular anime in Japan tend to be popular in America. For example the "Big O" anime was a failure in Japan, but was a huge success in America. In fact, Americans loved it so much that they paid to make Big O Season 2. Same thing with Cowboy Bebop. It wasn't popular in Japan, and toy sales were horrible. Meanwhile Cowboy Bebop was massively popular in America. A massive success. It was so popular that the Americans were mostly responsible for the Cowboy Bebop movie getting produced.

>>23873687
>Kira gets over it eventually
No he didn't he double down on that. Kira's thing before his first death was that, he wanted to do the best he could to help out his friends, even though his one best friend is on the team that started the whole shit, and his other friends were unsure of his loyalty and thought he couldn't be trusted.

>>23874339
He does, but it takes him all the way until the movie to do so which obviously didn't exist back then.

>>23874346
No he double down on not the "No I won't fight" thing like the moment he turns up in Destiny. It's because of the way he is on destiny that makes people misremember what he was actually like in SEED.

So why do ESLs like SEED so much?

>>23874360
Because it was marketed to them in Japan, like all other Gundam shows.

>>23874360
What's the alternative?

>>23873409 (OP)
It was never freaking on and episodes were impossible to follow. It's almost like they aired random episodes not the serial. Then when they did air it in serial you forgot everything that happened beforehand.

I just remembered the tamaki nami songs and still play them while driving. But I remember SEED as a whole because I filled JP stuffs and play SRW.

>>23874421
I just don't understand why SEED is so popular in Southeast Asia. Was it aired on TV at a good time when a lot of kids could watch it?

>>23874447
There's no other good Gundam series to latch on to.

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>>23874469
Really? I had no idea. I never even tried to watched SEED. That's crazy how this franchise lasted 50 years with only one good entry.

>>23874472
You are trying to be ironic but failing hard

>That's crazy how this franchise lasted 50 years with only one good entry.
Without Seed, the Gundam franchise would have lasted only half as long. Learn your history scrub.

The 1990s was a terrible time for Gundam in Japan. Bandai kept spamming Gundam series, but none of them were that popular with Japan. Ratings and sales kept falling. It got so bad that they had to cancel Gundam X.

Seed literally saved the Gundam franchise from ruin. Japan absolutely loved Seed. Lacus and Kira became the most top voted couple in anime magazines. The characters dominated popularity polls for anime characters too. Especially Lacus. Anime magazine companies literally had to re-write the rules to disqualify Lacus. Fans kept voting Lacus to number 1 for YEARS after the show ended, and no other female anime character could take the top spot.

The Seed anime brought in so much merchandise sales and money that Bandai posted massive profits. Seed literally helped fund future series like Gundam 00. So yes. When you talk about Gundam Seed, you will do it with respect in your mouth you scrub.

>>23874518
I don't watch any AUs, and if the franchise stopped at 00 I wouldn't really even care.

>>23874103
>Jew
Thats a Muzzie

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>>23873782
> I've seen all Zeta three times

You are truly a good lad. Z is the best of shows.

>>23873692
That graveyard timeslot and waiting up for it made me love it more. Things are just better late at night when you're younger, before your soul is weighed down by jaded adulthood and gravity

>>23874518
Generally it's understood that a thing being popular doesn't necessarily make it good, but when it comes to Seed there's always ardent defences like this because thing popular (japan) therefore good.
Wow, no shit the Brilliant Japanman self-insert ubermensch and his yamato nadeshiko hand-me-down wife were top picks - they're designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator in JP. Much like all of Seed.

>>23874288
>Americans generally do not like feminine male war heroes.
They do nowadays

If I watched 0079 is there any point in watching SEED?

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>>23873409 (OP)
because instead of the UC's military sci-fi or Wing's philosophical musings on combat, SEED offered a plot on the level of a soap opera with enough cuckoldry to make you sick

>>23874518
I genuinely don't care, if gundam died that would've been fine too, things have to end eventually.

>>23873409 (OP)
It's a goddamned sci-fi soap opera with robots, people for some reason love drama for the sake of drama.

>>23874660
Only Sai really got cucked, the Kira and Athrun wife swap was consensual. Though I still contest there was no reason for destroying the true OTP of the series. Dude's genes are so broken and manufactured there's no way incest will cause a problem

>>23873692
>>23874563
Can't forget the disco laser guns.

>>23874628
If you like melodrama and want to enjoy the biggest AU gundam has I guess

>>23874570
>no shit the Brilliant Japanman self-insert ubermensch and his yamato nadeshiko hand-me-down wife
But enough about G gundam

>>23874748
G Gundam has enough Camp and self awareness that it gets away with it. SEED is like Code Geass where the writer and the fans really think it is actual amazing shit.

>>23874351
The movie is after destiny. It took him a looooong time.

>>23874628
Sure. People will say stuff like "it's a remake of 0079" but it isn't really. Just another case of borrowing iconic 0079 imagery and setpieces, and that's mostly in it's first third to half. What it's doing story and character wise is completely different.
The only place it's unavoidably aged poorly is production value wise since it got made in the hell zone between the phasing out of cel animation and digital animation maturing to the point it was being made natively in HD. It's cursed to forever be stuck looking kinda iffy even after being remastered.

>>23875035
It doesn't look bad.

>>23873409 (OP)
Main character was a sensible guy and America only cares for murderhobos.

>>23875574
If you don't mind early 2000's digipaint and digital panning, more power to you! Seriously.

The remaster is a pretty valiant effort but when it's not outright redrawing scenes you can't escape that Seed is upscaled from source material that's *340p*. There's a hard limit on how good it could ever look.

>>23875638
Kira wasn't sensible. He was a tween Mary Sue.

Because it's fucking shit.

>>23873409 (OP)
Westoids can't appreciate dramakino

I like it overall. It has a better ending than that communist hivemind slop that the 00 movie had.

>>23876187
But that's wrong.

>>23875653
Director Fukuda said that Sunrise gave him a very limited budget. I found this extremely ironic given that Gundam Seed made a massive amount of money including the remastered version. I think Fukuda wanted to do more like Perfect Strike Gundam VS Providence Gundam. But the budget only allowed for Perfect Strike during the Battle of Orb.

Why does Banrise always act against their best interest?

Same thing happened with the Zeta movies. They made huge amount of money in theaters but Bandai gave Director Tomino a tiny budget and only a tiny animation team.

>>23876868
>Doesn't want a half liquid metal body that gives you psychic powers and lets you live for hundreds of years.

Get out.

>>23880803
>I think Fukuda wanted to do more like Perfect Strike Gundam VS Providence Gundam.

They were limited by being unable to change the audio track which meant Strike had to get owned by Providence in short order, making a fight with Perfect Strike and Providence not worth the effort.

>>23875638
Americans didn't like Mikazuki either

>>23880822
I'm not sure where this rumor came from. I'm not saying you are wrong, but I never heard anything about audio issues. Feel free to share it if you can. The only Fukuda interview I read was him saying he wanted to a lot more, but they had to save all their money for animating Perfect Strike Gundam which took up the bulk of their limited budget.

>>23880803
>Same thing happened with the Zeta movies. They made huge amount of money in theaters but Bandai gave Director Tomino a tiny budget and only a tiny animation team.
Nah, Zeta is a really bad example:
>Z Gundam I = 862m yen
>Z Gundam II = 600m yen
>Z Gundam III = 492m yen
>Total = 1.9b yen
That seems like a lot until you notice it made less and less money over the trilogy, and even worse when you compare it to the Eva Rebuilds; 1.0 alone earned more than all of the Zeta movies combined at 2.0b yen, forget the other three movies which earned 4.0b, 5.3b and 10.0b respectively.
Let's not even bring up how badly the Turn A and G-Reco movies performed.
Bandai indulges Tomino out of respect, but him and his movies aren't a draw, appealing only to uncs who really should've moved on decades ago, and Bandai is right not to give him any more budget than what he was already afforded.

>>23880840
It's also just clearly wrong, since HD changes music entirely in a bunch of places

>>23880850
I think the Zeta movies suffered a decline because the animation wasn't fully reanimated. The first movie was watched because people were curious what it was gonna look like and if any changes were gonna be made. But when they saw how cheap the animation was, many opted out and figured they could maybe buy the DVD later. If Zeta was completely reanimated then things would be different.