Mobile Suit Gundam SEED/YMMV

The Series

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Flay, after her emotional breakdown and ensuing Redemption Equals Death.
• Base Breaker: Flay is certainly a polarizing character.
  • Americans Hate Tingle: Not so much in Japan, where she's generally well-liked. This is ironic since the director had actually thought she'd be the type of character to appeal to Western audiences, but things ended up reversed.
• Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Probably gets the most flack (not counting Gundam SEED Destiny) from UC fans than any other series, and most of them will readily admit they have never watched an episode of it.
• Conspiracy Redemption: More than one, but the Battle of JOSH-A is the metaphorical straw that breaks the camel's back.
• Deader Than Disco: Seed's success spawned a sequel and a manga spinoff series, and even started talks that the CE timeline could become the new UC. However, Destiny didn't work out so well, and a planned movie to wrap up the saga is in Development Hell, making creators and fans give up on the saga and move on to Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Today, if you ask Gundam fans of their opinion of Seed, you will get plenty of contrasting responses, and you certainly won’t find many fans of Destiny.
  • Though the new remastered version of Seed that's currently coming out may change that
• Downer Ending: Depends, as the ending is considered a Bittersweet Ending mostly, until you remember that while the heroes managed to end the war and Rau Le Creuset's plan to bring about the end of the world; most of their friends and loved ones are still dead; Natural/Coordinator tensions are still high and will escalate into another brutal war in two years; and both Kira and Athrun are left scarred and broken in the aftermath, along with most of the surviving cast. Sure, they get better eventually, but it's still pretty depressing in hindsight.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Muruta Azrael. Fangirls either downplay or handwave his atrocities in the show because he's so pretty and hot.
  • Shani, Clotho, and Orga get the same treatment. Yes they're Slave Mooks forced into the war by Azrael, but that doesn't make them any less vicious or insane.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Although being The Faceless, The Voiceless, and a bigger Sacrificial Lamb than everyone else put in the series together, Rusty Mackenzie has a bigger fandom than you'd expect. Supplementary materials have helped a lot, revealing him to be a friendly guy who was the only Redshirt of the Le Creuset team who didn't have a parent on the PLANT ruling council.
• Evil Is Cool: As the show's resident Char Clone and Malevolent Masked Man, everyone knew Le Creuset was going to be cool. Then the reveal comes in, and he turns out to be not only an Ace Pilot and a total Badass, but an impossible combination of Char, Emperor Palpatine and Hannibal Lecter. Muruta Azrael also gets this treatment, both from fangirls who give him leather pants, and others who find that his enthusiasm, dark sense of humour, and status as a Complete Monster with ADHD make him a lot of fun to watch.
• Evil Is Sexy: The fangirl opinion of Azrael. Feel free to be ill.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Though both Kira/Lacus ended up as an Official Couple in SEED Freedom with Athrun/Cagalli following up, this has not stopped some of the fujoshi circles on wanting Kira and Athrun to become a One True Pairing.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Any scene of Rau taking his medicines to stabilize himself is hard to watch after his voice actor, Toshihiko Seki, is tested positive with COVID-19 on August 4, 2020. He got better though.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Fllay hating the genetically-modified Coordinators. Her English voice actress goes on to voice the genetically engineered super-soldier Soma Peres.
• Its the Same So It Sucks: This series is the AU series that is the most like the UC shows, due to the similarities between the Earth Alliance/ZAFT and Federation/Zeon conflicts, which might be a factor into why it's a frequent target from UC fans.
• Love to Hate: Rau Le Creuset, who is incredibly popular due to his brilliance, Badassery and ability to give a speech.
• Magnificent Bastard: Rau Le Creuset fits this trope incredibly well. He does have a Villainous Breakdown but not much of one, goes out with a smile, and most importantly is a fine Manipulative Bastard and Chessmaster. When you talk the world into self-destruction, manipulating a pair of very high-functioning Smug Snakes in the process, you count.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Gundam SEED: Directed by Michael Bay." - Some detractors of the series compared the explosive battles (and by extension, the questionable writing & directing, courtesy of Fukuda) in the Anime to Bay's infamously signature direction.
  • "Bloody Valentine/FOR THE PRESERVATION OF OUR BLUE AND PURE WORLD!" - Both the nickname of the First Alliance-PLANT War and Blue Cosmos' motto was used as a comment for fans who were going against the very concept of Valentine's day.
  • "Bow before your savior, Jesus Yamato." - Detractors of Kira claim that the show portrays him as too morally perfect and good at everything he does, and mockingly refer to him as "Jesus Yamato".
  • "Nicol was fifteen! He loved the piano!" - Athrun's narmtastic explanation to Cagalli on why he "killed" Kira in their last duel, after Nicol took Kira's attack and sacrificed himself to save Athrun. Also, Nicol, being an Expy of Quatre from Wing, loves music and is a talented piano player and composer. Occasionally rendered as "HE LOVED TO PLAY THE PIANO."
    • Subtitled version: "Nicol loved to play the piano. And he was only 15."
    • Parodied here.
    • "Kira swung first!" - People's response to the scene where Nicol runs onto the Strike Gundam's blade to his death in the HD Remaster version, unlike the original where Kira actually killed him in self-defense. It has gone to "HAN SHOT FIRST!" levels.
  • "Freedom Gundam: Taste the rainbow." - From the Freedom Gundam's multicolored Beam Spam attack.
  • One of Blitz Gundam's ability: Mirage Colloid, which is able to turn the Mobile Suit invisible, is sometimes used as a term for Gunpla modelers who (jokingly) showed a (non-existent) Gunpla purchase and/or haul.
• Mis Blamed: As mentioned many times on this page, many of SEED's detractors take Destiny's flaws and put them onto SEED instead of focusing on SEED's own flaws. In fact, even though there were a lot of changes in production just like Destiny, they improved the overall quality of the series. Not that the Fan Dumb will listen when you bring this up, of course.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • It's easy to lose respect for Rau Le Creuset when he nonchalantly uses his DRAGOONs to kill Flay Alster, who had by this point redeemed herself.
  • And then there's Patrick Zala shooting Athrun. And pretty much everything Azrael does, most notably using Psycho Serum to turn kids into Super Soldiers, and using nuclear weapons as though they were going out of style. Captain Sutherland and the Earth Forces as a whole crossed it after the incident at JOSH-A with the Cyclops system.
  • Depending on who you ask, some members of the fanbase feel that Yzak Joule crossed this when he shot down that shuttle. Even taking what he thought was going on into account, he still believed he was firing on fleeing soldiers, a less than admirable act.
• Never Live It Down: If fandom is to be believed, then Kira's a bad pilot and Flay's an irredeemable bitch.
• No Yay: It isn't hard to interpret Azrael's interactions with Natarle Badgiruel as an attempt at hitting on her. Squick!
• One True Pairing:
  • Again, Athrun/Kira.
  • Even though someone (Shiho) had feelings with him, while the other had a love interest (Mirallia) before they broke up, at least the fans believe that Yzak and Dearka should have become an Official Couple instead, given their inseparable friendship.
• Take That Scrappy: Depending on who you ask, some fans actually cheered to Flay's death in the final episode while praising Rau for doing the job by ending her life. Bonus points if you also include the moment of Muruta Azrael literally beating her for attempting to communicate the Archangel just to let them get away.
• Tear Jerker: See the Gundam page and make sure you have a tissue with you.
• Rooting for the Empire: Some fans ended up rooting for the Earth Alliance because of the insane disparity between the kill ratios between the Alliance and ZAFT. Especially since many sympathetic POV shots indicate that most of those poor Earth Alliance bastards getting killed are just doing their jobs at the behest of raging bigoted lunatics instead of being raging bigoted lunatics themselves.
• The Scrappy: Flay Allster, for those who don't see her as a Jerkass Woobie. Her manipulation of Kira combined with her blaming him for her father's death, her racism, her bitchy personality, her treatment of Sai, and her general uselessness make her a pretty difficult person to like.
  • For some, Lacus. Detractors call her a Purity Sue and claim she doesn't deserve her romance with Kira.
• The Woobie: So, so many.
  • Iron Woobie: Go ahead life. Torture Kira. He'll get over it, eventually.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Flay Allster, especially once she has her Heel Realization and tries to redeem herself.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Rau Le Creuset. The man's life has sucked, to the point where he's convinced that we all gotta go.
• X Meets Y: The beginning of the series looks like Mobile Suit Gundam meets Gundam Wing.

The 2002 - 2004 Manga adaptation

• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some fans were dissatisfied because Natarle Badgiruel, a seasoned soldier, is depicted as blushing around Mu La Flaga, suggesting that she had romantic feelings for him. However, this goes against statements from Chiaki Morosawa (the writer of SEED) and Houko Kuwashima (Natarle's voice actress), both of whom indicated that Natarle did not have any romantic feelings for anyone, including Mu. Whether this reaction stems from the fact that Murrue and Natarle are also seen as a Fan-Preferred Couple has yet to be seen.

The SEED Freedom Movie (2024)

• Epileptic Trees: As the manual of the HGCE Duel Blitz Gundam kit mentions that the unit was modified from a "scrapped Duel Gundam", fans speculate whether it was the original one from SEED, or the Blu Duel variant from the Stargazer OVA.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks:
  • The "Impulse Gundam Spec II", which is basically a slightly recolored version of the original unit.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • For those that disliked the NYAV dub of the film, some fans also watched it just to hear Trevor Devall reprising his role as Mu La Flaga.
• Poison Oak Epileptic Trees: Meta example; Due to the timing of its announcement after the "Up to Interpretation" controversy for The Witch from Mercury, at least some fans of G-Witch believed that Sunrise (and to an extent, Kadokawa) took advantage of SEED Freedom's potential success to bury the former entry's reputation due to the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ protagonists.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Both the Rising Freedom and Immortal Justice, at least technology-wise.
• Tainted by the Preview: While the announcement of the movie after 15-16 years of Development Hell had won back the series' fans, some parts of the fandom showed little-to-no interest to the announcement as Mitsuo Fukuda is still helming as one of the film's staff, combined with the hype for the HD Remastered Version of both shows slowly dying down after a decade. The confirmation of a fast-paced story by Fukida has led fans to worry that the movie will pull another Char's Counterattack. Ultimately subverted as the film has earned 4 billion yen months after of its theatrical debut.

The Gunplas

• And The Fandom Rejoiced:
  • After years of hoping, the remaining G Weapons (Aegis, Duel, Blitz, Buster) has received their Master Grade iterations for the show's 10th anniversary.
  • The Option Parts Set line features a newly-tooled Aile Striker and the Launcher/Sword Striker packs for the buyers who wanted to upgrade their High Grade Cosmic Era/Entry Grade kits without buying the HG Perfect Strike Gundam and/or the already-discontinued 1/144 Gundam SEED Model Series (NG) Sword and Launcher Strikes for the packs.
• Base Breaker:
  • While it was generally viewed as a case of Improved Second Attempt compared to the previous High Grade Gundam SEED kits (articulation and color coding wise), at least some others felt that some parts of the High Grade Cosmic Era Freedom Gundam (notably its head) has strayed a bit too far from the original Kunio Okawara design.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • These two particular images for Bandai Hobby's Twitter page's "~SEED Gunpla Album~ 18 Consecutive Days of Posting" series has led (at least SOME of) the fans to believe that the old kits featured on the pictures are considered teasers for their future High Grade Cosmic Era iterations. As of June 2024, only the Akatsuki Gundam is confirmed to be released as a new iteration for the Real Grade line.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • Many of the the High Grade Cosmic Era kits based on older releases can be qualified as such, like the Aile Strike Gundam and the Freedom Gundam (though it became a Base Breaker in some occasions, as mentioned above)
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks:
  • The Real Grade Force Impulse Gundam Spec II (An upgraded version of the original Force/Impulse tech specs-wise from the SEED Freedom movie) is basically a recolored version of the original with no additional accessories. To rub salt to the wound, the kit is a regular release instead of a Premium Bandai exclusive item.
• Poison Oak Epileptic Trees:
  • While the fans rejoiced that the Duel (in its Duel Blitz form) and Buster (in the form of Lightning Buster) has received new High Grade Cosmic Era iterations, they also fearfully assume that either the two's original forms, or the hypothetical Option Parts consisting of the former's Assault Shroud armor and the latter's double long rifles, will be relegated into an Online Shop exclusive despite being the most popular units.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks:
  • While long-awaited, the GAT-01 Strike Dagger, one of the most prominent O.M.N.I. mass-produced units to appear on-screen, had its High Grade Cosmic Era kit being released behind the Premium Bandai paywall instead of being a regular item like the Dagger L.
  • Though downplayed, at least the minority felt that the Full Mechanics (a successor of the No Grade 1/100 scale line, but with aesthetics and articulation of a modern Master Grade kit) 1/100 Calamity, Forbidden, and the Raider Gundam would've been appropriately a Master Grade kit like the GINN.

Other

• Snark Bait: While this was meant to milk the series's popularity in China, the 1/1 Freedom Gundam statue erected at Mitsui Shopping Park in Shanghai has become the source of ridicule due to the statue's ironic placement on a country notorious for it's political issue.