Shadowtraveler wrote:Out of curiosity, what does 00 have that SEED didn't? I never got a chance to watch the later.
Not in any particular order, but it had considerably superior animation quality, what with being the first Gundam series to be shown in HD. SEED's animation was very much average, and the character designs are, in a way I can't relaly explain, weird looking. Despite the fact that they're all ridiculously bish, the various Gundam Meisters had character designs I could say are actually fairly good, if none which are not all that fresh. Regardless, they're less generic than Kira Yamoto or Athrun Zala.
Then there's mechanical design. While some MS were pretty goofy (the Throne Gundams especially, but the GN-X was pushing it), others looked pretty cool. The Tieren is a triumph of design - it clearly has elements of the Zaku, and it clearly is the Zaku of 00, yet it has its own distinctive look (the same can be said of the Anf, incidentally). The Union Flag/AEU Enact are also cool, and to my knowledge do not actively reflect earlier MS designs (though I can claim to know what every MS looks like). They're fresh and original, as far as I know, and have elements that let them stand out, in particular their ludicrously badass eyeflash thing. It may just be me, but I think basically every original design in SEED is lacking in some way (especially the Strike Gundam, which is terrible).
Then there's the approach to technology. There is at least ten times the amount of made-up technobabble in SEED to 00. 00 has a central conceit in its GN science (and then later there's the Trans-Am system), but that's compared to the phase shift armour, the colloid particles, the N-Jammers and so on of SEED. Just the fact that GUNDAM, METEOR and DRAGOON are all terrible acronyms is just plain annoying.
For something slightly more substantial, I'd like to compare Kira Yamoto with Setsuna F. Seiei from 00. I can't talk so much about the plot of SEED, because I've only seen the first two episodes, but I can talk about the main characters. The first thing we ever see in regards to Setsuna is him running around a blasted warzone, AK in hand, with flashes to various acts of child soldiering, trying to avoid being killed by a bunch of Mobile Suits until he is saved by a Gundam (this is a pretty heavy handed bunch of scenes, mind you, with the central message of 'this is some terrible shit, yo'). Later on, we meet him after he has aged somewhat behidn the sticks of Gundam Exia. Comparitively, Kira Yamato is an ordinary high school engineering student. He gets caught up in a raid and gets knocked into the cockpit of the central Gundam unit of the series. This happens a lot, of course, and inevitably the ordinary high school student is always pretty awesome ... somehow. Except Kira is not satisfied with just that, so he basically reprograms the Strike Gundam's operating system, on the fly, while he is under attack by an enemy MS, just to drive home that he's a genius. I understand that he had originally written the OS onboard the Gundams, though he didn't realise that at the time, and thus was just completing it, but it's still silly. Yeah, Kamille Bidan designed the Zeta Gundam, but that wasn't nearly as jarring.
I have seriously rewatched those OVAs atleast 10-15 times each I think and sometimes I occasionally watch a few of the battle scenes because they are just so well played out and fun to watch, especially episode 2 with the kicass Zeon Tank of DOOM and the final episode space battle at A Baoa Qu. 
