In fact the ending climax is identical to that show, even featuring recycled footage from SEED, which really just makes the whole thing feel painfully ironic. A bunch of fights and melodrama happens and then eventually things come to a head with another big battle in space featuring a colony laser about to blow up Earth and a big clash between all the Gundams. A couple of Alliance druggies rock up and steal them, a colony gets dropped on earth and everything goes to shit. It’s the anniversary of the Earth-PLANT war and ZAFT are flexing off their new Gundams that they will totally use for peace purposes.
Destiny starts off fairly well in all honesty. Athrun ends up rejoining ZAFT because reasons while Kira, Lacus and the Archangel Crew watch from the sidelines and generally cause a nuisance. Young coordinator Shinn Asuka joins ZAFT after his sister and family were killed during the battle for ORB depicted in SEED and ends up thrown into the middle of the conflict, piloting the Impulse Gundam (and eventually the Destiny). I’d like to say that was the case but unfortunately Destiny is basically a repeat of SEED except now focusing on ZAFT on the outbreak of a new war.
Plot: Just like how SEED was a modernised update of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, Destiny is a modernised version of Zeta Gundam. Bandai/Sunrise clearly thought they had to strike while the pan was still hot and rushed into production as fast as humanly possible and the result is 50 episodes of… well, you’ll see. Airing just 12 months after the original SEED finished its run (which should be a pretty big indicator about how things were going to play out), Destiny did well ratings wise, though nowhere near as good as SEED. We’re here to talk about its sequel: SEED Destiny. While I’m not the biggest fan of SEED, I’ll even say that it’s pretty one note and annoying at times, but I can appreciate what it did for the franchise and how it helped push Gundam back into the forefront after several years of lagging ratings and mixed critical reception.
Ratings were high and model kits were flying off shelves. Gundam SEED was a bit of a big deal when it first aired.