ITS TIME FOR HAKETH GIANT LIST OF REASONS WHY GUNDAM 00 SEASON 2 **BLEEP** THE BIG ONE
The Innovades. They did nothing, never came off as threatening, Ribbons never comes off as a genius manipulator, in every fight they all ways get their butts kicked without getting in the slightest offense, and there to **BLEEP** many of them. If the Innovades had just been Ribbons manipulating the Federation and the A-Laws from behind the scenes it would have been much better. Ribbons can still pull strings from behind the curtains and emerge as last boss with a magnificent mecha after all else fails, but no need for Innovade grunts at the beginning of the series when he can manipulate people to be his disposable pawns.
Mr. Bushido. All he does is talk, act stupid as hell and like just about everyone else from S1 ultimately end up doing nothing. I mean my god was the fight between him and Setsuna that had been building through out this entire a season a **BLEEP** ledown. It should have been him in Louise's spot as the guy the Innovades are trying to push as the next big thing and really tap into his obsession and rage at Setsuna for killing his comrades. Instead of being an awesome Rival character for Setsuna he is pretty much all bark and no bite. Same damn thing with Ali Al Saachez, he does nothing for pretty much all of Season 2 and ends up dieing to Lyle. Honestly the both of them should have stayed dead if this was going to happen.
Louise and Saji. f you're going to have a character to personify those caught in the cross fire, don't put them on either side but put them IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CROSSFIRE. And Saji being the pilot of Raiser was just **BLEEP** stupid. Instead of infecting Lasse with Plot Device disease why not give him something to do, or just let him stay dead like he should have at the end of Season 1? Oh wait, if that had happened we wouldn't have gotten more 00-Raiser GN particle Hax bullshit.
Totally not Lockon dudes. I liked Lockon, I liked him alot. He was my favorite character in S1. He had an awesome look, personality, Gundam, and gimic with his gundam and a great death scene. But fuuuuuudge was that all made largely unimportant by Not-Lockon. He wasn't Neil, and the crew sometimes had trouble accepting that he was a completely different person, but unfortunately there is little real importance put into that aspect of his character to the point where it affected anything at all, so in the long run, it didn't really matter. The deal is, that despite their efforts to tell the viewer that Lyle isn't Neil, Lyle indeed looked, sounded, and even acted like Neil. The only difference was that his easygoing personality wasn't a fake one to hide his rage. While I did end up liking Lyle, and I totally understand the point of his character, but an unfortunate side effect of his replacing his brother was that it indeed cheapened Neil's formally brilliant death scene, and sometimes, even made it feel like he never really died. There were ways to have him NOT totally evoke Neil's entire appearance and character and still have him play the same exact role, like making him younger or older than his brother, but they decided to make him identical to a dead popular character. Look at it this way, it's as if Aerith's identical sister comes into the picture after she dies, completely takes on her role, only she's not interested in cloud or something like that. She's not the same character, but there's not enough content to her to really drive that into the player for it to matter, and it would have just ended up cheapening Aerith's death. And another thing about him, he goes from having no experience in a Mobile suit to this fuckawesome pilot in no time. Bull**BLEEP**.
Nena Trinity. We see her all throughout the show doing nothing pretty much, and when she finally does something and no longer be Wang's **BLEEP** she ends up dead. Hell have her end up being the new pilot for the Cheridum. She was a goddamn Gundam Meister in S1. On the bad side, yeah. Hell you can even have it happen as timeskip character development that gets expanded upon as S2 goes. Hell even have Louise and Nena become friends, and then either Nena tells her offhandly, or Ribbons does some trolling, and Louise finds out instead of HERP DERP GUNDAM THRONE DREI EXACTLY THE SAME, THERE IT GOES LOUISE GET IT GET IT GET IT! And why was Nena the only person to still be using a S1 Suit other than Plot demand?
Another point that kinda ties into Not Lockon, Katharon, what was the point again? They were introduced pretty much solely as a plot device to show that the A-LAWS were evil incarnate. Instead of playing up Lyle's connection to Katharon it's pretty much just thrown to the wayside and forgotten except for the Big **BLEEP** Heroes Moment near the end. I mean goddamn despite what they were tring to do was on the side of right they were still a terrorist organization, why try to show some form of ambiguity and interesting storytelling and have them pull off some terrorist stuff and have CB question whether they should really be working with them or not?
The Gaga's, just the goddamn Gaga's....
The complete and total loss of any dramatic tension in the show whenever 00-Raiser was involved. **BLEEP** **BLEEP** the Hax level of this suit was **BLEEP** insane compared to everything else. At no point during S2 is there the illusion that Setsuna might be in trouble due to just how hax and powerful 00-Raiser was. Everything he faced was just completely and totally curbstomped. At least it made for a nice Gunpla kit.
The loss of all ambiguity in season 2. Part of the appeal of the first season was because there was no real, central antagonist and things kind of operated within an ambigious realm of morality. Celestial Being was a likeable bunch (well...for the most part) who technically had a good cause, but the fact remained that they were trying to prevent war by blowing the living crap out of anyone who promoted it. The second season's whole plot is about how this technically created just as many problems as it supposedly solved. This also made (most) of the people who fought against Celestial Being, specifically characters like Sergei and even Graham, a little bit easier to sympathize with, a quality very few "antagonists" in a lot of other things posses. All and all, the overall plot was a little less cut-and-dried than most of the stuff I've watched, which is why I enjoyed watching and discussing it a bit more. Meanwhile, in the second season, we're granted a much more generic, much more cliched villain in the form of the Innovators, of the typical "humans are disgusting warmongers...let's kill them!", and "smiling smugly while manipulating things behind the scenes" variety. I don't mind me some cliched villains every once and awhile, but it still seems like a big step down from the somewhat more complex scenario presented in the first season.