I’m keeping my promise and continuing Garbage Time. There are a bunch of other models I’d like to build before the High Grade Strike Freedom, but it’s important to me that I try to stick to my guns.
This is a milestone moment for me (for some definition of “milestone”). It is a rare example of me building a model of a mobile suit I’m not familiar with, from a show I’ve never watched. I don’t like doing this, because it makes the build feel too arbitrary. Sure, I have a huge (and still growing) collection of model kits already, but I like the fact that I can take any one of them down off the shelf and tell you its whole history. It matters to me that this hobby is a genuine passion, and not something I do in order to get a temporary high from snapping pieces of plastic together.
So why buy and build this one? Because it was the last one at Target, and I want them to keep selling Gunpla. That’s basically all there was to it.
Of course, this makes it difficult to talk about the Strike Freedom, because I don’t know all that much about it. I do know that it shows up specifically in Gundam SEED Destiny, and that it is the ultimate/final mobile suit used by the protagonist. I also know that a lot of SEED fans dislike it for being ridiculously overpowered. And honestly, I’d rather not know anything more about it, because it otherwise spoil my mild appreciation for the Strike Freedom’s design.
About Cosmic Era Mobile Suit Designs
In general, I don’t like the look of Gundam SEED’s mobile suit designs. I talked about this a bit when reviewing the Helios, in which I had the following to say:
Building the Helios helped me to better understand why I dislike SEED’s mecha designs. The problem is less with the actual designs themselves, and more to do with their color palettes. The factions of the Cosmic Era largely use the same colors as the factions in the Universal Century, but the tones are all much darker (the amateur color theorist in me feels like all the colors used in SEED have a lot of grey in them). Everything looks too dark and muted, which clashes with the not-at-all-realistic designs
I still stand by this assessment. I also think the Strike Freedom manages to sidestep this very issue with one very simple change - it adds a bunch of dark grey (and a healthy dose of gold):
Basically, if you are going to use such dark tones, you might as well add some more dark colors to go along with it. It gives the design a bit more of an edge, while also feeling more coherent. It feels more like a true, Gundam SEED specific aesthetic than a weird and incongruent riff on the Univseral Century style.
So yeah. I don’t love the Strike Freedom, but I can dig it. And I’d rather keep it that way than try to dig in, learn more about it, and possibly sour on it.
Which means I have nothing more to say in advance of the build. I’ll see you next time, when we dive right into it.