At first I thought they were rumors, but more outlets are reporting that Bandai-Sunrise is hinting at a Gundam SEED Freedom prequel OVA in development during their extended-cut re-release of the GSF movie in Japanese theaters. One Facebook page summarized some of the new extended dialogue between Athrun and Cagalli, as well as showed some scenes of Shinn and Lunamaria cleaning the deck of the Millennium, and Yzak and Mwu meeting.
It does not really surprise me that Bandai-Sunrise is letting Fukuda continue making things in the SEED universe, and I would not be surprised at all of they were to greenlight a full fifty-episode run of another CE series probably set after GSF. Remember, SEED was kind of their soft-reboot of the UC era series back in 2002, but the project kind of died on the vine after the modest performance of Destiny and controversies surrounding Fukuda, along with the health issues of his wife Chiaki Morosawa. If you consider SEED to be MSG, Destiny to be Zeta, and Freedom to be Char’s Counterattack (kinda), we’re owned a Double-Zeta, right?
Truthfully, Destiny kind of double-dipped between both Zeta and Double-Zeta in places, since it attempted to shift between three different main characters, and that muddied the waters quite a bit when you got to the GSF movie because the main character there was clearly Kira, and they very much forced Shinn and Athrun to the back to ensure Kira was front and center for his conflict with Foundation and the Accords. Amuro Ray really kind of fell back as a main character after MSG, appearing in Zeta and Char’s Counterattack but without really stepping over Kamile or even Hathaway. I think the reason Kira gets the spotlight is his mobile suits print money for Bandai-Namco when it comes to gunpla. Even I am not shy to deny that, I love Strike, Freedom, Strike Freedom, and Mighty Strike Freedom, the latter two being OP as fuck. There was always a measured balance to Amuro Ray, but Kira Yamato, the boy is Jesus Incarnate now that he has Lacus’ love and her big fucking… force lighting… powers…
But coming back around to this rumored prequel OVA, everyone seemingly latched on to Cagalli’s mention of a “Freedom Seizure Incident” to Lacus early on in the film when discussing Foundation’s desire to join COMPASS. While only a brief mention with no other details, it implies that our CE Skittles Squad has had contact with either the Strike Freedom or Rising Freedom and/or its pilot, Kira. I have read various takes suggest that they engineered the seizure and “rescue” of the unit itself in order to understand its capabilities for its eventual defeat in the movie, so that would suggest it was Rising Freedom that was kidnapped, and that they were not prepared for Kira to A: Survive B: Obtain the OG Strike Freedom and C: Couple that with the Proud Defender and wreck their shit.
I can’t imagine this incident is enough content to fill out more than maybe 1-3 twenty-two minute episodes, but I guess it depends on what they want to do with this. Since it concerns Orb, I would kind of hope the star of this OVA prequel is actually Athrun Zala, and together with Meyrin and other Terminal spies, he’s shown piggybacking off this incident to gather intel about Foundation that would be later used in GSF. The big plot device in the movie was Foundation’s Femto Technology Armor, which had no prior introduction or explanation other than it blocked beam weapons. SEED and SEED Destiny’s Phase-Shift Armor had a more in-depth explanation on how it helped block beam weapons as well, so this OVA could focus on Athrun and Meyrin obtaining the technical data on the Femto Technology for Albert Heinlein and Kira to begin developing the Proud Defender. You could maybe throw in some scenes with Kira and Shinn trying to form their working relationship, or Shinn and Lunamaria’s actual relationship, maybe flesh out some of Agnes’ backstory as told in the novels, and hit some other odds and ends like Yzak and Dearka’s work within ZAFT Intelligence, how Miriallia Haw and Sai Argyle came back to work for Orb, and so on.
As for the CE universe in its totality, I don’t completely hate the fact they’re coming back to it now and swinging hard for the fences. Up until the first Hathaway’s Flash film, UC has been kinda down bad on both main content and side story content since IGLOO and Unicorn. Sure, Narrative got some blood flowing again, but I think you see a lot of UC purists hating on this announcement over a second film for Hathaway’s Flash because that at least represents a return to that closer-to-0079 feeling they’ve wanted for years. Meanwhile, the CE universe is still largely unexplored apart from Astray and MSV content. While our current lot of heroes could have much more told of them, I wouldn’t mind a series set maybe 20-30 years after GSF that explores a same-but-different conflict between Naturals and Coordinators, and maybe brings back a handful of legacy characters, but focuses on new ones, either children of those characters, or new characters. I suppose that’d be akin to Victory Gundam really, except not quite as far into the future.
I admit I was skeptical about the return of CE before this movie, but I’ve legit speed-rewatched SEED and Destiny, and rewatched GSF probably five times now. It’s not just the allure of new and exciting Gundam, it’s finally getting to see these characters and this universe still look pretty good after twenty years. I definitely want to see more, and if I have to buy a few gunpla to make that happen, oh dear, oh my, whatever shall I do, this money is just leaving my bank account entirely on its own!
Update 11/15
It seems a short reel has released today with some of those scenes that were shown at the recent GSF movie re-runs in Japanese theaters.
Given Kira and Murrue have Orb uniforms on, it sounds like ZERO indeed focuses on the post-GSD, pre-GSF timeline they suggested, before COMPASS was founded. One of the scenes we got in the finale of the GSD Special Edition was Kira wearing a white ZAFT uniform, and the GSF movie suggested that part of the whole arrangement made was that he was attaching to ZAFT while Athrun remained with Orb and Terminal, and Shinn and Lunamaria joined also as ZAFT. Perhaps the start of ZERO maybe shows that lead-in, especially if it involves Yzak and Dearka, as I seem to recall they were especially instrumental in securing Lacus’ interests within ZAFT and helping push for COMPASS.
Let’s hope this comes out fairly soon in 2025 so we’re not stuck waiting another twenty years though. It sounds like they’ve had this on deck for awhile, which means either it was material cut from the movie, or produced alongside the movie intended for post-release. It’s like they’re making DLC for movies now.
