The original Gundam series spawned a franchise in more ways than one. In addition to generating enough revenue to spawn more series, it created a set of requirements that every show wanting to call itself Gundam would have to follow. (SEED especially had to, because it sought to remake the original.) Rule the first: Thou shalt have Newtypes - people and/or machines that are the next step in man's evolution. They're called "coordinators" in this show.

Rule the second: Thou must villify war, not glorify. This rule is without a doubt the most important. Gundam has always been about showcasing the casualties of the change from the old guard to the new. Gundam SEED satisfied the first rule right away, and begins to honor the second in this volume. There are of course other less-interesting rules, like "Thou shalt have giant robots with red chins," but we needn't discuss those.

This volume shifts the spotlight partially to Flay Allster, a cute girl that Kira met in the first volume. It seems at first that she only exists to cause problems for Kira, since she has a disdain for coordinators and doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut. She's easy to dislike, but we're forced to have a bit of sympathy for her in this volume.

Pink-haired Princess launches confusion attack.	Flay gets a visit from Flo.

The big change in this volume is the addition of a new main character, because fifteen or so obviously weren't enough. The new character is Lacus Clyne, an idol singer and a coordinator. The creators seemed to pull the "Thou shalt have at least one diva" rule right out of Macross with this one. It's safe to say that she changes everything, since she has great influence and yet a peace-loving nature - a rarity, given the characters we've met so far. I get the feeling that she alone might be enough to distinguish this series from its ancestor. And hey, she's played by Rie Tanaka; what's not to like?

Bandai done good on at least one of the extra goodies for Volume 2. There is a music video for the show's first opening tune - Invoke, by T.M. Revolution. It's a pretty sweet extra, since you get the full-length version of the song. The other extras are standard fare: a trailer for the Ghost in the Shell video game, and some more info on the mecha in Gundam SEED.

Now that the series is in full swing, it's easy to recommend Gundam SEED - especially to space opera fans. The series has met the base requirements of a Gundam, and I'm interested to see what new ideas Lacus might bring to the franchise. I'll be watching this one closely.

Video Quality: A
Audio Quality: A
Presentation: B+
Content: A-
Overall: A-