Epimondas

This is a fairly entertaining show but for some reason the bad guys win in the end.  Well for the most part there really are no good guys save maybe 3 characters.  They are Meer Campbell, Shinn Asuka, and Lunameria Hawke.  Her sister fails to qualify as a good guy (gal) character due to her foolishly treacherous actions.  The reasons there are virtually no good guy characters are numerous.  The so called Archangel crew and the Eternal, are projected as protaganists but the way they handle things reminds one of how Jack the Ripper might treat women.  Both crews essentially kill indiscriminently friend and foe alike.  

Characters:

Cagalli is somewhat of an enigma.  Initially she appears to be sort of a victim character who is aided by the coordinators with whom her backstabbing nation is for some reason allied with.  She preaches peace and non violence but ironically she causes more death than pretty much any other character to both how so called friends and her foes alike due to her reckless actions which take no thought of foresight of the consequences into account.  It is hard to believe she could ever mature enough to avoid her destructive nature.  She also seems to migrate form a somewhat compassionate character to a heartless one who rarely shows any kind of true emotions or awareness of the immense destruction she personally brings upon the world.  Why and how the creators have it in their mind to cast her as a either a sympathetic character or a heroic one given her bloody methods to achieve them is beyond me.  I went from liking her to wanting to see her get her just deserts or even death only to be sadly disappointed.  

Meer Campbell though a somewhat minor character is without a doubt the most sympathetic, tragic, and heartwarming appealing character in the series.  Like the so called extendeds, her path was pressed upon her though by choice, the viewer gets the impression it was that choice or a life of hardship or worse.  She is manipulated really by everyone she comes into contact with for their own purposes.  Yet her geniune true personality still stands out.  She is also about the only character who doesn't personally cause physical harm or death to any humans.  Sure her life may have been somewhat of a sham but she had selfless reasons for taking on the job she had.  

Shinn Asuka is the deepest and most detailed character by far.  The viewer is treated to plenty of information about his life, background, and thoughts.  It is clear he struggles against the direction things are going and the hard choices he must make, which is feels far more human than all but a couple of all the other characters.  The first episode focuses on his early life which leads the viewer to perhaps mistakenly believe that he is in fact the main protagonist and the hero of the story.  Yet, the focus bounces around from one character to the next so much all orientation who the viewer is supposed to see the perspective from is totally lost.  Yet he comes closest to that sense of a central main figure despite the seemingly sabotage attempts of the writers to divert focus from him.  

Athrun Zala is the slimiest character just slightly less slimey than Djibril.  He flips sides more than a dice in a Yatzee game.  And any sense of respect or integrity expected for such a character is nil since no one can ever tell who he will side with or fight against next.  Of course his friend Kira is the same and also flips sides but not as blatantly.

Kira mainly changes who he fights and kills depending I suppose on his mood and who he feels like killing or destroying.  I see no sense of justice in his motives or his actions though it is amusingly attempted and implied throughout the series.  He is probably the most empty of all characters and seems to have no soul, will, passion, or discretion of his own.  His thoughts feel akin to the direction the wind blows a wind sock.

Djibril is a pure slimeball you would love to hate yet, he at least has a geniune aura to his conviction of hate.  He is the personification of prejudice.  Though he is evil, he can at least be understood and it is clear he is evil and a bad guy.  That is more than I can say for the other antagonists who's murky convictions are hard if not impossible to follow like Athrun, Kira, and Cagalli.  

The captain of the Archangel inexplicably morphs from a sweet, charming, helpful, girl next door mechanic to a sadistic psychopath in the captains chair.  She conceals that with sweet sound words that try to fool you into believing her morbid motivations are in any way good natured or for the good of humanity.  

Captain Gladys seems pretty straight foreward as a good caring captain until the end when she starts acting a little nuts.  How she ever loses any fights seems illogical given her tactics and solidly discplined military style.  

Meryan Hawke turns from a nice intelligent younger sister anyone would welcome to their family into this cult like follower of the enemy for no solid reason.  She is the most difficult character to figure out or understand.  None of her actions make much sense save when she actually seems to remember she has a sister and voices concern near the end.  That makes it seem a bit contrived however and works against the strength of her character.  

Lunamaria Hawke is probably the most balanced and stable character of them all.  She never changes significantly or for no apparent reason like most the others nor does she like to kill for fun like most the others save her, Meer, and Shunn.  

Rey is a bit odd to start with.  He is a bit too much blended into the background like wall paper for much of the series.  Only in bits and pieces and a bit more near the end is much attention paid to him.  Initially he is like a typical college room mate to Shunn and a seemingly nice guy best friend type.  Yet his demeaner slowly changes to be a bit more cold, robotic, and distant.  The reason for this is never really clear.  If he was able to be nice at all, it would be a bit helpful to understand more clearly why he changes so dramatically for the worse or at least for the less involved and less social.  

Yuna is just a weasel and why Cagalli is too blind to see that much much sooner when it is so freaking obvious that he is not worth wasting time on and figures she should punish herself by marrying him as if accepting a prison sentence for no conviction or crime committed frankly puzzles me.  He is a weasel from the start and it seems pretty clear to most around him that he is best to stay clear of and yet she sticks with him until she is taken out of his life at least for a while.  How such a man gets any respect or power let alone keeps it for long is pretty hard to understand.  He never offers any decent qualities to really even fool anyone that he is anything but an incompetant doormat.

Durandal is yet another difficult to comprehend person.  I got the impression his mood or plans changed sometime after his so called ally betrays him and his country.  Though that is not crystal clear, it does not seem like he starts out with any grandiose ambitions beyond exactly what he says he wants which is to defend his people from Earth aggression.  His character changes so much and so dramatically it is hard to envision he is the same person from episode 1 to episode 50.

Few other characters are worthy of note or make much of an impact.  Things are a bit like a rollercoaster ride with respect to characters and how much they change and constantly flip from friends to foes several times through out the series.  It is enough to make you dizzy trying to keep up with it.  Several valid attempts to introduce drama and startling plot twists are commendable but they are not done with a good sense of organization.  It screams of amateur hour.  it is either that there are too many little ones throwing up at you rapidly or one long convoluted one that often is foggy or feels misplaced.  Overall there was a lack of consistency to how the plot and twists worked themselves out perhaps mainly because they constantly slam like a head on collision into the quirky way characters appear to be all over the trait scope jumping or changing from one set of traits to another either so often or so far out of left field you can feel lost trying to follow them.  

This series might well have worked far better if they simplified things a little bit, had fewer characters and focused more on them, and kept the twists to a reasonable pace so that they were unexpected but do not feel like being jerked around on a rugged rollercoaster.  The twists are a bit sharp to fit well into a story without being overwhelmed by one another.  I wanted to like it and there were certainly things I did like about it, however, all the flaws and misses mean I can not rank it as high as it could be had they done a slightly better job.  I can deal with a story that was about evil characters or bad guys, but the way this series did things it was like they try to trick you into believing the bad guys are somehow good.  I do not care for that kind of deception in story fundimentals.  Maybe you are ok with deception in the story structure.  Though for me, if the setting says it takes place in France, for example, well i expect it to do so.  If the story is about bad guys, thats fine.  If it is about good guys as central characters that is fine, but when you try to paint say for example, a blood thirsty serial killer as a saintly good guy, thats a problem.  Be true to what you are and what your story is.  There is no reason to either deceive or alienate an audience.