Originally posted by: danholo
He really knows how to evade those shots but somehow you got the impression that Shinn was a better pilot this time by just flying initially in front of Destroy and slashing the cockpit area.
If you watch the part before the intro you see Kira try to go in right away and hit the Positron Reflector. After that he resorted to just firing from a distance. I'm not positive of this, but I think the Positron Reflectors are only in the arms and on the forhead of the Mobile Fortress mode. After it transformed in MS mode it seemed to rely more on the arm shields for protection. It may simply be that Kira didn't realize that he could get in close after it transformed since he couldn't earlier.