Don't forget the excessive recaping, all the cheapass animation, and a certain character who was most certainly dead coming back to life. Still all of that only brought it down to the mediocre range for me. It was still watchable because of the characters, action and the storyline. It's not even the worst Gundam in my opinion. That would fall to SD Gundam Force. I also couldn't get into Gundam AGE either.
I remember Gundam X sort of flopped, it had an interesting concept- a post-apocalyptic Gundam that was sort of a what if? to the original UC timeline (With newtypes and suits that closely resembled UC versions although the Gundams themselves were still similar to those from G Gundam and Wing)-but didn't really get good ratings, was cut short and made the franchise semi-dormant for a while. In a few ways it was kind of Gundam's Enterprise, and like that series it's sort of being re-evaluated lately as well, at least by some and getting a manga series and some new models....
Yeah, that one seemed to have some issues but it did end up concluding rather nicely. I liked it, but I don't remember much about it. Gundam F91 had something similar happen. It was supposed to be a new series, but ended up getting turned into a compressed movie. I really would have liked to see what it would have been like if it was expanded upon.
i really liked Gundam X. its a shame it was cut short, as it was just getting really interesting by the time they made it to space. same with F91. you can see where some of the characters could have been expanded and the story stretched out had it been a series.
Turn A is probably my favorite (i know, i'm weird.) I like the original universe stuff too. seed ok, destiny not, never got into 00. with Age it feels to me like they should've gone for a comedic, parody version of the average gundam series. (though nadesico basically did that years ago)
I think Gundam X got shafted because it followed the insanely popular Gundam Wing. Gundam X was the 96 series and Wing the 95 series. Wing was given a movie in 97 after Gundam X was cancelled. Wing was just that popular I guess. With the proceeding Gundams being G in 94 and Victory in 93. G Gundam a lot of people saw as a parody of the Gundam franchise with too many shonen tropes added. Victory Gundam also wasn't very popular. Granted Victory earned it's reputation by being joyless, mean spirited and not very memorable. I really think Tomino was out to kill the franchise with Victory Gundam. F91 was supposed to be a full series; 50 episodes. But creative differences among the production team and problems with Sunrise are what caused F91 to cut down before it even got started. The movie of F91 is composed of ideas from the first 13 episodes of the show compiled in to a 2 hour movie. It suffers badly. The alleged creative differences among the production crew stem from how they were to handle the Crossbone Vanguard and the conflict. The Crossbone Vanguard as presented in the film teeter between aristocratic family like Zeon, and space pirates who just take what they want from other colonies. It's all iffy. F91 also had to compete with Gundam 0083 which was released 2 months after F91. 0083 was a 13 episode OVA which served as a prequel to the classic series Zeta Gundam (one of the most popular). Timeline wise, everything after Unicorn (UC 0096); F91 (0123), Victory (0153) and G-Savior (0223) range from ok to terrible.
The gundam talk got me to watch some more stuff. I decided to try 08th MS Team, because it seems well liked and its only 12 episodes. I watched the first episode, and I liked it. I have no idea why the Federation and Zeon are fighting (they don't explain it in the first episode), but its not a huge deal. White with red/blue gundams = good, green cyclops gundam = bad . I liked the main character (Shiro), the gundam pilot, and the female zeon pilot Shiro meets. The guy writing the letter was a bit annoying, but nothing too bad. Overall, I liked it, and I intend to watch all of it.
8th MS Team is a spinoff of the original Mobile Suit Gundam and in the timeline it takes place sometime during that show about midway through it I think. It was also made like two decades after the show it spins off from so it kind of assumes you already know things about Mobile Suit Gundam. Spoiler: Extremely Minor MSG spoilers Basically, Zeon, which controls a couple space colonies wanted independence so they started a war with the Earth Federation in a big way by dropping a giant space colony on Earth and killing millions. They were dominating the battlefield for a while until the development of Federation's Gundam. The Gundams in 8th MS Team, however, are cheaper, less powerful mass produced models.
The Cyclops suit is called the Zaku II. (There also is a Zaku I but it's not as 'iconic' and is outdated by the start of Gundam). The black and purple Zaku in the first ep is a partial prototype for another mobile suit, the "Dom" which appears later in the series. (Zakus and Doms also appear in Gundam Seed Destiny, although with a slightly different design). Zeon also has a powerful ground unit called the Gouf, which appears later in the series (and also memorably in the original Gundam and Seed Destiny). The Gundams seen in the series are a mass production model as noted called the Gundam Ground Type. There also is a less powerful mass production suit known as the GM (analogous to the "Dagger" in Gundam Seed).
I figured it expected me to know the conflict, although I wasn't really that lost. Spoiler: MSG So, in this bversion the bad guys seem to definitely be the bad guys. SEED seemed to try to say that both sides in the conflict weren't exactly blameless, and both had bad and good people working for them. But, I'm fine with a more straight up villainous group, although it makes me wonder how any good people with the Zeon's (and there are probably some) justify the mass murder. Then again, its based off an anime that started in 1979 according to wikipedia, so the black and white good guy/bad guy isn't unexpected, and based off the first episode won't effect my enjoyment of the series.
You may want to also watch Gundam 0080. It's 6 episodes long and takes place from the Zeon's POV. The events of 0080 take place during the final week of the war. It offers a different perspective of the Zeon's character. Really first MSG does as well. The Zeon's are fighting a war of independence against the Earth Federation, so the soldiers and officers are committed to their duties. It's the leadership of the Duchey of Zeon, the Zabi Family; specifically Gihren Zabi, who are the twisted ones. Gihren the commander of the Zeon forces who is an avatar for Adolf Hitler (even Gihren's own father uses this description for his son). The One Year War is covered by the original MSG (1979). The events take place from the summer of 0079 to January 0080. 08th MS Team (1995) takes place late summer to November 0079. and 0080 War in the Pocket (1989) In the final week of the war in December 0079 to 0080 January. In 2015 a new ova series called Gundam the Origin will cover the beginning of the One Year War and before.
The perception whether Zeon is good or bad is really a generational one. The creator of Mobile Suit Gundam, Yoshiyuki Tomino was born during WW2 and grew up in the bombed out and devastated post-War Japan. The original MSG is very much a condemnation of the rampant militarism that lead the world into a second world war (and also Vietnam). Other Gundam writers/creators of Tomino's generation are even more clear in linking the Zabis and Zeon with Japanese militarism such as having Gihren the architect of the One Year War paying homage to the Japanese samurai. The creators and fans born in more recent years who never saw the aftermath of WW2 however have a more positive stance and view towards Zeon, which colors more recent works such as Gundam Unicorn, which seems to try to justify and remake the actions of Zeon as some sort of spacenoid rights movement that went out of control and was highjacked by the Zabis.
Which is a whole bunch of BS as they still go around dropping colonies on people and trying to take over the world aka the same crap they did with the Zabis in charge. Its just now they're reconting the Earth Federation from morally grey entity into just as evil to make Zeon look less evil while ignoring that at the end of the day when the Federation went nuts about half rebelled to take out the nuts while when Zeon does horrible crap their soldiers still seem to go along with it. Spoiler: unicorn Lets not forget that their last leaders were an asshole trying to kill billions and his clone who is still an asshole and trying to turn the rest of space into Zeon's economic vassals with added shades of nihilism
The primary storyline in earlier Gundams is actually that of Amuro and Char IMO. Amuro's the main pilot, and Char is an Ace pilot and commander, but there's more to his story, and there's an inciddent later on in Mobile Suit Gundam which takes their rivalry to a whole new level, which continues in Z Gundam and especially Char's Counterattack. Of course a lot of the spin-offs/sequels have had their own take on Char, most notably Zechs Marquise from Gundam Wing and Ra Lou Couset (sp?) from Gundam Seed (Haven't seen Unicorn yet). Apart from his mask/helmet: Char's trademark, btw is that most of his suits have a red paint scheme (With exceptions such as the gold Hyaku Shiki). Hence the nickname "Red Comet"
Gundam Unicorn is a must see, in my opinion, although I'd advise that anyone considering it should watch the other UC stuff before it as it builds on and connects lots of previous works. It's probably my favorite Gundam thus far. It has pretty much everything that makes Gundam great for me. Also the sound mix and the music score are awesome, especially on Blu-ray. You also can't go wrong by Spoiler: Gundam Unicorn having a grown up and matured Mineva Zabi, as one of main characters. It was nice to see what became of her. For more focus on Zeon, the 3 Mobile Suit Gundam IGLOO OVAs are also something to see. It revolves around a group of Zeon engineers and test pilots developing Mobile Suits and other war machines.
The writer for Gundam Unicorn is interesting. He is actually a right wing militarist who fully believes that transforming the Japanese Self Defense Force into a full military organization and getting rid of Article 9, the ban on war in the Japanese constitution, is equivalent to restoring the "dignity" of Japan and the Japanese people. They also blame the post-War pacifism for all the societal problems currently facing Japan. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/international/asia/09fukui.html?pagewanted=all
I've read that Ritestuff has picked up the original series, Turn A and ZZ, as well as Reconquista (sp) in G and the origin movie. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/new...rs-gundam-zz-in-n-america-for-1st-time/.79832 Hopefully they eventually license Zeta and the OAVs as well, and the other series.