Ganelon wrote:I'm a big Gundam fan. Well, at least I used to be. I watched every available Gundam show (except the 0083 movie) and played every game before Seed came out. I don't know if it was the emo personalities, move away from cel animation, or perhaps even my own tastes maturing but I stopped watching Seed after a few episodes.
I checked out the recent Gundam Unicorn episodes and while they present a nice story and cast, I'm turned off by any drawn-out moral arguments nowadays. I don't want to hear 2 characters arguing about the effects of war for minutes at a time with minimum action. To me, it seems childish and forces me to suspend my disbelief. The last part of Char's Counterattack with a chat behind every attack left me with the same reservations. The other thing that makes me cringe is when a Gundam show focus too much on a NewType's (plus all the variants) "magic" or on an artificial/cyber NewType's instability.
08th MS Team is the grittiest Gundam OVA. I'm not really a fan either for the same reasons but I respect it. 0083 has an engaging story and characters but the protagonist isn't the easiest to relate to. 0080 is more believable without love and whining to push it down but I'm not sure it's entirely fulfilling (I think everyone wishes the Kampfer had a cooler pilot).
V Gundam and Gundam Wing were and still are my favorite Gundam series. I normally don't like kid lead roles either and the former is filled with kids, but I think that makes the journey all the more memorable. I'm not a fan of teen heroes either but I liked that the show tried to make everything feel as "cool" as possible at the time and didn't try to insult the audience by explicitly explaining everyone's motives (e.g. a particular antagonist's death).
yeah a friend bought me a Seed DVD of some description and I couldn't bare watching more than about 7 minutes of it :s - I have watched all UC Gundam (except where movies and series exists I have watched the series or OVA over the movie (though I have watched all 0079 movies)). I have to say I enjoyed pretty much everything; even
MS Igloo and
ZZ - in fact the only time I found myself wavering was in some of the later middle sections of
Zeta Gundam where there just seemed to be too many parallel plots for the sake of nothing IMO, also Kamille is BY FAR my least favourite UC pilot...
The only non UC things I've seen are
After War, which I really liked story wise, and
Turn A which I thought was utterly brilliant, and I don't think is half as well respected as it should be. I might try
|Wing even though from what I see of it's mecha in gunpla post on tumblr etc., I don't really like em, but when I finish my 'second pass' of UC Gundam which I'm on at the moment (basically I'm watching everything again and where there are movies I'm watching them now), I think I'll give it a go.
Unicorn is ok art wise, well the mecha are definitely (well
except for
Unicorn and
Banshee themselves which I think are abhorrent looking (especially
Banshee)), especially the
Zaku in the museum near the start, that looked really good, but yeah the story is a bit :S, although the Char guy is pretty cool.
08th MS Team I really, really liked except for the chara design, bu 0080 I adore unequivocally, so tragic the ending, bring a tear to a glass eye
.
One thing I actually really did like, apart from it being admittedly
extremely squashed, was
F91, I thought the art was outstanding, and I really wish they'd make something mores set in that period or even based on the
Crossbone Gundam manga.
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