I started watching Zeta Gundam in late-2021 after researching how to catch up on all of the Gundam I had missed out on in the past several decades. Being that I had seen the original in 2011 or whatever, I figured I was caught up enough to enjoy this. Well, I kinda was?
MS Zeta Gundam is a direct sequel to Mobile Suit Gundam and was made 6 whole years later from its original. In story, it takes place seven years after the events of "the One Year War". It does a fun switch where a section of the Federation are now also bad guys called "The Titans" (they dress as SS Nazi's just to drive the point home) and their goal is to take out Zeon remnants. The hero is Kamille Bidan this time , a hot headed teen with his "will they won't they" not girlified Fa Yuiry. Captain Noa Bright comes back, and there are a lot of cameos by the other crew of MS Gundam. Even Char comes back wiht a fake name that literally everyone sees through, but he no longer fights for Zeon and wants to fight against the Federation.
My thoughts? I liked it but it felt...too long. So this is my first aforay into what is apparently a long-standing tradition of stretching out a story in Gundam to 52 episodes because that's how many weeks are in a yea rand that's how a TV season works in Japan. Apparently there is a compilation movie about the series, but I am reliably informed it is purely edited and leaves out rather important details, unlike the Gundam 0079 movies' which leave out all of the episodes about the Gun Hammer (which, again, is good, because it sucks). It still has on of the strongest mobile suit designs ever, the Zeta Gundam. It even transforms into a jet/plane thingy. The story is excellent as it delves deeper into the futility of war and watching Kamille grew as a pilot was rather a refreshing change. The whole thing about Newtypes goes into a bit of overdrive into the second half of this series and by the end expands upon itself into opening new avenues of storytelling that Gundam doesn't stop exploring in the Universal Century Arc. I have had a couple months to think it over and I have watched even more Gundam series since then, but so far this might be my favorite arc in the franchise. It's not too full of itself, it knows when to slow down, and it still uses the concept of the Gundams just being excepptionally good military combat vehicles, not super robots.
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