When I watched F91, I can understand that they ran behind schedule and had to rush a project with what little they had but some of the women based on which side they serve and have a crush on almost immediately change sides. For me, the one saving grace the movie had was the fanservice scene of Cecily laying nude in the tub.

I mean F91 is just kind of a bad movie in general; wether that's due to it being cut down a bunch of times or the stry outline just never being good in the first place is up for debate (I'm in the latter camp - Cosmo Babylonia is the dumbest, least interesting villain faction in the entire franchise, and the rest of the ostensibly most important storybeats that made it into the movie just don't have enough meat to them to stretch to even a 12 episode show, much less the 50 it was originally scheduled to have.)
As for UC as a whole - I think that the people who insist on a rigid front to back watchorder are at best high on their own fumes of how great and meaningful to everything the overarching narrative is when really everything you need to know about earlier entries is explained approppriately well when it becomes necessary (because guess what, people at a billion dollar studio know how to construct a story in ways that don't require new viewers to watch 150+ episodes of backlog in order to understand what's going on and inevitably get tired and drop it before reaching the new thing that they want to sell) and at worst pretentious clowns artificially raising the barrier of entry so they can be on their high horse about how all those newcomers don't watch "the real Gundam shows" and how that makes them normie fakes.
As long as you have the vaguest understanding of who Amuro and Char are and that Hathaway was involved in a time these two got into a big fight and his love interest died during it, you have all the context you need to understand Hathaway.

hui43210 wrote:Just dropping by to clarify that it is not the same director as Code Geass but is the writer of CG, which is maybe even more exciting in a way. The director is Hiroshi Kobayashi who directed Kiznaiver and the new Spriggan and work on other shows along the way.

Mh, my bad. Thanks for correcting me on that!

Blockio wrote:As long as you have the vaguest understanding of who Amuro and Char are and that Hathaway was involved in a time these two got into a big fight and his love interest died during it, you have all the context you need to understand Hathaway.

I understand that all but one question I still have in my mind is do all of Hathaway's love interests have to have a certain quirk that to the so called sane person would identify them as crazy? I speak for both Quess and Gigi in this matter of course.

Tomino's female characters are usually either competent with kinda bland personalities or completely insane. That's really what that is.

Also gonna add on to what Blockio and co. were saying- Gundam is primarily a toy commercial franchise and while occasionally its a toy commercial with good or interesting writing, its never gonna get so bogged down in narrative to the point you NEED to watch multiple 30-40 year old shows to understand what the newest stuff is trying to sell you. Sure, there are nods and such for long time fans, and sometimes greater context can lead to greater understanding of where a character comes from (I.e. Marida in Unicorn looks a little different if you've seen the ZZ characters she stands in contrast to), but you can still watch whatever and understand the vast majority of the story of that particular series.

You can watch any Gundam UC stuff independently if you want, but there are these things called themes that carry on from one anime to the other, regardless if the writers or team changes. It is simplfying things to say one doesn't see Hathway or any other Gundam anime with different eyes if you've seen all that comes before or not. Again, one shouldn't not watch something because they feel forced to watch x episodes of something else before, that's just going to drive away pontential viewers, but I'm not going to pretend that the hypotetical new guy is as invested in it as a long time fan. Those nods and characters and moments all add up to something bigger, it's not just "oh look the Zaku f-1234 from Gundam Zeta whatever popped up 5 seconds on the background!"

Gundam is also not a toy commercial any more than Evangelion is an excuse to sell figures of Rei and Asuka. It is really underselling the entire franchise when the only reason Evangelion even exists is because Gundam came before and actually had a more serious story than usual at the time, when most mecha shows really were episodic toy commercial selling nonsense.

Understood. I do have one question about CCA that has been a big issue with it is that why didn't Sayla appear one more time? I know Char mentions her once to Nanai but other than that it's like Artesia is out of the grand scheme of things.

Blockio wrote:As for UC as a whole - I think that the people who insist on a rigid front to back watchorder are at best high on their own fumes of how great and meaningful to everything the overarching narrative is when really everything you need to know about earlier entries is explained approppriately well when it becomes necessary (because guess what, people at a billion dollar studio know how to construct a story in ways that don't require new viewers to watch 150+ episodes of backlog in order to understand what's going on and inevitably get tired and drop it before reaching the new thing that they want to sell) and at worst pretentious clowns artificially raising the barrier of entry so they can be on their high horse about how all those newcomers don't watch "the real Gundam shows" and how that makes them normie fakes.

I watched the three compilation movies for the original series and thought they were boring like hell. I still haven't seen the original series and don't think I'm missing much, except maybe 150 episodes of pretty ancient and somewhat crappy animation.

I remember that to this day I still have in my possession the English dub VHS tapes of the MSG compilation trilogy. When I compare it to the TV series dub, either they had a misprint or the people who dubbed the movies were extremely high, making up random "conversations" as they went along. Not even the part where Amuro gets slapped by Bright where Amuro would usually say "Even my father never hit me" is replaced by taunting at Bright like "Better try again, I'm still not convinced."

Blockio wrote:I mean F91 is just kind of a bad movie in general; wether that's due to it being cut down a bunch of times or the stry outline just never being good in the first place is up for debate (I'm in the latter camp - Cosmo Babylonia is the dumbest, least interesting villain faction in the entire franchise, and the rest of the ostensibly most important storybeats that made it into the movie just don't have enough meat to them to stretch to even a 12 episode show, much less the 50 it was originally scheduled to have.)
As for UC as a whole - I think that the people who insist on a rigid front to back watchorder are at best high on their own fumes

OTOH, if you go into Unicorn with not at least Gundam and Zeta under your belt --- you will get lost.

I know, because I did that. I think I might have seen OG Gundam at the time, but not Zeta or ZZ yet. I missed context clues all over the place.

Colony Laser? What happened to Armuro exactly? Who is Bright and why should I place my trust in him to be someone to help the MC?

I mean, I watched Unicorn without having seen either, and understood it just fine. I of course knew who the characters and plot points were through general cultural osmosis, but all that's really required is a basic understanding of this not being the first, and if there's something alluded to having happened a while ago, an earlier show probably covered it

The Witch from Mercury Prologue is out if you know where to look for it an hooo boy. This is already going a lot of places.

I don't know if anyone else besides me caught on to the design of the Dilanza from the upcoming Witch From Mercury looks similar to the Aestivalis piloted by the lead character in Martian Successor Nadesico.

After the Prologue was already great, today an interquel novel and the actual episode 1 dropped, and both are excellent. All the indicators are pointing towards this being great.

The Witch From Mercury eps 0 and 1 were pretty cool. Seems to be a little more playful then your typical Gundam show but I guess we'll have to see where it's going with it.

The beginning of Episode 0 had a cool homage to the beginning of Q and the end of Epsiode 1 def gave me Utena vibes, so it was right up my alley

Really enjoyed episode 0, didn't like the idea of a time skip right after.

Also, I'm very confused at just making the show Battle Athletes now

Joy Evangelion wrote:the end of Epsiode 1 def gave me Utena vibes, so it was right up my alley

For good reason! The show is written by Ichiro Okuchi, who has also penned the Utena novels

Forgot to mention; I really love her eyebrows.

Oh yeah, Suletta's character design is super on point. Adorable little raccoon.

Little behind on things but I just finished the first proper episode of Witch from Mercury. People weren't kidding with the Utena comparisons, holy moly, but its nice to see Gundam taking huge inspiration from something like that.

There's a such a huge difference in tone between the prologue and episode 1 though that it has me really curious to see where the series will go into the future (Maybe we'll get more typical Gundam war in the second cour? I guess that would turn the show from Utena into Rose of Versailles lol). I'm very cautiously optimistic for now.

Yeah, I expect things to escalate to at least a war between corporations, perhaps a full conflict between earth and space, as hinted towards by the Prologue