Going through the topic, I'm clearly not the biggest Gundam aficionado on GAF but I've still watched a fair sum. I'll give my thoughts too:
Mobile Suit Gundam (43 episode TV series) - Good war story/coming of age story. Rewatched this with a friend who'd never seen it before a couple years ago. He was pretty onboard with everything up until the end.
He was not a fan of hippie, space magic.
Zeta Gundam (50 episode TV series) - Tomino unleashed, in the worst way possible. There's a stiffness and melodrama that permeates this series that I largely hold responsible for making most UC pretty bad. I could not connect to the cast. As other have said, the beginning is rough, and presenting the lead unintentionally as a total fucking lunatic does not help.
ZZ Gundam (50 episode TV series) - Really mixed. The first third of the series consists of wacky hijinx which don't land at all imo. Series shifts gears completely after that and becomes much better. Elpe Puru is adorable and my favorite Gundam side character.
Char's Counterattack (movie) - Boring and awful, except the ending. We don't need the Quess plotline. Nobody cares; that's not why we're here. The finale is spectacular. TBH, you could just read a summary of the start of the movie and watch the final battle and get everything out of this movie it has to offer. To be clear, the final battle is really worth it, even if you decide to suffer through the rest of the movie.
0080: War in the Pocket (6 episode OVA) - Solid side story. Lighter on the action and more down-to-earth.
Gundam F91 (movie) - Unintelligible. It's a TV series crunched into a single movie and the jumps from location to location are sometimes impossible to follow. Looks good though.
0083: Stardust Memory (13 episode OVA) - Attractive side story. Traditional rookie->ace setup although ultimately Kou's kind of a loser and the plot falls to pieces by the end. Famously looks amazing though. Maybe peak of hand-drawn Gundam.
G Gundam (49 episode TV series) - Super robot fighting. Some people swear by it. I can see it. It's very hot-blooded. Didn't land for me personally (in the way other hot-blooded series have). It gets tedious imo.
Gundam Wing (49 episode TV series) - Lives off the memes tbh. The characters are less people and more props for whatever ideal or worldview leaves their lips. Simultaneously though, the show tries treating them real people. The result is cute. You can't help but admire Wing for trying to have its cake and eat it too when it's
so obvious what it's doing. Mech design is also really solid. Everybody loves Wing mechs.
08th MS Team (12 episode OVA) - Side story following grunts. Earns its rep as good imo.
After War Gundam X (39 episode TV series) - One of very few series I think is underappreciated (and largely not underrated). Sure, the production was a mess, the bishonen (sub)villain duo never stop being lame, and much of the mech design look like past series rejects, but the core cast is rock solid, the plot stays fun most of the way through, and the main mechs look good. The Gundam X in particular is my favorite protag Gundam - A perfect mix of cool and plausability for the universe (I understand the practical limits of a moon cannon and am willing to accept it).
Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz (movie) - More of the same but prettier. Katoki mech redesigns are a mixed bag. I generally prefer the blockier TV show designs, especially for the Wing Zero, but some of them like Nataku look much sleaker (Nataku TV is hilariously awful). Incidentally, the battle before orbital re-entry is practically worth the ticket price. The best Wing-style drama there is to offer with banging music and fantastic visuals.
Gundam SEED (50 episode TV series) - Big thumbs up from me. Some longer series like this tend to drag, but SEED uses its episode count to build a great cast and to let so many scenes sit and breathe (with its also fantastic score). Mecha design is great although some don't like the elaborate and/or backpack-heavy designs. A fair chunk of reused animation is a fair criticism but enough about SEED lands that I can let it slide. The final third slips a little when it seems the production realized they needed to wrap things up and the plot felt warped a long but the series conclusion is so good and the last act is still entertaining enough that again it's cool with me.
Gundam SEED Destiny (50 episode TV series) - Famously collapses in on itself. I won't drone on about the many ways Destiny (comes to) suck.
Gundam SEED Stargazer (3 episode ONA) - Pretty cool short story. Capitalizes on SEED Destiny plot points better than SEED Destiny. Shocker.
Gundam 00 (50 episode TV series) - Pretty neat, I guess. I wasn't as engaged by the main plot as many others were and actually enjoyed the more off-the-rails second half. Kenji Kawai is a good composer! 00 is my earliest memory of the obnoxious trend of characters constantly calling each other by their full names.
Never forget that time Allelujah blew up a hospital full of orphans as a heroic act.
Gundam Unicorn (7 episode OVA) - Wherein production identifed the elements of UC that fans supposedly like the most and made an entire, boring series about it. I remember
one moment of real interest and humanity in this whole show, and that's when Mineva was talking to some restaurant manager in some misc. episode (although it's been long enough I don't remember why I liked it). The rest of this show is dolled up Zeta-style UC.
Gundam 00: A Wakening of the Trailblazer (movie) - 00 but just kinda worse and I think most people agree. The scenario is incredibly dumb and that's... fine if you just want to see more 00-style action I guess.
Gundam: The Origin (6 episode OVA) - Landed for me as a background story. I liked and like a lot of these characters.
Iron-Blooded Orphans (50 episode TV series) - Another thumbs up from me but not without its asterisks. I like the idea of downtrodden, ex-slaves forming their own PMC while
political intrigue takes place in the background. I like the directions the show goes in and the developments near the end of the first half
(losing their moral center when Biscuit dies and wondering where the group will go from there) but the second half takes way too long to go places with it. A lot of those second season episodes are forgettable and awful slogs that didn't need to exist. Series might have been better a little shorter or better constructed to arrive at the
inevitable conclusion.
Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky (4 episode ONA) - Fantastic. So
broadly good too that it has actual legs for normie appeal imo. Solid direction, art, animation, and a cool sound motif too. Predictably tragic and it's no less entertaining for it beause it's told so well.
Gundam Thunderbolt: Bandit Flower (4 episode ONA) - Incredibly boring and such a disappointing follow-up to December Sky but thankfully you can pretend it doesn't exist since December Sky stands on its own.
The Witch from Mercury (24 episode TV series) - I watched this whole show this week, actually! (in part spurned on by this topic to try it again) "Mid" seems about right. I agree with a lot of assessments that the show doesn't go full-throttle enough, on both its ideas and general plotting. The hardest hit was probably the brake slam after episode 12 which was a legit good episode.
How did the series just go back to the school again after that? The yuri bait from production is obvious to everyone but even the simple friendship angle between Suletta and Mio which the show really does want to sell doesn't really fly - the two have like one scene of genuine bonding before the show tries telling us they're totally close, when really their relationship is Mio just using and abusing Suletta at her pleasure for most of the runtime. Best parts of the show play off the characters - like how Mio is constantly full of bravado but always jumps into situations completely unprepared. Prospera's my favorite character.
I don't know why Quiet Zero is actually bad, outside of the obviously terrible optics of allowing a practically immortal child ultimate authority over 99% of the world's tech. Hey, she wasn't gonna kill anyone until they fired first!
Gundam SEED Freedom (movie) - Very clearly made by people who both know and love Gundam SEED.
I already wrote a big post back in May detailing my thoughts, but to sum it up, production knew SEED Destiny's faults and simultaneously tried to make a fun time in a sequel, and they largely succeeded imo. It's still bad - make no mistake - but it's securely in 'it's so bad it's good' and 'they
know' territory, dunking on SEED Destiny while not being obnoxious and mean-spirited about it.
Favorites:
1) Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky
2) Gundam SEED
3) Gundam X
