Positives:
* Character designs are mostly great. Wing fans (like me) will get their fix.
* Mecha designs are solid, as can be expected from a Gundam show. Specifically, the Virtue is a powerhouse instant classic.
* Pacing is better than average; something important happens in nearly every episode
* Avoids an excessive amount of backstory in favor of current action
Negatives:
* If you ...
Positives:
* Character designs are mostly great. Wing fans (like me) will get their fix.
* Mecha designs are solid, as can be expected from a Gundam show. Specifically, the Virtue is a powerhouse instant classic.
* Pacing is better than average; something important happens in nearly every episode
* Avoids an excessive amount of backstory in favor of current action
Negatives:
* If you don't like Gundam Wing, you'll hate this one nearly as much. Luckily, this does not apply to me. Go Heero!
* Hearing "Blah blah blah blah Celestial Being. Blah blah blah Celestial Being" over and over again really gets annoying after a while.
* The music, while nice, isn't as good as it was in SEED and Destiny. The first opener of the first season is good, though. TM Revolution saves the day.
Overall:
I can break down this review for you and definitively recommend whether or not you should give 00 a try. If you like mecha, you will, at the very least, like the action parts of Gundam 00. There are definitely a lot of instant classic mecha fights towards the end of the show. If you like political anime, you will like Gundam 00. There is most definitely a lot of factional warware occuring that this show, much like the Oz/Specials/Treize Faction/Romefeller/White Fang stuff in Wing. Along those same lines, if you liked Gundam Wing but were turned off of some of the other Gundam shows, you will enjoy 00. If you think Zeta Gundam was the be-all and end-all of Gundam, though, you may walk away disappointed. This show isn't a polemic about the pain of war and "one man's struggle". This is a amazingly animated anime series that attempts to modernize the Gundam franchise for the current generation. It takes the SEED audience that is now 5 to 7 years older than they were when SEED premiered and attempts to give them a story that is a bit darker and more "real". Likely, the next Gundam series will attempt to be more "real" than Gundam 00 in an attempt to grow up with their audience.
I'm a Wing fan, mostly because I like having multiple protaganists- it's good to have multiple plot threads running at the same time as opposed to dealing with the same "whiny kid in a mobile suit" archetype over and over again. Because of this, 00 impressed me. If I had to deal with Alleluja Haptism alone for 50 episodes, I'd probably lose my mind. Thankfully, I was given the option of following Lockon, Tieria, and Setsuna instead. One final warning, though: if you like stories that are neatly tied up with a proper epilogue, you might want to wait to watch this until 2010, when the Gundam 00 movie is released.
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