Thoughts on Gundam Wing
It was okay. I didn't love the Gundam designs, and I feel like the story is a bit disjointed by having so many PoV characters. One of the characters, Wu Fei, is practically non-present for 90% of the series despite having one half of the climactic final battles in the show. Another, Trowa, is effectively written out of the show for a chunk of it to the point I'm pretty sure he was supposed to die, but the writers couldn't pull the trigger on it.
The Gundams have this really weird niche of being both obscenely powerful, and being not much more durable than a normal mobile suit. In the very first episode, Wing shows an absolutely ludicrous amount of firepower with its rifle, AND gets bodied. The show seems to try to be illustrating that the Gundam pilots are insanely good pilots, but most of the times we see them in combat, they're relying on overwhelming firepower, not tactics or skill.
I still appreciate the show for paving the way for my precious baby, Gundam 00.
CHARACTER THOUGHTS:
Heero Yuy: Like a slice of white bread that's very good at war in general.
Zechs Merquise: The real protagonist of the show. Best Char clone other than Quattro. Is 10000000% right that humanity is not in a place to implement Total Pacifism. Tallgeese for best Gundam.
Duo Maxwell: Good character A++. Is mean to Hilde, though.
Trowa Barton: Has the best Gundam, but is almost identical to Heero. Exists to die.
Quatre Raberba Winner: Good character A++. Too pure for this world.
Wu Fei: Completely redundant, hyper-misogynist character, adds nothing of value to the story. Everything he does that has any effect should have been rolled into Trowa, who deserves to exist far more.
Relena Peacecraft: Best character in the show, constantly told it's not time for her ideas yet, and to wait her turn. To her credit, she pushes against that, but notably doesn't succeed until the boys are done playing with their toys.
Oh. Mobile DOLLS. Ha, I just put that together.
Lady Une: Good character concept executed poorly - a person completely unable to reconcile their civillian and military lives. Super wish it wasn't portrayed through mental illness, though.
Noin, Sally Po, Howard, Peacemillion crew: "oh shit, we forgot to write in any infrastructure for the pilots! uh, do we have any spare characters laying around? put 'em on a space boat!" Noin and Sally Po definitely get the brunt of the show's lowkey misogyny, too, thanks to the Heavy Misogyny Beam Cannon, Wu Fei.
Dorothy: Amazing character. Hated her. She's definitely going to teach Quatre some lessons about the beauty of dying in battle.
Treize: Pretentious asshole. It's good that he died.
