Zeta Gundam completed. It's an interesting sequel that expands well on the universe, and the new cast builds well off of the old one. However I think there are two large flaws in the show.

The first I had no fucking idea what the plan was, and I suspect they didn't either. Yeah, Titans are bad and AEUG is trying to stop them. It's just they didn't seem to know how to achieve this and were just wandering around having random battles with them on occasion. Every now and then they would have a major offensive like infiltrating Jaburo or Char giving his speech, but they never followed up on it and just focused on surviving. I think if the Titans' colony laser hadn't forced AEUG to join with Haman Khan, who then attacked Sedan's Gate and started the final battle, Agama and Radish would still be floating around in space, twiddling their thumbs. Compare this to 0079. Even when they spent twenty episodes flying around Earth doing complete bullshit, I still knew what the end game was: get to Jaburo to unload all the refugees, and then head to space to take out the Zabis.

The second is I think the focus of the series was more about the relationships between men and women than the actual war itself. Just as much time if not more was devoted to sexual tension than actual battles. I lost count of how many times Camille would cease fighting to jump out of his Gundam and start chatting with a woman. I guess that would be fine... if it were better written. It's the same problem I had with Resident Evil 2: It's hard for me to believe you've formed this deep, emotional attachment if you've only known them for an afternoon. The only one that struck home deeply was Reccoa since we've had time to get to know her and feel the depth of her betrayal... but conversely she left AEUG for Scirocco, a dude she met for about five minutes.

My third gripe (which I don't think is as fundamental as the other two) is I can't figure out why this was the AEUG crew. The circumstances in 0079 explained its ridiculousness. Zeon attacked Side 7 and killed most of the soldiers, so all the civilians jumped onto White Base and got the fuck out. Bright had to pull young men from the population who showed capability to fight, but in the end they weren't trained soldiers and were prone to talking back, making stupid mistakes, and weren't disciplined. Meanwhile you have the civilians running amok all over the base, causing chaos and disorder. It was a crazy situation.

This shouldn't be happening in Zeta. Why are there two children rampaging everywhere? It's not like they keep to their rooms too. They will barge into the bridge to bother Bright in the middle of a battle. They start locking themselves into mobile suits that need to launch. And then AEUG seriously couldn't fucking hire anyone else besides angsty teens? Camille, OK, he's a Newtype, so you need him. And he actually keeps a relatively mature head on his shoulders, particularly when you compare him to Amuro in the first half of 0079. But Fa and Katsu? Half the time Katsu was just doing whatever the fuck he wanted. That is not how a soldier should behave. If you fucking disobey an order, you're fucking out. But no, they let him do it. And how the hell was he storming out in a mobile suit without permission? How the fuck is the launch pad not controlled by the engineers in Agama? Why does Bright not have some sense of control over his own damned troops? See, he wasn't slapping people enough in this show. Even fucking Kai got into line in 0079 after a while. So why the hell couldn't AEUG just get professional soldiers instead of these idiots?

So those were my complaints. On the positive, I think plot-wise it's nice see how the world changed in the aftermath of the One Year War. Personally I would've liked greater involvement of the people from White Base, particularly Amuro, but I accept many of them wanted to move on with their lives. Char's ample screen time is nice, but he's not as cool as in 0079. He did the best he could given the terrible name and horrible fashion sense. To be honest the most excited I got was whenever Amuro and Char were on screen simultaneously and I was hoping they'd start fencing or something. It also had some of that trippy shit I disliked in 0079 but it wasn't as much or as freaky so it was palatable. And at the end of the day I liked Camille. He stepped into his role and dealt with war as best he could, but really all of this shit could've been avoided IF HE JUST WENT TO FUCKING SCHOOL LIKE FA TOLD HIM TO.

Overall it's not a bad series. I think 0079 was better, but in some ways Zeta was superior to its predecessor. Of course it's necessary if you want to keep up with what happens in the UC timeline, and as I continue this project hopefully I won't take as long. Next up, Zeta movies.