Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Olorin666
Gundam Z. The most iconic. The most popular. The undisputed king and grandfather of all mecha anime. The depth and breadth of the philosophical themes woven into this story are truly impressive. It is, first and foremost, an anti-war statement, and the Japanese know better than anyone the horrific consequences of war and the responsibility for war crimes. A distant, distant future, where technology is hundreds of years ahead of ours, is, by and large, no different from our own. People are still greedy, ambitious, and cruel. The main characters, mostly children, are dragged into the very hell of war. Through the prism of their childlike view of the world and their forced early maturation, many psychological and philosophical themes are revealed to us. The anime is filled with political intr…
Read at the sourceKinglink
This was more gundam with most of the same positives and negatives. A heavy focus on "Space wizards" which is it's weakest part. However the positive is FAR more mobile suits including the absolutely awesome Qubeley. Since so much of this series focused on Cyber newtypes, and yet the anime is SO afraid to define what a new type is because they might want to change that definition later to give some new space power... that is a little annoying.
But I'll give it a point higher for one important reason... In the original series Earth federation good, Zeon Bad... But in the new series it's flipped on it's heads Titans (An offshoot of Earth Federation) bad, AEUG (A not quite Zeon rebel force) is good. I hate black and white material and this at least leads the ability to say neither the Feder…
Read at the sourceHERMIT_PAIMON
" Probably the best sequel in enitre anime history "
Gundam zeta is the 2nd main installment of uc timeline which describe the struggle of humans or newtypes in a never ending conflict to seize power . Zeta Gundam introduces a more political and morally gray world, where allegiances shift, and the true cost of war becomes painfully clear. It's a war story that feels genuinely consequential, with each decision and action weighed with emotional and political motivated .
I think there isn't much need to describe too much details because everyone knows what gundam is truly means or what it tries to convey all time . You will find similar synopsis or plot throughout the gundam universe but the way of execution of story along with character development and mecha designs make every gundam uniqu…
Read at the sourceChrismas95
Disclaimer: To be fair to Zeta, I took several hiatuses during it because work was picking up during the summer. I’m talking 4.5 months to get from start to finish. While I think that doesn’t affect my overall sentiments, I have no doubt in my mind that it made Zeta Gundam feel less tight than it should’ve.
Perhaps case in point, I just couldn't get into it because it felt like things just Happened. While there’s the overarching plot of Titans vs. AEUG, it never felt like any progress was being made to me. In 0079, everything is in service of The Little Ship That Could surviving, even after being officially recognized. Zeta didn’t feel like it had anything like that to latch onto.
I did like the mini-plot of the last handful of episodes though. They were very tight with no flaffing abo…
Read at the sourcek-0da
Zeta has a lot of high highs and a lot of low lows. The writing peaks and dips dramatically based on if there's a woman in a scene or not. The writing isn't bad per say, it's actually extremely good, it's just that I don't think Tomino knew how women worked when he was writing this. Free my girl Reccoa she didnt do anything wrong.
Great action, animation. Suits look cool.
Kamille is a very good protagonist, and watching his journey is harrowing. Four Vaginas is also like so fucking cool, like unreasonably fucking cool, but he's still an asshole dipshit and I appreciate that. Haman was fantastically menacing, even if she didnt show up a lot.
The cast overall is fine. I wish I got to see them interact more as a team, but I'm fairly happy with what we got. They're not beating the charm o…
Read at the sourcelastnameEver
Some lunatics decide it’s a good idea to go to war. One batch of lunatics is led by a man named Four Vagina. Four Vagina thinks it’s a good idea to employ a teenager to pilot a tank that can fly in the hopes that his flying tank skills are better than the other side who fly tanks. This goes very well until the story hits a brick wall by trying to juggle too many characters at once, and by introducing a series of increasingly unconvincing romantic subplots between the aforementioned teenage lunatic and the stand-ins for Tomino’s mistresses. Eventually, things devolve into a kind of trainwreck where everyone starts acting so out of character that you begin to wonder what their original characters were even supposed to be. There’s a scene where a robot impregnates another robot with a metal s…
Read at the sourceCrumbSteak
The original Mobile Suit Gundam (MSG) was something of a sleeper hit, having failed to garner a lot of attention during its initial airing. The successful merchandising of gunpla, reruns, and other factors helped it reach a wider audience by the mid-80s. A sequel seemed inevitable. Yoshiyuki Tomino returned as the director, the legendary Kunio Okawara was once again the mechanical designer, and even Yoshikazu Yasuhiko pushed the project forward with his striking character design.
The result is a confident sequel that retains the creativity of its predecessor while throwing in more than a few tricks of its own. The original MSG has been derided for its stiff animation, a shortcoming that Zeta dodges thanks to its fluidity and style. My favorite part of the visuals is the character design,…
Read at the sourceJastereich
Zeta Gundam differs significantly in tone from Mobile Suit Gundam, as it has a darker atmosphere. The series has a constant sense of foreboding as if the entire system is on the brink of collapsing into a despotic nightmare. Even the victories earned by the AEUG in the show's early stages feel hollow and Pyrrhic, as they often take one step forward and two steps back.
While the story is interesting, my issue lies with the main cast. Although they have strengths, I must say that they often fall flat. They come across as two-dimensional and overly transparent in their motivations. For example, I had mixed feelings when Reccoa Londe's true internal conflict was revealed. On the one hand, I understood her frustration and disgust, but on the other hand, her behavior in the past thirty-somethin…
Read at the sourceYes_that
When I started this show, I wasn't expecting it to become one of my favorite shows I've watched. My introduction to the Gundam Franchise was The Origin manga, which was so beautifully drawn and put together that I kind of expected all of the 80s Gundam shows to fall flat in comparison to the newer, more retrospective manga. While I think Zeta Gundam is more flawed than the original Mobile Suit Gundam, especially the manga, it most definitely did not fall flat. In fact, it blew me away.
This show has a lot of problems. The animation, while it doesn't inhibit the enjoyment of the story, is obviously dated, and doesn't really have the same retro-y visual appeal that 90s stuff like Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, or Gunnm do. Dialogue is sometimes awkward, and very often unclear or dense, and epis…
Read at the sourcewhiteflame55
Overall, this show was just very messy. While I can say there were some improvements (this series did not start off slow like the 1979 original, getting into the action early and often), it shares many issues with that series and added a few more. Much of the finale felt rushed and too much was built on Kamille's sudden acquisition and use of certain absurd newtype powers. The whole narrative seemed like it was jumping from battle to battle, often with little rhyme or reason, and while the original series clearly was aiming to sell toys and finding any reason to come out with a new mech type, this series seems particularly interested in hyping up new models with little or no explanation. It did make some of the fights more interesting, since new tools got pulled out often, but with so much…
Read at the sourcebboy_X
I won’t lie, I picked up this series before the original series. In retrospect I understand how absurd that is. Trust me, I am thoroughly embarrassed by having admitted that. But this was recommended to me, and I watched the first episode on a whim. Much to my surprise, by the time the episode finished I was not only in shock, but thoroughly confused. Not so much by the plot, but because of how erratic characters were from the start, specifically that Kamille kid. I thought this kid’s actions were so violent and over the top. “This kid had to have had trauma from an event in 0079, huh?” was my only rationalization for his behavior. I was also left wondering why this place called Side 3 was under attack for a hardly discernible reason. So I did my homework, watched the original MSG, and cam…
Read at the sourceVaguelyweebish
After the surprising depth and satisfying conclusion to the original "Mobile Suit Gundam," I was riding high on Mecha Fever, buying my first two Gunpla models and excited to consume more of this landmark anime franchise. Hearing good things about "Zeta Gundam" and eager to see how this universe could be even better fleshed out than the good yet quite flawed original series (which I practically binged from start to finish!) I went into "Zeta" expecting great things!
But it turns out that even in the eighties, people should have been wary when a company wanted to turn a popular series into a genuine franchise. "Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam" is bad. VERY bad.
While the first several episodes are easy enough to follow, adding new characters and bringing in the occasional fan-favorite from the ori…
Read at the sourceSpirit_Chaser
In accordance with the brutality of it's prequel, Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam followed after greatly, improving everywhere it had previously lacked before. Beautifully improved animation and Mobile Suit designs, a brilliant continuation of the story and characters after a long time skip, a hauntingly sounding orchestrated soundtrack used impressively in execution, and even more chaotic space battles, furthering the self-destruction of mankind. The structure of the dialogue, pacing, and progression of the story all flowed amazingly. As the episodes went on, there is massive build up as the political struggles savage the colonies, and death soon follows.
Alongside the old cast, as they slowly get pulled back again into a new war, a bright and shining new cast emerges. Kamill…
Read at the sourceNoahboy
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is a series that has has some amazing content, but is frequently bogged down in a variety of areas, preventing it from reaching its full potential. However, in the moments where it reaches that potential it is one of the best shows I've ever seen.
I hate to shit on an anime as old as this, but the animation is one of the factors that brings this series down for me. The battles are rarely visually interesting and most of them meld together for me, making it often hard to remember specific battles throughout the series. It also doesn't help that many of the battles end in nobody dying, I lost count of the times Kamille and Jerid fought eachother without one of them managing to die, having the same outcome repeated so many times takes away the tension and excitement I…
Read at the sourceshinrisen
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam has been one the least enjoyable anime series I've seen and finished.
Usually, whenever I'll watch a handful of episodes of a series, decide if I like it or not, and drop it if it's not enjoyable. In the case of MSZG, I felt compelled to keep watching after the initial "oh gosh, is this that bad?" of the first 10 or so episodes. This is due to the fact that I've seen and enjoyed the prequel to MGZS and would like to continue in its shared universe. After having slogged through 50 episodes of MGZS, I'm not sure if I made the right choice.
The best thing about this series is definitely the audiovisual art. While its animation might not be a technical marvel, it has this distinct 80's look to it that I certainly like. The color palette for the mech's and such is ver…
Read at the sourceTykylo
(Minor spoilers)
While a lot of sequels these days do little to expand on the original source material, and in some cases actually make the original worse just by existing, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam genuinely earned the status of being the sequel to one of the most revolutionary anime of all time.
It takes all of MSG's concepts and ideas and cranks them up to 11. Newtypes get fleshed out amazingly, and the post-war period is depicted as gritty and not all sunshine and rainbows. Zeta is substantianlly darker than its predecessor, having no qualms with slaughtering characters left and right, depicting the universe's political inner workings with the darkness and moral ambiguity that would be expected of real-world politics, and only giving the main cast a pyrrhic happy ending.
The best par…
Read at the sourceGosplan14
Eight years after the events of 0079's One Year War, conflict has broken out again in the solar system and Gundam's Universal Century continues.
Story: 10/10
The story is by far the best part of Zeta Gundam. Highly political in nature, Zeta Gundam is a good depiction of a conflict breaking out over ideological differences, the lust for power and the remainders of a defeated ideology and their supporters. Tomino lives up to his reputation and wrote a story in his signature style, in which plot armor is relatively uncommon, cynicism (influenced by his fragile mental health at the time) prevails and the very nature of the military conflict drives people both well- and worse-adjusted into misery. The story also increases in quality in the second half of the anime, but the first half also very…
Read at the sourceTiankioo
A good series that is ultimately ruined for adults by yet another whiny teenage brat of an MC and romance subplots that move way too quickly.
On a mission to be able to watch newer UC Gundam series, I decided to watch some of the older stuff. I love the mature themes surrounding the series but frankly, the MCs in these old series are awful. I fail to understand how you can take a mature plot about death, space wars, and politics and decide to add a rebellious teenager into the mix.
I came extremely close to giving up on trying to watch the series due to the MC's constant tantrums, where he lashed out at everyone for any reason. Being "just a kid" is merely a lame excuse when you control a hulking robot capable of death and destruction. 16, 18, what difference do two years really make? Y…
Read at the sourceOwms
Zeta Gundam, the highly praised sequel of the classic 0079 series fails to learn from the predecessor and improve from its mistakes; Chiefly the main plot structure and the characters development.
STORY
As I said before the main plot feels contantly weak due to the fact that most of the episodes, until the last arc, are just used to show random gundam battles that change nothing in the long run; this and the fact that there is a lack of a clear goal except a vague"win against the Titans" make the show really slow and nearly impossible to binge, we have a few exception, namely the earth arcs that don't last more than a few episodes and add something really valuable to the characterization of the protagonist.
We have a few problems caused by the fact that there's a lot of forced drama(chara…
Read at the sourceMoeTie
Tomino's Biggest Miss-Step and UC Gundam's Weakest Link(LR);
1985's seminal Gundam Zeta has gone done as one of the greats, with Gundam fans often siting it as on par with it's predecessor and actively out performing it's descendants but is it all it's cracked up to be? Is it really the "Empire Strikes Back" of anime? Let's quickly pass through the spoiler free segment which on this occasion will be fairly short as it should go without saying that one needs to have seen either the original MSG '79 or the trio of recap films before starting this 50 episode sequel.
Music and Animation - Without doubt the strongest elements of this show are it's production values. Starting with the music, it's the 80's at it's finest. Massive orchestral pieces prevail through the entire soundtrack which its…
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