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Amazing piece of work. I loved how beautifully the Gundam universe matches the pirate aesthetic and I also love how this manga is essentially all the themes of Char’s counterattack except done better in every way. Strong thing for me to say, but let me explain.

The essential driving force of the conflict in this manga is humanity producing oxygen and water on its own. It depicts pretty well how much ordinary citizens forced off of earth hate that they have to do said production and the loss of lives the smallest accidents create and juxtaposes it with the philosophy of "how far could humanity evolve ... if we lead them realize that manmade oxygen was the only way to go?" It proves Amuro right in his counter to Char that revolutionary ideals never match on the ground reality, and no character even needed to say that.

One of the important characters, Sherindon Ronah, inhabits the perfect form of Tomino's pacifist side in action. Tomino's interviews repeatedly say that he targets the younger audience because they are the ones who will surpass the traditions of adults and save the planet the older generation is killing. Here, we have a princess who wants to be isolated from that "old" society and build one of newtypes that, with their high degree of empathy will overcome that hoddel once “oldtypes” are essentially done killing each other. It's fun to see such a pacifist in action. Take away the need to engage in war to protect those they love and that has essentially been the ideology of newtype pilots in zeta and after: "it's because of adults like you that we have wars" etc etc. It’s interesting that she’s opposed to the protagonist. The first anti-war and never-violent character ever in a UC gundam to do this, to my recollection.

The antagonism comes from the Char in her, the complete rejection of the idea that non-newtypes have anything worth offering, which leads to antipathy with regards to whether they live or die. I thought that the main character’s, Tobia’s, response to her was the best part of the series. It’s a letter that starts with a simple “Can you walk 12km on a mountain road in a single day?” A question meant to bring up how much humanity has left behind in their evolution to newtypedom. The resto f the letter is Tobia not denying that humanity will one day evolve and have no need for earth. In fact, he even accepted it. He just acknowleges that there is far more that we can learn from earth. “Leaders can be better planned for tomorrow if they know what happened yesterday” and all that. Far more complex answers to the same questions posed in CCA and I love that. The only thing stopping me from rating it higher than CCA is just that this art style doesn't translate well to gundam, especially mobile suit fights, for me. I really hope this gets an anime adaptation soon.

A friend told me she hasn't watched this, but heard lotgh is more "pro-war" and less "focused on the underside of things" than gundam series tend to be. From just watching the pilot, i can see where they're coming from. Usually into the start of a new Tomino Gundam, there would be a civillian or two holding dead family members in their arms and one or both sides comitting a war crime of some kind followed by the antagonist giving out hints of what ideology led them to put away their empathy. Here, we have a 150 year war with no reason why it started ... and the main motivation for every single character from either side wanting their side to win isn't from any attatchment to their nation or ideals, just they don't want to die. Not saying this as an insult to lotgh, I like this being more focused on wars for what they are and space battles for what they could be.

I liked the silent and "dull" way they did laser bullets compared to gundam and star wars. Besides the realism component, the way a 1988 pilot depicted a space battle in such a "silent" way that ive never seen before is fantastic. Also i was getting kinda sick of the teenager romance drama being at the forefront in every war in Tomino's Gundams, so this is a nice change of pace.

Ecoterrorist manifestos and destroying hotels of politicians that haven't done enough already makes me love this setting more than Zeta's more generic war against an anti-environmentalist government or CCA's plan to simply destroy the earth. Not saying there's not so so much more to those two series, but still.

The destruction caused by the terrorism/mobile suit battles and the spyware at every corner feels very real. Tomino's 1989 Light novel adapted by people living in the 21st century that can actually imagine a future contemporary to our present. I'm glad the UC year 0105 gets to have ipads and massive skyscrapers.

Nothing much to say here since ... this is obviously incomplete. Hate that I can't read the light novels that continue this.

One thing I will say I really disliked right off the bat was the Nina Kou romance, especially so when it turned into a love triangle at the end. Tomino had nothing to do with this OVA, but the "You can't call that betrayal when a woman does it. Women are quick to change their stance on things. So to a man, it looks like betrayal. [...] They give up on their men. Why do they abandon them’? It’s a sort of basic self-instinct, I think. 'Women can’t survive without depending on someone.'" quote kept ringing painfully in my ear whenever she was around. ... When she left the ship when Kou didn't take her to the movies and only came back when he said he loved her. Or caring about her love triangle far more than the colony drop on either her home on earth. Even if, again, this wasn't written by Tomino, it is a writer emulating the worst parts of the women Tomino writes. A woman whose whole political/life philosophy and raison d'etre being the man he is attracted to at any moment is just boring. It's the same gripe Ii had with Reccoa and Sarah and Quess and others.

That being said, there are a lot of things that I like about this OVA that made me give it an 8. This is also the most "pro-antagonist" of any Gundam I've seen so far. I've seen Gundam fans say that Gundam is a franchise where there aren't any good or bad sides, it's just everyone fighting for their own ideals. While I see where they're coming from, and Tomino has said on record that he makes sure to have all sides in the war have a point, I do have to disagree with the way that is framed. In Tomino's interviews and the way they always portray the antagonist side as poison gassing and nuking civilians or needing to brainwash children for their ends, it is obvious in a lot more ways than one that he sees the side that needs to be rooted for by the children is always the protagonists side. With this one, I liked how Gato was both Kou's reason to kill and also almost a mentor to him. Showing how skilled he could be with the Gundam if he tried while lecturing Kou about what it means to be a soldier, which to an extent Kou ended up taking to heart as the series progresses. It also has the Zeon higher ups as well as the individual soldiers being the only ones that fight for the big picture, while every federation soldier is more content to fight just because they're following orders or for the sake of their friends. Zeon is still the side that murders civilian lives the most, but it does feel overshadowed by the one or two scenes of civilian spacenoids supporting them, and that this is the Gundam that seems to have the least care for civilian deaths. Like when Kou found out the deaths were unavoidable, his only thought was wondering if him and his teammates fought for nothing.

To list some more things I liked in short sentences: It was nice seeing a jock-type rival to the main character that, in contrast to Jerid in Zeta Gundam, was on the same side as him and was a barrier he had to get above at the very start. I liked how unsure and easily picked on Kou was at the start. Besides Bern and maybe Amuro, he feels like the character who develops the most in Gundam. Also Haman and Bask's cameos were short but were so well done.

By far the best Gundam media I've seen in terms of direction. Tomino and the other directors are great, of course, but Takeyuki Kanda and Umanosuke Iida, I feel, truly used the soldiers fighting in mechs in a jungle to its fullest potential. I loved how threatening a single zaku was against Shiro in a ball; not showing the zaku pilot until the very end. I loved the jungle guerilla atmosphere. I loved how much importance was given to the non-mobile suit artillery. I loved Shiro being trapped in darkness leaving him and us as the audience to wonder why Norris won't kill him yet. ... My favourite scene by far was the conclusion Shiro vs Norris fight; just how desperately the entire squad tried to kill him as he was mowing down tanks in his wake, and when they finally succeeded... it's miliseconds before realizing how fucked they are.

I loved conclusion to the Romeo-and-Juliet-esque romance at the end too. UC Gundam series seem to really love these types of romances and this was the one that was executed in the best way so far.

Surprisingly Nietzschean climax to Bern's character arc, especially for an anti-war film. Supplanting the childish fantasy Alfred started with, with his perspective of war as cool, fun, good guys vs bad guys giant robots duking it out. Contrast that with Bern, in his last recording, telling Alfred that while he could go to the police himself, he wanted to conquer the Gundam, he wanted the actualization of the fantasy of testing his spirit against the unbeatable enemy. His only rationale he could think of being "maybe it's because I'm a soldier". This is not to say OVA failed in its messaging or that it wasn't ... by far the best Gundam ive seen. On the contrary it was an interesting surprise to find this anti-war film slowly transform into a narrative that won't be alien in the world of samurai flicks.

It was also really nice how Alfred being whisked away by Zeon was treated. Both that the "return from abduction" weren't by other adults finding out and being the heroes of the story by making him realize the error of his ways, and the Zeon soldiers themselves showing their humanity in simple ways even after it was revealed that they only didn't kill the child who only wanted to join them, were nice deviations from the norm.

"There is a responsibility for us creators to create practical logical common-sense material to upload that’s socially responsible. If I could add one more thing, when I say 'common-sense' it could be taken to mean the opposite stance to populism." -- Tomino Yoshiyuki in an NYC convention

If I could summarize the message of ZETA and ZZ especially, it would be Tomino's plea to the kids watching his show that's something of the lines of "Adults convince each other to do evil things like destroy our planet and massacare each other. You, the new generation, counter this with thinking with your heart" (which I personally both ... don't believe is antithetical to populism, and is a deeply flawed message for Tomino to give and encourages ignoring the times when mass violence as a means to an end has radically changed societies for the better, but I digress).

Char's Counterattack stays close to that line of viewing things. Populism, as Tomino would have defined in the above quote, is seen in Char riding off the coattails of the decades of resentment sprung up by earthlings' blatant disregard for the people who left for space and just how much they have outpaced those whose souls still chained by the gravitational pull of earth.

If I can think of the closest contemporary equivalent to this mindset, I would say sometime around 2020 when the belief that covid would radically wake up society in its path of destruction was at its peak. Positive environmental impacts were happening the first time for so long due to how seriously everyone was taking the lockdowns, and boomers, those whose souls are most chained by the gravitational pull of the past, were the ones dying at the fastest pace. This was also at the detriment of the poor and disabled, but just like in Neo-Zeon's collective consciousness, this was collateral to the naive and misguided optimism for how impactful this wake up call was.

Amuro's response to char is a post ideological "all revolutions end in mediocrity and leave only a path of destruction in their wake" framing of things.

Both the naive hope for destruction as an end in itself being the wake up call the future needs and the "common sense" resistance against any radical political ideal given by Tomino's voice of reason (not to say the federation government Amuro fights for isn't obviously corrupt or even that adult Amuro is portrayed as always in the right, just that the way Tomino typically presents morals in the Gundam universe and the fact that this is a recurring theme makes me reasonably certain that this is what he believes) are harmful in their own ways, but no side being completely morally correct is what makes gundam fun.

Forgot to talk about the robot fights: they were pretty.