Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985)
Incredible follow-up to the original.
It's not interested in being anything but a sequel, no attempt to appeal to new viewers is made (I'm sure you can hop in whenever but it does not care) and it's all the better for going in on that.
It's less that there was anything left unsaid in the original that this needs to address but rather it feels like a response to people wanting a sequel and what that means to try and recreate what they wanted out of the original.
It's been around 2 years since I saw the original and I think some time away is intended here- the show takes place around 7 years after the original and it's about 5 years after it aired as well.
The thing that I'm most reminded of is Metal Gear Solid 2- both in-text and in terms of what you're doing it's a recreation of Metal Gear Solid. Much like how Raiden was put in his situation to recreate Solid Snake, Kamille is constantly being put into situations because "wow he's just like Amuro."
Beyond that, there's so many events that Kamille goes through that recreate things that happened in the original series. There's one point where Amuro is warning Char that they can't repeat past mistakes over what both feel like is their biggest mistake watching something deeply similar happen to Kamille.
Things are different too, of course. The politics is a lot more immediately denser than what we dealt with before. It's not as simple as the Earth Federation vs Zeon but instead more complicated factions and alliances that expand as the series goes on.
The Titans are so explicitly evil it's amazing it doesn't pull you out of the show- somehow they're able to stay grounded. Unlike Zeon who was a nation and the original show attempted to make points about how not everyone who happens to be part of it is evil, the Titans is a pure military force who whenever ideology comes up for them they basically amount to "might makes right" and very little humanity is shown for them.
We follow Jerid throughout the series and he's such a great example of a Titan. He thinks the world is his to take- and we get to see him fail constantly but despite that he's always rising in the ranks of the Titans. Incredible character to watch as he'll be tasked with a heinous crime one episode and then getting all emotional over his feelings being hurt the next. I don't even think Kamille thinks about him even a little bit outside of battle, while Jerid is obsessed with Kamille and blames him for all of his misfortunes. Just awesome television to watch Jerid do his thing over and over.
I feel pretty strongly that binging stuff isn't the right way to watch it but sometimes it's hard not to when watching it on your own. There's so much that happens in each episode that's worth talking about and breaking down, not just with this show but with most shows in general- it feels like a disservice to the artists to lump it all together. But it's right there and autoplay goes and you get to the point where you're like "yeah I'm gonna watch the last half of the show today." There's plenty more to say about the show and I won't be able to cover all of my thoughts but here's some other stuff worth touching on.
Scirocco is an incredible villain. The way he manipulates people but makes them think they're doing their own thing by positioning them in spots where they'd do things to help him seems like such a hard thing to pull off in a way that's written well but they nail it. Seeing his subordinates come to him feeling guilty like they were disobedient after as well just shows how deep he's in their heads. We're introduced to him doing cool pilot shit early on and somehow this never comes up again- he mainly sits back and has other people do his thing. His final mech when he finally gets back into action doesn't seem to do anything particularly impressive. Scirocco is sort of part of the Titans but is really doing his own thing and has more-or-less his own faction going on- I love how the Titans philosophy is just so well suited for them to be taken advantage of. The biggest aspect of Scirocco that stands out is that he's a total menace to women- he starts by insulting Mouar for not being into him but soon after we see how Sarah is obsessed with him to her own detriment. Reccoa becomes absolutely deranged after a single interaction with him. It just feels absolutely disgusting how he uses women deep to my soul. I feel like the show could have used a bit more time with him, but I can't understate how impactful he is in the moments we do get to see him.
One of the other later faction leaders is Haman and she's on top of whatever situation she's in. Whatever her ideology is unfortunately is not very cool but you can't help but be impressed when Kamille is doing the Newtype understanding thing with her and she just gets pissed off and declares Kamille her ultimate enemy for trying that. I'm sure however she shows up later won't live up to her appearances here but just, damn.
What a show. Really was expecting that once the newtype stuff was out of the bag and there for a full series we'd really suffer from exploring that too much but it really hits the right balance. Kamille deserved so much better than what everyone was bringing to him. He was getting beat up by his own team mates constantly and felt like he never had time to figure out things for himself- he didn't even get an AWOL arc like Amuro did. I feel like if Kamille was able to be a bit more human and less used as a tool he probably could have saved Katz from his fate too. So much to think about.
I immediately checked out what was going on with ZZ after Zeta finished- apparently ZZ aired immediately after Zeta finished so it feels fitting. There's a huge total shift but one thing that really jumped out at me is Bright nearly immediately being like "this kid could be the next Amuro" with Judua despite what Just happened with Kamille. It's fucked up! ZZ seems disinterested in the same approach Zeta had and I'd say it feels more like its about making Gundam into a franchise- the first episode being a strange recap of everything that happened when Zeta offered nothing of the sort is the first big indicator there. Interested to see where it goes since just upfront it does not want to tell the same story.