So since I was bored, I decided to rewatch one of Jexhius' favorite anime of all time.
It's been awhile since I've seen the show and so with the BD transfers, I was curious how the picture quality and animation have held up. The first episode starts off by establishing the core group of characters with the show, mainly Kou and Nina. Kou comes off as the usual brash sort of Gundam pilot but does seem competent as a test pilot in how quickly he was able to analyze the strengths of the new prototypes.
As an aside, I thought this line was pretty funny as at the end of the episode, the test pilots largely seem useless and one guy gets sliced up like butter. Then there's Nina who comes across as the usual stuck up Gundam heroine. Ah the good old days when Gundam heroines were actively dislikable. I am liking some of the side characters, mainly Keith and Mora. I'm starting to pick up on Kawamoto's preferences when he designs characters such as there's usually a 'big girl' and I appreciate a man with good taste. Anyway the primary villain Gato jacks the lightly guarded Gundam armed with a nuke. Why an active nuke isn't better guarded other than one checkpoint or that there aren't thousands of fail-safes, I will never know.
On the visuals side, there are a lot of really detailed mechanical drawings but no real animation showcase yet. There were some cuts with good motion but nothing too outstanding yet. The art direction and color design are making me a bit reminiscent of the previous cel era. The music is a bit better than I was expecting, the ending credits song being in English (by a native English singer) threw me for a loop. I forgot how some old anime liked doing that at random.
