Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack

This movie gets worse the more of the backstory you're aware of. If you've only seen the original series, you're pretty much perfectly primed to enjoy it. If you've seen Zeta/ZZ, you'll be left wondering why Char and Amuro are acting so thoroughly out of character. Well animated, and a great stand alone followup to the original series, but a terrible followup to the shows that followed that one.

More or less spits in the face of Char's and Amuro's development through past series, giving some of the dumbest explanations imaginable for them inexplicably acting out of character. It has some cool mech designs and the animation is of a much higher quality than anything seen before the series; however, that doesn't save how utterly insufferable the dialog and new characters in this film are.

Though it features some great mech designs (like Nu Gundam and Jagd Doga), Char's Counterattack is far from the zenith of the franchise as which it's been described.

Brisk and fast-paced, this is some of Tomino's finest work; a marvel of a screenplay on how much narrative it packs in, and a beauty to look at in terms of its animation quality. CCA's soap opera story is edited in such a way that can only be described as "militant", the stories' themes on humanity told with little fervor or romanticism, a rarity in regards to its belongings in the realm of overblown anime. If Oshii ever directed Gundam, this would be it.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack has a rich series lore and two great characters to tap from, and yet it focuses on two totally awful new ones. Tomino's lack of sense in his writing never ceases to amaze me. The drama is non-existent to bland, and this movie is mostly an excuse for well-animated Mobile Suit fights. I need to stop expecting more out of Gundam, but it's its fault for coming so close all the time.

Arthur C. Clarke, with giant robots duking it out. There's some real groaners in the dialogue, and some of the explanations given for character motivations and psychic powers seemed like copouts, but it's an otherwise solid anti-war toon with fairly interesting humanist, transhumanist, and nihilist themes. Plus giant robots duking it out. In space. pewpew.