One note on the voices. I found the Japanese voices to have a bit more of an 'adult' tone. With the voices and with the type of language used. The English voices make the characters sound younger, which they are. Also the anime itself uses a lot of English for the written text that appears. The English voices fit this. I also liked the voice acting as well. In general I prefer Japanese voices for Japanese anime but they did a good job with this. It doesn't feel strange at all. Not to me at least.
I honestly don't mind waiting a whole season if this is the type of quality they're going to produce.
It's really no different than making a model. A lot of people speed through the process just to get it done and maybe they take a couple shortcuts and in the end it isn't as good as they'd have hoped but it's something they can show off but it might not be something they're necessarily proud off. I aim to never do that with any of my models, which is basically why I don't finish anything! haha
But my point is that when this is all done... let's say 2012, when we're all looking back on this and the series is finished, what we'll be left with is an extremely high quality OVA that will stand the test of time for years to come and that's priceless. That's worth waiting for.
I ended up watching the first episode again to remind me of what's going on and I was also pleasantly reminded of just how good that first episode was too.
Putting the technical things off to side... I have to stay that even though the story is intentionally quite vague right now, they way that things are being done and how they're being presented is very well done in my opinion.
One of the problems I've always had with Gundam is how unrealistic it is and how ridiculous some of the premises are but this episode in particular does a very good job of expanding on the ethos and principles of the main characters and once this is done you're left with a complex array of charaters whose motivations are believable.
Not only that but they're managed to bring this eras issues of war, terror, oppression and lack of political representation into a 30 year old storyline thus infusing a modern sense of relevance to a very old story. This was excellently done by the writers. As a life long Federation supporter I found myself for the first time really sympathizing with the Neo Zeon fighters and felt that I'd finally fully grasped on an emotional level their motivations, desires and frustrations.
Speaking not only as a Gundam fan but also a fan of anime, I have to say that this may be one of the best I've seen. I have no complaints what so ever.
I'll end this post with a quote from Full Frontal.
"As I am now I consider myself nothing more than a vessel, a vessel for the hopes of those abandoned in space."
It almost makes me want to shout of "Zeig Zeon" myself. Excellent, excellent animation. Very entertaining, very well executed and extremely well done. Highly recommended.
