Gundam SEED 1-10

So one of my ongoing projects is designing a tabletop game system for playing magical girls and giant robots.  Yes, the same system, because the most interesting style of Magical Girl to me is Nanoha, and the magical girls in Nanoha are giant robots who happen to be wearing pretty dresses.  And Infinite Stratos, while the mecha part is awesome, it isn't really the focus of it, so I figured I'd get back to the real heart of the Real Robot genre, and that means Gundam or Macross.

My last contact with the Gundam franchises was Gundam Wing back in the late 90s, and I was generally unimpressed.  I'm told that's not an uncommon reaction to it: it's generally reviled as being lighter and softer in a weird way, and having an unreasonable amount of Ho Yay and Estrogen Brigade Bait.  But the mecha were cool and stuff blew up, so I watched it.

After a little research, I decided that trying to watch the original Mobile Suit Gundam, as I'd feel honor-bound to do if I were going to try to watch anything in the Universal Century timeline (the main Gundam franchise timeline, for the uninitiated).  The sheer volume of anime that would be committing to is presently beyond anything I can sanely say I want to start, so I tried to find another alternate universe like Wing to get my Gundam on in, and I stumbled across SEED.  Now quite an aged series (2002), it was described as being a very strongly mainstream Gundam series.  Jackpot.

I watched the first ten of fifty episodes tonight, and I'm enjoying it.  It's a military drama that uses robots ace pilots as its main protagonists and antagonists, and is already dealing with fantastic racism in the form of genetically engineered humans, and isn't hesitating to lather the gray on the gray reality of how war sucks for everyone involved.

Being a long series, it's got some uphill to go before I give it a truly good rating, simply because it needs to convince me that it needed 50 episodes to tell this story, but so far I'm willing to believe that it'll manage a B.  50 episodes does let the series allow for a lot of growth, however, and means that there will be enough time to recognize the entire (already fairly substantial) cast.

First Impressions:  Series military drama is serious.  Stay away if you want laughs or light-hearted, hot-blooded robot battles.