I was pretty blown away by Gundam Unicorn’s first episode.

I’ve watched a few first episodes of Gundam shows in the past year and I don’t think anything comes close to how I felt while I was watching UC’s first episode. Even though it’s not until pretty recently that I started traversing through what the Universal Century had to offer me, I considered myself a Gundam fan. Even though I was only halfway through Zeta, I could still feel the significance that Unicorn carried in being the first show set in the UC in more than ten years.

I think the production really surprised me. It was way above any other Gundam show I’d seen. 00 may have had HD sparklies, but UC made even GMs in combat look impressive. I was really happy to see the UC style and aesthetic rendered with modern animation techniques and technology. And the music! I want to know why they never got this guy to do music for any other Gundam show before.

Making my way through the Universal Century, something I’ve felt was off was the pacing of the shows. It was only slightly noticeable throughout the original movies and the OVAs, but it became pretty apparent in Zeta. Something about the way events are timed and episodes are constructed really bothers me. I’m assuming it’s just the way shows were written back then, since I felt 0083 flowed more naturally out of everything I’ve seen. Of course, it could be Unicorn’s origins as a novel shining through here. Not only that, but there’s a lot more symbolism in that episode than a lot of Gundam shows that I can remember.

What’s unfortunate is its release schedule. Thinking about it some more, it doesn’t really seem all that far off from a typical OVA schedule, but it still doesn’t make the excruciating wait between episodes and the completion of the series any easier. But, it does look like we’ll have our Kara no Kyoukai equivalent to obsess over every few months for a few days whenever it lands over the next few years.

But yeah, I certainly didn’t expect to start off 2010 with the best first episode of a Gundam show while also being the most impressive thing of the year so far.