To contrast with my most recent review, here's me unabashedly shitting on something without giving it a real chance. Because I gave it a chance once, and it tore it up in my face.
I briefly mentioned in my Char's Counterattack review that this manga, Char's Deleted Affair (also know as C.D.A.) is complete and utter tripe. Not worth anyone's time, let alone mine, and yet I read the whole thing and feel like a worse a person for it. The reason I have it at a 2 instead of a 1 though, is because it allowed me to pause and appreciate some elements of the first core saga of Gundam that I really never stopped to appreciate before reading this, an element many people probably dislike even. That element is the timeskip, and how Gundam uses it.
This manga inserts itself in the 8 year span between the original Gundam TV anime and the Zeta Gundam TV anime, and sets itself up as being the media that explains Char's relationship with Haman, how Haman became who she was in Zeta and ZZ, what Char did in those years, and ultimately why the two are at odds with each other come their reunion in Zeta, and all of the explanations suck. Haman was just a cute schoolgirl until Char cucked her for the twentieth time on the Axis Colony and she became the Joker for women, that image of her and Char dressed all nice you briefly see in Zeta was a real image and not some shit she made up in her head, which is what I took it as. I saw it as her desire, her want to be with Char but him ultimately not being ready for companionship so soon after Lalah's demise, but no this is a real thing that happened in an incredibly boring multi volume arc. Oh, what did Char do on the Axis? He had sex at one point, which is so opposed to how I perceived his character at this stage in Gundam, and to not cause continuity errors the woman he had sex with dies almost immediately after.
The worst part is that these awful "expansions" on the series aren't even the main course, they're fluff. The meat of the manga is watching a bunch of old men debate fictional space politics like a wannabe Legend of the Galactic Heroes, except with NONE of the fun prose or interesting characterization, or it's about these other original female characters, all of which look like bottom of the barrel bait for filthy otaku to cream their pants over. I don't know where all these 5 foot nothing, bright coloured hair Zeon soldiers came from, and I don't know where exactly they went after this manga, maybe they all died, but beyond the fact that they're also dreadfully written, I just hate that they look the way they do. This isn't some "I hate women" schtick, I genuinely dislike the fact that they have these poppy, kinda punky designs, when that's Quess' thing. Quess is a rebellious teenager, that's why she has the bright blue hair and floats through space with no space suit. I would say "Who are these people", but I don't care enough about any of them.
Now, you could say that I'm being a bit of an ass with this review, just kind of throwing shade at this manga with no real backing points, but you're just gonna have to trust me. Avoid this awful manga, read something else, ANYTHING else. This manga is around half the length of Gundam The Origin, go read that instead. This manga is TWICE THE LENGTH of Beltorchika's Children GO READ THAT INSTEAD.
And, if you couldn't tell, I won't be reading this manga's sequel, which is a reimagining(?) of Zeta Gundam, titled ZETA DEFINE. Has the same bad art, and will probably stick to the poor characterization and development of characters we already know. I've already heard that they changed Kamille's introduction and bafflingly added extra justification to him fighting the Titans, it's like the writer didn't get his character.
tl;dr don't read this.
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