Years ago, as I was venturing into mecha anime, I took the plunge into Gundam starting with the classic Universal Century timeline. I grew to become a devoted fan of the franchise, especially the Universal Century stuff. Looking back, it's a miracle I did when I made several rookie mistakes. For one, I tried watching in chronological order and crammed all the side stories for the original Gundam 0079 between that and its sequel Zeta Gundam, which made me quickly see why Gundam fans groan at the announcement of new One Year War side stories. Second, I went from Zeta Gundam to Char's Counterattack on the basis of Gundam ZZ (the direct sequel to Zeta) having a divisive status in the fanbase and not having my favorite character Char Aznable, which negatively impacted my experiences with both Gundam ZZ and Char's Counterattack (for what it's worth, I ended up digging Gundam ZZ considerably after rewatching in the proper order). But the most egregious rookie mistake of all was my first one: skipping the 0079 TV series in favor of the compilation movies. I told myself I wasn't ready for a full 43 episode series from the 1970's yet (before proceeding to watch nearly 100 episodes of Zeta and Gundam ZZ from the 1980's) and that I would just miss out on the filler. After watching the full 0079 TV series for the first time, I can confidentally say I made the wrong choice back then. Characters and plotlines that seemed underwhelming became fleshed out with additional screen time. The pacing was less rushed. And the "filler" episodes I thought were skippable actually enriched the narrative in the grand scheme.
After writing all that, you might think I hate this first compilation movie upon rewatch. You'd be wrong. Despite my preference for the TV version, there are still merits to this compilation movie. For one, there's extra bits of animation that are more polished than the TV version, which looks much rougher compared to its direct sequels. There are a few changes to the story that improve on the original. One is how the concept of Newtypes go from only being introduced at the tail end of the show to being introduced a third of the way into the story, making the plot point less abrupt and better explained than the original. Another welcome change comes from the rearrangement of events from the TV version. In the TV version, Amuro falls into a depressive funk after Icelina dies attempting to kill Amuro to avenge the death of her lover Garma Zabi, while never knowing Icelina or why she wanted to kill him. In the movie, Amuro's depressive episode happens after a reunion with his mother ends with their relationship destroyed beyond repair, which is a more plausible explanation for Amuro's intense feelings of depression and hesitancy to pilot. And while the classic TV music cues aren't used as often, they do get new rearrangements for the movie and sound great.
While I believe that the TV series is the optimal way to get into Gundam and/or the Universal Century branch of the franchise, this first compilation movies does have its merits. It captures the basic plot of the first 13 episodes of the show about as well as it can in a feature length format, in addition to some improvements on the technical and (to a lesser extent) narrative fronts. The fact this story managed to draw me in and take a deep dive into Gundam even in compressed form speaks to how well the original Mobile Suit Gundam holds up today (and anyone who says otherwise just because it isn't shiny modern animation is part of a poisonous mentality in anime as a whole, but that's a topic for another day). Regardless of which version of 0079 you start with, it is worth watching both at some point just to appreciate the differences between the TV and movie version.
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