Prior to watching 08th MS Team, I had seen Gundam Wing, Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz, G Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam, Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory (in that order). Up to this point, I had synonymized the word "Gundam" with "God-like," and 08th MS Team changed that to a degree.

Some potential spoilers ahead.

08th MS Team takes place between October 6th, 0079 and November 30th, 0079 (episodes 1-11), with the 12th episode largely taking place sometime in early 0080 (I would argue sometime around late February/early March) with some prequel events occurring on December 24th, 0079 (one week before the end of the One Year War).

Some of the themes relevant to the War in Vietnam as depicted in media are fairly observable in this series, chief among that is the importance of guerilla warfare, and themes of post-traumatic stress, and the dissolution of war and combat.

To my point above, about Gundam's being god-like, it was refreshing to see the Gundam prototype as a limited production unit for ground operations, and ultimately seeing them as equally capable of defeat as a typical GM or Zaku. To that end, it was also refreshing to get a cast of characters that largely had a decent amount of combat experience by the start of the show save for perhaps one. Shiro Amada, the main character, maintains a sense of idealism without so much naivety that seems to be the main trait of pretty much every other Gundam pilot in the U.C. Universe. It is worth pointing out that Shiro is 23 in this show, whereas other Gundam pilots had been between 13-18. TL;DR, we get a show with a cast that are adults who have been in war already. This sets a very different tone than that of the other Gundam shows preceding the events of 08th MS Team.

I also really enjoy the design work in this show (0083 and Char's Counter Attack are my other two favorites). It is a bit more evolved from the original Mobile Suit Gundam. It is also a bit grittier, in some contexts, with my favorite episodes being the ones in which there is a lot of mobile suit action in either the jungle or city. I think the animation gives a real sense that gravity is a difficult thing to manage (the Ez-8, for example, is about 71.1 tons, which is equivalent to the Statue of Liberty without the base). It would take a great deal of thrust to lift off of the ground, and generally a lot to just move. It's easy to take for granted, but this show, I think, captures this physical fact of nature pretty well. Though, admittedly, it ignores this almost entirely by the end of the series with the Asparas' III, but I guess we can't have everything. But it isn't just with the mobile suit action, it's also with the arc of the bullets, surviving in space or the cold, using the tools available to result in extended life. The guerilla tactics were also on par.

If I had to pick my number one favorite element of this show, though, it would be the closeups of the internal workings of the RX-79[G] (which is my favorite Gundam model in the UC Universe), and the Hover Tank. If there was a show dedicated just to the maintenance crew of a Gundam unit (or mobile suit unit) with lots more of this, and it was as detailed as some parts of this show, I'd probably give it a 10/10 (and I don't do that pretty much ever.)

I would have liked to have seen more discussion on Shiro's arch prior to the events of the first episode, mainly because it isn't well explained, and so it is easy to perceive all of the events happening inside of 55 days as being absurdly fast. Like pretty much every other Gundam pilot, Shiro, too, despises the war (which makes sense, since we know that before even the half-way point, millions of people had died on both sides, which is a point that is easy to forget throughout this brief installment). To this end, the pacing can seem off, with one potentially getting the sense that it goes like this: the main character goes to war, falls in love with the enemy, gets emo about it, and then decides that war is dumb because people are fighting for dumb reasons. Ultimately, war is awful, and I think Shiro's attitude towards it is appropriate, but the writing doesn't capture that very well.

All in all, a solid addition to the Gundam franchise, and a solid addition to the U.C. Universe.