Gundam's second foray into OVAs is closer to a condensed version of a mainline conventional instalment in the franchise than its predecessor Gundam 0080, and has a lot of the strengths and weaknesses you'd expect of a Gundam series at this point.

Essentially this is a story about stupid assholes making everything worse for short-sighted reasons. On the macro level, this works well - the remnants of Zeon steal a WMD because they can only express their nationalism through violence, and the Federation brass make some convoluted, obviously risky power plays just to cling onto their idea of hegemony. This is an interquel so you know going in that the ultimate outcome is going to be the senseless slaughter of Zeta Gundam and Gundam ZZ, which gives a nice sense of futility to the proceedings. All the grand dreams of these arrogant men are going to come crashing down, sooner or later. The ideologies driving them are dead ends. They can't see it, but we can.

On a micro level, things are rougher. It's not impossible to write a compelling story where every character sucks, but it's much harder to write one where almost every character is annoying, and that's the camp Stardust Memory falls into. The protagonist Kou is by turns a gratingly naïve milksop and an excessively driven self absorbed git, and isn't a very arresting screen presence in either mode. His antagonistic counterpart Gato is better, since he is a charismatic and confident advocate for his ideals, even if they are completely moronic. I did really like the totally unromantic way their conflict finally resolves, it's very grim and very Gundam. The ending in general is tonally great, even if getting there wasn't always especially always enjoyable. The third main character is Nina who is kind of charming when occupying the role of obsessive engineer, but falls into the pits of "Gundam female character syndrome" when her romance with Kou becomes more of a feature. They have absolutely no screen chemistry and none of the scenes where they're together are especially compelling, and as is required by being a female character in a Gundam series, Nina has to make some bafflingly stupid decisions. I'd have liked more time with their respective best friends, the clumsy and often cowardly Keith, and the altogether more sensible Mora. Mora steals pretty much every scene she's in by being one of the only actually put together characters in the whole series, and by being a woman built like a brick shithouse who is still treated as desirable. The other characters don't really get enough time or character to really remark on. Unlike its predecessors, Stardust Memory focuses on a fully adult cast and I think in losing that contrast between the adult and child perspective it did lose a little something that made Gundam distinctive, although it would be more forgivable if it was better written. The series starts strong and ends strongly (in parts) but still finds time to meander about unsatisfyingly on the way. In defiance of what you may expect for doing a full Gundam series in so short an episode count, this is arguably overstretched and could have easily lost a couple of episodes without much consequence.

There are good things here too, however. It's a really beautifully crafted series on a visual level. Even where the script is falling short, Mitsuko Kase and Takashi Imanishi's direction does its best to sell the story being told. Despite often lacking stakes, the battle scenes are thrilling and full of wonderful motion and detail. Most of the genuinely striking and beautiful moments Stardust Memory has to offer are a product of the direction far more than the writing. The mechanical designs by Shoji Kawamori, Hajime Katoki, and Mika Akitaka are superb and they fit right into the established UC continuity while being distinct iterations. I especially like the look of the main carrier for the series, the Albion, which is a pitch perfect interpolation of the White Base into something bigger and sleeker. The Gundam Prototype Unit 2 which serves as the antagonist suit for much of the story is also a very neat radical reinterpretation of what a Gundam could look like.

Overall, if you're already in deep on the Universal Century you might as well watch Stardust Memory. The fact that it is so pretty makes it a worthwhile attraction. If not, this is not going to win you over.