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From the first opening minutes of Stardust Memory I was greeted to an all-to-familiar riff on the Top Gun Theme, and a great training sequence of Mobile Suit Pilots. I was looking forward to watching Stardust Memory, it has a fantastic soundtrack, great animation and some pule-pounding action sequences. It's old Gundam without any of the New Types, and a focus on the every day soldiers in the Federation Forces. Then we're finally introduce to our main protagonist Kou, a timid, shy, and frankly terrible pilot. On top of that the cast that we get acquainted with is, how do I put this? Horribly unlikable. Ho boy. The plot is the least of the show's concerns, but it is amongst one of them.

The series takes place between Gundam Zeta and the original as we get to know where the world is after the One-Year War, what the Zeon remnants are up to, and more importantly how the Titans were formed. Stardust Memory boasts interesting ideas that are never really lived up to. The directorial choices of characters and dramatic scenes are outright terrible. I don't often use this word lightly but cringe-inducing is how I would describe some of the scenes. For an anime that's actually newer than Gundam Zeta, it's odd for me to see such blatantly obnoxious cheeseball scenes that overshadow a lot of Stardust Memory's redeeming traits as a maturely thematic series. Anytime Kou screws up there are often these long scenes where it takes him a few minutes to even react to the most obvious things (including the whole try-hard romance with Nina), and it's not just because of his character. The director actually made decisions that weaken or portray Kou as this guy who's just slow on the uptake where there are huge pauses in between him thinking and him realizing what's literally in FRONT of him. Next we have Nina Purpleton, who at first I was fine with when she didn't have a thing for Kou. As the series progresses, or "degresses", Nina becomes one of the most infuriatingly annoying characters that never feels like she gets her comeuppance. A lot of the terrible decisions characters make are because of Nina. There are many moments of awkward conversations that had me scratching my head asking what Nina even sees in Kou, and vice versa. At least Top Gun had Tom Cruise as an ace pilot with some legitimately attractive qualities (no homo). The romance between Kou and Nina feels so contrived that you begin to even ask why it's went on as long as it has. Then we're hit with another plot revelation about Nina's past that is beyond disbelief and this is due to the directorial switch. Our antagonist/rival Gato is one of the more familiar Gundam characters, although there just isn't enough time with him to really establish him beyond the basic level of being an ace pilot for the bad guys. Monsha's blatant sexism that's played up for comedic relief wears out immediately after his introduction when it just becomes annoyingly obnoxious devolving into borderline sexual harassment. It could have been a critique on toxic masculinity in military culture but I don't think the series really ever dives deep into it's themes let alone it's story. What's even more baffling is that it's cast isn't entirely bad, we get people like Burning, Keith, Synapse and a few others that had me sticking around a little bit to see if things got any better. Their only problem is that they never go through any kind of character progression themselves, and have some fairly static personalities that are only there to push the plot forward. Kou fails a lot and barely deserves to be the protagonist, in fact I'd he's the Homer Simpson of Gundam pilots who keeps screwing up but somehow gets rewarded for it even when it costs people their lives.

Episode 6 was one of the most clunkily directed episodes that I had seen, and it was ever more apparent by the really weird placement of the ending song with a sequence that just did not fit the visuals, and it was the vocal version of the track (MAGIC). I noticed the audio mixing interfering with the dialogue that had me wondering what was even going on because I could not pay attention to the characters over the music blasted over top. The entire episode was meant to be dramatic, but ends up coming across as one of the corniest sequences I've ever seen in Gundam show, it reminded me of Take Your Breathe Away from Top Gun but with even more sexually confused vibes. Of course this isn't including the fact that Kou makes some questionable decisions that have me rolling my eyes as he tries to find his way in life. I hadn't even got to episode 7 yet which again seemingly ends on such a weird note where Nina is yelling out Kou's name after being saved in the most awkward manner possible. Every time I think of the end of episode 7 I facepalm knowing how overly melodramatic it was, t it felt like a pointless attempt at conflict. In fact the episodes when the crew finally get to Luna is one of the biggest slogs to get through, and you have to wonder how this is even possible for a series that spans only 13 episodes. There is just barely a shade of character progression as it just seems like the minor cast stays the same, while our main protagonist seemingly gets more schizophrenic as the series goes on with plenty of penance. Kou never feels like he gets a redemption of his character in the same vein as Camille who actually becomes a character you begin to actively root for. Stardust Memory barely has the sense to make me not wince at a few scenes that are handled with the least nuance possible rivaled only by the likes of its equivalent Top Gun.

Then the show completely switches gears when its director changes after the 7 episode mark, and it's a noticeable change of efforts spent on certain plot elements. But those who argue that it "got bad" after this point need to take a look at the Luna episodes because it shows that the bad seeds were planted moments before the switching of directors. To be honest I don't know how I continued with Stardust Memory at all, but I needed to get through it at least once to add some constructive criticisms amongst the love it seems to get. It wasn't the characters that kept me around that's for damn sure, and the plot kind of fizzled out of urgency halfway through before the end. In reality, I just wanted to see what happened by the end when the Titans from Zeta were formed. I kind of got satisfaction from that. Kind of. On second thought no. The whole reason for the Titans existence was handled terribly because it never felt like a natural focus, instead it was overshadowed mainly by the pointless love triangle and Nina's horrible decisions that put her in the same league as Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars. If you think about it hard enough you'll realize that Nina was indirectly responsible for why the Titans were formed...good lord. Having Nina be the catalyst was an awful way to fill in the backstory for the Titans because it meant that Zeon was actually less of a threat than her somehow. I'm going to spoil this right now because it's worth bringing up. Nina (almost) gets away with a colony drop in the finale because of a last minute backstory addition with our antagonist Gato where supposedly (off-screen) they used to date. At the very end of the series Kou is just somehow ok with all this? There's so much wrong with the writing of the main cast it hurts because its a show I so desperately wanted to love. Apparently they had room for last minute plot decisions, but can't find ways to show them on screen or just spend time fleshing out necessary story bits that go unanswered or exploring anything meaningful.

As for the rest of the show, I never found myself rewarded with much else for its self contained plot and characters. What's even more disheartening is we're never treated to moments that are as epic as its openings. Stardust Memory limps, trips, falls and stumbles as it tries to get to it's best story bits out there within it's small timeframe, yet it gets stuck pursuing the wrong ideas for most of the series. Stardust Memory misses the mark in it's potential that's squandered by it's directorial choices in episodes that become groan inducing and laughably bad at dialogue between characters that can't be patched with the sub or dub versions.

I get that this is supposed to fill in the gap between Zeta, and I know that many Gundam shows suffer from exposition dumps. It does offer insight in why the Titans were founded, but beyond that it never actively shows their ruthless rise to power as a militant force. I'm super disappointed with Stardust Memory, but maybe I set my expectations unbelievably high for something that's set within the UC timeline. I hyped myself up to watch it with some YouTube clips, and the soundtrack, but there's not much saving this one for me. It's actually quite heartbreaking to me as I had thought this series would become a favourite alongside the 08th MS Team, when in reality it's become one of my least favourite UC shows that makes me hesitant to give it a positive recommendation. I'm not saying that it's completely unwatchable because there are some scenes that are worth checking out, however I'd say that there are moments that become completely irrelevant by the end especially for our main cast that more or less remain static throughout the shows entirety. When you have a Gundam series that has you asking yourself "why am I still watching this" then maybe it's worth reconsidering its importance on the UC timeline. I can safely say that the show ranges from mediocre to bad territory because of the way the plot is executed and the little time it spends on developing meaningful relationships. It's fun as an homage to Top Gun, but if it's any constellation neither were really revered for their storytelling rather it was the action and music that people love to fondly look back on. Stardust Memory is loud, frankly quite dumb, and a semi-entertaining 90s anime schlock that I'm not keen on revisiting any time soon, if at all. 0083 is a one and done series that solely aims to fill in some of the stones that might've been left unturned by Zeta, and yet it never feels like it turns over the right stones for me to get a sense of fulfillment. In fact the epilogue to the show is so disconnected from the entire series that you could watch it separately without gaining or losing anything.

Much like Top Gun, this Stardust Memory's best parts are the action and soundtrack and not a whole lot else (let's be real here, they're both pieces of media that think they're too cool for school). The shoddy writing of 0083 never improved, and we never actually get to see Kou redeem himself as a character, and Nina Purpleton makes this show unbearable and cringe-inducing. Although the show itself isn't outright atrocious, the entire experience just gets held down by its piss-poor writing of characters, and heaps of undercooked plot development where you never get a reasonable explanation for a lot of it. Stardust Memory was extremely hard to enjoy because all of its bad parts were actively working against any of its redeeming traits. But, to its credit 0083 is exactly the kind of filler most long-running anime are treated to in their lifetimes, and should be treated as such.