True. The Gundam universe is a cool looking place where a lot of dumb shit goes down.

I actually like the background for the main Gundam universe. It's a complex take on space colonization, and aside from the wonky magical psychic stuff, it's pretty cynical in its politics.

It's the execution that I find lame. Far too many Gundam shows tell the same sort of story with the same sort of characters and the same sort of heated melodrama where hero kid shrieks out his philosophical crisis to the troubled but sympathetic enemy woman pilot who probably won't survive the series. I'd like more along the lines of 0080 and the better parts of 08th MS Team, less of some teenager stumbling into a big robot.

A lot of it could be blamed on Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of the whole Gundam thing, being a really awkward storyteller and influencing too many other Gundam shows. Unicorn is a lot like that; Tomino didn't direct it, but it takes too much from his playbook. Or at least it did from what I saw. I stopped after the fourth episode and haven't gone back yet.

Cool robots, though.

after the last 20 years of multiple 18-23 year olds running in emo flocks, I found just one kid being the idealist to be refreshing...also pretty much everyone around him constantly tells him for naοve and self absorbed he is.

that, and the main character doesn't hog all the screen time, a lot of support characters fill out the series.

This is why you turds need G Gundam. The politics are simple: every country in real life is now an island in space. Every four years they turn their most offensive stereotypes into robots and they fight. The winning country receives an assortment of fine meats and also total dominion over all nations.

The American Gundam looks like a football player and it blows up the Statue of Liberty just to make a flashy entrance. No one minds.

I'm trying to meet you dicks in the middle, what is the best mechasuit gudamn whatever to start? I saw Neon Genesis Evangelion and really enjoyed the none filler episodes.

Let's not let this meeting of dicks result in a point blank ejaculation contest because I assure you I shatter continents like a comet, deep impact and I WILL dominate your pisshole in such a contest.

08th MS Team

Stardust Memory was really good, even if the ending was a bit of a letdown.

Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket

Actually, the original Mobile Suit Gundam movie trilogy might be the best place to start. I didn't like them too much, but they lay the foundation for the whole shebang.

That's because Gundam is a fascist, astrological doggle for lunatics.

What Fenris said up there, but of all the annoying tropes that the original series unfortunately set in stone for nearly every fucking Gundam after, he neglected to mention the charismatic masked antagonist with a hidden agenda. Char Aznable is to Japan what Darth Vader is to us.

However, there are two details of the original series I still like: how obviously green the crew is in the beginning, since they're, y'know, teenagers (Amuro, the Ur-whiny magical teen pilot, actually has to consults his Gundamned operator's manual constantly just for maneuvers), and the fact that most of the crew very rightly doesn't put up with his whiny shit.

ax vs. axe

GO!

To answer your question: yes, which is why they don't build giant robots out of wood anymore.

That will be covered in After War Gundam 127; Mobile Forestry