Gundam

[Pearly]

I kinda get why he isn't fond of Zeta, given what he did with Ideon and some of his later series and Zeta is admittingly pretty bleak with it's ending and probably saw an opportunity to do what he saw could have been done. Tomino shows can be dark and very somber, but there is a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel and some hope and Zeta just doesn't have that if you look at it's ending. I don't think it detracts from the show, but I think it shows why he views it differently from the rest.

CCA actually has a lot of little nuances and details packed within itself and I'd say it's one of his biggest accomplishments. If you weren't on board with the movie, I would highly recommend checking out Beltorchika's children, which is a more expanded version of CCA and shows more of what his vision was for the story in a different way. I think it really helps in understanding it as a whole, and I personally feel it has some advantages over the movie. They both work very well as complimentary pieces of each other and I think CCA also benefits from multiple viewings.

War in the pocket is good, but I have grown to prefer the other UC ovas to it. It does a good show showing a more human side and smaller scale to the OYW. The final episode is a very stand out and highly emotional end that fits right at home. There's a few things about it that I don't feel quite match what I like about UC gundam, but it's still a very good ova.

I think being burnt out on UC gundam is understandable and IDK how far you went, but if you only did just 0079 up to CCA, then you're basically done with that particular main era, since after that is when you have F91 and Victory which branch off a lot and do different things, I personally love Victory and regard it as one of the best and F91 is cool, and the further UC material is just side stories with 0080 up to MS igloo, all are good and worth watching. and that's also before they started doing different series with their own continuities that are all pretty seperate from one another.

I would think it's one of those things were the creator wasn't aware of just how great their creation was, he would've been told it was too dark etc. by staff members and such during it's original run, since it was a daytime tv show in Japan during 1985. The reception of the show at the time caused him to view it negatively, which as far as I am aware, it was received poorly and merch wasn't selling etc., causing ZZ to have a tone shift. It was fans that watched Zeta years after it's original broadcast in Japan that viewed it as his best Gundam series. So he likely always wanted to fix zeta as he had a long held belief it was bad, because he was told as such at the time. He likely had full creative freedom on Zeta and a bigger budget than the OG Gundam, due to how well the Gundam movie trilogy did and he made what he wanted. So I'd take it as the original Zeta was his actual intent and a new translation trilogy was his effort to address the complaints he heard nearly 20 years earlier.

I am curious about Beltorchikas children as it is essentially what he had in mind for CCA, Amuro was married to Beltorchika from Zeta and it was just much more tied to his series than the movie we got in many ways, he was great at tying his works together if anything. If I recall correctly the Hi-Nu Gundam was in that as well, as a much more ambitious design for the nu-gundam and clearly the animation staff said "F**k off" when they saw it, so it was given a simpler design. Super saiya-jin 3 in Dragonball was abandoned in favour of simpler designs in super for this reason, which is a shame given that it is iconic, even Akira Toriyama had to rein himself in for an animation team and he was royalty in Japan at that point. I'll try to get around to reading Beltorchikas children at some point.

Basically what made me interested in Gundam is no longer involved and that is Tomino as the writer. He was great at doing character dynamics, it would make the slower human focused episodes quite enjoyable as the mech parts weren't what was great about Gundam, it was genuinely the human element. I noticed that outside wing and Tominos own stuff, the rest of gundam doesn't really hold my attention as much so I stopped following it. I've heard amazing things about Iron-blooded orphans, I tried witch of mercury and Gquuux, I enjoyed the reimagining of Char getting the Gundam in GQuuux but it lost my interest after that. I've gone from a mega fan to it's something I enjoy when they focus on OG, Z or ZZ gundam. I've had war in the pocket on my list for a while because it's considered to be superior to Tominos work.