I just re-watched the entire Gundam Wing series for the first time since I was 12, and I took time to process it all. I remembered it all wrong. I thought it was just cool robot battles and romance.
The thing is, there is no romance for one, that was the biggest like, revelation. I'm honestly not sure why I remembered there being one to begin with. Also, these aren't "Cool Robot Battles", a lot of it is actually really horrifying when you think about it. The whole thing is a cautionary tale. PTSD. Drone Warfare. Artificial Intelligence. Pros and Cons of Revolutionaries. Fighting for Peace. Fighting for War. Fighting for Profit. The Manipulators and the Subservient. War Politics. By the end of it, just about every line is blurred, you don't know who's side you're on anymore. I guess everyone's side. You want them all to stop, you want them to be okay.
I was actually caught off guard by how little action there was, and that's probably how they get away with using a lot of the same animation repeatedly. A lot of the combat is flip/rotated and reused, but the fights are completely character driven, and the combat only serves to reinforce the characters. But there is never like, flashy, excessive combat for the sake of having flashy excessive combat like you see in a lot of modern Anime. I can't recall what happened in specific fight scenes, but I could tell you about the trauma, and the hardships the characters were dealing with at the time, and that's why this was a successful series.
It was very compelling, considering I can actually grasp the material now, unlike when I was 12. Why were they marketing this to me when I was 12? It went completely over my head, and I really appreciate it now.
(also, robots are fucking cool)
