zeta gundam overrated?

[Seto Kaiba]

In a sense yes CE used UC as a jumping on point for ideas along with 8th MS Team but I still believe it has it's own style of writing, [...]

It's less a "jumping off point" than "Can I copy your homework?", and its style of writing is "Gundam for Kids!"... that's not even disparaging, that's literally what their goal was. CE's storyline feels kind of basic and has a lot of issues in the eyes of older audiences because its showrunners and the writers were aiming the series at middle schoolers and couldn't make the story as subtle, complex, or nuanced as the UC works the series was being based upon.

A lot of the reason Shinn gets as much crap as he does is that he's a less complex, less nuanced, and much less interesting version of Kamille Bidan who lost a lot of what made Kamille sympathetic in the process of streamlining him for CE's intended audience.

I agree UC is raw in it's approach to war and it's spinoffs like Thunderbolts, Hathways flash, Unicorn have a lot of space to explore the events that were hinted at in the main timeline. But so does SEED/DESTINY with the bloody valentine, junius seven drop, the morganrate project with the gundams, the corrupted earth alliance

But, as you pointed out, it's already been done and done better in the Universal Century.

If your goal - as Sunrise's is - is to push viewers towards the UC as the "true" Gundam, why put any more than the necessary effort into a sideshow?

The SEED series also sells model kits and has an extended popularity, time will tell UC has a bigger catalog and timeline, SEED does not until the movie comes out or if we'll see another series in CE considering the movie was cancelled at one point.

There is absolutely nothing special about that. That's merchandising. They are trying to make money off an established property, in some cases because it still hasn't broken even on its production costs. Every Gundam series gets that.

[yugioh54]

Sunrise has different management, sure right NOW there pushing the UC but the AUs were important in the longetivity and if it still resonated younger audiences, there producers all have different feelings, when Fukuda who was asked if there would be more cross ange and said Sunrise was busy with there other mecha franchise(gundam) plus they've been limboed there other franchises like Mai Otome and Code Geass and even 00. There is gundam for kids like gundam build divers. Believe or not I don't think Shinn was the main character of Destiny he doesn't appear in the first episode besides the beginning and end and is just another set of eyes to look at the CE but then becomes a pawn. Comparisons aside Kamille wasn't as interesting as Shinn comes from the fact he's a completely different character as his goals is just listen to ZAFT. The Destiny movie Complications change so Athrun becomes the main vision. Anyway my criticisms don't amount to much I just think Zeta has issues and CE is still popular, UC is popular too but I don;t think Sunrise is trying to convert everyone into a UC fan but the new productions on trying to spread the message war is bad which I think most gundams do a decent job. IBO director tried to kill the whole cast in IDEON fashion. I think the ending of Destiny shows that message too.

https://starcrossedanime.com/mobile-sui ... ew-775100/
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interv ... ka/.131472
https://starcrossedanime.com/some-quick ... wo-shinai/

[Seto Kaiba]

Sunrise has different management, sure right NOW there pushing the UC [...]

"right NOW" is a very incorrect way to spell "always".

In case you have forgotten, the Universal Century is the Gundam franchise's primary revenue stream and always has been. Not only is it a bit of a cultural and industry icon, it's the version of Gundam that's made for and marketed to the franchise's devoted fans. The AU titles are meant to be the franchise's ambassadors to casual viewers: stand-alone titles that follow the same plot beats, tropes, and narrative stylings that didn't require you to be familiar with any previous works to follow the story. They aren't, and never were, intended to be rivals to to the UC. They're meant to be one-and-done titles that introduce Gundam to new viewers with any who want more eventually gravitating towards other titles and ending up with the UC.

Anyway my criticisms don't amount to much I just think Zeta has issues and CE is still popular, UC is popular too but I don;t think Sunrise is trying to convert everyone into a UC fan but the new productions on trying to spread the message war is bad which I think most gundams do a decent job. IBO director tried to kill the whole cast in IDEON fashion. I think the ending of Destiny shows that message too.

As I've noted, your complaints with Zeta basically boil down to some form of failure to recognize that Zeta is what every subsequent major installment in the franchise has been copying. It is to Gundam what Goldfinger was to James Bond: the moment when everything that was going to make the franchise great came together for the first time. It's said that every new James Bond movie hopes to be the next Goldfinger. Where Gundam is concerned, every new sequel series wants to be the next Zeta.

The UC is Gundam's main money-maker, and the AUs are very much intended to push people towards it and quite successful at doing so. They are, in very real terms, a sideshow meant to get your attention before redirecting it to The Main Event. That's why most of them don't get sequels or spinoffs and why the ones that do generally aren't priority activities for Sunrise's studios.

[MythSearcher]

They're meant to be one-and-done titles that introduce Gundam to new viewers with any who want more eventually gravitating towards other titles and ending up with the UC.

They tried to make them longer titles at least some times, like SEED obviously is trying to have much more than one off from the beginning, just that it didn't work as well as UC.
AGE is likely the same, just that it worked even worse.
Wing is one of those strange cases, they did try to prolong it, but the narrative really isn't helping.

[Kuruni]

I think the only setting they keep it going on aside from UC, albeit rarely animate, is SD Gundam Gaiden (although there was long pause after W). It help that the setting has pretty loose continuity with multiverse and such.

But of course, SD is always a sideshow and never the main attraction by itself.

[MythSearcher]

I think the only setting they keep it going on aside from UC, albeit rarely animate, is SD Gundam Gaiden (although there was long pause after W). It help that the setting has pretty loose continuity with multiverse and such.

But of course, SD is always a sideshow and never the main attraction by itself.

Well, the SD Sengoku and Sangoku are both really long running and I have no idea about the SD Knight part because it's a mess. (and then the Sengoku back story had Mk-III ported to that world and becoming Knight Gundam & Satan Gundam and then recombining to form Superior Dragon.)

But CE is still ongoing, it was not even in hiatus with all the Astray series and the main reason that the movie was on hiatus was because Fukuda insisted on having his wife write the story but she was on death bed and eventually died.

[Seto Kaiba]

They tried to make them longer titles at least some times, like SEED obviously is trying to have much more than one off from the beginning, just that it didn't work as well as UC.

It might look that way in hindsight, but it's not quite accurate.

Like the other AUs, Gundam SEED was developed and initially produced to be a one-and-done series. The show's unexpectedly strong viewership numbers and merchandise sales prompted Sunrise to quickly greenlight Gundam SEED Destiny as a sequel. Some of the staff may have thought that the Cosmic Era could turn into a long-runner like the Universal Century when Destiny went into production, and despite strong viewership the performance of the sequel's all-important merchandise line were only a fraction of SEED's and its momentum died there. The CE stumbled to its finish with the Stargazer OVA in '06 and that was the end of its unexpected second wind.

Essentially, SEED and SEED Destiny repeated the same phenomenon as Zeta and ZZ in terms of the fast sequel based on excellent viewership numbers, but where ZZ was able to keep the momentum up CE faltered with Destiny.

[Mafty]

Another factor in ZZ is the fact the story itself isn't exactly concluded

Spoiler

Amuro and Char are still around, and Sayla express justified concern of his ambitions.

Of course the story was originally supposed to tie up all loose ends, and was only given a movie partway through the show.

Really no other series ends with an open ending like Zeta and ZZ , so it makes sense they start off as a one and done deal. Which to be fair is better than a story with no conclusion.

So does this mean that CE was the most popular AU? 00 and Wing seemed very popular and all they got were movies.