Anime is a Mistake

Wow, I also forgot Hellsing. Jing, King of Bandits was also pretty fun at times,

Yeah, Zeta is brilliant. Probably the best of the Gundam TV shows (if we include OVAs, I rate 08th MS Team slightly higher) and in general one of the top animes ever.

No one would believe. I mean NO ONE! Your avatar is nowhere close to implying something!

Hellsing Ultimate OVA was pretty amazing. Never watched the Hellsing anime though, but I heard it was bad and not worth watching if you had seen Ultimate. 

*cough* Quess *cough*

Gundam Unicorn is getting updated. There is now an anime, Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn RE:096. It'll contain new footage and all that good stuff. I have only seen the OVA, not the RE:096 so I cannot say what is new and what is updated. 

You do need to watch the other two episodes of Thunderbolt. 

Do you own any model kits by a chance? 

Both sides have had their major faults. That was what helped make Gundam great. Neither of the factions were really good guys, but both of them committed their fair share of evils upon the other. You have a faction for Earth that is littered with corruption vs a faction that will drop a colony onto the Earth in the name of independence. 

I currently have a few. MG 1/100 Sword Impulse, MG 1/100 00 Raiser, HG 1/144 Gundam Barbatos, HG 1/144 Transient, HG 1/144 Zaku II High Mobility Type Black Tri Stars, HG 1/144 Ryusei Go, and an HG 1/144 RX-78-2 Gundam Revive in the mail. Likely going to gun for a RG 1/144 Exia and a MG 1/100 Banshee next. Also might recreate Gundam Sovereign from that video. 

Unicorn pretty much excelled in some areas but as you said, fell flat in several as well. Ultimately it is a hit or miss. 

High grades are the cheapest. They stand five inches tall. A high grade is between ten to 20 dollars. Most HGs are also pretty solidly detailed, though not as detailed as a RG and not processing the gimmicks that RGs and MGs have. RG are between twenty to thirty, and MG is forty to sixty plus, with some like the Destiny Impulse Gundam being a hundred. MGs stand eight to nine inches tall. Perfect Grade I forgot the height, but is hundred to two hundred dollars plus. They are the most detailed, the most expensive and the most time consuming to build. Enjoy installing thirty LED lights into your PG 1/48 Unicorn Gundam and getting that into destroy Mode. 

Plus you need the materials to build them. 

Igloo is indeed great. As for 08th MS Team, well, I don't love it for the romance (something which no Gundam shows do well). I love it for the smaller scale conflict. I love it for the camaraderie of the titular team. I love it for the mech designs (things like the "GM Head" are much more interesting to me than the latest super prototype). I love it for the much greater sense of realism it portrays both in terms of what the moblie suits are capable of, and the issues facing them (maintenance, environment etc). Given that often Gundam drifts towards Super Robot territory, even in the UC at times, I love it for being the most Real Robot of the franchise.

Meanwhile in SEED Destiny with the Strike Freedom being able to wipe out an entire army of the latest Mobile Suits effortlessly and 00's Space Magic drives...

What Igloo?

Yeah, you should at least for the first two seasons.

Its all about Zeon

Tomino also never imagined that his franchise would bloom into anything like it would, he expected another one off like everything else he had ever made besides Gundam, and Mobile Suit Gundam nearly followed suit.

To the primary point though.

The Federation and Zeon are equally morally reprehensible states if one wants to arbitrarily construe morality as a defining characteristic of either government. The Zabi regime is responsible for roughly half the deaths of the human race, that is the Federation logic, never minding that a solid portion of that falls on the Federation as well. Zeon gassed colonies, nuked colonies, I won't deny that, because its been demonstrated and described for decades as having happened. However the Battle of Loum, according to Entertainment Bible 39, you had nuclear equipped Federation Saberfish and warships during the conflict, it is expressed that they unleashed as many nuclear strikes as Zeon during the course of the battle.

The end result being the utter destruction of Side Five and its two billion inhabitants, now if you want to be cut and dry about it you can attribute those deaths to both parties, a billion a piece. Another thing I hear a lot about from the fanbase is the colony drop, Sydney, it wasn't the intended target and in fact if the Federation hadn't launched a nuclear strike on it during descent, it would have struck South America and flattened the Amazon Basin along with Jaburo, resulting in a primarily military personal loss of life. It still would have killed numerous people obviously, but it wouldn't have struck a inconsequential civilian target.

This mutual history of both parties being just generally bad states if you want to throw in morality extends back all the way to the beginning of either party. The Federation after all was founded upon the assassination of its prime minister by wealthy interests that would seize control of it and treat Spacenoids like second class citizens at best and a slave labor force at worst. Meanwhile you have the rise of Zeon nationalism and its racial and culture politics, the belief that Spacenoids are the next step in evolution, that Spacenoids are the future, that everyone should live in space. That the people who do not are inferior, culturally, genetically and by any other standard, add in that by the time of the Zabi regime resulting in the Principality that tensions between the remote colonies of Side Three and the Federation had already reached their boiling point and its no wonder it went isolationist and only emerged periodically over the course of the next decade. 

Both Zeon and Federation ideologies proved incompatible with each other and the result? You have a arms race between the two parties for a decade before the outbreak of the One Year War, with notable incidents occurring between the two states over the course of that decade including the Zeon assisted overthrowal of the Federal government of Side Six in 0077. Spacenoids for their part generally either were indifferent, or loyal to one side or another, you had notable factions such as Side Six, the Jupiter Energy Fleet and the Lunar cities, that all more or less leaned in one direction more then the other, and that was Zeon.

What most fans do not understand is that even Tomino eventually realized the impact of Zeon and how it would effect the story of UC, hence why he introduced them again in Zeta as AXIS and ZZ. And in ZZ you see something fascinating, a meeting between the rogue Neo Zeon Warlord Haman Karn, head of AXIS Zeon and officials of their former homeland at Side Three, you know what Tomino had happen in that meeting? At Haman's arrival in Side Three? A colony bunch that had for the prior decade lived under Federal controls as the Republic of Zeon? She was greeted as a returning war hero for her defeat of the Titans, the people of Side Three basically threw resources at her feet and awaited the return of Mineva Zabi.

Mineva herself also comments in ZZ to this effect, although translation has differed from time to time this is the general point of her speech. "People will always be more comfortable being ruled by one of their own." Unicorn also hits this point with the whole. "Zeon was the shining light in the darkness of space." It is a society dictated, controlled and made up by those of Space, not of the Earth Federation, and that sentiment isn't exactly unpopular, it wasn't even years before Unicorn, because it popped up repeatedly in other material.

Zeon stopped being the carbon cut out badguy shortly after the completion of MSG I am afraid to say, if you were under that impression. Hell even the Zabi's have been give a lot of in depth backstory and explanation for their beliefs and outlooks on the politics of their era. Gihren for example genuinely considers himself the best suited ruler for humanity given his incredible talent for military affairs, statecraft and ridiculous intelligence. And given the guy has a IQ of 240, is a miliary designer in his spare time, and has more or less been running the day to day affairs of the colonies of Side Three for a half decade, he isn't exactly wrong.

Morality is what is against Zeon but it is also a factor with the Federation. Given we were discussing Zeta earlier surely I don't need to tell you of what the Titans did in that series, their own attempted colony drop, usage of nuclear weapons, etc, etc, etc. In its prequel series 0083, you already see the moral failings of the Federation well in place.

Even before the rise of the flag of the Titans(I had to reference that manga) You had the Federation constructing mobile suits capable of carrying out nuclear assault in a time of supposed peace, you had the Federation both in military and political elements preparing to go against the very treaty that ensured such weaponry would not be employed, and on that matter. Just what do you think the GP-02 would have been used against? I will tell you.

It would be leveled at Side Three in case if they were got sick of Federal rule again. They'd kill the billions of people there simply because they do not wish to remain apart of the Federation, that is the logic of such a weapon.

Mmmm this is getting long so I think I will cut it off here with just this simple quote.

For the rebirth of the ideals of Zeon, for the sucess of operation stardust. Solomon..I have returned!-Anavel Gato

Zeon will wage its war for a half century, again and again and again because it as a society is incompatible with the Federation. Neither side will attempt to understand the other except through personal interaction, and that can result in anything from combat, to outright defection(Looking at you pilot of the Pale Rider) The Federation seeks to rule humanity, Zeon seeks to rule humanity, both sides seek to impress upon its own image in human history.

At the end of the day? Neither side is a saint nor devil, its up to fans to pick which faction they favor.

My favourites from my childhood