Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team - 8/10
Probably the best Gundam anime I've seen so far. It did have some fairly bothersome flaws, the main two being the fake feeling love story and goody-goody lead, but none of the flaws ruined my enjoyment. To be fair to the anime, it was a short series and there wasn't a great amount of time to create both a believable romance and a a lead who came across as being somewhere between good and evil. It's too bad there wasn't more episodes...
If there had been more episodes, I would've liked to see some flashback episodes that covered the history of each main character, or even just more detail than the few sentences of explanation provided for some of the cast. Karen's character would've just been improved a lot if her past with her husband had been shown instead of being mentioned a few times during the series and never looked into, and Ginias would've been a much better character if he had some reasoning behind his evil actions beyond him being a a bit of a nut. I suppose the people in charge of the anime didn't want to make a fairly light-hearted war story overly depressing, deciding to not go into too much detail about the difficult pasts of certain characters and instead focus on the present (of the story, that is).
One last moan I have is about the final episode: it was a bit pointless. Outside of Aina getting a large tummy, it revealed very little to viewers that they wouldn't already know after finishing the series. It would've served some purpose if Michel and Kiki had been shown as a couple who'd gotten over their feelings for others and moved on, but in the episode they were simply traveling around together. Instead of being forced to watch two old characters reveal nothing new as they dealt with Zeon brats, I would've preferred to see each of the main characters get a few minutes on screen.
Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, and I can see myself picking the series up on DVD at some point if the remastered DVDs are released. It isn't the best series I'll ever watch due to the above character issues, but it's one of the most enjoyable to watch series I've seen.
