80%

This was one of the shows that had hooked me on anime, and was the first Gundam show that I had watched in its entirety.  On the whole the series was a very solid entry into the Gundam timelines, but it did have a few flaws.

In terms of animation, the action moved very fluidly and was easy to follow, which I have encountered problems with in Giant Mecha anime before.  The only problem is that this series seemed to rely quite heavily on stock-footage.  Just watch for how many times they show the same thing when the Archangel shots down incoming missiles with its Igelstellungs and you will see what I mean.

The English voice acting was actually very good (my personal favorite dub), but it did somewhat grate that they had to cast two different voice actresses for Lacus Clyne, one for dialogue and one for singing, but this flaw was English dub specific (the Japanese dubing didn’t suffer from this flaw, but had the unfortunate tendency to call another character Ass-Run.)  On a humorous side note, it would appear that the Animators do not know how to spell in English (just look at how they spell "Positronic Interference")

The story which revolves around a war being waged between genetically engineered humans called Coordinators who live in space colonies orbiting the Earth and the normal humans, called Naturals, living on the earth.  Overall it was actually quite intriguing, and incorporated some very interesting characters.  The one major flaw in the story telling was the seeming lack of comic relief, and that at times it could seem to move a little too fast, leaving the viewer with having to watch an episode twice in order to grasp the whole thing.  There were also a few unexplained (and quite hard to justify as well) instances of characters surviving things that by all rights should have killed them.

Overall, I give this series a solid 8 out of 10, but only because I cannot give it an 8.5 out of ten, and It problably is just shy of a 9.

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