Honestly, I dropped it really early because my sense of verisimilitude was completely broken by the protagonists' goals and methods. I'm sorry, but trying to create peace by making war on the world is, to borrow (and malaprop) the old quote, like having sex to protect one's virginity. That and the fact that they were apparently powerful enough to take on the entire world out of nowhere. As you note, GreatJustice, there's a reason why the protagonists typically have to struggle; it's because even a fake potential for defeat creates some dramatic tension, while if you've got the protagonist plot shield combined with massive superpowered mechs out of nowhere combined with a massive and somehow untouchable basis for logistics, resupply, and support, then there's really no reason not to expect them to win every time they go into a fight.
Actually, I think I would have taken 00 a bit more seriously if the ostensible protagonists had actually been the villains straight from the word go. Think about it: you start with the ace pilot in what's supposed to be the newest ace custom prototype, then suddenly this evil conspiracy comes out of nowhere with superpowered mechs and blows through them while preaching not only peace, but absolute submission to their particular brand of justice with themselves as sole arbiters. Every time someone tries to fight somewhere, either against each other or against said conspiracy, they get smashed down with extreme prejudice in order to make an example. You still have the same verisimilitude problems that usually get tied to conspiracies that somehow field single units that can somehow overmatch entire armies, but that's kind of a regular thing with Gundam. You can sympathize with their goals for world peace, but you're no longer expected to consider them in the right for killing everyone who happens to pick up a gun (or be forced to pick up a gun). Contrast with Wing, which 00 was apparently analogous to in the same way Seed was to the original series. The five Gundam pilots are sent down to fight, but they're fighting a guerilla war of liberation. They don't have a strong base of logistics (which especially comes up when one of the five suits ends up destroyed), they don't always win (in the very first episode, one of the Gundam pilots is forced to abandon his suit when the patrol he runs into is particularly on the ball), they don't have perfect communication between them due to precisely the oppression they're fighting against (none of them know about the other four at first), and they're not fighting for something as nebulous and self-contradictory as world peace; they're fighting for that Gundam stand-by, political independence for the colonies.
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Topic: I like anime, do you like anime? (Read 3122679 times)