Something different. Gundam Wing vs. Gundam 00

Gundam Wing will always and forever be my favorite anime series of all time. I own every episode (in digital format) and I own the movie. It's the greatest story in anime history. What makes it so great is the balance. There is a great balance between plot and action. Even when the action is happening, the plot is always the main reason for it. The Gundam pilots even are amazing, given great backstory, tragic pasts, tragic scenes, and all around great exposition. You really start to feel for them. Heero Yuy, the main character, even though he's so unfeeling, you get a feel that he has so much inner turmoil. The opposite of him is in the show as well. Pilot Quatre Rebaba Winner, a Gundam Pilot with his feelings always out at the forefront of his actions. He feels too deeply. Plus the Gundams themselves are awesome. They are called Gundams because they are made of a special metal called Gundanium that can only be forged in space.

Now that I've watched all of that series, multiple times, had time to reflect, make connections to reality, make connections to story and plot points, I've moved on to another series. The series I'm currently watching is Gundam 00. It takes place in a set year of 2307 AD. Planet Earth has all of its fossil fuels drained and must now rely on solar power, so around the world are giant pillars that extend into space and collect sunlight, turn it into energy, and I'm sure you know how solar power works. Sunlight->heat->energy. Anyway. The world is not split up into nations anymore. It is, but they form different unions of power, 3 to be exact. The Union is the united states and some other nations around it. AEU is the Advanced European Union. It's pretty much the current European Union. Human Reform League is the rest of the world.

These three powers have a treaty imposing regulations based on military power and whatnot. Basically they all disobey the treaty and start building armies of mobile suits. Giant fighting robots. (making gundam sound so much cooler).

The difference between the Gundam pilots of this series (now known as meisters...) and from Wing is that there are only 4, and these guys are less interesting. Setsuna F Seiei is pilot of the Gundam Exia, which in all honesty is completely kick ass. It has a giant blade at all times, beam sabers, gets more blades...it's awesome. There's also Gundams Dynames, Virtue, and Kyrios. The only reason these are known as Gundams is that they have Gundam printed on them, and they are powered by GN drives (I don't know what they are really).

The problem, like I mentioned before, is that I just don't care about these pilots. They are part of an organization to stop war by means of armed intervention. Basically they go into the middle of a conflict and wipe out the weapons on both sides. What's wrong with that? Nothing, Gundam Wing basically did the same thing, toward the end; but in 00, you see the bosses and the people behind the Gundam missions. In Wing, you didn't know right away, it was all a mystery that you had to figure out after proper introduction to certain plot elements and certain characters. Here they just flop it right on your lap and say "Here ya go!"

In this series, everything happens too fast. There's not enough time to reflect on where the Gundams are, why they are there, or who they are really fighting against. It's just BAM action scene, itty bitty plot scene, BAM ACTION.

I haven't watched enough 00 to give a complete review, but from what I've seen it's just not as good as Wing.