Mobile Suit Gundam Wing/YMMV

"Heero: Let me confirm: your shelter is secure?
 * Adaptation Displacement: There are people who aren't aware there were Gundam series before this one, though this attitude was mostly prevalent when Gundam Wing was new to foreign shores and mostly justified as it was the first official widespread North American release of any Gundam show.
 * Americans Hate Tingle: Fan opinion of Relena is split in America, while in Japan, she would often appear on the Gundam Ace "Top 30 Females" monthly ranking, and she is the only female Gundam Wing character (so far) to appear on the list, not to mention ranking #21 on Newtype's list of Top 30 Female Characters of the 1990s. Notably, she's not hated for anything she actually is or does, but rather she has a vagina, is unapologetically feminine, and is romantically associated with a boy who Americans like to ship with other boys.
 * Awesome Music: The soundtrack contains quite a few, and even those who don't like the rest of the series will concede that it has an awesome soundtrack. It helps that the whole thing, minus openings and endings, was done by Kow Ohtani, the award-winning composer for Shadow of the Colossus.
 * Base Breaker:
 * Relena is THE poster child for Broken Bases in Gundam Wing (if not the entire franchise itself), though the majority of it is caused by Shipping. And if it's not because of the shipping, it's because some fans ignore (or at least refuse to acknowledge) her Character Development throughout the series. Again, this mainly applies to American audiences, though her character has been considerably Vindicated by History for much of them over the years, especially when compared to even less well received Gundam franchise heroines.
 * Wufei has two camps: one that seems him as a Jerk Ass and being seen as a Hypocrite who killed sleeping soldiers despite his honour/justice proclaimations and refusal to beat up weaker opponents. The other camp respect him more for it, for sacrificing his own personal honor for the greater good.
 * Big Lipped Alligator Moment: The first ending is a song about a Type A Tsundere, as Relena glares at the camera and annoys various animals on safari. Relena's presence is basically the most this sequence has to do with the events of the actual show.
 * Broken Base: There are essentially three bases involved: the old guard mecha fans who think the show schlocky bullshit starring invincible pretty boys, the Yaoi Fangirl crowd who only cares about the cute guys and nothing else from the show, and the actual Gundam Wing fans who are tired of both of the above and just want to enjoy their show in peace.
 * Complete Monster: Alex and Muller, two OZ operatives who slaughter surrendered soldiers and then laugh about it. One could make a solid case for Chief Engineer Tsubarov too.
 * Crossover Ship: Heero gets paired with Kawarou Nagisa in a Super Robot Wars 4koma.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Heero in Endless Waltz having finally arrived, with Wing Zero, at the compound where Relena and Mariemaia are:

Dekim: What?!

Heero: I'm asking if your shelter is shielded.

Mariemaia: Of course! See for yourself just how powerless you are!

Heero: Roger that. (fires BFG.) BOOM

All the Bad Guys: ...!"


 * Not to mention Relena intercepting Lady Une's Armor-Piercing Slap for Mariemaia and delivering one herself.
 * At the English-language premiere of Endless Waltz at Anime Weekend Atlanta, the entire crowd burst into applause at both these moments.
 * Heero's "I will... I will... I will SURVIVE!!" before blasting the last remaining debris from the Libra that's hitting Earth, in the last episode. This is amazingly awesome because of the fact he pretty much screams it (at least in Japanese); this is coming from a guy who has never raised his voice prior. To top it off, for the majority of the show he didn't care whether he lived or died as long as his mission was completed. Watching that scene was so... Squee.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny: Giant Flying Golden Jellyfish hallucination brought on by the ZERO system.
 * Those were actually images of Deathscythe with a golden aura, but yeah, it did look pretty silly regardless.
 * While not necessarily a bad thing, the whole series had almost no humor. What little could be found was probably accidental and subjective, or intended to be extremely subtle. However, in Endless Waltz, this troper found it hilarious when Heero asked Duo to punch him.
 * Trowa, after he and Catherine nurse Heero back to health after Heero attempts suicide via self destruct, wonders if he should follow Heero's example -- who in return warns Trowa, completely deadpan, that "it hurts like hell".
 * When Wufei and Duo are imprisoned in space and have their air supply cut off, Duo gravely tells Wufei that he can't go on any longer... with the stoic act, as it turns out, because he starts rolling around on the floor complaining loudly about how "this is such a lame way to die."
 * Die for Our Ship: Relena is the most infamous case of character bashing ever in Anime fandoms, and a strong contender for all fandoms. This also happens to her rival Dorothy, Duo's best friend Hilde and Chang Wufei, but it is much rarer.
 * Draco in Leather Pants: While by no means a bad person, Treize has gone far beyond Memetic Badass and is treated by many as if he walks on water. Rose-scented water. This is arguably canonised in the Super Robot Wars games, as Treize usually has amazing stats and is often one of the best pilots in the game. Unfortunately, he's also always a Guest Star Party Member.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Duo is one of the most popular characters in the series, especially in the West. In the semi-official Gundam Ace "Top 30 Male Characters" poll in Japan, as well as the "Top 30 Male Characters of the 90s" poll in the March 2010 issue of Newtype magazine, he is the second most popular male Gundam Wing character (#21 in the Newtype poll), after Heero Yuy. Also, he was voted the Best Male Character in Animage's 1995 Anime Grand Prix Awards, and was voted the 3rd Best Male Character the following year.
 * The Leo, much like the Zaku II, is the initial grunt suit the heroes go up against. And also much like the Zaku II it's one of the more popular suits (and easily the most popular grunt) from the series. Even people who otherwise don't care for, if not outright hate, Wing tend to love the Leo.
 * Epileptic Trees: Is Mariemaia really Treize's daughter, or did Dekim lie to her?
 * The English dub makes this somewhat more ambiguous, with Dekim saying . This could possibly be interpreted as Dekim staking his claim as The Man Behind the Man. Dekim might have used Mariemaia's parentage as a pretext for turning her into a figurehead, but claims that if she were gone, he could do the same thing to any other girl he finds. A bit of a stretch, true, but that's why we have this trope.
 * Episode Zero features a young girl roughly Trowa's age named Midii Une; Fanon often tries to draw a connection between her and Lady, despite the fact that Word of God says there is none (Midii references a father and brothers, but no female relatives). Rather, Word of God says that the connection 'will remain a secret forever'. In other words, there is one, but they'll never tell.
 * Fan Nickname: "Mini-Noin" for Hilde, because she almost looks like Noin, and how she could be mistaken for Noin's little sister. Hilariously, Episode Zero shows us a 12-year-old Noin. She looks exactly like Hilde in her OZ cadet uniform, only more stoic and formal.
 * Fashion Victim Villain: Colonel Tsubarov's blue jacket...
 * Fridge Brilliance: The OZ mobile suits are often mocked for their abysmal performance, but it makes perfect sense when you remember they were originally created as terror weapons (or as maintenance machines even earlier than that) to keep the civilians in line & were never intended to fight other MS, let alone Super Robots like Wing & friends. Indeed, MS introduced after the Gundams' debut do manage to score a few key victories before the obligatory round of Midseason Upgrades sets them back to being mowed down by the thousands, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam-style.
 * Gateway Series: While not the first Gundam series released in America, Wing was the first to gain a large audience, and is the main reason more of the franchise made its way over to the West in the early/mid-2000s..
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: For being the Gateway Series for the Gundam Franchise in the United States, and being considered less popular then the likes of Seed and the UC in Japan... by a considerable margin. It isn't Wing is disliked, but rather that the Universal Century and Cosmic Era timelines have much stronger and more fanatical fanbases.
 * At least initially, the Japanese fans (especially the women) despised Quatre, while he's one of the more popular characters in the West.
 * Harsher in Hindsight: Many a fanfic has had Relena go evil, usually to facilitate killing her off and setting Heero with Duo.
 * He's Just Hiding:.
 * Ho Yay (Dear God, where do we begin?)
 * Les Yay (Relena and Dorothy. Actually, Relena has some form of Yay with pretty much everyone. So much the worse for her...)
 * Hilarious in Hindsight:
 * There's an uncanny resemblance between the Leo mobile suit and Halo's Master Chief, with their yellow visors, green color scheme, and the boxy armor.
 * Duo in the Dub yelling "NOOOOOOOOOO!" and "... it's a fake!" comes off as this now, thanks to Darth Vader, a Romulan Senator, and the Internet.
 * The dub voice for General Septum sounds uncannily like abridged!Jack. You are now imagining Septum yelling "CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES!?"
 * Irony: This troper found it amusing that during the series, the titular Wing Gundam
 * Magnificent Bastard: Treize Khushrenada
 * Misblamed: For years, actor Mark Hildreth was blasted by fans for making Heero sound stiff and emotionless in the dub. Then, at a convention, he said he was told to act that way and that the backlash he had received ensured he never wanted to work on any Gundam dub ever again. Oops.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Frozen Teardrop --
 * Narm: The dub, being your typical cheezy 90's dub, has it's fair share of moments, including General Septum's downright cartoonishly angry voice.
 * Zechs riding the Tallgeese into battle while saying "But I can't falter with the Sanc Kingdom right in front of my eyeeees!" in his best Jack Nicholson voice.
 * Never Live It Down: Heero to kill himself only twice.
 * Twice is kind of a lot, when it's suicide. Still fits the profile of the trope, though.
 * The amount of undisguised suicide attempts may be only two, but he also tended to use relatively minor setbacks to inflict unnecessary damage to himself.  Just saying. People do seem awfully quick to forget , though.
 * There's only two true suicide attempts in the series, maybe, but in Episode Zero
 * Guess that makes him an Heero.
 * It really depends on which times you count. For the unarguable ones, the time in Episode Zero is clearly one, hitting the kill switch on his suit when Relena finds him on the beach is two, and standing on the Wing's hatch when it self destructs is three. But his reputation also comes from the more ambiguous events, such as allowing himself to pass out when he lands face down in the water after firing the torpedoes at his Gundam, waiting much too long to deploy his parachute when he jumps out the window of a hospital, and going around to all the relatives of one of his victims asking them to kill him. Counting them all brings it up to a total of five, plus an indeterminate number more.
 * The way some fans act, you'd think Wufei's entire vocabulary consisted of four words: "justice", "evil", "woman", and "Nataku".
 * Nightmare Fuel: In particular, some of the things that the ZERO system is capable of doing to its pilots' heads.
 * Portmanteau Couple Name: One of the more famous examples in Anime fandom, Wing combines this with the Numerical Theme Naming; hence, 1x2 means Heero/Duo; since most of the show's women don't fall under the theme, they're identified by initial (1xR = Heero/Relena).
 * The order in which the names are listed is important too. Whoever is listed first is the initiator or "aggressor" of the relationship, while the listing of XxYxX (as in 1xRx1) means both partners are equally interested. Certain listings indicate shifts in personalities; for example, 2x1 means a moody Duo with a happy Heero. Don't think about it too hard or you'll go cross-eyed.
 * Real Women Never Wear Dresses: If people don't bash Relena for "taking Heero away from Duo", she's bashed for being unapologetically girly or having a pink limo (which her parents gave her, so it's not like she can choose the color).
 * Ron the Death Eater: Quatre gets this a lot in fanfiction.
 * Saying that Relena gets this is like saying "The sun is bright"; the bare statement of fact simply doesn't do it justice.
 * The Scrappy: Head writer Sumizawa revealed in an interview that Quatre, of all people, was rather unpopular during the show's run, with Japanese girls nicknaming him "The Space Heart Jerk".
 * Wufei cops a fair bit of flack, mostly for being a Jerkass and being seen as a Hypocrite due to the time he killed sleeping soldiers. Which completely contradicts his honour/justice proclaimations. Or his outright declaration that he hates beating up on weaker opponents because it makes him feel like a bully.
 * Relena is this for many, many people.
 * Ship-to-Ship Combat: Yaoi and Het fans can get very...touchy about their pairings of choice. The main war is over Heero x Duo vs. Heero x Relena fans.
 * You don't even need to bring up Heero/Relena in front of Heero/Duo fans. if you ask "Hey, who tops? Heero or Duo?" you can have a really "nice" flame war.
 * Squick: The first time Heero uses the ZERO System it causes him to throw up. Inside his pilot helmet.
 * Woolseyism: In an early episode, Duo refers to Relena as "Ojou-san", which is the proper way to address a young woman of high social status (though he may have just been flirting). In the US dub, he instead calls her "Good-Looking", which is more obvious flirting and gets around the fact that there's no English term that quite matches the original.
 * They could have used the term "Princess" but that may have sounded mocking instead of being flirty.
 * They could have used the term "Princess" but that may have sounded mocking instead of being flirty.