Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory/YMMV

"Kou: "Y-Yes, sir!" Gato: "I'm the enemy, you idiot!""
 * Ass Pull: The sudden reveal of Nina's romance with Gato can come off as this, since there's effectively zero setup for it (other than maybe, maybe her reaction to seeing him at Torrington in the first episode). The manga adaptation averts this by showing flashbacks to how they met.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome - Gato's "Solomon, I have returned!" speech just before he nukes the Feddie naval review; Kou impaling Cima's Gebera Tetra on the end of GP-03's giant Beam Cannon and firing it at point blank. Not to mention the entire duel between Kou and Gato in episode 10.
 * Crowning Moment of Funny - The scene after Kou interrupts Gato's escape in episode 2, leading up to this.


 * Crowning Music of Awesome - The second opening theme, MEN OF DESTINY.
 * The first one, The Winner, is nothing to sneer at either.
 * Likewise for its English version, Back to Paradise.
 * Epileptic Trees - One scene at Anaheim Electronics shows an engineer who resembles Christina McKenzie, leading fans to come up with all sorts of theories to explain how she ended up at Anaheim, usually involving her learning about Bernie and quitting the military in response.
 * Fridge Logic - Unit 02's vulnerable spot is its shield. Were the designers unclear on what shields are for?
 * GP-02A was designed first and foremost for nuclear strikes... in violation of the Antarctic Treaty (?). Active cooling on your heat shield is very sensible. It's debatable whether Gato pulled out because the damage to the shield was incapacitating the normal operation of his suit in any fashion or whether he wanted to preserve the suit's nuclear strike capability as fixing the shield would have been a tricky operation for ragtag Delaz Fleet. (Which was using improvised suits, like the MS-21C Dra-C that's as close as you can get to an Ugly in Gundam).
 * I think it's debatable whether there was a need for a nuclear warfare specialized mobile suit to begin with, as nuclear warheads were actually common MS weaponry toward the beginning of the OYW. They were standard among Zakus from the One Week War to the Battle of Loum, and the Zakus themselves could launch them from a great enough distance that they never suffered blowback. In fact, the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons, alongside poison gas and Operation British, was the key factor behind half the human race dying out early in the war.
 * Speaking about Fridge Logic, try this one for size. Among one of the biggest contradictions to be seen in UC Gundam, Delaz decries the Federation for creating the Physailis as a violation of the Antarctic Treaty. Apparently, he (or more likely the writers) forgot that the Zeeks had already violated the treaty (multiple times in fact) during the One Year War, starting with M'quive's last minute deployment of a ICBM at Odessa (which occurred in the very first series of all places!), alongside the battleship Graf Zeppelin carrying nuclear weapons to attack Side 6 with (in 0080). The latter had become public knowledge when her captain surrendered to the Feds toward the end of the war. Hell, the viability of the Antarctic Treaty post-OYW itself is in question, as the treaty was signed by the Federation with the Principality of Zeon, and would logically be null and voided when the war and the Principality ended. But then, the writing of 0083 was so biased towards Zeon that it's doubtful any of those points, much less the fact Zeon was already independent as the first Republic of Zeon (the Federation even cut off all Earthside supply lines to Side 3 as "acknowledgment") or that it had murdered far more Spacenoids than it "saved" (look up what happened to Sides 1, 2 and 4 during the early weeks of the war), would have mattered to anyone, much less Delaz or Gato.
 * I will grant that it is rather hypocritical for that character to say that, but I personally think it adds to the realism. I mean, how many treaties has the United States broken in its history (Manifest Destiny, anyone?)? That is just what happens in a war between a fervent minority fighting oppression through dubious means and a government attempting to defend its own people by means that are almost as questionable due to the prejudice present within their society towards people in the colonies. I don't think that any entry that I have seen in the UC canon is biased toward either side, including this one. I think both sides are consistently depicted rather evenhandedly, and that Delaz's comment was intended to be hypocritical, thereby adding to the show's realism.
 * @_@ Thank you for making a pointless real life political statement in a page that has to do with giant robots and men with bad pony tails. Seriously, couldn't you have at least gone over to the Eagleland page? Also, I fail to understand your statement: Side 3 might have been oppressed at the beginning, but the fact is the Feds left when they demanded independence, which means whatever oppression they inflicted went away with them. Likewise, how were the Feds questionable in their defenses when said colonists were responsible for the worst form of genocide in history, as well as quite capable of reenacting it (how hard is it to move a colony into Earth's gravity well)? As bad as the Titans were, the reasons for their formation were logical in that regard (if they weren't, then the Londo Bell would never have been formed in their place). And finally, if the show were "realistic" as you claim, then logically there would have been commentary from characters shooting down Delaz's BS; instead, they just stood there mouths gaping, with Delaz (and Gato) getting away unchallenged. If that was meant to be displayed as hypocritical (and unbiased) as opposed to the Zeon version of the Rebel Yell, then the writers really dropped the ball on it (no surprise). Ditto on the ending, which depicted the clearly victorious (if Pyrrhic) Zeon forces making one last stand against the Federation, complete with Gato claiming future generations would be inspired by Operation Stardust to carry on Zeon's fight.
 * Also, for an additional detail, one must take note how some of the 0083 writing staff (and one of its Directors) would later go on to create MS IGLOO, which as described in the Rooting for the Empire section was essentially Zeon themed propaganda that obscured the Principality's Big Bad elements (for example, the Battle of Loum was depicted without an exchange in nuclear weapons and its cause, the Zeeks' attempt at a second Colony Drop, is never mentioned) while retaining the overly patriotic themes from Stardust Memory. It also didn't help that the Zeon side of IGLOO took up two OVA series, while the Federation side not only held just one, but was built entirely around the War Is Hell theme as opposed to showing Federation troops fighting a "valiant" battle in the wake of Zeon's invasion. If that's not clear case of bias toward Zeon in a canon series, then I don't know what is.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight - Cima defects and joins the future Titans calling the people on Axis backwater. Yeah...
 * Narm - "GATOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
 * Too Cool to Live
 * The Scrappy - Kou and Nina. Your Mileage May Vary but Nina is extremely flakey towards the end and Kou constantly kicks and whines about flying Gundams to the point he takes the ill equipped GP-01 out into space and getting his ass handed to him.
 * And Kou is more of a Rescued From the Scrappy Heap in later episodes
 * And Nina jumps headfirst in the final episodes. Her flakiness, indecisiveness, and ultimate Face Heel Turn...because she couldn't forget Gato? Unfortunate Implications much?
 * Wangst - Kou has a short bout of this, but is thankfully brought out of it within an episode's time.