[Starlevel004]

> A friend recently asked how to get started watching Gundam, and as I tripped all over myself, equal parts excitement and not wanting to sound like a lunatic, I fumbled around for a good answer.

But there is a good answer. It's Gundam 79. That's not hard.

There are few forces in the world as strong as somebody seeing a long-running Japanese series and twisting and turning themselves into how to avoid release order.

[omoikane]

> But there is a good answer. It's Gundam 79. That's not hard.

The hard part is that the older series relatively slow paced. I enjoyed most of them when I first saw them, but I am not sure I would have the patience to catch up from the beginning now if I had not watched them before.

Newer series are much faster paced, but they build on the foundations of the older series. Like GQuuuuuuX is great but you might have to watch Zeta Gundam first to fully appreciate it (50 episodes, maybe a few movies). It can be a lot of time commitment depending on where you enter the Gundam universe.

[jjk166]

But for someone new to start, they have not watched them before. The goal isn't to get through it, the goal is to enjoy it.

[nemomarx]

The memes around Fate were especially annoying for this. Anything but a "dated" entry, I guess.

[terribleperson]

I think fate is a fair one to struggle with because not only is it a complex franchise, none of the Fate anime are even close to perfect. Zero tells an interesting story but you have to put up with Gen Urobuchi and it spoils parts of Stay Night. Stay Night is the classic, but calling the original anime dated is an understatement. Unlimited Blade Works (Ufotable) is very shiny and a lot of fun, but I think it's less interesting and more straight up shonen.

I started with Zero, and I feel it was a good way to start, but a lot of people disagree.

[underlipton]

Because most Americans started with Wing, which (for whatever reason) turned out to be a brilliant synergy between timing and executive choice. I think we almost got X or Turn A first, and I don't know what that timeline looks like.

MSG remains a masterpiece and a watershed and all of that, but it is possible to choose a Gundam series that incorporates many of its objective strengths without the aspects that can be hard for newcomers to approach. (But whichever one that happens to be depends on who you ask.)

[exBarrelSpoiler]

G Gundam might've been the most uncomplicated, yet wrong, series to introduce the American mass market to the franchise.