Okay, so we're diving head-first into Gundam with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin, a 6-part OVA series based on the manga of the same name. This series acts as a prequel of sorts to the original 1979 anime series, and from what I can tell is recommended to watch if you're new to Gundam. This series was produced in 2015 and had a decent budget, so it's a fair bit easier on the eye than something coming out of the late 70s.
Going in, I wasn't 100% sure what was happening at first. The opening scene of the series shows a character called The Red Comet who goes around blowing up ships left and right. This is clearly a shout forward for the benefit of returning fans, but pretty quickly things got into a place I felt more comfortable following along.
The main premise of The Origin is that the far-flung space colony of Side 3 has decided that they want to be free from the influence of the Earth Federation. Their leader, Zeon Zum Deikun, has a heart attack just as he is about to give an influential speech, and this throws the entire colony into an uproar.
I won't do a blow-by-blow of everything that happens, but you follow the characters involved, from Deikun's own children all the way up to the family that has succeeded him in running the colony. The story has a big focus on the politics that led to the One Year War in the main series and does a great job of setting up future events.
There's a lot of political intrigues and interpersonal drama all over the place, which I was a bit shocked by. My only point of reference for the series was Iron-Blooded Orphans, and I assumed that the political side of that show as unique to it, but apparently it's a running theme in all Gundam shows. The story is supposed to be about the reasons behind war, and they typically avoid having a straight-up bad guy.
That's another thing that The Origin does well. In the original series (truth be told I'm over 20 episodes into original Gundam at this point) it's said that the Principality of Zeon (Side 3 basically) dropped an entire colony of innocent people on earth, devastating half the planet's population. Now, this sounds cartoonishly evil, but during The Origin, we see both sides of what happened, including the people involved on Zeon's side who didn't want it to go ahead.
That said, the subtlety is sort of thrown out of the window when one side is characterized as Nazis. The Principality of Zeon features giant black flags with red-bordered crosses going across them that hang from their huge buildings where people stand outside yelling "Seig Zeon" all day... I guess it could be trying to point out that not everyone on the 'bad' side of a war is a monster, but then again when your country goes around dropping entire colonies full of people onto planets and destroying their populations, you probably should stop shouting about how great your country is back home.
In the end, I really enjoyed my time with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. It was well animated (like seriously, that scene at the end with Char was amazing), it set up a lot of the background information that was important to have for the original series, and it was also relatively short. The only major complaint about the show is how much of it feels like it's there because it has to explain or lead into things that are going on in the main series, rather than because they're elements that make sense in the universe of the series.
Score: 8/10