Would I cripple my watching experience by treating 'Gundam Unicorn' (2016) as a standalone series?

Aereldor said:


To be entirely honest, I enjoyed this series because of its immensely high production value and stunning opening and ending sequences, and that more-or-less summarizes my relationship with the Gundam franchise (barring The Origin, as I've been able to understand all of it and am deeply engrossed in its story).

However, since I did enjoy Unicorn without understanding most of it, I'm willing to put in at least a little work in order to understand it. Do you think watching just the movie trilogy and perhaps Char's Counterattack would be sufficient? If not, I may be inclined to just go on with Unicorn looking up the Wiki for stuff that I'm truly interested in, or just waiting till all the Origin OVAs are out (if I'm not wrong, they're a retelling of the 0079 films, no?).

Something that also drew me to Gundam Unicorn was that I don't have a lot to look out for this season. However, seeing as you said Gundam Wing, Seed, Seed, Destiny, and 00 are easier to get into and maintain high production value and more modern animation, I might give the more recent entries a shot.

Your assistance is most appreciated. Thanks again.

SS2_Vegeto said:
It more or less presumes knowledge of 0079, Zeta, and ZZ, and is a direct sequel to Char's Counterattack. You could probably follow the narrative well enough with a little background knowledge even without actually watching all of that, but you honestly won't get as much out of it if you don't.

Also, contrary to what some people have insinuated, the only reason Zeta isn't more skip-able than ZZ in relation to Unicorn (which isn't to insinuate that either of them are particularly skip-able) is that ZZ is a direct continuation of Zeta and so itself makes no sense if you haven't watched Zeta.

SS2_Vegeto said:
You can follow more or less what's going on, but you'll miss the significance of much of it unless you at least know a lot about the previous history of the Universal Century, because this series is basically ABOUT resolving that history.

ValexIV said:
I watched the OVA version of MSG Unicorn, without watching any of the previous entries in the UC Timeline, and I liked it a lot.

I am sure that if I watched the original series, Zeta and Char's Counterattack movie I would understand and appreciate Unicorn more than I did, but by no means my lack of knowledge about the MSG universe cripple my watching experience.

Unicorn is a good anime and I recommend it to you. My only concern is that the TV series version seems to be having pacing issues, so you might as well watch the OVA version.