Gundam fans are right about it borrowing a lot from earlier shows. Like most of the first film seems like it was based on a loose outline of the first Gundam series, and there are characters who are basically Amuro, Char, and Ramba Ral with the names changed. And I do feel like I would have enjoyed these parts more if I were new to Gundam, but they didn't do it poorly enough that I hated it or anything. And during the second movie, the plot does veer off into its own unique thing. Sadly, by the third movie, that thing is mostly "everyone's either Kira's friend or a puppy kicking, mustache twirling genocidal maniac." One big theme in Gundam series is that there are good and bad people on both sides, even if one side is clearly worse overall than the others, and during the first two films, Seed embraced that, so it was sad to see it dropped for seemingly no reason.
Most of the characters were sadly rather bland, though this may have partially been due to how they chose to condense the TV series into these films. But in any case, I can only judge what I've seen. Most of the side characters are just there, Kira is boring and generic, and the villains in the last film are pretty interchangable aside from who they wanted to exterminate. On the plus side, I rather liked Cagalli and her relationship with Athrun. To the point where I think it would have been a much better series if it focused on them.
Art wise, this is sadly was made during the awkward transition from painted cels to digital ones, and to make it worse, it embraced the ugly style of character design that was popular in the late 1990s. The result might be the ugliest Gundam series ever made.
I don't hate this, but I can't really say I'd recommend it to anyone. There's a good chance you'd enjoy it if you haven't seen any Gundam series before, but then why watch this instead of one the original series, 08th MS Team, or Iron Blooded Orphans? I really don't know who this would be for aside from people who are nostalgic for it now.
