First and foremost, this entire first cour feels like a prologue (unrelated to the prologue episode 0 for this series), which is not necessarily a bad thing, but as such, feels incredibly dragged on for the majority of the series. The typical space war-drama action found in your usual gundam series is replaced with space-school hijinks and "duels", of which there are stakes, but are a far, far cry away from usual gundam fare. There are many episodes that feel incredibly mundane with not much happening, and the pacing just feels way too slow, even for a gundam series, which can go up to 40-50 episodes.
Secondly, this is the first time ever in a gundam series that we get a proper female protagonist, and a very cute one at that. Although I myself am a fan of both gundam AND CGDCT SOL series, Suletta's moe antics may irritate hardcore gundam fans and shonen action junkies. The cast of characters in general is a very mixed bag, and viewer reception to the abundance of "cute girls" might be divisive in that regard. (But wasn't Kamille the best girl in Zeta?)
On the positive side, when the action does get going, be it the ACTUAL battles or the duels, no one does mecha fighting justice quite like sunrise when they handle gundam. Thank goodness for 2D animated mecha again, instead of cheaping out for 3D models. Aerial's gund bits look fantastic, as do the usual beam rifles and sabers. I ragged on earlier about the slow pacing, but how the season ended was fantastic, in what was the most "gundam feeling" episode ever of the entire series.
All in all, even though I'm giving it a 7/10 due to just how dragged out the majority of the show was, it is a series with incredible promise, with a cute FeMC, and great mecha action animation. It's been many, many years since a proper "main" gundam series that's not just another spinoff OVA set in the UC timeline, and I sincerely hope the follow up season fully delivers on what this was setting up for.
