The essential driving force of the conflict in this manga is humanity producing oxygen and water on its own. It depicts pretty well how much ordinary citizens forced off of earth hate that they have to do said production and the loss of lives the smallest accidents create and juxtaposes it with the philosophy of "how far could humanity evolve if we lead them realize that manmade oxygen was the only way to go?" It proves Amuro right in his counter to Char that revolutionary ideals never match on the ground reality, and no character even needed to say that.
One of the important characters, Sherindon Ronah, inhabits the perfect form of Tomino's pacifist side in action. Tomino's interviews repeatedly say that he targets the younger audience because they are the ones who will surpass the traditions of adults and save the planet the older generation is killing. Here, we have a princess who wants to be isolated from that "old" society and build one of newtypes that, with their high degree of empathy will overcome that hoddel once “oldtypes” are essentially done killing each other. It's fun to see such a pacifist in action. Take away the need to engage in war to protect those they love and that has essentially been the ideology of newtype pilots in zeta and after: "it's because of adults like you that we have wars" etc etc. It’s interesting that she’s opposed to the protagonist. The first anti-war and never-violent character ever in a UC gundam to do this, to my recollection.
The antagonism comes from the Char in her, the complete rejection of the idea that non-newtypes have anything worth offering, which leads to antipathy with regards to whether they live or die. I thought that the main character’s, Tobia’s, response to her was the best part of the series. It’s a letter that starts with a simple “Can you walk 12km on a mountain road in a single day?” A question meant to bring up how much humanity has left behind in their evolution to newtypedom. The resto f the letter is Tobia not denying that humanity will one day evolve and have no need for earth. In fact, he even accepted it. He just acknowleges that there is far more that we can learn from earth. “Leaders can be better planned for tomorrow if they know what happened yesterday” and all that. Far more complex answers to the same questions posed in CCA and I love that. The only thing stopping me from rating it higher than CCA is just that this art style doesn't translate well to gundam, especially mobile suit fights, for me. I really hope this gets an anime adaptation soon.
