Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn Review

The latest animation production in the Gundam metaseries, MS Gundam Unicorn is adapted from a light novel with the same title. Although most of the newer Gundam production is set in an alternate universe, this time Sunrise decided to return to the Universal Century timeline, set in UC 0096, 3 years after Char's Counterattack and 27 years before F91. Planned to be a 6 episodes OVA, this OVA will take approximately 3 years to finish. But for me, the wait is worth it, since based on the 1st episode, the series will be an excellent one.

Story: 8
The story takes off from after Char's Counterattack. Many cliched plot are used, but they are played very well to create an enjoyable plot. Since the story is a continuation of the first 4 Gundam animes, it is advisable to watch those first (namely, Mobile Suit Gundam, Zeta Gundam, Gundam ZZ. and Char's Counterattack.) Else there may many aspect of the stories and concepts that you don't understand. I give an 8 based on the first episode only, so it might change as new episodes came out.

Art: 10
Too bad the maximum is 10. I'd like to give more, but oh well. Animation is the best I've ever seen in an anime. Battles are done fluidly, good character design and mecha design. One thing that I like is the cel-shading, the mechas are done using 3D CG, but the cel-shading is done beautifully to make them not look 3D anymore; they really look like hand drawn. Though it still retains a bit of the 3D CG feel, it's still the best cel-shading I've seen so far, gives more of an anime feel than a real 3D CG, like in Macross for example.

Sound: 10
I got addicted to the soundtrack of the first battle right off the bat. Not only that, the whole episode is accompanied by good soundtracks. They really fit the scene well. SFX is also good, even in scenes where there's a lot of SFX played, each one is defined pretty well without becoming a mess. Voice acting has no problem either, no annoying voice acting present for me, like those annoying overly shy girl's voice which is present in many animes.

Character: 8
Still the first episode,so I can't give much comments, but as far as I see, they got a solid start. Some characters are from the previous series, which adds to the reason why you should watch the previous series before watching this.

Enjoyment: 10
Very enjoyable. I really enjoy as the story unfolds to reveal more conflicts. The first episode gets more and more interesting as you watch. The battle is also top-notch, it's really rare to see a 'nameless pilot in a grunt unit' possess so much skill and put up such a good fight against the 'named pilot in a non-grunt unit'.

Miscellaneous things:
-It's a Gundam series set in UC timeline so it has to be good. Well, that's just my very biased opinion so don't mind it.
-Funnels. Who doesn't like funnels? This has the best animation of funnel attack I've ever seen.

Overall: 10
Perfect score, since to me this is an outstanding anime. It's got good story, good art, good soundtracks and SFX, good characters, and very enjoyable. Although, this anime is more oriented toward Universal Century Gundam fans rather than the newer Gundam fans. I think maybe because lately there's been a lot of people who voiced dislike towards the newer Gundam series, so Sunrise decided to animate this series.
All in all, a good watch, though the wait is very long, 6 months per episode, but it's worth the wait.