The story is a surprisingly compelling one - in bringing a pair of prototype mechanized giant armors - Gundams - to a test base in Australia, the crew of the Albion finds one of their nuclear-equipped Gundams hijacked right from under their noses by the remnant of the rogue government that Earth defeated just four years before. Pursuing this stolen Gundam across Australia and Africa, this crew has to desperately try to stop Zeon - the rogue government - from using this Gundam as the lynchpin in rebuilding their forces.

Two things really struck me about this series. One was that it was really more about the interpersonal relationships between the characters than about the Gundams (although there's lots of tech and battle sequences for the die-hard Gundam fans as well). The other was that it's quite beautifully animated. The colors are surprisingly vibrant and the animation quality is impressively good for a series that dates to the late 80s/early 90s.

The video and audio quality seem quite good - at least to my rather archaic television. The extras were quite nice as well: the usual textless opening and ending as well as a miniatue Gundam encyclopedia full of Gundam and vehicle stats and - something especially useful for me and any others new to the series - a timeline in the DVD insert.

While this disc hasn't sold me on the entire Gundam franchise, it has sold me on the rest of this series. It balances action, romance, angst and fear in a very well-realized world. I recommend it as much for the anime fan not familiar with (or traditionally not interested in) Gundam as the die-hard fan. I will be awaiting the rest of this series with interest

Onto 0083, now you don't really need to watch any of the previous Gundam shows to watch it, but it may help to look up the story to MSG to get an idea of the backround. If you like action scenes you are in luck! Gundam 0083 has them in every episode, and may I say they are good action scenes. And I am going to defend the character of Kou Uraki here, people call him whiny, but let me remind you that Kou was forced to try to beat overwhelming circumstances after many of his friends died during an attack, and he was also struggling in his love life, wouldn't you be angsty in that poisiton? I certianly would. With that said characters like Kou, Keith, Nina and Cima are neat, but let critize 0083 for not explaining Cima's backround well enough, I can't remember it to well, so I won't explain it here, you should look it up.

The Mechanical desing is great, notable ones are the GPO 1, 2 and 3, and others, I personally am found of that Guncanon Keith has.

Overall would I suguest the series? Yes. To people allready into mech anime, and people just getting into mech anime. while the characters are no were near as deep as others, the action is good and interesting to watch, the story is good and I love the intro songs :)

Peace out! Matt B.