YMMV / Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The Compilation Movie starts with a scene of the colony that will eventually be dropped on Earth being repaired (apparently it was a colony that had been severely damaged during the One Year War and a peacetime project had been started to repair many of those colonies and return them to service). The scene ends with the repairs finished and the colony starting on its journey to its final location (which is why it was being moved to a new orbit when the Delaz Fleet stole it). As it's leaving the docks a bunch of the people who worked on it (all spacenoids) are looking at it and grinning: are they grinning because they're proud of their work, or because they know what Delaz is planning to do with it?
  • Commander Nakato really fights tooth and nail to stop the GP-03 from launching and keeping Kou and the Albion crew out of the fight. He could simply be an Obstructive Bureaucrat to a dangerous and stupid degree or he's one of the people in on Jamitov's plot. Stopping the GP-03's launch was labelled as an important part of the future Titans's plans and they might have sent someone in on it to do the job. The Rebellion manga confirms that Nakato does join the Titans and helps in deleting the data from the GP project. While it doesn't confirm he was in on the plot to stop the GP-03 it does lend more credence to it.
• Anachronism Stew: 0083, created in 1991, chronologically take place inbetween the original Mobile Suit Gundam and Mobile Suit Z Gundam, which were created in 1979 and 1985 respectively. While the show does make an effort to avoid using technologies that would not be created in-universe prior to Z Gundam, many mobile suits fielded by both sides are both original to 0083 AND make the mobile suits in-use at the start of Z Gundam such as the GM II seem confusingly antiquated, barring statistics that imply otherwise. The Movie compilations of Z Gundam in the early 2000s introduce new animated pieces showcasing a handful of suits featured in 0083, somewhat resolving the complication.
• Ass Pull: Several episodes in, Nina reveals that she had a past romance with Gato, which is odd because she looked Gato dead in the face in the first episode and clearly didn't recognize him. It's not even mentioned until Kou and Gato fight for the second time, at which point Nina says she wishes they didn't have to fight, despite the fact that Nina knew who they were fighting from day one and chose to go along with the Albion crew regardless. In-universe, the most charitable explanation is that he was a bit far away, but out-of-universe, this is almost certainly the result of behind-the-scenes switch-ups as the series changed directors. The manga adaptation averts this by showing flashbacks to how they met, and the novelization further has Gato wearing a helmet in the earlier scene when they walked past each other.
• Awesome Art: The series is regarded as having some of, if not the best animation in the franchise. And with buttloads of Technology Porn, fluid movements of the mobile suits in combat sequences, and a general attention to detail, it's not hard to see why.
• Awesome Music:
  • The second opening theme, MEN OF DESTINY.
  • The first one, The Winner, is definitely nothing to sneer at either. Likewise for its English version, Back to Paradise.
  • There's the ending theme, Magic.
• Base-Breaking Character: Anavel Gato. Some fans think he's the epitome of manliness and honor. Others think he's a rabid attack dog who'd kill his own mother if Gihren or Delaz ordered him to do so, and point out that their whole scheme is to commit a terrible war crime and kill millions of innocent people. He is supposed to be under Dozle, not Gihren, at that, so one wonders how Delaz brainwashed him into this state.
• Broken Base:
  • 0083 has always been a contentious series. A lot of fans love the art work, animation, action scenes, and music. Hajime Katoki's mech designs are a particular high point of the show and Anavel Gato is seen as a fairly popular villain in his own right. The shows critics often take issue with the story aspects and feel that the change in directors made the climax and resolution into a mess of subplots and betrayals. The poor handling of the romance arc is a sore point even amongst fans of the show. The rise of the Titans at the series end is either a great down note to tie the show into Zeta or another example of the overly complicated "too many cooks in the kitchen" final act.
  • The depiction of the Federation and Zeon morality is always one of the biggest debates the show sparked. For some it's a great example of Mirroring Factions with the sides juggling heroism and corruption. Gato's nobility and honor is a major draw for his fans. Others accuse the series of canonizing Zeon's Draco in Leather Pants characterizations and pushing for too much sympathy for a man and a faction who want to murder millions of people with a Colony Drop. The Federation's corruption is also debated with some seeing it as par for the course (the Titans even being shown rising to power here) and accurate while others feel the series pushed it too far to make the Zeon look more competent and heroic.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Character Perception Evolution: The Delaz Fleet was viewed at one point in a somewhat sympathetic light despite being Gihren loyalists seeking to carry out a Colony Drop in revenge for the One Year War. This is because of the emphasis placed by the narrative of Gato's honor as a soldier and viewers finding their Patriotic Fervor and willingness to die for the cause they fought for endearing, this perception was shaped by the focus of 0083 on the corruption of the Federation culminating in the eventual rise of the Titans along with various early Super Robot Wars titles that can see Gato pull a Heel–Face Turn and join the players' side. The rise of terrorism in both Japan and around the world in the late 1990s and early 2000s however would see more critical interpretations of the Delaz Fleet's actions surface, and attention being brought to the fact that it is their colony drop that gave the Titans an excuse to come to power. The ongoing and growing backlash against the Misaimed Fandom that tries to paint Zeon as more heroic and the One Year War as more grey than either actually was adds to this; for many Stardust Memory is patient zero for these misaimed fans Running the Asylum. As such, the Delaz Fleet's actions have started to come under more scrutiny.
• Designated Villain: Cima's fans see her as this, due to how the series paints her as more evil than Gato and Delaz on very flimsy reasoning. Sure, she indirectly causes Burning's death, but aside from that, she causes far less death than Gato or Delaz, and she's honestly doing more to stop the colony drop than the protagonists before Kou ignores orders and kills her in cold blood for ill-aimed revenge. On top of that, digging into supplementary materials reveals a sympathetic backstory,^note She was sent to clear out one of the Side 2 colonies for use in Operation British by way of gas attacks... but she was told it was simply knockout gas, rather than a nerve agent. Then her own colony was turned into the Colony Laser late in the war, with the people overseeing the evacuation making no effort to track where the inhabitants were sent, meaning she and her Marines were now all homeless and family-less. Then, for good measure, when Axis offered amnesty for Zeon remnants after the war, the commanding officer who duped her into gassing a colony pinned all the blame for that incident on her, so Axis wouldn't take her fleet in. she treats her band of men well,^note Granted, there is one case where she basically sends one of her men on a suicide mission, but there's at least semi-decent justification for it - he had just screwed up a potential alliance with a man who had a potentially very useful mobile armor by telling him to his face that, contrary to what they had agreed to, they were going to take the mobile armor he had spent years repairing and leave him behind. and Gato and Delaz are knowingly committing a far worse war crime than the one they hold her with contempt for.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Ironically, two examples that kind of feed into each other, with each used as a justification for the other. It doesn't help that, to varying extents, both are at least somewhat blurring the line with Designated Hero.
  • Gato and Delaz might be exciting to watch, but many fans (and, in fact, the series itself to an extent) are blind to the fact that they're essentially out to kill millions of people with a weapon of mass destruction on a point of principle, with no real end goal in mind other than those deaths.
  • As the above trope shows, Cima also gets her share of this, with her fans tending to emphasize her Freudian Excuse for her war crimes and subsequent treachery. The fact that she gets Adaptational Heroism in some of the games also helps her case; ironically, like her Zeon fellows, she clearly enjoys some friends upstairs.
• Epileptic Trees: One scene at Anaheim Electronics shows an engineer who resembles Christina McKenzie, leading fans to come up with all sorts of theories to explain how she ended up at Anaheim, usually involving her learning about Bernie and quitting the military in response.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The series frames its resolution as a Bittersweet Ending, but some viewers really question if there's anything good about it. Nina and Kou reunite and it's implied the latter forgives the former for protecting Gato from him. This is ignoring how Nina doing so assisted Operation Stardust, meaning she had a hell of a lot more to answer for than just betraying Kou's personal trust, or that a decent chunk of the cast are now part of the Titans, fascistic antagonists from Zeta Gundam.
• Evil Is Cool: Gato and the Delaz fleet of course, carrying on from the proud tradition of Zeon. The GP-02 in particular has a number of fans, being one of the franchise's most popular evil Gundams.
• Fan Nickname: "Top Gundam", due to its obvious influence.
• Funny Moments:
  • Episode 2: The scene after Kou interrupts Gato's escape and Gato gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, leading up to this:
    Kou: We're in the middle of a battle here and you start giving speeches!
    Gato: You're a soldier here, aren't you? If you want to be more than just a grunt, you better learn to see the whole picture!
    Kou: Y-yes, yes sir!
    Gato: ...I'm the enemy, you idiot!
  • Episode 4: Before his GM Custom is launched from the catapult, Bernard seeks the opportunity by using the left sub-camera to peek underneath Nina's skirt while she's on the bridge, only to be stopped by Mora, then immediately launched to the battlefield without warning.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Cima is quite popular among Gundam fans in the Americas and Europe, probably because her retroactive tragic backstory is a bit better known in the aftermath of being fleshed out, and there's an ongoing backlash against Zeon apologism.
• Genius Bonus: If you pay attention to the OP sequence before "Men of Destiny" starts, you'll see a Zeon soldier in the desert with a STG-44 slung on his back, a reference to the German Afrika Korp.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • A terrorist attack being used as justification for militarism and curtailing civil liberties? Stardust Memory basically predicted The War on Terror.
  • When the series first came out, Gato was viewed by most of the Japanese audience and many in the Western audience as an unambiguously heroic character and an honorable warrior. Post-9/11, however, opinion on him began to shift...
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Cima defects and joins the future Titans, calling the people on Axis backwater. Yeah...
  • The GP-02A is a heavily armored mecha that's designed as a nuclear launch platform. In other words, Anaheim Electronics created a Metal Gear. Even better is that in the original Japanese it's Solid Snake himself who jacked it in the first episode.
  • Thanks to KanColle, some fans apparently cannot listen to the first OP seriously without constantly being reminded of Kongou.
  • This wouldn't be the last time Akio Ohtsuka would voice a character involved in an Operation Stardust.
    • Also, he'd later go on to voice Iskandar, who became playable in Fate/Grand Order in the crossover with Fate/Zero. Take a wild guess who the final boss of the first story arc is. That's right, Solomon. Unfortunately, due to Iskandar debuting in a crossover event as opposed to one of the main singularities, the two don't have any dialogue, although since Iskandar is a Rider-class servant, he's a very good choice to use against Solomon/Goetia, since he has class advantage.
• Improved Second Attempt: The novelization addressed some of the more contentious plot points in the series. It explained that Nina didn't recognize Gato when he stole the Physalis because he wore a helmet, and she stopped Kou from shooting Gato because she didn't think Kou would be able to forgive himself if he killed a defenseless man rather than just because she was torn between the two of them.
• Just Here for Godzilla: It's almost universally agreed that the fight scenes are awesome. There is significantly less agreement on the story's merits.
• Love to Hate: Sure, Bernard Monsha is an arrogant, perverted, hard-drinking bully, but it's really damn hard not to be entertained by his over-the-top behavior at every situation.
• Magnificent Bitch: Once used in a brutal war crime by her Zeon superiors, Cima Garahau ended adrift with her fleet, resorting to piracy to survive. Upon learning of Aigulle Delaz's attempt to revive Zeon with Operation Stardust, Cima joined Delaz and his right-hand man Anavel Gato while plotting to betray them. Secretly plotting alongside the Federation, Cima lured Delaz's forces into a trap to end Operation Stardust, plotting to also secure the safety of the Cima Fleet, finally executing Delaz when he refused to yield and using military force to try to stop Gato's Colony Drop.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Kou and his disdain for carrots. Alternatively, Gato's epic entrance.
  • Kou's been running for four years.^note The OP shows Kou running while a calendar ticks up from UC 0079 to 0083
  • “Muh ideals!” ^ExplanationKind of a franchise-wide one, actually, but it stands out here since the Delaz fleet trying to kill a bunch of people with a weapon of mass destruction just 'cause but being treated as honorable and heroic in spite of it is a great crystallization of the problematic lionization of Zeon among the fanbase, some of whom went on to make Gundam shows of their own. Note the Titan label in the lower right hand corner, another Misaimed Fandom branch.
• Moment of Awesome:
  • Gato doing the franchise's first Grand Theft Prototype on the GP-02A, and his infamous Pre-Mortem One-Liner to the Federation fleet eight episodes later.
  • The entire duel between Kou and Gato in episode 10, even using the Gundam's own foot as a shield, and ending it in a draw.
  • Also how he curbstomps Cima's Gerbera Tetra.
  • Delaz, after he's been captured, and is being held at gunpoint by Cima, who tells him to order Gato to step down. "Gato... continue. Carry out our cause, we still control the colony. Step over my dead body and carry on."
• Narm: "GATOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
• One-Scene Wonder: Raban Karcs. He is literally only in one scene, if you don't count his time as one of the pursuit force that went after the GP-02 (though we never see him outside of his mobile suit). Mostly know for his childish enthusiasm at the prospect of piloting a Gundam and asking who the hell Nina was. However it's much more likely you remember him than, say, Bait or Allen, who actually had important roles in the early episodes.
• The Scrappy: Nina is a fairly generic, but somewhat likable love interest through most of the series, until the end when a romantic link with the antagonist is pulled out of nowhere and she suddenly interferes with Kou to prevent him and Gato from killing each other, inadvertently helping make the Colony Drop they're trying to prevent a sure thing. Because of that, she is not very fondly thought of by fans.
  • Kou himself is not well-liked by the fans due to his Failure Hero status as well as his Revenge Before Reason campaign against Cima. Doesn't help that he seemingly forgives Nina for her betrayal above in the ending which makes him come across as even more of a doormat than he already is.
• Spiritual Licensee: The series pretty much screams Top Gun IN SPACE with its visual style. Although it can also be considered a deconstruction; as it continues, it becomes considerably darker, being more like Metal Gear except here, the protagonists fail to stop the nuclear launch platform from firing its payload.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Many people find that the first opening theme, "The Winner", reminds them of "Danger Zone" from Top Gun. This may not be coincidental at all, considering 0083's second opening theme, the "Men of Destiny" resembles Top Gun's "Mighty Wings".
• Suspiciously Similar Song doesn't really do the following examples justice, as the background music tracks listed, credited to Mitsuo Hagita, are more or less ripped off from the soundtracks of other movies and slapped into 0083 (some are direct rips and the others are re-orchestrations of the exact melodies).
  • The BGM pieces "The Battle of Solomon Sea" and "Burn Down" are plagiarized from James Horner's "Race for Time" and "Lillian's Heart Attack" on the Brainstorm soundtrack.
  • "The Naval Review" is "The Year of Jubilee" from James Horner's Glory soundtrack.
  • "Rising Op. Stardust" and "Hidden Moon" are taken from Jay Chattaway's work on the soundtrack for the Cannon Films action movie Invasion U.S.A. (1985). Later releases of the 0083 soundtrack credit Chattaway and Horner for inspiring their respective tracks.
  • "R&R" is cribbed from George S. Clinton's Platoon Leader soundtrack.
  • "The Crater"/"Despair", a piece from Ennio Morricone's soundtrack for The Thing, is the basis for part of the 0083 track "Solar System II".
  • The themes "Mau Cima" and "Earth Circle" are "China's Arrival at Harem" and "Encounter Twins and Canary" from Pino Donaggio's score of The Barbarians. An unnamed piece (not on the 0083 OST) is also taken from The Barbarians, where it is called "Canary's Promise": it's heard as the Neue Ziel approaches the Solar System II in the final episode.
  • "Ambush" is "Space Linkup" from 2010: The Year We Make Contact composed by David Shire. The second half of "Earth Circle", mentioned above, contains an excerpt of "New Worlds," the end title theme of 2010. Another unnamed piece on 0083's soundtrack, which we hear in episode 5 when the Gelgoogs of the Cima Squadron attack the Albion and damage the GP01, is also from 2010, where it is entitled "Probe".
  • "R&R" is the track "Les Lions-Sabres" from Le Guerre du Feu (known as Quest for Fire in English), scored by Philippe Sarde.
• Too Cool to Live: Why else did Burning die?
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Cima is the one person in the Delaz fleet trying to stop Operation Stardust, nothing less than an act of pointless mass murder, yet for some reason the story attempts to portray her in a far less sympathetic light than Gato and Delaz, the men attempting to carry it out. Why? Primarily for betraying, again, a bunch of mass murdering terrorists and a nation that's a stand in for both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, and for having a small hand in the last colony drop Zeon carried out during the One Year War, detailed above under Designated Villain. For her efforts, she fails in every way that matters and dies ignominiously at the hands of the hero. It’s kinda hard to see her as a villain when her actions in the series paint her as something else entirely, and side materials just reinforce that image.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The writers treat Gato and Delaz as brave, noble characters with many positive qualities…while almost completely ignoring just what it says about them when they practically worship Gihren Zabi and carry out Operation Stardust. The former would be bad enough even if they aren’t aware Gihren took being compared to Adolf Hitler as a compliment (he was already a terrible person by then), but there’s no way they could be ignorant of how Stardust would - and did - kill millions of innocent people directly while devastating North America's breadbasket, starving countless more. The story basically lionizes a bunch of mass murdering Zeon samurai staying true to their lord by fighting in the name of a nation which no longer exists, and whose terrorism accomplishes absolutely nothing but killing a bunch of civilians.
• Wangst: Kou has a short bout of this after the GP-01 is wrecked, but is thankfully brought out of it within an episode's time.

---