Mobile Fighter G Gundam
Early in the show's North American run, Bandai reported that "G Gundam" had the top ratings of any anime show for the period. The company considered the show to be a "hit" at the time. However, officials for Toonami recounted in 2006 that no "Gundam" series earned significant viewer ratings after the first North American airing of "Gundam Wing" in 2000. "G Gundam" received an overall positive critical reception amid its mainstream exposure in the United States. Nonetheless, views on "G Gundam"s plot remain largely mixed. Negative reactions to the plot mostly stem from its stark contrast to preceding "Gundam" entries that have traditionally focused on deep political and social issues in the midst of war. AnimeNation writer John Oppliger considered "G Gundam" to be "the plague of the "Gundam" franchise" and "one of the biggest mis-steps in anime history" due to its elimination of such serious subtext. Both Bamboo Dong of the Anime News Network and Duncan Scott of "Protoculture Addicts" were also initially disappointed for the same reason, with the latter writer feeling that the series features "Gundam" in its title purely for marketing reasons. Derrick L. Tucker of T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews called the series' episodic storyline its "most profound weakness", whereby "the narrative exists to move the viewer from fight to fight". Tucker also found that the potential for its more dramatic themes, such as tension between Domon and Master Asia or Domon's romantic relationship with Rain, is "overshadowed from start to finale by the show's domineering, if repetitive action sets".
Mobile Suit Victory Gundam
"Victory Gundam" is the fourth "Gundam" television series and the first of four "Gundam" television series that aired on TV Asahi and its sister ANN stations in Japan sequentially from 1993 through 1996. In order to attract the younger elementary school age demographic that "SD Gundam" was popular with at the time, the show featured the youngest protagonist in the "Gundam" franchise, the thirteen-year-old Uso Ewin, and established a setting within Universal Century that was largely independent of previous "Gundam" works. Unlike previous "Gundam" series that started off in space colonies, the show starts off in Eastern Europe before moving to space 15 episodes later. The intent of this was for Tomino to dispel the association between "Gundam" and space. Nonetheless, the mature themes of the show, as well as the high casualty rate of the main cast, meant that the show would instead attract an older crowd, the young adults who had seen "Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam" and "Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ" a decade earlier.