Hooboy another build-up episode- first half is the remaining 0079 era bits from the movie with Char trying to kill Kycilia with a big asteroid provided by the Federation (the more things change, the more things stay the same it seems). There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it freeze frame of Lalah stopping Char from shooting Sayla in Newtype space just before the Axis Shock/Zeknova happens that I didn't catch in the movie, but it's here in the show.

Overall I'd say this entire sequence felt better with the movies chronology, since it set up the big mystery of this timeline (what happened to Char?) and highlighted the danger of the Zeknova. I guess this was as good a place as any to put this tho, because we really couldn't continue the back half here without this context.

I'm not going to get too deep into the back half- a lot happens here. (And a distracting amount of Eva references.) But I do want to highlight a smaller character scene/detail that's only possible because we're playing in a franchise with 46 years of material-

Nyaan is a refugee from Side 2. Side 2 was the colony that Zeon gassed and then dropped on the Earth, the event that kicks off the One Year War.

That dinner scene between her and Kycillia would be like if George Bush gave a home cooked meal to an Iraqi kid, promising asylum and college entry if they just signed up for the US Military to test their latest weapon systems.

The entire back half, Nyaan has a deep-seated sadness within her, almost like her soul is being weighed down by gravity.

Oh shit is that my favourite Gulp Shitto, Quattro Bajeena!?

(Have some Kycillia Obaa-chan cute fanart.)