Hopefully it doesn't take as long as SEED did to establish itself. On the other hand, even that would be preferable to it never establishing itself.
imo, at the moment the series is suffering from two serious problems (not saying that there aren't lesser problems; merely that these are the two most serious ones).
1.) The premise of the show is so "out there" (i.e. four mobile suits single-handedly stopping all war) that much of the speculation is on what CB's plan might be. To the best of my recollection, none of the other Gundam series have been like that. Even Wing, which bears some similarities (i.e. five super mobile suits blowing stuff up), had a pretty clear premise (i.e. wreck OZ). When you've seen three episodes and you're still not really clear on what the protagonists' plan is, then the series starts to feel a bit adrift. Are they really as nuts as their plan seems to be?
2.) Too many characters, and a seeming determination by the writers to give all of them roughly equal amounts of screen time. Wing had a lot of characters as well, but in the first few episodes of the series the primary focus seemed to be on just a few of them. The early focus on Heero let us get to know the character a little better, and the useage of Duo and Relena showed us more what normal people were like - and that yes, Heero really was weird even by Gundam Pilot standards (though iirc Duo didn't become a major cast member until the end of episode 3). Other characters were shown as well, but didn't get the screentime that those three did. It wasn't until after episode 10 when Heero and Duo split up with Qattre and Trowa that we got some real insight into those other two Gundam pilots. And Wu Fei got an episode with a previously introduced character to fill us in on him.
SEED, being much more focused, had an easier time of it. We quickly got some idea of what Kira was like, and the character development branched out using him as the focus as he interacted with the people onboard the Archangel (and to a lesser extent, as Kira's friend Asuran interacted with his fellow pilots and his commanding officer).
In comparison, at this point the only characters that I really feel I have any sense for are Graham Acre and his intelligence officer friend. Hopefully the fact that Setsuna is now next door neighbors with the JNN reporter's younger brother means that we'll finally start to get some real information on Setsuna and the Japan characters.
junior
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