Unless Victory Gundam shits its pants massively, I think it's setting itself up to be one of the best installments in UC. I can not understand how this barely has a higher score than ZZ

Some cool aspects:

The character interactions and dialogue feel actually human and realistic, but still very much Tominoesque, which is a great balance.

There is a lot of care and attention to detail in every interaction and situation.

The mechanical designs are top tier

Even though the use of colour is lackluster and makes the characters look flattish, the shot composition and animation are good, and the direction is pretty competent too without the trademark Tomino cuts

The exploration of PTSD and internal moral conflict in a child soldier

is better than in most Gundam shows, which adds to how good the protagonist is

The portrayal of war is as always very nuanced and full of powerful anti imperialist commentary

Hell even the cast is pretty endearing and cool overall, even if I try to not get too attached cause I

know everyone's gonna die probably

Just all in all I'm finding it to be very solid and much more refined in terms of presentation than most Tomino stuff I've seen

One criticism is that yeah the villains kind of suck except for the Char clone of turn