Occasionally, I think about wanting a 1/144 scale White Base or Ptolemaios, but then I remember the things would be useless, expensive bricks the size of my desk.

Episode 2 of Unicorn Re:0096 doesn't seem too different from the middle of OVA episode 1. I think there is a new scene of Marida admitting to Zimmerman she didn't know Audrey was on the ship intercut with them trying to find her. And I think the pacing of getting to the mansion has been tightened up a bit, but again, don't have the OVAs on me to compare.

I hope we get a good amount of new footage next episode. Because Cardeas Vist being Banaghers' dad always kind of felt like a random thing that wasn't really developed as much. I remember Banagher having this weird stuff around his head, so maybe it was implied he was a Cyber Newtype, or his father was trying to come up with a definitive way to define/test newtypes?

That scene existed in the OVA.

Also yeah, Banagher was being tested, he's not a Cyber Newtype. (that's the entire point of his arc, being a true Newtype)

True enough.

This one is in the Cosmo Fleet line though, and to my knowledge they're small enough where you can plop them on your desk or something.

Watched the next 10 episodes of Wing today. Well, more like 8 since two of them were a freaking clip show. Good god, who the hell thought it was a good idea to put two clip shows in a row? They could have used that running time to actually develop the characters instead. Anyway, one of the episodes just starts off with Romefeller at war with the Treize Faction, which isn't even explained until like 5 minutes later, which was really dumb. How about showing the Treize Faction's creation BEFORE you jump into a battle dealing with them? Dorothy is probably the best female character on the show thus far as she is far more realistic than the joke that Relena has become. Seriously, this girl is pushing all of her beliefs onto other ways in the most unrealistic manner. The entire plot is just laughable since the whole world but Romefeller is with her. -_- BTW, when the hell did she even reestablish the Sanc Kingdom and start up the school? It's like something happened off-screen between episodes 26 and 29 that weren't shown in the clip shows.

Now the Duo episode where he battles Wing Zero was pretty awesome and of course the Epyon rocks. No idea how Treize got a hold of the Zero system though to make it. Also, Zechs and Howard now suddenly have a giant space ship. Oh, and look, Trowa isn't dead, how surprising. Meanwhile, Wufei's master just decides to kill the citizens of an entire colony just to motivate Wufei. Seriously, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED DURING THE CLIP SHOWS?! It's like an entirely different show started afterwards.

Those clip shows were originally going to be flashback episodes, explaining the origin of the Wing pilots and other characters, much more in depth than what we got in Endless Waltz. Production eventually fucked up on the episodes, and that's how we got those clip shows episodes.

There's a manga written by the writer of Gundam Wing called Episode Zero, and it is essentially all of the characters' backstories. Many people consider it to be 100% canon to the actual series since it was never explained and it was written by the show's writer.

Oh I know of the manga, I used to own it. However, I don't play the supplement material game. The way I look at is that they have 50 episodes to tell a story and develop their characters. What isn't said in the anime is just fanfiction to me.

But what if the manga was animated, just as some 30 minute special or whatever?

I take Expanded Universe material on a case by case basis. As long as it doesn't contradict/interfere with anything and it's not incredibly dumb, I'm okay with it. I hate the expanded 00 stuff because it sort of undermines the importance of Celestial Being's core team in the show.

Depends on how it is done and if it is done by the original people of the show. I agree it can be a case by case basis, but they had 49 episodes to develop their pilots and they chose not to do jack about it. Therefore, I'm not willing to take their supplemental material in account when I critique their final product. You either do it right the first time or don't do it at all. Wing was not their first Gundam series, it was their sixth. And it wasn't their first non-UC series. They had no excuse to not do it right, especially when they start throwing in random elements that were done off-screen (like Relena's rebuilt Sanc kingdom and the Treize Faction).

I would say in their defense though, Sunrise had been producing Gundam shows for 2 years nonstop before Wing came out, so bungled production would have been way more probable. But still though, they messed up. Hopefully this show maybe gets a remake. I heard there's an Origin style manga of Wing called Glory of the Losers, so hopefully it gets adapted and fixes some of the problems the show had.

The only other series I could think of that used expanded material to explain something important in the main series was SEED Astray explaining how Kira survived his mobile suit getting blown up and being fine (Freedom?).