Not understanding the larger context or who any of the referenced characters are is what kept me away. I gave it one episode and couldn’t understand what was happening so I bailed. It needed more narrative training wheels for folks like me
It backs up and fills in some of the background in the second and third episodes (in fact, episode 2 is pretty much entirely a history speedrun about Gundams, Char, and the Zeon/Federation war), and I can understand wanting to start the first episode with the characters of the current story rather than with the history, but while the combination was enough to get me mostly up to speed, it’s seriously clunky in the way it plays out, and it’s unsurprising it lost viewers (it came within a hair of losing me, too). They could have done better.
It backs up and fills in some of the background in the second and third episodes (in fact, episode 2 is pretty much entirely a history speedrun about Gundams, Char, and the Zeon/Federation war), and I can understand wanting to start the first episode with the characters of the current story rather than with the history, but while the combination was enough to get me mostly up to speed, it’s seriously clunky in the way it plays out, and it’s unsurprising it lost viewers (it came within a hair of losing me, too). They could have done better.