I'll be reviewing Gundam SEED every week (hopefully). The first striking realization was that this will be a retelling of original Gundam, and by being so may be the first alternate universe Gundam I like.

Some of the similarities that aren't very subtle:

1. The space alliance name is Zaft, four letters beginning with a Z, much like Zeon.
2. The much larger Earth Federation is fighting a staelmate war with the technologically superior Zaft Alliance.
3. The main protagonist, Kira Yamato, is a teenage whiz kid, like Amuro.
4. The opening episode takes place on a neutral colony where the Earth Federation is prototyping their first mobile suits.
5. The key Zaft bad guy, Rau Le Creuset, so far wears a mask, like Char.
6. Rau leads a daring raid on the colony to steal the Earth Federation mobile suits.

Some other notes that I noticed. Infantry style mobile suit usage. No more super robots taking on an infinite number of disposable enemies. Projectile weapons have returned, the basic weapon of the Zaft suits are machine guns. A lot of the episode dealt with backstory that will be explained. Good Gundam is as much about the human characters as it is the mobile suits, if they fill in the character back stories this could be good.

The animation is good. A nice mixture of hand drawn and computer generated. However the character art, at least for the children/teens, is that washy clean look most examplified by .hack//sign. I much prefer the rougher character art, it seems more real.

All in all I enjoyed this episode, hopefully it continues to get better.