Anime

Like many in the west, my first exposure was to Gundam Wing on Toonami, and while I remember thinking the character and mech designs were cool, it never really clicked for me. I never watched it from the beginning, however, so I don't think I can fairly judge it.

Wing was also my gateway. A friend of mine got me watching on VHS during downtime at work (man I'm old), but the official releases were taking forever to come out. So I tried tracking down Toonami reruns, and the damn thing never had a consistent time slot by then lol. So things felt very disjointed. It was only on rewatch when I got the DVDs that I realized that disjointed feel was due to the plot. 😂 I still enjoy it but it's definitely a brain-off show.

Glad you enjoyed! If the end felt like things could have been fleshed out better, it's because they were supposed to be. The show was slated to be outright cancelled, but they negotiated to at least allow the it to end properly. The end result is about 10 eps of planned content had to be cut.

The movie versions do some massaging to work in the newtype concept earlier, as well as improve the overall pacing. A lot of series ended up getting the compilation movie treatment, but 0079 is the only one to do it right IMO. They are worth watching on their own, and Ai Senshi is a fucking banger.

The Zeta movies in particular I do not recommend as a shortcut for the series. Main reason being the ending was completely changed, which makes the start of ZZ problematic if not impossible. The cuts between 80s and 2000s animation are also jarring. If you want the overall notes, they're there. But the series does a far better job of telling the story.

0080 and 08th Team are fine next steps. They touch on thematics brought up in Zeta a bit, but that's all. They're self-contained and worth watching.

The only feature film I can recommend at the moment is Cucuruz Doan's Island. Just roll with the Origin continuity differences (Sleggar had already joined the crew on Earth, for example) and it's basically an extended episode of 0079 with modern production. I think there's a good chance it's exactly what you're looking for.

WfM is its own thing and can be enjoyed at your convenience. Hell, you can probably binge it between episodes of GQuuuuuuX if you wanted lol.

and even the soundtrack (there are a few Gundam OST cues that I wouldn't be surprised were used as placeholders or references during Eva's production) .

I'm almost positive I read/watched that MSG and Eva shared some sound staff, and could have sworn that Anno himself was involved somehow. But I cannot find a source, and searches are naturally putting GQX front and center thanks to the Khara connection. So grain of salt all of that, and if I come across the source (because it's now bugging me lol) I'll share it.

Enjoy!