This review contains terms/words which are minor spoilers to the gundam universe. Read at your own volition. Story - 5 If you've thoroughly enjoyed the first season and think you can jump straight into the second season without knowing anything about the gundam universe then you're wrong. Unlike the first season which had a strong focus on war and its effects on people, the second season relies heavily on the viewer knowing about the Universal Century and important events in it. The show has many unanswered questions for people unfamiliar with UC such as: How did they rescue Io? What is the Battle of A Baoa Qu? What are Zeon Remnants? Whatis the state of the war?
What are Newtypes?
These are all things you have to be familiar with beforehand which the show does little to no explanation.

And even if you did know all of that, the story is very simple and not really that interesting. It actually feels like more of an introduction to the new setting of Thunderbolt than a complete story.

Art - 8
Another thing which is very subjective based on whether you're familiar with the Universal Century is the art. Sure you can say: if it's a robot and it looks cool then the art is good. But there's actually more to the design of these machines than you may realize. The main focus of this show in particular is aquatic mobile suits and it takes models from the original series and redesigns them to have more aquatic features. And although you may think: who cares? You have to realize that gundam is more than just a show, it's also basically a huge advertisement for their line of plastic model figures, and if they make the designs well enough, people will be interested in buying them so it's very important to make interesting designs which people want to buy.

Animation wise it's almost as good as the first season. The fight scenes are really fluid and there aren't really any badly animated scenes considering how short this series is. The setting however is very much different and I feel it takes away from the appeal that the original series had where the setting played a huge role in the art, this one doesn't utilize it as much.

Sound - 9
Soundtrack is as good as the first season. If you enjoyed the style of music in the first season, typically jazz and blues, then you'll definitely enjoy the music here as well.

Character - 7
They introduce a few new characters which I really liked how they designed and introduced them. In terms of development of old characters, there's not much simply because of how short the show is but obviously it's also because they assume you've watched the first season before watching the second, there's no point reintroducing characters within such a short time frame.

As I've said, this really feels like an introduction to the new setting of the Thunderbolt Series rather than a full story. There are a few new interesting characters but don't expect that they'll do anything dramatic or too exciting.

Enjoyment - 9
Your enjoyment of this show is entirely based on how much you like mecha or gundam. If you're watching this without any knowledge of gundam or the Universal Century, you have to keep in mind that there are a lot of things they don't explain which are important to the story so you're basically watching it for the sake of seeing giant robots fighting and nothing else.

Overall - 8
Even with a mediocre story, the art, sound and overall enjoyment of seeing giant robots fighting makes this series a really enjoyable watch. It's probably one of the best animated gundam series if nothing else.