Mobile Suit Gundam 00

I would like to address this statement to every single human being born and raised on Earth.

We call ourselves simply Celestial Being. We are a private armed organization in possession of the mobile weapon 'Gundam'. The main objective of Celestial Being's activities is to completely eliminate acts of war and conflict from this world. We do not act for our own benefit or for personal gain. We have chosen to intervene for the greatest goal of all: To rid ourselves of the scourge of war. As of this moment, I make this declaration to all humanity: Territory, religion, energy; no matter what the reason or excuse, if there is an evident act of war being carried out, we will commence intervention with armed force. Any country, organization or corporation that promotes war will also be a legitimate target for our intervention.

We simply call ourselves Celestial Being. We are an armed organization that was established to eliminate all acts of war from this world.

- Aeolia Schenberg

Status

Anime: complete. (50 episodes, English dub.) Also see the film section for the movie that concludes this Gundam series, A Wakening of the Trailblazer.

Thoughts

Well, it's not Seed, and most certainly not Destiny. (Though admittedly that isn't saying much.)

Let's get one thing out of the way first: I think that people who say Season 1 > Season 2 are smoking something fierce. To me, Season 1 was painful (I would rather have rewatched Seed, if that's any perspective), because of a few things:

"We're going to eliminate war by shooting down anyone who starts a fight." Now, for me personally, this message has to be played very carefully, lest the characters (and the show by extension) preaching it come off as irritatingly hypocritical, and Gundam 00...doesn't do very well here. Looking at the characters...
Celestial Being garners zero sympathy with me due to the behavior of its members - how they express angst over their own losses, or, hell, not even losses but simply things like "we revealed Gundam ability X too early, this is not according to plan!", without expressing much care over how much the rest of the world suffers because of their actions. And speaking of Gundam abilities...
There are quite a few times in Season 1 when the enemy forces come up with a very nice, interesting plan to capture Gundams, and almost successfully execute it...only for a deus ex machina to occur (new Gundam ability? more Gundams?) without any hint of it beforehand. Celestial Being never solves problems in Season 1 with actual clever strategizing, and always relies on sheer brute force (including Veda) to overpower anyone who challenges them. Again: Celestial Being has zero sympathy from me, while the enemy forces (especially Graham and the Flag pilots) garner a lot of it from me. Also, ignoring sympathy issues...
The Gundam Meisters (and, for that matter, the machines they pilot) aren't very interesting to me at all. Setsuna shows all the emotion of a stone, Allelujah has a stereotypical crazy evil side, and Tieria...well, he's just annoying. Lockon is a fine character, but he's the exception out of the four, and not even the protagonist. Again, "enemy" characters such as Graham and Sergei fly a lot better with me.

Season 2 fixes the first problem by eliminating the very-badly-done grayish morality and replacing it with a standard black-and-white morality. While the latter is typically associated with poor writing, it can be done quite well (remember, gray morality != deep and compelling moral dilemma), and it sure looks a lot better than Season 1. Celestial Being finally gains a bit of sympathy with me as they seem to have suffered from the consequences of their Season 1 actions, and the deus ex machina approach to solving problems is toned down considerably. (Gundams are now shown to take damage constantly.) All very good changes in my book.

The characterization, on the other hand, is kind of a mixed bag. Setsuna, our protagonist, does improve and finally begins to show some believable emotion. Ali al-Saachez is as entertaining as ever and Ribbons makes for an amusing (even if standard) big bad villain. But for all of that, we get things like Allelujah, who gets way too caught up in his romantic subplot (ditto with the new Lockon, who initially looked even better than his older brother), and Graham, who serves no purpose other than to be a butt monkey and randomly challenge Setsuna to battles. And Marina? Still the irritating expy of Relena of Wing, but without any character development and a pacifism ideal that makes me want to smack her - where Celestial Being is hypocritical, she's just plain delusional.

As for the machines themselves...although the Celestial Being Gundams are finally cut down to proper size, as normal machines are able to challenge them properly, the 00 Gundam is the most OP Gundam I've ever seen, easily surpassing the Strike Freedom of Destiny, and battles involving Setsuna were worse than those from Season 1. Except the final battle against Ribbons - that was fine. But otherwise...yeah, I really don't know.

The point to take away from this is that Season 2 is better than Season 1, in my books, because it's less annoying. Season 1 arguably had more potential, but it was wasted so badly I see no point in attempting to salvage anything from it. Season 2 was generic as all hell and had the most OP Gundam this side of the galaxy, but the moments that made you want to smack people were kept to a minimum.

Aside: Feldt is so cute when she gives a flower to Setsuna like that <3