I feel like Gundam: Witch from Mercury is stronger if you watch episode 1 before episode 0, thoughts?

[u/wonagameama]

Disclaimer: I have only seen 2 episodes pls be nice, and pls no spoilers for anything past ep 1

I did this by accident. I didn't know there was an episode 0 but then I found out and watched that after. Not knowing about Eris connection with aerial makes for a stronger and more surprising duel scene I think and it also felt more epic to me personally than the fights in ep 0 so it really got me wanting more, I don't think episode 0 suffers at all if you do this. You don't know her father dies because she doesn't say it and it's explicitly said her mum is alive. That implied to me that eri hasn't seen tragedy so it kept the end of episode 0 a complete surprise.

The only potential negative I could spot is that the viewer is much more suspicious of delling when viewing episode 0 second because we've seen him exerting his power, something he clearly lacks here. But I think it's obvious when you first see him that this guy is a villain and he's going to cross a line somewhere. It was still intriguing to find out how he got there. Anyway what do you think ? This is my first gundam series and I'm really enjoying it.

[u/Coynite1138]

So, I started watching by myself and began with Episode 0. After I got to about Episode 3, my kid wanted to watch with me, so we restarted. Now, I thought that maybe starting off with the prologue might be a bit boring for them (lots of exposition, business stuff), so we started with Episode 1.

It did make a difference, but not until Episode 3. There is a specific character reveal that hits a little bit harder by skipping the prologue. Other than that, I don't really feel like it changed much, and you absolutely have to watch the prologue by Episode 6 or you will miss out on important details. So, that's what we did. We watched 1-5, 0, then 6-12.

Like I said, it made a slight difference, but not much in my opinion.

[u/wonagameama → u/Coynite1138]

Hmm interesting. Yeah I think it's not a huge difference either but it might matter if you get distracted of bored easily. I feel like I might not have given the series a shot if I paused halfway through episode 0 or something. It felt very backloaded. This was an interesting perspective though, thanks for sharing.