History Anime / MobileSuitZetaGundam

* KarmicDeath: [[spoiler:Jamitov and Bask are both killed by people they tried to manipulate, which can be seen as overdue payback for their manipulations during the Delaz Fleet incident, in ''Stardust Memory. Scirocco was also killed by Kamille when he used the latent powers of various women, including his subordinates, for a final attack with the Zeta.]]

** Finally averted with the PMX-003 The O, which was simply too big and tough for beam guns to make a dent in its armor. Scirocco's engineering genius probably helped, too.

* BackupFromOtherworld: [[spoiler:During the duel with Scirocco, Kamille uses his psychic powers(powered up by the Zeta's bionsensor) to summon the spirits of Four, Emma, Rosamia, Katz, Sara, Reccoa and even Lila to jam Scirocco's mobile suit The O and then ram into it with the Waverider]].

* CreepyCrosses: Present only in ''A New Translation''. To further highlight his DarkMessiah nature that was barely touched upon in the original, Scirocco's The O emits a cross-shaped beacon from its head to guide the Titan fleet with. [[spoiler:He winds up getting distracted by the Char/Haman psychodrama and leads his fleet right into the path of the colony laser.]]

* DeusExMachina: In the final two episodes [[spoiler:the Newtype powers that up until this point had been portrayed as a weird form of telepathy suddenly escalate in both power and utility without any prior hint at this even being possible, leading to things such as the Zeta Gundam being protected by an energy barrier as well as having it's weapons powered up to even disabling enemy machines. All this is ultimately what allows Kamille to defeat the superior opponent Scirocco and his machine The O]].

* KickTheDog: Jerid does this during the evacuation of Jaburo, attacking his comrades just so he can board the escape plane.
** Debatable. Jaburo was rigged to [[NukeEm explode with nuclear weapons]] and those who were left behind would have faced certain death. Further driven home by Jerid reciting a SurvivalMantra as he did so.

* SpellMyNameWithAThe: Scirocco's personal ride, the PMX-003 The O. Yes, those two 'the's were intentional.

* ThemeNaming: Scirocco likes naming his custom mobile suits after deities. Pallas Athena is named for the Greek war goddess, Bolinoak Samaan is named for a Mesopotamian god, and The O is a play on Theo, a name derived from the Greek word for 'God'.

* StockholmSyndrome: Amuro is shown to have developed this towards the "attendants" at his GildedCage. Though it's downplayed in that he's perfectly aware that they're all Federation minders tasked with keeping an eye on him, he's come to consider them as family.

** The episode where Reccoa is captured by Yazan. It seems like the entire scene is that of a woman getting raped/being beaten. Far from enjoying it, Reccoa seems to stand for abused significant others who have become resigned to what they see as their fate (or who have become victims of StockholmSyndrome).

** The Titans research into new experimental weaponry produced a number of powerful Mobile Suits... that saw only limited production. In terms of mass-produced grunt suits, the Titans were significantly lacking, with the GM II outdated before the start of the Gryps Conflict and the Galbaldy Beta and Hi-Zack not being that great in terms of performance (supplementary materials noted that the Hi-Zack's power input was especially poor with the model only being able to wield a beam rifle or beam sword, never both, something which the inferior GM II could do). The Titans produced a handful of powerful prototypes and individual units but one powerful soldier backed by a squadron of subpar grunts wouldn't cut it against the powerful AEUG and Axis mechs backed by grunts that were up to snuff. The Barzam, Marasai, and, to a lesser extent, Asshimar were much better mass-production units, but, like the Principality's Gelgoog's from the OYW, they ended up being produced too late into the conflict.

** Kamille as a particularly vocal version of the Conflicted, as he's highly emotionally dependent and driven and begins fighting for the AEUG for selfish reasons. Despite this, he has an prominent sense of empathy, which leads him to sympathize with a few Titans' members regardless of his self-pronounced hatred of all of them and unfortunately leads him to becoming more and more of a HurtingHero as the conflict bears on.

''Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam'' (''Kidou Senshi Zeta Gundam'') is the second installment in the ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' franchise, and one of the most well-received. It is also one of the darkest installments. The original sequel to ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'', Zeta Gundam's story follows HurtingHero TeenGenius Kamille Bidan, who joins the rebellious AEUG out of hatred for the Federation. Following the One Year War, the [[TheFederation Earth Federation]] has created a special, elite branch of the military to police the space colonies and prevent anything like the One Year War from happening again. Unfortunately for all involved, this group, the Titans, are oppressive, corrupt, and elitist, believing that those born on Earth are inherently superior.

* LuckyCharmsTitle: In a stroke of LuckyTranslation or perhaps because of it, uppercase zeta (as in the Greek letter, and is the basis for the letter Z) can be written as just "Z." The official logo of the series thus stylistically renders the title as "Mobile Suit Z Gundam," with "Zeta" fully spelled out, but minimized and placed over the Z.

** As for mecha, the Psyco Gundam gets mistakenly identified as Psyc'''h'''o Gundam a lot; the name is a contraction of "'''psy'''chic '''co'''mmunicator", not a descriptor of its [[BrainwashedAndCrazy unfortunate pilots]].

''Zeta'' is a mainstay in ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'', being in every game until ''Judgment'', where after that all UC was excluded from the handheld titles, but reappears in ''Z'' and ''Another Century's Episode R'', as well as returning UC to handhelds in ''Z2''.

* ArmorPiercingSlap: Almost any given character is either on the giving or receiving end, or both, Bright included. Of particular note is Emma slapping Fa twice in the same scene even after Bright asks her to let up. In the first few minutes of the series, Kamille already gets slapped by one of his teachers for skipping out on club activities.
** Kamille gets slapped a ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckUbAykOt3M lot]]''.
** Kamille managed to punch Char in the face twice and get away with it.

* {{Bishonen}}: Kamille is an arguable case whereas Scirocco combines this with loads of charisma and Newtype powers for a disastrous combo.

-->--'''Reccoa Londe.'''

* CorporalPunishment: '''''[[UpToEleven Everyone]]'''''. The one who gets hit the most would probably be Kamille.

* AnyoneCanDie: One of the series where Tomino easily lives up to his KillEmAll reputation.

* KillEmAll: EnforcedTrope - Tomino was seriously depressed when he directed Zeta, which led to ZZ being LighterAndSofter. The last episodes are the incarnation of this trope. Only worse could have been an 'End of the world' DownerEnding, like [[Anime/SpaceRunawayIdeon he did five years prior]].

** Throughout the series the Titans and AEUG repeatedly clash, but due to constant damages and limited ammunition on the field they often fall back so they don't lose all their forces in one fell swoop. While this keeps several protagonists and villains alive a lot longer than one would expect, [[spoiler:both sides being forced to fight to the death once and for all in the finale results in [[KillEmAll most of the cast dying]] because they can't afford to retreat.]]

* WhamEpisode: Literally happens [[spoiler: when Katz slams into a piece of space debris and dies. This begins the mass culling of the cast in the KillEmAll ending of the series.]]

* DownerEnding: Although [[spoiler: Kamille succeeds in destroying Scirocco for good, he goes insane as well. The evil Titans are finally annihilated for good, but save for Fa, Quattro, and Bright, all the other heroes of AEUG die a horrible death, and Haman successfully gives Zeon a rise to its former power, shadowing the future of Earth once again.]]

* AdultFear:
** After Fa has a brief argument with Shinta and Qum while the ''Argama'' is docked at the moon, the kids are nowhere to be seen, and they are presumed to have made their way into the city when shortly after, a plot to blow the entire area where the ''Argama'' is docked is discovered. When [[spoiler:they fail to disarm the bomb and the ''Argama'' is forced to take off without finding them]] Kamille and Fa are heartbroken. [[spoiler:Though the bomb couldn’t be taken care of, Shinta and Qum were thankfully just hiding in the shower, thinking they’d get back at Fa by hiding in the shower, since she’d never think to look there.]]
** When Mirai and her children are first taken hostage, a basket is knocked over, and the camera lingers on that shot of the basket for the rest of the scene, and all the while, Mirai and the children are heard struggling as Mirai pleads for the soldiers to not hurt her children.