The anime's themes on war being a hellish nightmare that's dressed up easily, sold to children, and glorified. It's either a great use of Gundam's central anti-war themes that addresses the Misaimed Fandom around it to deliver an abysmally sad but necessary story, or just a hypocritical and hollow You Bastard! statement from a franchise that continues to make its money from awesome robot fights and toys. A large part of the divide may lie in exactly where you feel the franchise's anti-war message is lost: the fans or Bandai.
Among Gunpla builders, there's the Reborn-One Hundred Zaku II FZ kit. Several builders have been very critical of the decision to have a mobile suit that plays a large role in the series climax be represented in a line meant for more obscure MS or ones too large to feasibly make as a Master Grade kit when Master Grade Zakus have been made for years, resulting in the suit's modern 1/100 scale representation featuring several design limitations that Master Grades can usually avoid (such as shoulder pad seam lines and "palmless" hands). On the other hand, several builders are happy to get a modern 1/100 Zaku II FZ at all, and feel that the kit's grade is justified by it making several major improvements over previous Reborn-One Hundred kits (such as ditching the line's infamously-weak polycap runner to give it strong joints and having part-separated thrusters for a color-accurate OOB build) and argue that it's close enough to Master Grade quality.
Complete Monster: Lieutenant Colonel Killing A. Danigan is a high-ranking Gihren loyalist who took part in Operation Rubicon. He deliberately sabotaged Operation Rubicon—which revolved around stealing or destroying the new Alex Gundam—causing the death of nearly the whole Cyclops Team; he did that just to give his superiors an excuse to destroy the civilian colony of Side 6 with nuclear weapons. When his commander overrides the order to destroy Side 6, Killing shoots him dead and usurps control of the operation, orders the nukes launched, and prompts Bernard "Bernie" Wiseman—the only surviving member of the Cyclops Team—to launch a suicidal attack on the Gundam Alex in the hopes of heading off the strike.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: A story about how glorifying war through cartoons and toys is wrong... in a Gundam series. It's likely that the show's creators knew this, given the reaction of Al's friends at the end. See the page quote.
Despite appearing for less than a minute in a single episode of the OAV, the GM Sniper 2 is hugely popular with the fandom and features prominently in numerous spinoffs, most notably Rise from the Ashes and is generally considered (in and out of universe) as the overall best non-Gundam Federation MS of the One Year War.
The Kämpfer is another similarly popular suit. Though its appearance is brief it's praised for having a cool design loaded down with weapons and being a fearsome One-Man Army. It's also notable for being one of the only "original" mobile suits in the OVA as the others were based on pre-existing designs.
Heartwarming Moments: Bernie lifting up Al over his shoulders as they pretend it's an airplane.
Bernie and Al making up, repairing the Zaku and Bernie even lifting Al in the Zaku for the boy.
Bernie's final message.
Bernie: Whatever happens, don't hate the Federation soldiers, or the Gundam pilot. Okay? They're just doing what they believe is right. The same as me. It may be hard for you, but please... Don't hate anyone, and don't blame yourself.
In the SD Gundam G Generation series, the narrator for the War in the Pocket scenarios is Daisuke Namikawa, Al's original VA, implying that the scenarios are actually a grown-up Al remembering the events of his childhood.
Narrator: The boy will never forget... That there was once a soldier who risked his life, fighting a war in the pocket of this tiny colony. The words that he left behind, will forever be in the boy's heart...
The commercial for the DVD release of the OVA, released ten years after the original OVA, was also narrated by a grown-up Al.
Al: I remember those days... About the day I saw a Zaku for the first time, about the battle I wasn't able to stop... Bernie... I'll never forget you.
His English VA David Hayter's role as Bernie makes it funnier when a few years later, he's become well-known for his role as Big Boss (aka Naked Snake) and Solid Snake, FOX/FOXHOUND commando with a specialty of infiltrating places. In 0080, he failed in the infiltration attempt and was detected by Earth Federation soldiers.
At the end of the fifth episode, when Bernie calls Al to tell him he's changing his mind and is going to stay and destroy the Gundam, Al finishes the call by saying "I love you, Bernie". Funnier still later on in Japan, where Al's replacement VA is Kumiko Watanabe, who ended up getting married to Bernie's voice actor Kouji Tsujitani in 2012.
The "Wow Cool Robot" meme, originally made to criticize people who only care about the cool robots in the Gundam series and not the War Is Hell message, is the exact message of this show, to the point that it could be called "Wow Cool Robot: The Anime".
It Was His Sled: Bernie dies and his corpse is compared to a hamburger.
Bernie's remains looking like "a pile of hamburger" leads to some black humor about Bernie's Burgers within the fandom.
Ditto "Christina is best grill" (misspelling 'girl' intentionally, referencing the instrument that cooks hamburgers, not intentional)
When a Gundam-themed restaurant offered Gundam-styled burgers, streaming site Crunchyroll used a shot of Bernie eating a burger as the thumbnail for the story.
People making comedic comparisons with Bernie and Big Boss/Solid Snake once they find out David Hayter voices both.
Nightmare Fuel: The scene of an entire classroom of students being disintegrated by a nuclear weapon.
The Woobie: Al after the events of the series. His brother figure Bernie dies at the hands of Chris, his sister figure of all people. And he has to keep an iron face so no one will find out that he was working with Zeon.
Tear Jerker: The ending, as well as Bernard's recorded message to Al. This OVA will hurt your soul by the time you are through with it.
Woolseyism: The phrase in the original Japanese is "worse than mincemeat". On the other hand, "Nothing left, sir. A pile of hamburger" came from the translation by Neil Nadelman, and ended up being one of the more notable Black Comedy memes based from the English-speaking Gundam fandom.
" meme, originally made to criticize people who only care about the cool robots in the Gundam series and not the War Is Hell message, is the exact message of this show, to the point that it could be called "Wow Cool Robot: The Anime".