Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is turning 30, and a new retrospective from ComicBook argues the series occupies a strange double space in anime history: it hasn't held up, and it's still awesome.

The piece is built around a recent rewatch of the Toonami staple, with the writer finding that revisiting the show recaptured exactly why it was so beloved in childhood — while also exposing how poorly parts of it have aged in the decades since. That tension will be familiar to anyone who grew up on the late-90s Cartoon Network block, where Gundam Wing served as a gateway into the wider Gundam franchise for an entire generation of Western fans.

The retrospective credits the series with giving a lot to the medium's popularity in the West, even as its flaws become harder to ignore on a modern viewing. For a show synonymous with Bandai Namco Filmworks' most successful push into American living rooms, that's a fitting legacy at the three-decade mark: imperfect, dated, and still impossible to dismiss.