Gundam Wing is already, in my opinion, best approached as theatrical performance. The tone is far less of strict verisimilitude than previous entries in the franchise and more exaggeratedly representational. It's a history play, everyone declaiming and expounding upon their motivations for the audience, constantly asiding for no obvious diegetic reason. This creates a different effect from the hyper-reality of G Gundam, which runs on fully-sincere commitment to the bit. In Wing, getting the most out of the story requires letting it get away with gesturing to things it isn't strictly showing or justifying, simply because we have to move to the next scene or philosophical point.
And flawed though it may be, the English dub serves to heighten that theatricality. I mean this without the least disrespect to the cast, who have largely been caught out by time and place, but now it's rather like watching a play put on by an am-dram group. Heero was cast for his looks yet got invested in the part and occasionally pulls off the most bitingly dry line delivery. Quatre is achingly committed, to the point of turning slightly scary when he has to go off the deep-end. Trowa is trying his best. Wu Fei wanted to be the lead. Duo gets the most applause because he knows how to play to the audience. The Peacecraft siblings are attempting Shakespeare. Sally and Noin aren't taking it nearly that seriously but are having a lot of fun. Lady Une is bringing the house down every scene she's in. General Septum is the local bank manager. Dorothy has a lot of notes for the director.
I don't know, I'm just finding that I'm enjoying my rewatch a lot more by adopting this frame of mind. Tubarov is literally dressed as Richard III, for heaven's sake, to say nothing of Treize's whole... everything. We have an honest-to-goodness narrator filling in all the gaps!
I guess this is the equivalent of 'but it's really someone's DnD campaign', only as an actually load-bearing part of the viewing experience.
