I'm always glad to have more Unicorn. This ep did feel a bit draggy at points but ultimately I liked it a lot, even the more talky parts. Banager's Heroic BSoD reboot sequence was initially grating but I really liked Zinnerman's speech to him in the desert, Life sucks, but you get on with it anyway. Rhidde is now my least favorite Federation character, idk what the author was thinking when he wrote him but his confession seemed to come out of the blue and he just seems like a total mess of a human being at this point, but maybe that's the point, that he doesn't know what to do with himself.

The large scale mostly grunt-level fighting was a great addition as well. It was good to see both sides taking heavy losses and a showcase of the life-cycle of a surprise attack by inferior but determined forces against an established base with much deeper reserves. Props to the custom Byalant pilot and heck, even the Zeon sniper guy for having the balls to take a Zaku I into battle in 0096.