>>11184801Alright, if you're interested in seeing a different tone, then not-so-sombre stories are 0083, 08th MS Team.. maybe give one of the alternate universes a try. ZZ starts off with a far brighter and wackier tone, but comes closer to Zeta's overall tone in the second half. They were written and aired back to back, so ZZ will likely have some of the dialogue and character interactions you like.
Zeta is divisive because people have different wants. Some want a war story where a bunch of people die, some want a story where development isn't marked by the number of deaths. In any case, Zeta's pretty archetypical for a Gundam series - a lot of later Gundam stories have story elements taken from Zeta, which was popular at the time, but not necessarily the tone though.