Endless Waltz looks like a Gundam should look. The animation jumps so far ahead of the TV series that rewatching the original becomes almost painful, but more than that, the OVA finally gives these five pilots room to breathe as people instead of just mission objectives. Heero, Duo, and Quatre stop being driven by plot mechanics and start making choices that actually feel like their own, which means the war they thought they left behind hits different when it pulls them back in. This is what the TV series wanted to be but couldn't quite reach.

In After Colony 196, one year after the war between Earth and its colonies ended, Heero, Duo, Trowa and Quatre decide their Gundams are no longer needed and send them off toward the sun. Relena, now a deputy minister of the Earth Sphere Unified Nation, is abducted. Behind the kidnapping is Marimeia Khushrenada, daughter of the late dictator Treize and heir to the Barton Foundation, who aims to finish her father's plan for world domination through Operation Meteor. Fellow pilot Wufei Chang has joined her side. With help from former enemy Zechs Marquise and his Tallgeese, the pilots must get their mobile suits back and fight once more in this three-episode mecha action OVA.