I thought that Unicorn was supposed to be the first in the series, from a continuity point of view, but they reference the One Year War and Char and all that stuff.
Anyway, recommend me some more Gundam to watch now. I'm not sure if I'd be able to take the original series at this point, sorry. I have read the Viz Comics cel comic adaption of Stardust Memory and saw a lot of Wing back in the CN days, but didn't care much for the latter.
Also still have Code Geass ready to be watched...
Waiting for the DVD here since I don't own a Triple and don't pirate shit.
GIVE IN TO THE DARK SIDE. You're buying it anyway...watching it early is just like a preview! One that will run at a higher resolution than the DVD you're going to buy.
The continuity is:
First Gundam (the original show)
MS Igloo 1 & 2 (take place concurrently with the original show)
The 8th MS Team (ditto)
War in the Pocket (takes place in the last weeks of the One Year War)
Zeta Gundam
Gundam ZZ
Char's Counterattack
Gundam Unicorn (takes place a couple of years after Char's Counterattacks, but the plotline centers around the origins of the UC timeline)
Gundam F91
Crossbone Gundam (manga only but one of the most popular spin-offs)
V Gundam
The other Gundam series are all alternate universes that take place outside the original timeline.
To get a good sense of Unicorn's background, I would recommend the original Gundam movie trilogy, the Zeta movies (if you can torrent them), and Char's Counterattack. You can get all the info you need from Wikipedia, though, if you don't want to go through all those.
As far as quality, my personal favorite series are MS Igloo, War in the Pocket, and The 8th MS Team. They're also great in that you can enjoy them without having to know all the background about Gundam and worrying about missed references. They work great as stand-alone series, they are fun to watch,and they are relatively short. MS IGloo is six eps, War in the Pocket is four, and 8th MS Team is 13. I don't really recommend 0083 unless you're a mecha animation freak - the animation is glorious, the designs are cool, but the story is just nonsensical if you're not a Gundam otaku since it's meant to tie in the original show with the events of Zeta and ZZ.
It has the best female Gundam character, though - Cima Garahau, the Mayfly of Space.
I LOVE U CIMA
CIMAAAAAAAAA