What irks me the most though is that they've basically done away with the mechanics of Gunpla battle for the main character, and Sekai effectively becomes his Gunpla at various points, where fights boil down not to his skill at building or battling, but how much physical punishment his body can take. It sorta defeats the point, and you may as well be watching Naruto.
Okay, I'm going to address this. I just revisited GBF a couple days ago, and I feel people have really romanticized it.
Done away with Mechanics? What mechanics? Sei pulled new shit out every other episode. First it's the pack, then it's the shield, then it's the reflect, then it's RG, then it's the Build Knuckle. Everyone tends to poke at Sekai for the "Jigen Hao ends the match" But every time Reiji used the RG the hype music comes on and he wins. Please, let's not pretend GBF is innocent of that common trope.
Fights boil down to the punishment he can take? Okay, so Reiji is a super ace pilot, but when he fights Exia Dark Matter the entire fight pivoted on how much damage his Gunpla could take. That doesn't matter at all? Everyone makes Reiji out to seem like a bad ass who trained really hard. But the fact that Sekai has trained rigorously in the Jigen Haoh School of MARTIAL ARTS doesn't infer any skill or training? People like to say that Jigen Haoh is cheap, and that it just ends matches. But the RG system did the same damn thing, which was a product of Sei's craftsmanship. Then on the other hand, everyone likes to make it sound like Sekai doesn't have to work at it at all, but how many scenes in the early episodes do you see Sekai just in the yard training? In the earlier episodes specifically he would be out back practicing his Jigen Haoh while Yuuma/Fuumi were building. Just because he applies external training to Gunpla Battle does not mean mean he isn't a skilled pilot.
People complain about his character development, but between him constantly with his Jigen Haoh, studying the articulation of Burning, learning to build from Shia/Fuumi/Yuuma, his conflict with Junya, and wanting to get stronger to fight Wilfrid. He's had a fair amount of progress.
GBFT is more like G Gundam than anything else. Which is odd because the general opinion of G in this sub is rather high, you'd think the popular opinion would be higher.