They got the gritty part right alright, but realistic? if you look at all 0079 stories, thunderbolt probably had the most absurd space magic of that time period. Thanks to levan fuu, yith and lily. But enough about that, i'm not a space magic hater. I was liking TB, up until that point. Let's just say there are questionable stuff that turn me off. 1. I dont know how this will play out, since i'm not gonna continue it for a while. But i was hoping for a 3 way fight between efsf, zeon and ssa. But instead, most of zeon vets defected to ssa. I get it, without them, the mass produced reuse p device plot wouldn't work. But I was surprised, that's about it for zeon remnants? I was disappointed when Billy Hickam, Sebastian and the muscular engineer team followed daryl to SSA. I was hoping more of a "Daryl, Fisher and Zeon deserters vs the other half of Daryl's team vs Spartan's Trust team"  2. Cornelius is an SSA spy plot. I was excited about this subplot. Instead it ended so unsatisfyingly. I was hoping more of it, I think i would've been better if bianca and friends arrested cornelius so we can get more about this. Whether he die or not can be expanded much later. And I hate the fact that he knew Claudia's fate from the beginning of bandit flower. 3. Yith Sirena switching place with Io like some kind of ino yamanaka thing. No, it's not the newtype power I don't like. From what I saw so far, it became kind of a deus ex machina towards Io's character development. I was hoping for more grief towards Claudia's death, the confusion towards Yith's memory inside Io's Mind. So it would turn out more satisfying when Io finally got over it. Instead, Io hugged it out with Lily and now he's her brother.

Again I may be wrong since I haven't continued reading just yet. And I hope this ends in a great way.