I'm not a big anime fan, and I only put this on my watchlist because YouTube randomly recommended me a video list of gritty/gory anime featuring mechs, and this was on it. So it seemed like it was worth checking out.
The first two or three episodes were really good, and set the tone of how dreadful the world is within this anime series, but the entire middle section of the series has way too many filler episodes. Even then, I could have tolerated that had the continuity of the series been much better.
In some episodes vehicles and mechs were heavily damaged, but in the next episode (or even later in the same episode) the vehicles and mechs were restored. Later in the series they were better about the continuity, but early on there were a ton of issues like this, which made it hard to get immersed in the series, since moments that should have and could have had more impact were lessened due to immersion-breaking incongruities.
A good example is that characters seem to have infinite amounts of ammo just until the story doesn't need them to have infinite amounts of ammo. Mechs are highly capable just until they're not, and they become cannon fodder for the bugs.
I didn't have any problems with the over-arching story and what the series was trying to get across (even though it was wrong in its assessment of what's happening on the planet). But the continuity didn't improve until the second half of the series.
I think from episode 14 or 15 onward things really ramped up and improved greatly. Also there's a much stronger focus on the consistency of the characters, battle damage, and the war effort. So it made it feel much more grounded in its depiction of the world and battles.
Characters regularly repairing their mechs, and the damage they encounter makes more sense later in the series, which, again, makes the story flow and action scenes mean a lot more.
For this reason it's a difficult series to judge. A lot of the filler episodes are insufferable and mostly pointless, and some episodes seem to be filled with the two leads constantly just yelling out each other's names (especially on the space station).
But the back-half of the series really picks it up and is quite impressive. You can tell a large portion of the budget was put into the first half of the final episode with the big battle scene, which was really well done. And again, there was consistency with the way the battle played out. It's just a shame that there were so many wasteful episodes getting to that point, as well as a lot of ridiculous plot contrivances for certain characters as well. I think if the first half flowed better and they weren't so quick to kill off certain characters within the first handful of episodes, it could have been a much better series.
Still, the premise is awesome. The first two episodes are intense, and the back-half of the series really improves the flow and storytelling pacing. It's just a shame that there is a lot of filler getting to that point.
