Kyoukai Senki

The plot of the show is clear, I'm not sure what some reviewers were doing in the first few minutes of episode 1 but it's all laid out there: Things in Japan went south economically and the country was destabilized. Other nations moved in to help, but got too comfortable and essentially now are squatters and occupiers. This sort of thing happens. Imagine any country putting a military base in another sovereign territory to "help out" and then using that as a foot in the door to seize more territory.

It's true that the 4 occupying groups in Japan are painted largely in a negative light -- some are worse than others. Try to look at it this way, it's 2061 when this story is taking place. And nobody has said that this is OUR 2061. Alternate futures and histories are a thing. The North American Confederacy in Kyoukai Senki is, for example, either an alternate United States, or Americans have a rough 40 years ahead of them.

So the world isn't a happy place, the new warfighter is piloted mecha, AIs exist but not in great number... and our teenage protagonists are caught in the middle. These are pretty standard mecha anime tropes. They're at a minimum acceptable and at times the story beats are done very well. The action is good. The technical designs are great. The dubbing is good, or watch with subtitles -- they're fine too.

I'm enjoying the show. I didn't go in expecting Gundam as some may have. Maybe it does crib material from Code Gaess, I wouldn't know, I haven't watched it to make any connections there. You could make a lot of comparisons to other mecha fiction but at the end of the day ... Kyoukai Senki is still decent at worst and at times highly watchable real-robot anime. So give it a shot?