First of all, the art is incredible! This clockwork world is simply beautiful. The characters are interesting and creative. I love that the lead doesn't struggle with the kind of self esteem issues that drag on character development in many shows. I don't know about you, but I watch anime to see something more than ordinary. Anime has the power to richly develop exotic worlds in vibrant color in ways that mediums simply can't do right now. (not cost effectively anyway!). Clockwork Planet is a world unlike our own.
This show does force the watcher to accept that the physics of this world (this universe is obviously not ours), differs from our own. The way these gears work looks like magic to me, and thus, this show is closer to the magic genre than to mech. But they say that any technology, sufficiently advanced, would look like magic to undeveloped peoples. If you cannot accept that in this world gears have power in a way in ours it does not, I can see how you would find the show too unbelievable. If you can watch an anime and judge it based on the ideas within it and it's ability to help you imagine a new reality far different than your own, you too will see this as a masterpiece.
