This review contains a bit of spoilers there and there
I was young enough to watch this anime when it first came out in the late 90's but I never bothered to watch until 2022 because, as little as I knew, it never clicked with me, I never found it interesting despite I never really watched it, I just had that feeling.
Now in 2022 I know for sure that that feeling I had wasn't wrong, it was spot on; I genuinely have no idea how this anime is so highly scored, it's one of the most plain - boring anime I've ever seen, not super bad, but so ungodly filled with edgy-ness and cliché it's almost unbearable at some points.
Why edgy? because most characters show the maturity or plainly act like teenagers, with only Jet acting vaguely like an adult - what I mean by that? simply put, they're always over-dramatic or over-theatrical, it's like they have a couple of traits each but those traits are so engrossed in each of their action they don't really feel like real people: Spike for example, the main character, is a typical introvert-cool-easy-going type, which is okay when that's a part of your character, what is not ok is when that is ALL of your character, seriously, aside from vaguely hinted tragic backstory filled with all the cliché you could stuff in (an unrequited love, a past you ran away from, a nihilistic yet tranquil behavior).
Even worse, almost no character is really explored despite the serie has 26 episodes plus a movie, ED, Jet and Faye have a backstory that's barely mentioned, yet at times it's treated like of an huge importance in the episode, yet not enough important to explore.
The story flow is a pure mess. The episodes are auto-conclusive and can be seen in pretty much any order, which wouldn't be a problem if this was some sort of slice of life, but instead it's an anime that pretends to have an overarching story which only matters in the last episode and that's it - it's like all the filler episodes (almost all) pretend to be part of a greater story yet they do act like fillers, with nothing of relevance really developed past their own enclosed mini story of a characters you have no time to grow to be attached to to the point you care about for whatever happen in the said episode, resulting in barely any interested from the viewer (me) as, as I just said, these 1-episode characters have zero appearances / mentions outside their own episode; this becomes clear pretty early in the anime so you end up realizing that no matter what happens, it's yet another one-time story with one-time character that is given too much weight for what is worth.
So while the anime wastes time developing 1-episode long characters, it neglects it's main cast to an astonishing degree, only dedicating one or two episodes to the main characters and leaving tiny bits spread among other episodes.
The sci-fi element is staggering bad as well, the anime is supposed to take place around 2070 yet it's clearly just the late 90's with spaceships... the writer clearly didn't even bother to try and image a future, he just took the 90's and added spaceships and THAT'S IT - I'm NOT faulting the writer for not imaging the future "Right", I'm faulting the writer for not even TRYING to come up with something, so lazy writing, I hate so much when writers use the sci-fi elements but don't really do anything they couldn't do in the current time with slight differences...
Another BIG problem with the anime is it's lack of a mood, it is a comedy? it is serious? it flip flops with moments clearly absurd moments yet it pretends the viewer to take it very seriously when it says so...
Also, where the hell is the police? why capturing the criminals, down to small thugs, is the duty of random bounty hunters?
The most lame of all episodes is that one where a kid gains "Eternal youth" by staring at a space gate explosion... only problem is: 1) It's not simply "Eternal youth", the kid become literally immortal as it can take a bullet in the head and regenerate in seconds, and: 2)Why the hell, in all of of planet earth, he is the only one who got this effect?, not to mention, HOW exactly staring at an explosion or being exposed to some magic rays gives you super regeneration? the anime doesn't even try to explain, it simply happens and damn you if you try to question! you see, the writer wanted to use the genre "Sci-fi" but he was too lazy and non-creative to come up with ideas, so instead he used the genre "Fantasy" disguised as "Sci-fi", and that's because, when things happens with no reason, that's just fantasy, that's magic, that's no "Sci-fi" - I myself can come up with a teleporter device that can teleport you from one place to another and call it "Sci-fi" when I could to the same thing with a wizard casting a teleport spell on you and archive the same goal... in both cases, I would give 0 explanations so why would bother with the teleporter (Sci-fi) and instead going straight to the Wizard? (fantasy).
The movie is also lame, the antagonist is just some crazy person wanting to destroy the world by killing almost everyone with thin as air reasonings; It's pretty lame the fact that Spike gets shot in the chest in a scene yet he is 100% good as new the next day, while in Episode 26 Jet gets shot in the leg and it's pretty much down for the rest of the episode.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget about ED and just how random she is, at some point she meets a guy that's supposed to be her father but she cares more or less about 0 but then in the same episode ED decides to leave the gang, and the dog follow too, and... that's it, the anime is super anti-climatic when it should have had a bit of an emphasis... maybe? no? okay, whatever; ED's presence was thin as air anyway, she was basically the random super hacker of the show written by someone who clearly doesn't know what hacking looks like (Granted the anime was written in the late 90's but still...), and thinks it's like some sort of high-tech voodoo of some sort, really I've never seen a "Sci-fi" this bad.
