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Do you want to see Evangelion before Evangelion took a definite form? look no further than this series, which is simply a preamble to what Hideaki Anno made with that one, and I mean that it's a preamble in the true sense of the word not only in terms of visuals and scenes copied and pasted but also because it de facto encapsulates every virtue and sin (oh no the christian symbology from Ultraman and Ultraseven has taken hold of me too! help me! No, wait, I'm an Ultraman fan too, everything's OK) of that series, in turn the virtues and sins of the creator, who can write enticing and reflexive stuff when he refuses to give go to any pretention of fake intellectualism (hello the Gainax Bounce on Grandis' tits and the nude butt of Nadia/Vegetarian Asuka in the bathtub! Hello final reference to Otaku No Video!) and when he tries to convince you that he's the intellectual that he isn't due to his geek obsession of psychology by inserting a cameo of Goya's Saturn eating his son that has no meaning whatoever or with some kind of word salad/overcomplication that true intellectuals don't use (these ones make complicate concepts digestable for people who are not in their same league, not the contrary) the writing takes a nosedive for the worst, in particular with the all the stuff concerning the Electra complex of Electra towards Nadia's father (Misato Katsuragi and Ritsuko Akagi Anyone?) which literally has no point whatsoever and it is not particularly well written or explained. Oh yes, you can also clearly see that Hideaki was using this series as a way to externalize hard his depression like he did with Evangelion, and again the writing suffered for it, even if it didn't suffer the way sucky and unwatchable End of Evangelion did. So, this being the preamble of Evangelion, the only logical consequence is to give it the same rating I give to Evangelion, a 7. TBH, I still put Gunbuster and in particular the first five episodes over the Eva stuff (of which I'm a fan of certain things only, meaning all the Otaku stuff - I.E. the ladies, the mechas, the audio department and the people behind it - and not the word salad or the uberdepression) which have NO OVERDEPRESSIVE TONE and they're just him and the Gainax guys doing great Otaku stuff for other Otakus like them, but there are far worst Hideaki Anno products out there (totally unwatchable/boring End of Evangelion and trio of Love&Pop/Shiki-Jitsu/Shin Japan Heroes "movies" I'm looking at you). Oh and BTW as suggested by the majority of this anime's fandom I didn't care to watch the filler arc except episode 31, where the penultimate Ultraman fan fanboys like only he could do with no particular pretention, and I'm perfectly OK with that. Thanks for reading! Next in the watchlist for the Hideaki Anno world tour: his preferred thing ever The Return of Ultraman!
P.S. absolutely excellent voice acting and in particular by Akio Ootsuka and Kikuko Inoue in here, if you're a fan of those Seiyuus you'll love them. Kikuko is FAR BETTER employed and with a stronger range of emotions at display than she was in the Ah My Goddess series (my first introduction to her voice), IMHO.
