'Twas a fine show indeed. The animation took a little getting used to but the effects and models were fantastic. They held an interesting story, left room for more yet still concluded at a good point and made me emotional at a few points. Congrats to the staff.

The show was not as good as I expected because they changed the story line. The new story lin e focused too much on the Fog, and no human at all. Secondly, they gave I-401 too much power that made her so OP. This leaded to no more strategy (in manga they battled with good strategies & tactics)
Summary, this show is like FSN made by Deen.

Having never read the manga I'm gauging it on it's own. I tend to not let the source material influence my opinion of a derivative work anyway, so my opinion wouldn't likely have changed much if I'd read the manga. Encounters still retained a sense of danger, the heroes still faced death, Iona was even sunk and required sacrifice to survive and the only safety net was the usual "They're heroes. They're not likely going to die" that exists in all stories with only a small few stories ever breaking that net.