I wasn't the only one who felt that way about Argevollen! ;)
It's that show which at first glance, feels like it could've been constructed automatically by some kind of Rube Goldberg machine designed to create products with no human intervention or input.
OK, so the whole thing isn't negative but he definitely seems to agree with me on the genericness aspect.
...not sure if that was general or directed specifically as a retort to my prtevious quote on this subject, but I was actually agreeing, too. I'm just saying generic =/= poor-quality. I understand it can be more frustrating than even a bad show (Gundam AGE, for instance ddn't have a lot of things that were really that bad, it was just dull and uninspired, and to that effect I actually enjoyed it less than Gundam Wing and SEED Destiny, which were genuinely bad shows), I just didn't mind it this time because the genre as of late has really pushed the bar all the way down to the floor, and I really can't emphasis that enough. I've watched a lot of Mecha over the years, but outside of OVAs, virtually none of the good ones were within the last 10 years (except maybe Macross Frontier? I dunno, I gave up on that franchise - it seemed to be a one hit wonder and opinions seem to be split on Frontier being even competant). FMP: Second Raid was the closest, but IIRC, it wasn't a complete story. Okay, actually I liked Knights of Sidonia, but that just came out.
Otherwise, I feel like Mecha kinda forgot a lot of its central principles, to the point where it just feels crude. I can't count how many I found myself dropping after only only a few episodes, when with older series I found myself getting engrossed in them even when they aren't so good. Only exception I could think of was Gasaraki, which I went back to eventually and got into it. A lot of the new ones seem to lose their sense of realism, instead going off-the-walls insane like as if it was a Super Robot series, but now with darker and more twisted stories (much of which is
DARK for the sake of
DARK)
...I could keep going on ranting about this if I wasn't sick...