Pretty much best anime of 2014.
I follow most Gundam and Mecha series for the past few years and I've been waiting for an anime like this.
GBF was fun and Knights of Sidonia was meh.
Valrave, Buddy Complex, Captain earth are about the same level as Age.

Likeable MC (I don't care what you say about emotionless MC, it's way better than angst friendship will save the day archetype)

Urobutcher style anyone can die makes things interesting as well. I'm sure an important character will probably die in the next episode. At this point, everyone has some death flag already.

Plot-twist. Some are predictable, some are not. All are pretty well done.

Pacing is very well done. Very little filter scenes and no filter episodes so far. I really dislike some "Mecha Anime staple" Eg : Stranded in an island/cafe with someone from the opposing faction.

Super epic music. As expected of Sawano Hiroyuki. This composer pretty much the reason why hyped anime of the past few seasons are epic (Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill). He's refined his art in "sawano drop" further. When the beat drops, you know shit is about to happen.

Of course, let's not forget the fights.
I'm a sucker for strategic > brute force in mecha fights. And this show delivers ... constantly. They add in a bit of science info to make things interesting as well.

The consistent high animation quality is just topping on the cake

This post has been edited by LegendLee: Sep 14 2014, 03:20 AM