I often bounce around what I consider my favorite anime. I go through a lot and get attached to a lot of very different things so picking a favorite is tricky. If I were to Narrow it down to a general selection of what COULD be number 1, two anime most often come to mind:
Yu Yu Hakusho, and Macross Frontier.
Macross Frontier is possibly the best mech show I've ever seen. There hasn't been another mech show that has been such a perfect blend of everything I want out of a show fullstop. The story is great without ever dragging its feet, comedy is frequent and charming even if its hardly the funniest show I've ever seen, and the action and visuals are consistently spectacular, with the setting of the titular Macross Frontier being rendered with some gorgeous backgrounds, great character designs and tons of fun and memorable character animations, and the CG used for the lconic Valkyries being some of the best seen at the time that still holds up very well to this day.
And the MUSIC God damn the MUSIC. This is a Yoko Kanno composed soundtrack and her work is as good as always, both in the fantastic orchestral music and the larger-than-life pop songs sung by our leading ladies.
It's all here and it's all close to perfection.
Where all that is great on its own, what is truly perfect is the cast. The side cast is full of really entertaining Characters like Alto's lady's man of a Friend Michael, Ace Pilot and Music enthusiast Oz, the adorable and feisty Meltradi fighter pilot Klan Klan and a hood handful of others make spending time in the world of the Frontier colony a consistent show.
And TRULY sells the show, ascending it from a merely good show to an all time favorite, is out three leads:
Alto Saotome, Ranka Lee, and my GODDESS,
SHERYL NOME.
These three are possibly my favorite trio in anime. Alto is cool and aloof while feeling human and likeable, Rankja is the embodiment of sweetness and joy, and Sheryl nome is a bottle of spirit and charisma who won me over to this show by her sheer force of likeability. Every moment she is on screen she is girlbossing her way through annd dragging everyone along with her. And in the best way possible too while she is, for the most part, always the one controlling the room her Tsundere-esque dynamic with Alto means she is always kept in check and as the show goes her vulnerable side comes out and the goddess is shown to be as human as the rest of us with some of the show's best and saddest scenes.
The love triangle these three become entangled in is easily the best ive seen in anything and watching the three bounce off of each other in the downtime between awesome mech faction is one of the great joys this shown has to offer. The cumulation of the plot alongside their love triangle in the final episode is one of then most satisfying climax's in all of anime (even if the love triangle itself is ultimately concluded in an endearing but nonetheless cop out manner lmao)