It seems impossible to meaningfully discuss this series without forever spoiling at least the first episode. Watch it first if that sort of thing bothers you. Actually, feel free to go watch the whole show and forget all about this review. I'll call that a win.
To explain how this show works, I will use a metaphor. Thanks to "This is Spın̈al Tap," taking something up to eleven loosely means to exaggerate a thing, to a logical extreme. As an example, you could say that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann goes to eleven and stays there. To extend the metaphor, it's possible to imagine cranking the amp past eleven. This is perilous in practice. The intent of such a scene becomes unclear, as it can be difficult to take seriously when exaggerated this far. For another anime example, look at a show like Akebi's Sailor Uniform. Since it's already trying to portray incredibly mundane interactions as though they were magical, it's unable to turn it up any further when it wants to create a capital-D Dramatic moment, leading to unintended reactions, including some snickers (from me, at least.) This is also the realm of memes. For an example, look to Raul Julia's performance in the film, "Street Fighter." It's certainly memorable, but it's hard to imagine that's what the screenwriter had in mind.
However, I assert there lies a place beyond the memes, where the exaggeration creates clearly intentional hilarity. This show uses both ends of this range, forever flip-flopping between being absurdly awesome and just plain absurd. Bravern's voice performance is somewhere around a 15. It's too perfect for this show. You can practically feel the heat of his blood radiating from the speakers. He's exactly what one would expect from the titular character of a Super Robot show.
That's what this show is. It's an affectionate parody of the Super Robot genre, and it achieves this largely by selectively exaggerating to the point of comedy. I have little direct knowledge of this genre, mostly because it's been out of style for a long time. Thus, I can say with some confidence that one can appreciate this show's absurdity at face value.
The affection is also easy to see. There's a lot of great design work in this, from backgrounds, to characters and to the mechanical. Side characters have designs that a dedicated CGDCT show would envy. The animation staff spent an irresponsible amount of frames on random cute things Lulu did. Most of the military hardware is CG-rendered, but with more detail and better motion than I've come to expect from TV anime. You'd think they had Gunpla money to spend on this, and for all I know they may well be counting on plastic model sales to make this pencil out. Finally, the OP and ED are amazing. I don't even know what the lyrics mean. I don't need to.
I've seriously recommended this show based on the theme song alone. It's another thing which is all too appropriate for this show. I don't usually discuss the plots of shows I review, because I don't find plot discussions to be very useful in general, either from the reader's perspective or the reviewer's. In this case, it's even less useful than usual, because the plot is nonsense. Intentional nonsense is still nonsense.
"You have to see it for yourself," is what I really want to say. This is the kind of show where it's particularly difficult to predict what someone else's reaction will be. I've seen a review which read as wholly unironic praise of a wholly unironic Super Robot series. My personal reaction was mostly, "That was awesome! It didn't really make a lot of sense, though, but I don't care!" I'm satisfied with that, and I think the production team would be too.
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