I am new to this platform but I am old enough to watch fafner when it was on air the very first time. I just want to write a neutral review on it after this anime literally changed my whole life so many years after its release. How I felt then and how I feel now are quite different considering the current era of anime are filled up with so many eye-catching dramatic contents just to keep your eye and attention not moving away.

In short
If you are determined to overcome the gap of the time, you might find this one having a rather unique sci-fi world, some very good anisongs and quite good robots.

Some background
Hisashi Hirai, the character designer, dominated the anime world with his works in Gundam Seed, and every sci-fi anime project would definitely wish to have Hisashi as their character designer.

Tow Ubukata, the main writer of the whole series, just won the national sci-fi award for his light novel, Mardock Scramble. Fafner, commercially quite successful at the time, was one of the works he started to be more involved in other media scripting than just writing light novels.

Angela, the band of the anisongs, just changed their company and started to gain some popularity.

Also XEBEC, the company, was eager to have a successful work to build their brand.

I'd say everyone was very happy about the anime becoming a hit that time. It definitely helped them to develop their career years after. That's why you see the main team remained the same when they did sequels. Yes, they did sequels 10 years after, with some movies in between.

The story
It starts with a normal daily life on a Japanese fishing island (the original fishing town actually exists and fans visit it from time to time), followed by a sudden attack from strange creatures. Adults seem to hide a lot of things from their younger generation but as the story going on, you will realize it is not a simple normal island and the whole sci-fi world would gradually become more and more clear to the audience. While the teens need to pilot those robots, they did not know who exactly were their enemies, nor do they know what consequences they have to pay to pilot Fafner, even how they themselves were born.

It is a tragic story of teens fighting against aliens. You would definitely think about those earlier works like EVA or Bokurano, yeah, but I still felt it was rather unique in Fafner's settings. You would start to wonder whether the alien creature actually has a good point not to have the concepts of individual at all, since the communication between the human individuals seemed rather unsuccessful, especially between the parents and their kids.
Every teenage will struggle those problems, but Fafner brought it a higher level because of the sci-fi world. And every teens in this show chose differently but they all somehow followed their true heart, which brings the tragic story a deeper meaning and diverse expression of freedom.

What I feel about the script from today's view point is that you can strongly feel a production thing very popular at the time, which is to make everything mysterious, or having connection with myth. They did not need to expose every setting of the story to the audience at the early stage because teens watching this did not have social media or any other content to distract themselves. The opening of the world is rather slow-paced, You will have to finish quite some episodes to understand how far the world had always been. That might be a significant weak point after comsuming so many "engaging" shows.

My forever internal score: 5/5; my objective score: 3.5/5

The songs
As I wrote above, these are the songs quite popular that time and really helped the band to expand their audience. The opening song was quite different and very special for the band as well. The vocal has been performing that high note in this op song for 20+ years now and in live you will realize how difficult to reach that note. They even went a bit more experimental in their other Fafner related CD lineups (yes, I bought all of them).
For me, they will be all forever masterpiece.

My internal score: 5/5; my objective score: 4.5/5

The robots
The company actually built a whole mecha team after Fafner and continue to expand their mecha works. I would not say the design was that unique, but they look great. Honestly, I'd say I love their 2D works rather their late ones with 3DCG. Now as the company itself was reformed, some of the mecha team went Sunrise and some went back to mother company Production IG.

My internal score: 4.5/5; my objective score: 4/5

The fandom
I am not Japanese, but I learned the language and moved to Tokyo (well, 50% for Fafner) when they were doing sequels. I am of course surprised to see how huge the fan base was when I attended the live events because it was never huge in my country,
Consider mostly female would go live event, I actually did not expect lots of males also were there for Fafner after 10 years. People just remember this show in their teenager times, the struggles of teens in the story, how they fought out their own way of living rather than just following their parents, the good songs, and of course, there are new fans only for the sequels as well,
Lining up for limited goods, I had to team up with Japanese ladies, that's why I had the chance to talk with them and got to know how they started to watch Fafner.
It was a dream come true for me and I of course bought everything I could get and keep them with me til today.

Some final words
Thanks for reading my review to here. Fafner did literally change my life. I wouldn't have the mindset so determined to go outside my country because it was rather difficult for my financial situation then. But I made it anyway and I have a lot of emotions towards this work even though I do not see it very "charming" from today's perspective.

If you are interested in Fafner's story, I would also recommend some of the early works from Tow Ubukata, the main writer. He made some really beautiful worlds in his novels, some of which may not being made into anime that popular.