This series will always hold a special place in my heart as a thing I deeply love, even though it is truly terrible in so many ways. DOOM -copyright the Japanese dub and accompanying English subs, which are truly a treasure- It was, I think, the second anime I watched, and the first one I ever fell in love with, and the first I ever owned. The plot is... largely bad, and it's so obviously built to pad time that it's somewhat laughable. We'll ignore the plot holes large enough to fill the Grand Canyon. After all, that's what the show did. Characters are so densethey could probably stop bullets with it. The dialogue is at times phenomenally stupid and laughably stupid, with occasional bursts of heart. This was first released in 1988, and the art quality (not the style) looks it.

It has every bad hallmark of 80s-90s anime you can think of, even if you ignore the cheeseball dialogue DOOM. Repetitive overuse of the same long transformation and attack sequences (not just calling out the name of the attack and starting it, but actual movement) to cut costs and save time on writing plot by filling episode length. The only show I can think of that was worse with this was the old "Scooby-Doo" cartoon.

Annoying child character/audience stand-in who serves no purpose other than to be rescued and be a whiny asshat. Lots of damseling the single female character in the main cast. And then adding a female antagonist who also gets damselled a lot. Sentient-ish animal sidekick. Convenient (with the copyright logo) villain dumbassery. A truly random baseball sequence that... I still don't understand. At all. But you know. Why not? The protagonists are only 14-15 anyway.

That's not to say there aren't some very good plot ideas and episodes in the series. E03, E05, E10, E21, and E32 are particularly close to my heart. I'm biased because I'm a Ryo fan, if it wasn't obvious.

If you're looking for cheese that's so bad it's funny, this skids the line of not quite making it there? Sure, DOOM is added to almost every villain's dialogue at least three times an episode, and the mangst wavers between good fanfiction fodder and true cheese, but well... This probably is not the corny thing you want to watch for shits and giggles while you get drunk or something. It's too slow most of the time for that. Although if you're watching the English dub, at least revel in the fact that Matt Hill, who voices Ryo, also voiced Ed from "Ed, Edd, and Eddy". "Your mother wears army boots" indeed, my dear, stupid English dub. (what does that line even MEAN I ask you)

The series has a ton of potential. There's a rich bed of Japanese fantasy lore in the show that you don't see in a ton of easily recyclable shonen from the era. I'd love to see a modern adaptation of this. It would be spectacular. Particularly if the main cast got character development. The art, for all that it's generic 80s-90s quality, has a neat style that could do well on a modern show. The armors all have neat designs, particularly the Shiroi Kikotei. It's not surprising that this is the studio that went on to produce the "Escaflowne" movie in 2000, for better and different kinds of worse.

The first ED, "Faraway", by Mariko Uranishi, is quite good. The rest of the music is forgettable. I seem to vaguely recall that the English OPs were pretty bad, but it's been so long since I watched the dub that it's thankfully faded from my memory.

Honestly, if you aren't watching this for the nostalgia factor, I'd suggest skipping it. It hasn't aged well at all. And are the OVAs bad? Yes. Yes they are. All three of them. Oh you didn't know there were OVAs? How fortunate for YOU.

Unfortunately there really aren't alternatives that hit the same-ish genre spots as this that I'd recommend. Too many mecha or samurai shows are terrible for similar and somewhat worse reasons, particularly from the same era. "Natsume Yuujinchou" is an amazing Japan-centric supernatural/fantasy show I'd always recommend, but it's not shonen or mecha. "Macross Frontier" is pretty, with some good plot and mangst, and some great music, even if it does succumb to some typical mecha genre issues. "Katanagatari" is a beautifully drawn and stylized fantasy samurai-centric-ish show with great fight scenes that embraces the cornball factor, so that might be the best alternative. If you want a more modern product of this studio with some nice animation, try the "Escaflowne" movie, which has Bones animation to give it the polish completely absent from the storytelling.