The characters are truly loveable and well-written (Jean and Nadia are both adorable in different ways), many interesting and philosophical themes like science/nature conflict, growing up, human race and its flaws, love, death, fate, duty, sacrifice, hubris are covered. I loved how joyful and childish the show looks like at first sight, but it actually ended up being kinda dark and deep. The story itself is also really interesting, and the ending (ep 35 -39) is grandiose. The Island and Africa Arcs are for sure flawed in many ways: they are mostly fillers, with crappy and boring humor and gags, ininteresting events (King being jealous...), boringcharacter interactions (Sanson and Hanson were just so annoying), and sometimes the graphic style looked horrible (ep 27...). But there were some interesting character moments (mostly with Nadia/Jean/Marie in ep 23-26) and the Jean-Nadia relationship was well explored. However the Africa Arc was litterally useless - it was watchable but it brought nothing to the show and it felt so out of place- but I still enjoyed the show, mostly by attachment to the characters and for the plot. Nadia also is a great follow-up for Evangelion, some characters are truly similar (Kensuke is basically Jean, Ritsuko is inspired by Electra, Gendo and Nemo, Nadia is kind of a mix of Asuka and Shinji, some themes are also similar.