Man, I wish I had never finished this show. I don't watch much anime, but this one came highly recommended. I remember I watched the first 20 episodes or so, I thought it was amazing. Life got busy and I never continued, then it had been so long I had to restart, and I remember that time I got through like 30 episodes or so. It was as good as I remembered, I dropped it for some reason and had to restart *again*. I kept falling off around the Munich arc. I thought "This show is amazing, I dunno why I never finished it" In retrospect, it's like, well, maybe the Munich arc was a bit... odd. I don't mind a change of focus, it was intriguing. I like the new characters there! But maybe it's not as gripping as the start of the show. But anyway, I finally gave it a real push a couple years ago and finished the series, and... first of all, maybe being older now, the first 20-30 episodes didn't amaze me as much as they did when I was younger? And then, the whole second half, everything after the Munich arc... nothing worked for me. It's like the show went fully in the direction of being a "thriller", and it fell into this trap that I feel so many shows fall into where they delve more and more into their "overarching plot", which in theory is like "whoa it's getting deeper and deeper and all the mysteries are being revealed!" but in practice all that means is spending a bunch of time learning details about some evil organization and all the bad people in it and how evil and bad they are, instead of spending time with the characters we actually care about. I found myself... very bored and struggling to get through it. The first half of the series has so many episodes I still like, I think my absolute favourite is the episode with the random couple that Tenma hitchhikes with. But the first half has lots of random sweet episodes like that, plus I love Eva's arc in the first half and Lunge is at his best there. The second half of the show felt like it retreaded a lot of arcs and was focused more on action and thriller stuff rather than humane moments. By the time I was at the end, I barely cared what happened, and the final confrontations were sort of underwhelming to me. The show would have been better if it had lived in my memories, I truly did believe it was the best anime ever made like was contantly recommended to me, and I was okay just imagining the future of Eva and Lunge's arcs. Ratings are hard when a show leaves me with complicated feelings like this. There's a time I would have said it was a 10/10. The second half was boring for me and would get like a 5/10 or even a 4/10. But I'll average out to a 7 for the fond memories I have of it and because I do truly love Eva and Lunge, there is no character archtype I like more. But I now think the show is flawed enough and lost enough magic to me that I can't go to 8/10 overall because 8/10 to me is, like, Great, Amazing, and I can't call this show that without reservations.