I am happy to see another person who doesn’t see Mebius as God's gift to man. First of all, YES I actually like Mebius too. I love the show, I love the characters, and I think that as an anniversary show, it does its job very well.
But it IS overrated. People who praise Mebius always talk about the team-up episodes and the Tsurugi arc. But they forget that those were only a very small part of the show. All the other episodes were filler.
The show felt like it used all its creativity in the beginning, then ran out of steam midway through.
The character development was so-so. We did get a proper background for all the characters, but we barely learned anything about their personal lives outside their hobbies or jobs. It was quite poor for an Ultraman show.
Speaking of the characters, I really didn't like the GUYS crew. I am not a big fan of "inexperienced everyday-people become special soldiers"
The team always had to rely too much on convenient stuff, such as Marina's super-hearing, Geroge's super sight etc.
Compared to other defense teams, GUYS is easily one of the weakest. In every episode it was the same:
"We have a great plan on how to defeat this monster!"
*5 mins later*
"Oh no! The plan isn't working!"
*Enter Mebius*
Now as for the story itself. Mebius was a mixed bag of candies for me. There were some very good episodes that had everything a fan could wish for. Then we had episodes that could easily be skipped.
I am not a fluent Japanese speaker, so I am not sure if the subs are to blame for this, but didn't some of the dialogue come off as a bit weird or nonsensical?
I am referring to all the techno babble and overuse of engrish. Sometimes it sounds cool ,other times it just leaves you scratching your head thinking "What the hell did they just talk about?" (And no, I was not watching the HK subs)
I loved seeing the old actors return. Great fan-service. Though, I wished that all those episodes could have been like Ultraman 80's episode.
He was the only showa Ultraman who actually got some focus. The other Ultraman did not do much, other than help out. 80's episode actually FOCUSED on 80!
Mebius is a great anniversary show, but it is nowhere near as good as Tiga, Gaia, Nexus or Max.
I love it because it is one of my first Ultraman shows, and it showed some really good writing at times. It just didn't show it enough.