okay so to really feel the full impact you kind of need a baseline experience of classic anime and in particular mecha. i recommend Gundam '79, Zeta Gundam, and Super Dimension Fortress Macross at least.
OK, as the person who would normally give this answer: OP isn’t bouncing off the show because they lack genre context, my guess is that they’re bouncing off the show because the presentation - pseudo christian imagery, sci-fi technobabble, apocalyptic world ending scenario - is somewhat unrelatable. Which it is, let’s be honest.
I dunno if recommending 100+ hours of old Japanese sci-fi cartoons here is necessarily the correct thing to do. (And I say that as someone who dearly loves all the shows you mentioned. Okay, mainly Macross, but still)
Maybe a show that strips out all the over-the-top trappings to focus more on the personal journey would be a better recommendation? Something like FLCL or Serial Experiments Lain, although those recommendations aren’t perfect either.
I was joking but actually FLCL is the perfect suggestion because there’s also a dramatic save-the-world sci-fi plot, but the whole point is that the protagonist isn’t aware of it and it’s never really explained.
