You know, I read that post of yours in the "Last anime you watched" thread where you mentioned the mechs, and I thought to myself, "Mechs? Really? I haven't seen those yet...". That was about the time I was only about 5 episodes in, and there wasn't any mention of any mech suits by any of the characters. I think they first appear in episode 17 or 18...and that's pretty late in the series for something like that to be introduced, especially when there's only 24 episodes in the series. It didn't really bother me, but it was sort of odd seeing them.

As for the sci-fi stuff, I thought it was an interesting twist on the concept, and I liked it, but I can see where you're coming from on that. And I agree about Albert... I thought he was too naive for his own good, but he does start to get some sense of how the real world is and starts to act more mature, so he becomes less annoying.