Oh, just wanted to throw out that I started Xam'd the other day, and like...I expect shows to either do very little to try to pull you in in the beginning or really try to leave an impression even if the amount of work/effort will fall off after episode 1/2 (not that it necessarily will, but).
Xam'd is definitely the latter and good God did it know what I look for in an episode 1. The sakuga was on-point, with foreboding plot mumbo jumbo being brief and quickly overtaken by a kid's mundane life in what's clearly a politically anxious nation and a land where order lines most parts of its culture, something that we can tell more from visual clues than from actual explanations.
In fact, rather than using some sort of train ride to have the news dump the state of the entire world on the viewer, Xam'd instead opts to just show some kids ride to school, and hot damn the sakuga's great. The character acting here was top-tier, but moreso than the character acting was the direction, which was filled with so many small nuances that it calls to mind a Ghibli-inspired thought process. It was just a pleasant experience to watch, and while some people might roll their eyes at this sort of thing, especially if it goes on for most of the episode, I'm absolutely enthralled by things like this. A sequence like this illustrates not just what I can expect in terms of animation (even if it won't look quite this good later), but it also showcases the main character gives ample time to form an opinion on him (which makes him getting slapped by the plot later grant a more personal response) and puts the director, the man at the helm, on full display.
So good stuff all around, I'm liking this show so far. Gonna keep going with it, definitely.