I just finished watching the final disk of Chikyu Boetai Kigyo Daiguard and I have to give it a big thumbs up. It started off looking looking almost like a slight spoof on other giant robot shows (*cough*Eva). Over the course of the show though, it's shown to have quite a bit more depth than that. The main characters are wonderful, my favorite being Rika, the genius who designs the weapons for Dai-Guard. She's wonderfully insane and is voiced by Shintani Mayumi (who voiced Haruko in FLCL).

The thing that made the show stand out for me though, was that it considered things you normally don't think about in a giant robot type show. One major focus was on the economics of the whole thing. Who pays for fuel? Repairs? What about property damage? There's also lots of interesting storylines to do with the civilian DaiGuard team and the military's team.

What I find interesting is that this show really hasn't gotten much attention. While each release didn't necessarily have me impatiently waiting for its release, when I started watching it I couldn't stop till I finished watching all the episodes on it in one sitting. I think it's one of the more underrated shows out there. Netflix carries it, so give it a try on rental first.