Why do people laud this as the second coming of Christ, anime-wise? As someone who has almost religiously watched the regular anime and was pretty hyped about Origins, my impression of it was rather poor.

I'd say the only thing it did better than the normal anime were the much better-animated battles; Something which the XY anime series is rapidly catching up to. There are some serious flaws in almost every other aspect of "a pokemon trainer's journey" that the normal anime is fantastic at portraying - things like:
- bonding with your pokemon
plural, not "bonding with charizard"
- meaningful captures
Ash's charmander (abandoned pokemon), chimchar (literally a rejected pokemon the rival deemed as a failure), and froakie (a hero of justice that will only follow someone who shares his values) as examples
- unorthodox strategies
every battle in Origins is a powerlevel slugfest - Ash, as much as people hate him, does some really awesome shit, thunder armour notwhistanding. Even Clemont's most recent Gym leader battle had him disguise his real bunnelby underground by sending out a wave of doubleteam clones out of a hole.

So vp, why do you think Origins is so good?