>>1024579As the other anon said, the moral messages are really half-baked, mostly because the main character feels like they were written by a juvenile attempting their first spr srs story. I wouldn't say that specific episodic comedy episodes wasted time, more that the writers failed to balance the different elements of the main character, so there is time wasting in most episodes. The animation isn't special, so it doesn't make up ground there either. The two saving graces of the show are a supporting character that acts a good foil the protagonist and a pretty good score, which is actually what made me check out the show.
Based off your ranking system, I'd give it two and a half stars. I hesitate to call it bad, but I can't call it decent. Anything Trigun tries to do, Cowboy Bebop does much better.
Forgot to add FLCL in my original watch list.
