First off, I called it early on - we weren’t ever gonna find Skinner until the very last minute. Nearly every episode was a red herring. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; When thinking about Cowboy Bebop, the comparison one can’t avoid, most of those episodes are also “unnecessary” as far as the overall plot (in so much as there is a plot) is concerned. So I’m inclined to say it’s not that big of a deal, and you kinda have to go into a show like this with the understanding that each episode is just it’s own little adventure that you gotta try to enjoy on it’s own merits.

Now, I do think the ending was a teeny bit too convenient. You’re telling everyone in this crew just happened to have been at the airport incident, inexplicably survived, and then completely forgot? The show absolutely glosses over why they survived the bio weapon when everyone else died. I dunno, man, but this felt flimsy to me.

But I think what takes the cake for me is the whole Hundan assassin subplot. The show pushed this hard, despite the fact that it only affected a minor character. There seemed to be some kind of relationship hinted at between the Hundan and Axel, by way of the necklace, but this isn’t really explored very well. This all might have made more sense to me if we discovered that Axel himself had escaped from the same assassin school, but (as far as I’m aware?) that was never revealed as such. So yeah, this assassin dude felt like a huge waste plot energy that could have been spent more wisely.