Maybe one of the reasons that I felt GL suffered after timeskip was the transition to more of a “This is how the world really works” sort of thing. It was kind of awkward (but maybe that was GAINAX’s plan all along o_o), and it didn’t flow well from the nice climactic battle between Simon and our first main adversary. And maybe after that whole rush, I kept expecting more than what actually occured, so even as the scale got bigger, I didn’t feel that the story or characterization increase proportionally in epicness to that. Maybe I’m still bitter about “Believe in the you that believes in yourself”. :P