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This review contains minor spoilers for the first few episodes.

Before I further begin, I feel I should mention that Gatchaman Crowds, while an amazing anime, is not an amazing anime for any reason that one would normally expect an anime to be amazing. The art and sound and dialogue vary between being interestingly distinct and being so utterly bizarre that the idea of quality doesn't even seem like it applies to them. After some amount of time watching it, you either acclimate yourself to it or block those parts out. I think a large amount of whether you enjoy the show or not depends ... on how fast that happens. The other part is whether you're approaching it expecting a regular anime. (The term "regular anime" itself can't really be said to mean anything, but I need some term with which to refer to animes that are not Gatchaman Crowds.)

Once you block out or acclimate yourself to the more abnormal parts, the remaining content can be roughly categorized into disguised philosophical commentary, heroic anime cliches, disguised philosophical commentary on heroic anime cliches, and other things. (The other things are less prominent and not with individually listing.)

The heroic anime cliches are obvious from the first episode. The main character, Ichinose Hajime, has a wrinkly old man appear out of nowhere and give her magic bird powers. (This is not a spoiler. The mental image you just acquired is completely inaccurate.) She is then inducted into a group of superheroes named the Gatchaman. (This is also not a spoiler. If you didn't expect this the moment you saw the title I have no sympathy for you.) She's informed that their job is to protect the earth from aliens, and that they're currently in conflict with a species of alien that is always chaotic evil and eats people. (This is slightly a spoiler.) She brings this to a diplomatic resolution within two episodes. (This is extremely a spoiler.)

The series goes on in that fashion, shameless flowing down the paths provided by anime tropes and then making unexpected turns just when it'll have the most effect. The philosophical commentary takes the form of a plethora of characters with differing views acting very actively in accordance with them. It would be a bit of a spoiler to actually go into detail on this, but I found them very thought-provoking, so if you enjoy animes with that sort of subtheme going on, you'll probably like Gatchaman Crowds. Now let's talk about the protagonist, since apparently she's also a divisive point for liking or not liking Gatchaman Crowds.

Ichinose Hajime is one of the most unusual protagonists I have ever seen. Some of the reasons for this are very obvious. She acts very cheerful and very eccentric, rubbing notebooks on her face and calling them cute and other such acts. Other reasons are very easy to notice but very difficult to articulate. She's a very self-contained character. She doesn't explain her thoughts like some anime characters do, which makes it difficult to figure out why she does things. Despite that, it's very obvious that there are reasons that she does things, and she knows what they are. You don't catch her contemplating things much, or asking other characters for their opinions in anything but a rhetorical way. Whether you like her or not is going to depend on a combination of whether you can tolerate her superficial traits and whether or not you approve of the idiosyncratic moral code she gradually reveals through her actions.