I wasn't a fan of Nexus, particularly. I thought it was too self-consciously gritty and edgy, the kind of show that mistakes "adult" writing for good writing and thus isn't really as smart as it thinks it is. I also didn't care for the budget-saving move of doing all the giant fights in the same pocket-dimension set with no sense of scale. But it was an interesting idea to have an Ultra that could change hosts over the course of the series. And the music wasn't bad.
I've been bingeing Max before it leaves Shout TV, Tubi, etc. at the end of the year, along with every other Ultra series, apparently. I'd been nearly finished with Gaia and had been planning to take a leisurely rewatch through Cosmos before jumping ahead to Max, Mebius, Ultra Galaxy Fight, and the Zero film trilogy. But when I saw that the Ultra shows were leaving streaming at the end of the year, I decided to race through Max, since it was short enough to get through in a week and a half, and since it's one of my favorites. (I'm hoping somebody else will be streaming them next year so I can find them again legally, but I'm doing this just in case.)
I like how Max captures the eclectic, episodic style of the Showa Ultra Series with Heisei-era character writing and production values. I don't think I was as familiar with the Showa series the first time, so I recognize the homages more this time around. (I just now finished a back-to-back rewatch of Ultraseven: "The Targeted Town" and Max: "The Untargeted Town.")
I like Mizuki and Elly too, plus we get bonus Nao Nagasawa as "Zetton's Daughter." And yes, "Miracle of the Third Planet" is an amazing episode, one of the finest in the franchise. That little girl gave an amazing performance; I've never heard anyone sound so poignantly, wrenchingly sad and forlorn.
Max himself is one of my favorite Ultra designs, which is a bit odd, since he's based on Ultraseven, a design I don't much like. But Max takes the same general idea and executes it far better. He's the second lead Ultra, after Nexus, for Hideyoshi Iwata, who's played nearly every title Ultra ever since to the present day. Max showcased what a terrific physical comedian Iwata could be, in episodes like "Who Am I?" and "Drifting Monster."
I recall Max being the first Ultra in a live-action Japanese-language series to be given any significant personality of his own or ongoing dialogue with his host (following Joneus in the anime and Great in the Australian series), but apparently that only comes later in the series and I haven't gotten there yet (aside from the bit in "Who Am I?" where Max briefly had a memory flash of his home in the Land of Light).
Gaia is still a favorite of mine, by the way, though it takes longer than I remembered to get really good. I love how much bigger and more versatile its defense force is than the usual 5-6 people, and I love how it broadens the focus to include civilians like the TV news crew and the Alchemy Stars. It's got rich worldbuilding and is quite philosophical, really embracing the environmentalist-allegory tone that stayed with the franchise through subsequent series like Cosmos and Max.
I also like Gaia's music, and I only recently realized it was from Toshihiko Sahashi, who's done some Toei scores I really like such as Gingaman, Kyoryuger, Kamen Rider Zi-O, and most recently Kamen Rider Geats. I like Max's music too (the DASH march is one of my favorites, and a real earworm), but apparently its composer Kuniaki Haishima has only done a couple of other things I've seen, Kamen Rider Kabuto (whose music I remember liking) and Kamen Rider Amazons.
