I've been watching Desert Punk on Netflix for some strange reason. It has its moments once in a while, but over all just a little too silly and eye rolling.
Had a friend that bought it and said it was so bad it knocked him off his anime kick for the reason you said.
I've been just PLOWING through anime, from quality to character driven otaku garbage, I love it all. Pretty much the only thing that bores me with anime is anything overly mainstream (the current big 3 [One Piece, Bleach, Naruto], Dragonball Z, that type of stuff), everything else is pretty much fair game.
This is what I've watched the past 4 months...
Elfen Lied - I love this series, it deals heavily with the ideas of what truly makes someone a monster, are they born that way or are they made that way by society, abandonment issues, it's a very psychological series. It deals with a variety of issues with different characters, I feel I can't do the series justice in a paragraph other than to say WATCH IT.
Daphne in the Brilliant Blue - Not a spectacular series at all, but if you take it as a fun watch with some later story that really kicks in, it's fun. Plus I like the post-waterworld setting where we live on floating islands.
Solty Rei - It's about a cybernetic girl that doesn't remember her past and her experiences with an unwilling father figure and a few other characters. This series starts off promising but kind of putters out mid-way but if you hang in, it finishes pretty strong.
Witchblade - I was never a fan of the US comic (as in just never read it, not that I have something against it) and when I heard there was a Japanese-centric version of the series, I had to watch it and I love it. Fun characters and a story that takes some interesting twist along the way. I'm just a huge fan of it, watched it twice already, will go a 3rd time soon.
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 - A reimagining of the 80's series, it deals with the Knight Sabers (a group of women wearing armored suits) that fight robots-gone-berserk. The setting in a futuristic Japan and the implications of our future interaction with machines held my interest all the way through. Plus the music is fucking awesome.
Gantz - Great series that I won't get too much into due to possible spoiling, but it's a great ride all the way through. It's about a group of unwilling people randomly thrown together due to circumstances to fight aliens in a giant game that takes place in the real world Tokyo. My only complaint is the ending kind of sucks. It's like watching the original Evangelion, really, in that respect.
Rin: Daughter of Mnemosyne - This series has become easily one of my favorites that I have ever had the pleasure of watching. It's a six episode series that follows the story of two immortal women over the course of 55 years (each episode takes place in a different year, except for the final two which are the same year), as they deal with the situation that they have found themselves in. What I love about it is seeing the entire world change around them, people coming into & out of their lives. Fantastic.
Gunslinger Girl - Watched the first series, this is a great show, it deals with a set of girls that have through different circumstances been converted into cybernetic killers with, in most cases, their memories erased of their past. It has this sadness to the whole situation that is engaging to me. Working through the second series which is ok, but I think the first series is the real gem of the two. Yet to watch the manga.
Ikki Tousen & Queen's Blade - Pure guilty pleasure shows. Barely any plot here, just girls fighting for different reasons (Ikki Tousen layers the Romance of the Three Kingdom story in there, Queen's Blade follows more of a strained kingdom in need of rebirth with a new leader) and they all look good. Don't go into these shows looking to think and they can be fun to watch.