To sum it up, ef certainly was inspirational, and ended very well.

Among the anime I saw, ef seems to fall into the unique class together with Haibane Renmei. Unfortunately, I think it does not measure up, and this is why:

• ef overdoses on the imagery. It does not hurt the story, but it hurts viewers. The bulk of the imagery was poorly integrated: it only served to illustrate, or even to wink at the audience. In contrast, halo and wings of haibane were perfectly integrated (e.g. the holy donut). I'm quite convinced that a lot of this excess was only done to save money on animation.
• The split between the two clusters of characters hurts a lot. Switching between them makes the series to aquire a patchwork feel of Lucky Star. And certainly it was avoidable, just let Renji and Hiro to meet once, talk their respective issues. I blame the creators who were unable to break with the game heritage.

I can make more bogus analogies, for example Renji is Chihiro's Rakka in the finale, although fortunately in this case I think he'd do what was necessary even if Chihiro didn't call him by name. But that's just the mind idling. I'm sure we'll see more comparisons in the blogs, each more ridiculous than the one before. For now I'm comfortable with my classification of ef as Haibane-type, only not as powerful. It's still very unique and interesting.

Liked: YES
Rewatch: Yes

P.S. The ep.10 redeemed the triangle of retards in my eyes at least somewhat. And I appreciate how men of the show get a grip (albeit helped with a good punch in the face or a miracle (tangentially, I had an experience of a paper airplane getting stuck in a raising thermal)).