My anime opinions be different from most of ya'll nikkas here, but I be consistent and will always give my reasons.
Its dope, but more like 8 out of 10 dope, which is cool, but not good enough for some people who worship it as a masterpiece. I feel like the show only gives you its brilliance in spots and the novelty of the concept is spreads thin over 26 episodes. The best episodes usually involved the Syndicate or someone's past backstory. So I only got like a handful of real piff to enjoy which aint enough to call a masterpiece for the amount of episodes it had. Trim the series down to like 15 episodes or etc... and that shyt prolly goes up a notch for me. Show has little replay value compared to other shyt I think are real masterpieces. Like I would prolly only rewatch an episode or two, but never the whole thing like I know a lot of others do.
I honestly think the movie is better than the series.
I think a lot of the admiration for it based off nostalgia since it was prolly one of the first anime they experienced which is cool, but everybody gets in the game differently.