It's... It's so not.
Edit: it is a great series, but it's as far from a cozy slice-of-life show as you can get without being a seinen battle series. Like, things Planetes has that definitely don't show up in cozy or SOL:
Just to name a few.
Further edit: are you thinking of Space Brothers instead?
Man, I should watch Crest again. In the meantime:
I'd rank Harlock, 999, and Yamato up there as far as world-building, although the characters are more "interesting" or "amusing" than necessarily realistic. For Yamato, I think the original and 2199 are about on par - the original seemed more serious, while the remake has much higher visual quality.
Cowboy Bebop, although I'd assume you'll have seen it if you've seen Crest and LoGH.
Martian Successor Nadesico was an interesting take, more focused but definitely trying to bring a more serious tone... mostly.
I definitely feel you as far as Gundams go, although I'd suggest checking out War in the Pocket, 08th MS Team, 0083, or IGLOO as I find the side stories and OVA series to bring much higher quality both in terms of writing and production. Of the mainline series, I think Turn-A and Seed are probably the best you can get in terms of tone and world-building, and even then there's a lot of goofiness.
Have you seen any of Votoms? I haven't finished it, but it sure has the "bombastic space opera" feel, even though it starts out with a very tight focus.
Other than that, maybe Knights of Sidonia? It tries to be less "space opera" and more "hard SF", but I'd say it's on the edge - like the difference between Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars.
I'd rather never play a game again than use the Epic client even once, so I'm not sure you are correct there, Timmy.
They'll be back, and begging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironies_of_Automation
The 180 that Sasaki and Peeps is doing in season 2 has us completely confounded. Like, how do you make a show about an average businessman and his little bird buddy into one of the bloodiest combat shows that also touches on (c/w):
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I mean, we're going to keep watching, but it's certainly taken a dark turn in the second season.
Yeah; I was expecting a bland Maomao ripoff but what we got was actually really fun.
"Europe? More like Europartofmenow!"
Great, two things I have absolutely no need of are combining.
"We're all trying to find the scraping LLM who did this!"
My question is, how is the head of the cop union getting more air time than the actual mayor, on every network?
Sick of seeing that guy's smarmy face.
Lois McMaster Bujold pretty definitively argues for this in her Vorkosigan books.