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Anime Insider’s Top 10 Mecha Anime

100-Story Tall Fist Fights? Get a Ring-Side Seat…

#10 Macross Plus

The pinnacle of the OVA artform, revamping an old show for its original fans, adding adult themes and a riff on the original. Also a forerunner of CG–the animation form that is slowly taking over the entire industry. Ironic, when you remember the pilot revolves around human pilots unwilling to let computers make them obsolete. Besides, any time the music’s by Yoko Kanno, the audience wins. [Manga Entertainment]

#9 Mobile Suit Gundam

Did we mention something called Gundam? Before the universe was formed, before you were born, it was there. And a generation was shocked at the savage war between two similar space nations, at the embittered adversary Char Aznable, the hopeless despair of the people of Side 7 and the nescent powers of the Newtypes. So good it should be cloned…every year…by Bandai. The granddaddy of all mecha anime, and an amazing war polemic. [Bandai]

#8 RahXephon

Conspiracies, men in black, and the human race hanging by a thread in a savage war. Yes, if anyone remembers Megazone 23, The Matrix, or Evangelion, you know it’s all been done before, but the lush color palette and attention to detail of the Bones studio make this one to watch. And remember people, war is hell–if you want robots, there are going to be tears before bedtime. [ADV]

#7 Vision of Escaflowne

Deliberately designed to appeal to both boys and girls, Escaflowne piles on the romance, the fantasy warfare and a liberal dose of knights in very large and robotic shining armor…all right, mecha. If you like your robots to have dragon-gems in the hears and princes in their cockpits, then this is the best anime you’ll ever see. And Yoko Kanno’s music rocks the house. [Bandai]

#6 The Big O

And then there was retro–anime in a deliberately old-fashioned style, here with the Art Deco stylings of Giant Robo and the angular characters of Batman: the Animated Series. Bruce Wayne lookalike Roger Smith is a detective in a city where nobody can remember a time before “the Event.” What’s the Event? There’s your story. Gumshoe sleuthing, giant robot combat and a noir-ish twist. [Bandai]

#5 Super Dimentional Fortress Macross

Robots that can be planes, soldiers who can be lovers, songs that can be weapons — Macross is where pop culture met protoculture, and the ancestor of every anime music tie-in you see today. As Robotech, it created a generation of anime fans who had never even heard of anime, and shocked a nation when a good guy died before the end. Probably responsible for a full third of American anime fandom. [AnimEigo]

#4 Gundam Seed

There’s this thing called Gundam. You might have heard of it. And while the plot for this latest incarnation is the same as all the others, Seed lifts the best from its predecessors–the five-person team of Wing, the CG effects of Turn-A, the gritty combat of War in the Pocket, and the drama of Double Zeta. For those who find the words “more of the same but better” strangely reassuring. [Bandai]

#3 Patlabor

One of the smartest, most involving sci-fi anime, Patlabor asks: what if Piloting a big robot was just another job? Superb characters mix office romance, everyday drama and crime-busting with truly involving future dilemmas. An oasis of intelligence in a desert of pap, this is where the groundwork was laid for anime in the 1990s–Patlabor movie director Mamoru Oshii would later make Ghost in the Shell. [Central Park Media]

#2 Gundam Wing

Five independent freedom fighters team up to get even with the government cabal that has damaged their colonies, but nothing is as it seems. Featuring some of the most amazing giant robot combat ever, Wing’s alternate take on continuity made it more accessible to those who haven’t watched the other zillion serials within the franchise, but it still has an engrossing, smart, war story. A great point to jump aboard the Gundam go-cart. [Bandai]

#1 Neon Genesis Evangelion

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and Shinji doesn’t feel fine at all. He’s a kamikaze schoolboy forced to pilot a war machine that’s an angel of pain designed by his uncaring dad. It’s Hideaki Anno’s groundbreaking last word on the “giant robot” genre (though tenchnically, the EVAs are superevolved humans). Much imitated, never bettered, this is the ultimate in angst and apocalypse. It’s got Rei Ayanami in it, too. She’s quite popular. [ADV]

Reference: Anime Insider, Issue #11 – January, 2004.