When you get right down to it, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to mecha shows. The original Gundam inspired a spate of wannabe releases, and a spate of sequels, eventually saturating the market to the point where Super Robot animes made a comeback. Then something happened, mecha found their way into other types of anime, they stopped being the main focus of the animes they appeared in. Two titles that always get mentioned at this point are Patlabour and Escaflowne.
Patlabour was very much the epitome of “realism” that hardcore fans had been hoping for. It featured mecha as construction vehicles, and the police units formed to combat the crime this gives rise to. Military mecha did exist, but weren’t the focus of the setting, nor were they superweapons. In practice however, the anime has a police drama first and foremost, far removed from the teenaged heroes mecha were better known for. Escaflowne was a fantasy series that depicted mecha as a natural progression from plate mail, although the idea of a white mecha being pursued by an evil empire was clearly a nod to the original Gundam. Here the lead character was a school girl dragged into this world, but one who never used a weapon. The feminine aspects this brought to the show made Escaflowne one of the few mecha animes that have cross gender appeal. (Another was Gundam Wing, whose cast of Backstreet Boys look-alikes have made it a gateway drug for yoai fangirls).
While Patlabour and Esacaflowne are most well known of the atypical mecha animes, there are a few other overlooked titles that deserve to be mentioned here. The idea of mecha as war machines was more or less perfected in the series Gasaraki. This series was very much Tom Clancy meets mecha, with Japanese mythological undercurrents. Full Metal Panic would mix humour with mecha so successfully as to gain two sequels, and an audience outside the usual mechheads (in fact, the characters were so popular, there was a mecha-less comedy spin off). The most recent noteworthy mecha series was Eureka Seven, a character driven piece with an extreme sports angle. The genre had now reached the point where you could have skyboarding giant robots, and STILL have intelligent writing. Animes such of these, are how the Mecha Genre came of age.
Mecha started out dumb. Then it got serious, then too serious. In the 90’s we started to see real signs of self-awareness, post-modernism (gah, I hate that term) and parody. The trend that was started subtly by Macross and Gunbuster, had bore fruit. In the aftermath of Evangelion, a series would appear that could have been designed as its antidote. Martian Successor Nadesico was an affectionate parody on the genre and its fans, which proved popular enough to gain a theatrical sequel. If you want to understand what it means to be a mecha fan, this is the anime to watch.
