Growing up with Robotech, Transformers and Techno police and Samurai pizza catz and star zinger. Mechs, Robotos and sci-fi has always been a favorite of mine.
Sadly they don´t make much Mech and Space operas anymore. Surre we get some new gundam but that´s about it :(
Same boat here, saw the first two episodes of macross as Robotech at almost 4 years old, been my favourite since, and honestly it isn't too different from the original, the main plot is still the same and the episodes were dubbed out of order so a lot of the protoculture stuff is still in there for the "macross saga", however OG macross in its original Japanese is vastly superior in every way and I'd suggest that as it's currently on youtube for free except for the first episode, as a chronological viewing would have some serious animation quality whiplash from the time of release, release order is better.
Zero was meant to be released worldwide at the time, everything got blocked from 2002 till it finally resolved in 2021, by copyright trolls Harmony gold, nothing was released to buy till nearly 2025. Now it's all on Disney plus bar the OG series and DYRL, DYRL has English subtitles in it's latest official japanese release. It's easy to recommend macross these days as it can be accessed easier. Though there's censorship in 2-3 scenes of macross 7 on disney plus, sail the high seas if this is an issue for you because it is for me. The eventual blu ray release won't be censored though, and I will buy all things macross. Don't support harmony gold, buy macross stuff if anyone is gonna buy anything, if it has robotech/harmony gold on the packagiung, run away!!
Sunrise are making a new macross and i'm pretty sure that only happened now as it can now be released internationally and make much more bank than a domestic release only, anime makes too much money worldwide to do big budget things for the japanese market only anymore.
Macross: DYRL is my favourite piece of art in existence, everything about that movie is precious to me and the new 5k transfer, downscaled to 4k for the 4k disc, and further again for the blu ray disc(same edit of the movie) in the set, both have english subtitles, is an official release and overall absolutely sublime, and barring it being kind of dated in the odd blurry scene due to when it was made, 1984, that can't be fixed without modern reanimation, it's utterly gorgeous.
Gundam is very broad and someone is likely to like one of the series if not the UC series, before Unicorn at least, too much of the space magic nonsense that started with the ending to chars counterattack is in unicorn onwards in the UC canon.
I am really not fond of Chars counterattack as It feels like a rushed conclusion with annoying two dimensional versions of what was quite fleshed out characters prior. Char especially, feels like a massive step down from his portrayal in Zeta. Beyond the time slaps though. Otherwise OG gundam up till double Zeta chronologically and the OVAs are all great, haven't seen Victory gundam.
Evangelion sits a close second to macross for me, my set up has RAH Eva 01 and 2, govee Eva lights, the Eva pop collection, and the ASUS eva 01 keyboard, mouse and headset and a few other things.
Madox 01, patlabor and megazone 23 were all pretty neat too.
Darling in the franx in on my to do list, after I watch macross 7, frontier and delta with good subtitles in HD for the first f*****g time ever. I know that it's practically a parody of EVA by the trigger staff but also an homage to Anno and Eva as they are mostly former Gainax staff and it's their own crazy studio trigger take on it.
I don't watch much Mecha anime, but after following a Super Robot Wars LP on youtube for a while, I checked out Knights & Magic and loved it. Wish it had more than just the usual 12 episodes. Oh well.
Depends on what you're looking for from an anime, If it's well written character drama, you're gonna like some much more than others. I don't like most of gundam, but I love most of UC gundam and wing, as those are very human drama based, and consequences of war kinda stuff, as opposed to "wow, cool robots", it's a genre that has massive variance, and gundam practiaclly has a spectrum of what themes is covers and how much it focuses on individuals or events.
Start with Eva if you want something that focuses mainly on humans, then macross, then gundam. I didn;t start with gundam, but more mondern gundam is accessible, like witch of mercury or iron blooded orphans, I haven't seen all of either but I see them recommended often to newcomers
Patlabor would likely be able to either hold your attention or bore you to tears.
