Serdar Yegulalp: ''What with Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim on its way towards us in theaters, it seemed high time to put together a list of the anime in the genre that heavily influenced del Toro's film: mecha anime.
The term "mecha" is pretty self-explanatory: it's an abbreviation of the English word "mechanical," and in anime refers generally to anything where giant robots or other machines take a prominent role. This could be anything from the military vehicles of Gundam or Macross, to the single-passenger robots of Rideback and everything in between. The diversity within the genre has encompassed everything from homages to Western comics (The Big O, Tiger and Bunny) to alternate history and fantasy (Sakura Wars).
See our rundown of the most significant mecha anime here.''
And it's got some pretty glaring omissions. VOTOMs, Legend of Galactic Heroes and Turn A Gundam most notably.
...
For what it's worth, of a survey I did a few years back of ~500 mecha fans, the top 10 titles were:
1. Legend of Galactic Heroes
2. Turn A Gundam
3. VOTOMs
4. Cowboy Bebop
5. Giant Robo: The Animation
6. Gundam 0080
7. Gunbuster
8. Victory Gundam
9. GITS: Stand Alone Complex
10. PlanetES
I think its hard to do a list. It depends because mecha genre so big you got action mecha and politics mecha like the gundam series.
Big O
Gundam Seed
Nadesico
Gundam Unicorn
Bubblegum Crisis 2040
Gundam Wing
Eureka seven
G Gumdam
Appleseed movie 2
Zone of the Enders
"During its original run from 1985 to 1986, Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam had experienced the highest television viewer ratings in the history of the Gundam franchise." -Wiki
I enjoy Evangelion as well, but when anyone says "Mecha Anime", I immediatly think about Gundam.