Think about it…
Jokes aside, it’s sad how the genre has outright gone the way of the Dodo since like 2009.
Bravern was pretty great, but yeah, I had to think a minute for a recent non-Gundam one lol
You beat me to mentioning Bravern but I can’t think of a second recent example.
Given the prompt goes back to 2009, and if you are generous with your definition of good, I’d say: some of the late Votoms OVAs, the Macross F movies, Macross Delta and its movies, maybe Gargantia on Verdurous Planet (wasn’t my taste, but some like it).
I’ve heard good things about Planet With and Granbelm, but haven’t personally seen them yet.
86 Eighty-Six was good, but it’s pretty light on the mecha. They’re more like 4-legged tanks anyway, rather than humanoid mecha.
Knights of Sidonia got canceled prematurely AFAIK, so I never finished it.
I haven’t watched much non-Gundam anime recently because I’ve been trying to get more backstory to GQuux.
86
Bug tanks are totally mechs! I watched this one, but didn’t love it too much
I haven’t watched much non-Gundam anime recently because I’ve been trying to get more backstory to GQuux.
Mobile Suit Gundam (TV is better, but the compilation movies are fine if you don’t like 70s anime aesthetics), Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (the New Translation movies are an entirely different thing, watch them much later), Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (it starts as an odd comedic anime, but gets more serious and has a lot of cool political stuff), and Char’s Counterattack are the original Tomino run and should give you a full background on most of anything Gundam references.
If you work through all that and think “damn, I want more alternate history UC Gundam”, go for After War Gundam X. It’s technically an AU, but is clearly set in a world where their Zeon equivalent defeats their Federation Equivalent.
The UC also has a bunch of spinoffs.
0080 War in the Pocket, 0083 Stardust Memory, the 8th MS Team, as well as later ones like Unicorn.
Most are pretty good.
And then there’s the cream of the crop of all anime, Turn A Gundam! (well, at least it’s my favorite of all time lol)
Young people don’t feel guilt about their psychosexual development, anymore, so none of the classic mecha storylines would make sense to them. 🤷
The mechanime genre was a thinly veiled fantasy of Japanese rearmament, and rearmament and Japanese nationalism are depicted way more directly now there’s no need for pretense.
