Thought I'd spice up the thread by adding some YouTube links to OPs and such of the stuff I'm watching...
Now, the first show I finished watching was Southern Cross (which in retrospect, is not really a B- quality show...really in the "C" range, mostly because the conclusion is completely incoherent). Southern Cross originally aired in the US as the middle segment of Robotech...what they did for the Robotech TV show is that they took three completely unrelated animated series from Japan (the only thing they had in common was the basic theme - transforming robots used to defend against alien invasions) and turned them into one continuous storyline. The first part of Robotech was based off of the amazing Macross...
[youtube=425,350]otv28eZYmb8[/youtube]
...which still holds up today as an awesome, fun, melodramatic, cheesy show. You can probably get it in some form on DVD for a pretty low prices. I myself own the remastered AnimEigo releases, but ADV has released a bunch of versions of the show as well - just make sure you get the unedited Macross ones, not the butchered Robotech versions of the show.
After Macross in the Robotech timeline came the show I just watched, Southern Cross....
[youtube=425,350]Z5Jn_weadgI[/youtube]
...which is a pretty decent show. Unlike Macross, the original version didn't take place on Earth, but on an (apparently French!) space colony called Glorie, which is invaded by a race of human-like aliens. This show actually has a lot of interesting concepts - a female lead, a horrifying secret about the "alien" troops they fight against (SPOILER: they're actually all brainwashed human soldiers so the aliens don't have to lose any of their people in battle), and the mystery behind why the aliens want to conquer Glorie (SPOILER: It was actually originally their home planet, so technically the "invaders" are the humans,
not the aliens). The show regularly undermines these concepts, however, and raises a lot of issues that are never resolved.
After Southern Cross came Mospeada, which I watched last year.
[youtube=425,350]Q8ocqsBTkR4[/youtube]
Genesis Climber Mospeada is an aggressively mediocre show that is, again, conceptually interesting. As the show starts, the Earth has already been conquered by mysterious aliens (not the ones from Macross or Southern Cross, since these shows were originally completely unrelated productions) and all attempts by the human colonies on Mars to reconquer the planet have failed. The show follows around a group of rebels as they conduct terrorist attacks on alien installations and try to disrupt their activities. Bonus points for having one of the main characters be a cheeseburger pop singer/military man (with two different voice actors depending on whether he's pretending to be a girl or not). Junpei might enjoy this show. I give it a D.
Last year I watched the amazing Turn A Gundam, which has quickly become my all-time favorite Gundam series.
[youtube=425,350]S5C7ZuKJyWk[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]RcXwxeQaydk[/youtube]
This is an amazing show, which references a lot of Gundam history but can be watched completely independently of any previous Gundam series...in fact, I suspect it was originally planned as a non-Gundam series (and in fact, the Turn A Gundam itself doesn't really resemble any previous Gundam, aside from its traditional blue, red, white, and yellow color scheme). Highly recommended to anyone who loves animu in the slightest.
Though there were a lot of Gundam series in the '90s prior to Turn A Gundam, the only one Yoshiyuki Tomino (director and creator of the original Gundam series, Zeta, ZZ, F91, and Char's Counterattack) was involved with was Mobile Suit Victory Gundam. That's the show I'm watching now.
The interesting thing about Tomino Gundam shows vs. Gundam shows by anybody else is that Tomino does not tend to fetishize militarism and weaponry the way a lot of other creators do. As much as, say, 8th MS Team is thematically anti-war, you can tell the creators love the whole aspect of designing all these mobile suits and uniforms and imbuing them with all this World War II influence.
Don't be fooled by the Victory Gundam OP...the show is incredibly dark at times. I am really impressed by this, and am scratching my head as to why it's considered the black sheep of the UC shows, perhaps even moreso than Turn A Gundam (by this, I mean that it is rarely referenced in most video games, manga, etc.).
When I watch military mecha anime, I always focus on the political themes that the creators oftentimes subtly insert...and I'm often surprised at how contemptuous some mecha anime creators are towards the military in general (and the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in particular!). Tomino seems to actually hold disdain towards his audience for expecting happy-happy fun times with giant robots fighting and destroying cities and whatnot. Perhaps that's why one of his first acts in Victory Gundam is to kill off a young mother and give the responsibility of raising her baby to the protagonist and his friends (all of whom are barely in their teens - war orphans, apparently).
[youtube=425,350]dI_OIfcm7gI[/youtube]
This is really quality stuff, and flashy shit like Gundam Wing and even (dare I say it) Evangelion rarely deals with these themes...it's all just so much philosophical navel-gazing.
