Soukou Kihei Votoms

This a list of all Armored Trooper Votoms anime in release order, which is also the recommended watch order. MAL's relation system doesn't really give an overview of the franchise and its structure.
Recaps are marked and any special content is noted in case you want to skip them, and release order is clarified for the 80s OVAs.

Armored Trooper Votoms is a 1983 Mecha anime directed by Ryousuke Takahashi, noted for being one of the landmarks of the "real robot" subgenre, i.e. the treatment of mecha as simply military machinery instead of super heroes. The franchise is primarily built around this main TV show and fleshes it out with various prequels, side stories and sequels in a non-linear fashion, with a few spin-offs that make use of many of the elements of the world while not directly relating to the main story.

Sunrise's 80s OVA policy was to release a number of recap OVAs, then follow them up with new content, and then if that sold well they'd put out more recaps with more new content at the end. Votoms isn't the only show to see this policy, but it's the one where they did it the most. This is how The Last Red Shoulder, Big Battle and Red Shoulder Document came to be.

Armor Hunter Mellowlink, Case;Irvine and Votoms Finder are spin-offs that have varying degrees of connection to the main Votoms story and world, Mellowlink being the closest, and Finder being the furthest removed (in fact you may struggle to find a reason why it's called Votoms).

While the franchise has been dormant since 2011 as Ryousuke Takahashi has mostly retired from the directing anime (with a few exceptions in the last few years), there are a number of novels set in the Votoms universe that have been released in the last 20 years but have not been adapted to anime. These include Commando Vorct, Blue Knight Berserga, Philosopher on the Battlefield, and Child of God. Some of these may be adapted some day (in fact there is a doujin anime of Berserga on Youtube), but I wouldn't hold out hope.

Interested in the genre? Despite what people might say, mecha is a rich character focused genre with a variety of incredibly unique stories to tell. Here's a collection of shows with short, straight-to-the-point descriptions about each. Note that some of these were translated by fans, and aren't available officially/legally. A good amount of these are available on various streaming services, tho as for all well you might have to sail the high seas a bit. Disregard my personal scores, as its subjective at end of the day and you might like it. Also please don't dismiss some of these just because they're really old, they pretty much all hold up well even today. Check each out, and see what strikes your fancy. Any shows I personally haven't watch I got info on from fellow mecha friends of mine:

All shows featured in Super Robot Wars T
Not including: Crossbone Gundam (Manga)

Real robots are a subgenre of the mecha genre, in which the mechas are depicted as realistic warmachines as opposed to the superheroistic depiction of the super robot subgenre. It was started in 1979 by Mobile Suit Gundam.

Debuted in SRW Z2.1-SRW BX

Nuff said.

Anime that has been in the Super Robot Wars Series that debut in the 80's

Note:
I couldn't get all entries into one list

Some 80s anime with openings I really like. I'll probably add more to the list with time.

The mecha genre is specific to the anime medium, for the reason that what once started from an interesting concept, over the decades and the various artistic interpretations it had gone through, did managed to reach it's full development and thematic recognition.

It's origin can be traced way back to the end of World War 2, and the notion of the general populace at the time, that the technological breakthroughs, and their further usage to help and safeguard mankind are the way that we should develop as a species, so that's when the bipedal metal giants were born - a figures with humane limbs and features, that are controlled by a person and which allows them to wield this overwhelming power in service of a greater good.

In this interest stack, I've presented the ways in this genre had changed, and the specific shows which had major impact upon the development of the mecha as a concept, and the ways it had branched out of the established norm for this genre exploring a broad spectrum of themes. The order of the shows is in chronological order, since that way the slight alterations and changes can be presented in more simple and efficient manner.

Only series that are ranked below 2,000 in 'Popularity' on MAL.

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The heart of the "hard science fiction" designation is the relationship of the science content and attitude to the rest of the narrative, and the "hardness" or rigor of the science itself. One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should try to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically or theoretically possible. For example, the development of concrete proposals for spaceships, space stations, space missions, and a US space program in the 1950s and 1960s influenced a widespread proliferation of "hard" space stories.

(Note: not all of these works are considered hard sci-fi, but I decided to put them here due to them being potentially interesting to people that love logical space-themed stories as much as I do)

title

For the most part one entry per series. Subject to change as some are unfinished.

This is a part of a series of stacks that are about artistic tendencies in anime (and that border the fine line between sophisticated and pretentious).

This stack is a work in progress.

Bibliography:
Clements, Jonathan. "The Brown Screen: Trended change in Japanese animation 1966–83." Anime: A History. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 154-155.
Condry, Ian. "When Anime Robots became real." The Soul of Anime. Duke University Press, 2013. 117-119, 122-127.
Hack, Brett Anthony. "Screens, Clichés, and Revolutions: Code Geass and the Mediated Imagination of Change." Anime and Social Imagination: Media Fictions in Japan’s Age of Neoliberalism. 2021. Nagoya University, PhD thesis. 160-162.

Anime directed by Ryousuke Takahashi

Japan has waged countless wars within its territories and beyond her shores for thousands of years now, and in anime we can see some of the perspectives, interpretations and depictions the Japanese people have developed with regards to this topic.

In this stack list I have gathered what I consider to be the essential anime with the theme of war, whether they show it from the perspective of the soldiers who fight them or from the experience of the bystander civilians who have to endure its effects on society and the environment. War is a theme that comes up, even tangentially, in most of everything, so I can't really make a list of every good anime that has some reference to war in it, so here I tried to put shows that either have a direct focus on war as a core theme, or shows whose main focus isn't war and only have war related elements in certain limited sections, but still do provide an interesting and valuable perspective on it when the theme of war eventually comes up.

I don't necessarily agree with all of these shows' views on war (I actively disagree with some), nor do I believe every show here is good. I just think that all of these could offer interesting insight on the different perspectives about war that come up in Japanese animation. You decide which view of war you agree with the most or find most emotionally genuine and politically nuanced.

In 2012, The Asahi Shimbun announced the 104 TV anime that they considered to be the most representative and memorable of all TV anime between 1963 and 2012. It's a good starting point for exploring general TV anime history, and the shows are all worth giving a shot. The list was not ranked, and ordered by release date.