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60 Highly Recommended Anime Series Part 2: Mechas and Spaceships

1.

In the year 2015, the Angels, huge, tremendously powerful, alien war machines, appear in Tokyo for the second time. The only hope for mankind's survival lies in the Evangelion, a humanoid fighting machine developed by NERV, a special United Nations agency. Capable of withstanding anything the Angels can dish out, the Evangelions' one drawback lies in the limited number of people able to pilot them. Only a handful of teenagers, all born fourteen years ago, nine months after the Angels first appeared, are able to interface with an Evangelion.

One such teenager is Ikari Shinji, whose father heads the NERV team that developed and maintains the Evangelions. Thrust into a maelstrom of battles and events that he does not understand, Shinji is forced to plumb the depths of his own inner resources for the courage and strength to not only fight, but to survive, or risk losing everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW5DCdRp3rk


2.

September U.C. 0079 – December U.C. 0079

In the year Universal Century 0079,The Principality of Zeon invents a gigantic human-shaped weapon called the Mobile Suit (MS) and begins its war for independence against the Earth Federation. The story depicts the life of young boys and girls in the war, focusing on the young protagonist named Amuro Ray. Amuro becomes the pilot of the Gundam, a prototype MS developed by Federation Force. Through his battles against the ace pilot of Zeon, Char Aznable, and the bitter trials of the war, he become aware of his uniqueness as a NewType.


3.

In 1999, an alien ship crashes on South Atalia Island and makes the human race aware of other life in space. Ten years later, the ship is reconstructed and christened as the SDF-1 Macross. However, on the day of its maiden voyage, an alien race called the Zentraedi make their appearance on Earth, beginning the UN Spacy/Zentraedi war that would change the history of both races forever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shSedEJX9r8


4.

In the distant future, people build their homes and raise domestic animals in subterranean caverns called “pits”. This way of life has persisted for hundreds of years, and yet, the people are still powerless against the earthquakes and cave-ins which occasionally devastate their villages. Jeeha is one such village…

One day, while digging tunnels to expand Jeeha's edges, a boy named Simon happens to find a small, shiny drill. Meanwhile, Kamina — Simon's soon-to-be “bro” — insists that there is another land above the village and tries to break through the ceiling in order to leave the cavern. He fails; however, an earthquake suddenly occurs, the ceiling collapses, and a gigantic robot — a “Ganmen” — crashes to the cave floor!

Kamina is now certain that there is a world above their tiny pit-village. Encouraged, he begins to fight recklessly against the robot, until he encounters another person who has arrived from the land above. She is a beautiful girl by the name of Youko, who has come from a neighbouring village with a rifle in hand. She has been hunting the robot, but her shots only seem to irritate it. Desperately trying to escape its attacks, Simon brings Kamina and Youko to what he had previously found: A mysterious robot with a head for a body.

And so begins the “epic” adventure…


5.

Japan has been invaded and conquered by the Britannian Empire. Japan is now known as Area 11 and its citizens known as Elevens. The Britannian Empire takes away Japan's autonomous power and imposes its rule through the use of Knightmares. The Empire's rule has never faltered, but cracks have begun to show…

The Britannian youth, Lelouch, received a special power from a mysterious girl. GEASS. An absolute power which allows the user to give orders to anyone. Lelouch decided to plan the destruction of the Britannian Empire by using this as a weapon. His goals are to take revenge for his mother, and to create a world in which his little sister, Nunnally, could live in peace. All while knowing that what lies ahead is his father, the Emperor of Britannia.


6.

A 14-year-old named Renton lives with his mechanic grandfather. His life is thrown somewhat off-kilter when a mech called Nirvash crashes into his house one day and a young girl called Eureka pops up asking for help to repair it. Shortly after, the military mechs get involved…

7.

As a child, Haruka saw ghosts and spectres. She realized in her twelfth year, after observing a certain white haired, black cloaked man standing on the cross of a church, that what she was seeing were not ghosts.

Soon after this first sighting, time stopped in the middle of a quarrel between herself and her childhood friend Gotou Yuu, and the man appeared before her again, surrounded by blue snow, calling her the Dragon's Torque.

A ghost hunt for the black caped ghost, initiated by her school friend Mukai Miho, finds Haruka and Yuu face to face with him once more: Karasu, an alternate Yuu from a different dimension, fifteen years from the future.

Karasu's a Dragon Knight from the dimension called La'cryma, trying prevent it's destruction at the hand of the masked man of Shangri'la. To save La'cryma, he must capture Haruka, which sends his emotions into chaos, as she resembles the Haruka of his dimension that he'd failed to protect in the struggle against Shangri'la.

Shangri'la's intentions to create an ideal timespace by destroying and assimilating all possible dimensions requires Haruka's power to manipulate timespaces, while La'cryma needs her power to thwart Shangri'la's plans.

Haruka, Yuu, and their friends are swept up in a clash between ideals, quantum physics, greed, and mankind's inherit desire to survive as they struggle to understand the concept of infinite parallel dimensions and the changes in their own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRnDo3FgEEU


8.

Claus Valca is from the world of Prester where he and his long-time friend, Lavie Head live and work as sky couriers. They pilot a van-ship left to Claus by his father. Together they dream of one day making the journey their fathers were never able to complete — fly across the notoriously dangerous stretch of space known as the Grand Stream.

One day, after Claus and Lavie agree to shuttle a mysterious girl named Alvis Hamilton to the air-battleship, Silvana, they become involved in a war that shakes their world — Prester, a world where mighty winds and a sea of clouds spread far and wide…


9.

It is late into the 36th century in the ancient Christian calendar; mankind, having developed the technology to travel faster than light speed and colonize many planets, has taken a hold of space, to the point of abandoning Earth almost entirely. Two superpowers comprising almost all the human population have now for one and a half centuries waged to a long stalemate a war for interstellar supremacy: the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance.

When he was young and poor, Count Reinhard von Lohengramm, a military genius born a noble in name only, saw his sister, Countess Annerose von Grunewald, turned into an Imperial concubine; having once helplessly watched her being practically sold to Kaiser Friedrich IV as merchandise, he now seeks to crush the Emperor and free her. Meanwhile, Yang Wenli, an Alliance commander of similar calibre who really wanted to be a historian and not a soldier, wishes only for some peace and quiet; yet, as he unwillingly grows in relevance, he'll see himself duty-bound to protect the Alliance's democracy from the threat of the autocratic Empire. The collision of those two masters of tactics and strategy may bring the war to a close, provided, of course, that they aren't first backstabbed by their respective countries' rotten internal politics…


10.

The year is 2071 AD. With the systematic collapse of the old nation-states, a mixed jumble of races and peoples were driven out of their terrestrial Eden and spread to the stars, taking with them the now confused concepts of justice, freedom, violence, and love. New rules were established, and a new generation of bounty hunters came into being. People referred to these bounty hunters as “cowboys”.

Meet Spike Spiegel and Jet Black, a drifter and a retired cyborg cop who have started a bounty hunting partnership. In the converted ship The Bebop, Spike and Jet search the galaxy for criminals with bounties on their heads. They meet a lot of interesting characters, including the unusually intelligent dog Ein, the bizarre hacker child prodigy Ed, and the voluptuous and vexing femme fatale, Faye Valentine.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

Starting from my own blog in Greek, I then moved on to write for some of the major publications in Greece, and in a number of websites dealing with (Asian) cinema, such as Taste of Cinema, Hancinema, EasternKicks, Chinese Policy Institute, and of course, Asian Movie Pulse. in which I still continue to contribute.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

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