1 Y'know... what we need is a series about mahou meganekkoneko senshi who pilot giant robots.

2 Wasn't that G-On Riders? (No, that's mahou meganekko senshi who FIGHT giant robots piloted by animal lolis...)

Steven has a point - a lot of giant robot shows are of the "wow, we have a neat gadget" type. A lot of the other ones are of a "we have a neat gadget but it's unimportant compared to our BURNING FIGHTING SPIRIT!" style. Neither is really a serious format for storytelling; you're not going to get fantastic writing from a Voltron or a Getter Robo any more than you would from the latest Power Rangers. Significantly less, to hear my sentai-lovin' friend talk...

Even the ones that do serious storytelling tend to have (or at least, start out with) some of the obligatory gadget-fetishery. There's only one series I know of that takes mecha in a more-or-less modern environment and plays with them more or less realistically, and Steven hates it with the passion of a thousand burning suns anyway. ;p

3 I'm sure you're talking about "Gasaraki", and yes, it was awful. A total waste of time and money; one of the worst series I've ever watched. It was a two-bit ripoff of Neon Genesis Evangelion that managed to do everything worse.

4 I felt Gasaraki had intersting bits but they didn't mesh well. The political angle, was interesting and a bit surprising, but while I did not react as viscerally as Stephen did I tend to agree it was ultimately a waste of bandwidth.

5 And I used to like Gasaraki and cannot imagine why anymore.  Though I still consider it better than Evangelion...but I hate Evangelion so...