Personally I'm a fan of both, although I'm more versed in real robo having watched a lot of gundam and some macross movies. I'd say on the fun scale, super robot is all about that goofiness that defines anime while real robo has some good stories to tell and mechanical designs that wow you.
i like real robots but most examples aren't 'real' enough for me, i appreciate the original gundam show's ww2 movie style fight scenes and cinematography, but the robots are way too huge to seem even a little bit practical. i don't like how the mobile suits basically supersede every other form of combat vehicle, it makes the world seem gimmicky and one-note. I also don't like the protagonist mobile suit designs in basically any gundam show, i hate the red-white-blue color scheme and i especially hate the samurai mask aesthetic. barbatos from IBO is the closest to a good design imo and its still mid, overdone ninja shit. I want to see like smoke projectors and camera pods and persicope visors and ERA/up-armor kits, not nonsense sci fi greebles and spikes and curves with no function. Zakus look kinda like tanks but they are space nazis so my enjoyment is conflicted. the federation GM suits are better than the protagonist Gundam but still look too much like they are wearing cheer-leading outfits with skirts and vests. the zaku waist armor skirt looks more like a bronze age warrior or something and is much cooler.
so far the best mecha designs imo are in titanfall (mech designs better than the mech gameplay tbh), hawken (i wish they had hands though), obsolete (mini series by bandai), lancer ttrpg (amazing art and writing, idk about the rules since i can't manage to find IRL players willing to read a rulebook), honorable mentions to AC6 and MGSV: the NPC mechs in armored core 6 are all beautiful and amazing and i wish i could pilot them instead of the generic spindly ACs, and Walker Gear in MGSV is like 1 or 2 design revisions away (i would add a seat/straps/armor and 1 more arm to D-walker) from being the greatest mini-mech of all time. also as far as media-less figures and models, JOYTOY makes some great though expensive titanfall-style mecha figures, Hexa Gear has a few good designs like the Bulkarm Alpha and Bulkarm Jackal, and RIHIO Multiabyss V-Link mecha models have great simple lines, flat surfaces good for painting/kitbashing, and very modular parts if slightly simplistic in terms of realistic details, while also being 1/60 or ~28mm scale which is convenient for tabletop purposes.
too big, no kit
OBSOLETE is pretty good about that. It handwaves the need for technobabble to explain why not just better tanks with "aliens trade unarmoured superscience 8ft tall mecha skeletons for limestone" - so weaponised mecha rely on "RL" technologies being adapted to those skeletons, and access to mecha is pretty much global, rather than them being for superpowers only.
Cannot remember the politics of it though...
I love obsolete, i mentioned it in the second of my massive unformatted text blobs lol, its politics are decent iirc, mentions how imperialism causes wars/child soldiers, mentions that the USA is slow to adapt to the arrival of the exoframes due to entrenched business interests, even has an episode where the protagonists are immigrants crossing the US border illegally. not necessarily based commie propaganda, but nevertheless free of several of the more virulent strains of brainworms.
Yeah I have a soft spot for the original Armored Core designs on the PS1 and PS2, since those are the entries I played. The newer ACs in the most recent games, idk too sleek for my taste, I like you prefer the more bulkier beefy looking mechs.
i really like the 'box with arms and legs' style of many of the AC6 MT units, and the system authority/navy robots all look great as well. my main problem with the protag ACs in AC6 is the way shoulder weapons attach, they use these thin fragile looking pylons instead of attaching directly to the torso/back, it looks unwieldy and awful imo. similar with the limb/body attachment points, i feel like they sacrificed on visual design to accomodate custom builds, which is silly to me because there are less parts per manufacturer and none of the parts visually match across manufacturers. my favorite AC designs are probably from AC5 and AC Verdict Day, i love the square look and leg shields and the smaller scale and the wall-jumping. AC6 feels like a more refined AC4 with less parts/content imo, still good but i wanted some weird stuff after 5. the older AC games designs are a bit too wide-legged and rounded for my tastes, but that could be because i never got far enough to unlock many parts dabbling on emulators. i think front mission 3 mechs are cooler, for an example from a comparable console era
front mission 3
Very underrated series done dirty.
Can you believe I've only seen bits and pieces of that?
Go watch it right now
It has all sorts of philosophy and shit and mecha vs kaiju and it is just amazing in every way.
If Gundams are a real robot I'm not sure what a super robot is.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuperRobotGenre <<<--- a good primer on the series that cover it. If you wanted to get into it Go Nagai was the father of the genre.
I'd have to go with real robots then, I was really into the early Mech Warrior games.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
