Yeah original Gundam is about a never ending war in which the protagonists are just cogs in the machine. And it turns out every side is led by immoral scumbags.

Yep, and splatter around some talk about the horrors of being a combatant in those wars, as if you don't fight, your loved ones die anyway. You can see how Evangelion is doing a lot of riffing on Gundam. In some ways it's not Jane Austen, it's Full Metal Jacket, or Rambo: First Blood. The different series might have giant robots all over the place, but there aer serious stories barely hidden underneath.

Even when a story starts as mostly lighthearted adolescent fare (see, The Witch of Mercury), it tends to end in trauma, injustice and many war crimes.