Are Giant Robot Anime about Giant Robots?

So a number of weeks ago I watched a YouTube Video from the channel The Bellam called Anime Cryptids that begins with the author talking about hearing people praise a given Mecha Anime, most often Evangelion, for being a Mecha Anime that “isn’t about the Robot”, and then goes on to explain how no Mecha Anime is actually about the Robot, especially not Gundam.  

And yet to me the obvious response to this annoying type of Evangelion fan should be “what do you mean Evangelion isn’t about the Robot?”  If anything Eva is more about the Robot then Gundam since in Eva the Robot is actually a character with sentience of its own, but mostly that point is key to why Eva should be compared to Super Robot shows like Mazinger Z rather than Real Robot shows.

Still I find it amusing that to both sides of the debate in that video it’s treated as a good thing for a show to not actually be about the Robot.  I feel like especially in shows that are named after the Robot that should not be the case, it should never be a good thing for a show to be named in-correctly.

Clearly we are dealing with different people prioritizing different senses of what a show is “about”.  This video’s argument for Gundam not being about the Robot is the abstract philosophical themes of the overarching metanarrative of the Gundam Franchise. On that level no piece of Genre fiction is actually about the premise of it’s Genre, but no one feels the need to defend the integrity of their favorite Batman story by explaining how it isn’t actually about the Billionaire dressing up like a Bat to fight crime.

The author of this video clearly strongly feels only someone who hasn’t actually seen Gundam would think it is actually about the Gundam, but I’m not so sure.  I explained above one reason for viewing Gundam as less about the Robot the Evangelion.  But on the other hand Gundam feels more structurally built around the Mecha battles then Eva does.

Now I have to admit I did not initially respond to this video with the strong disagreement I’m expressing here. I initially left a comment saying something like “Robotics;Notes is actually about the Robot and that’s why I like it”.  But why did I feel that way?  At the time I would not have been able to explain myself and the counterargument that it doesn’t even exist yet for most of the show could easily have been thrown in my face.

It feels more narratively about the Robot then a lot of other Mecha shows because building the Robot is explicitly the Goal of the main protagonists, as an end unto itself not merely as a tool to achieve some other goal.  The build up of the Evil Conspiracy they will wind up having to thwart is mostly treated as a background plot till the final stretch of episodes.  But I guess even then the creator of that YouTube video could argue the Robot is actually just a symbol of something else like Communism maybe, I am a Communist who loves the show in part for it's Collectivist ethos.

So I guess the answer to the question is both Yes and No.