Mobile Suit Gundam II (1981) was essentially a continuation of the same action styles developed in the first without much else. Non-sensical "dramatic" arcs (with little to no character logic) pervade some noteworthy stories: the daughter caught between two sides trying to protect her family, etc; albiet these stories are not nearly as interesting as the untimely death of the prince and her lover from opposite sides from the first movie. Nonetheless, Gundam II maintains new ideas, while keeping solid fundamentals from the first movie, but is much disjointed and alleviates from the severe psychological decline of the main character.
Mobile Suit Gundam III (1982) provides the highest visual experimentation yet.
Arion (1986) is a mythologically spliced, yet also conventional, "hercules" tale between a boy, his lost father, a girl who he loves who he later learns is his sister, and the gods who spite the entire family name. Spliced moments of animation and music, as well as cathartic moments retain novelty.
Cowboy Bebop (1998), one of Shinichiro Watanabe’s first debuts outside of Gundam, is an episodic thriller with a visual dichotomy between excellently choreographed ground-scale action and stereotypically depressing sci-fi space visuals. With inconsistent arcs, Bebop still remains eclectic while only partially boring the viewer.
There is nothing more disappointing than a weak mecha show. Code Geass (2007) gladly takes that invitation. Each important plot element to remember blows away like wind, and the delivery comes from the up front action. Unfortunately many progressive mecha shows of the time did not only rely on its battles, there were certain (psychological or otherwise) nuances to offset the drama. Code Geass’s drama is cheesy in effect to bad Hollywood movies. The ending is a confusing mess.