Giant Robots in anime usually fall into two categories, "super robots" and "real robots". Super robots are essentially superheroes, like Superman or Captain America, only a LOT bigger. More accurately, super robots are superhero costumes, allowing heroes to temporarily leave thier normal lives behind to fight larger-than-life monsters and villains. Real robots serve a similar costume function, but in the case of real robots the heroes board the robots to take on more conventional hero roles such as soldiers, police officers, mercenaries, etcetera.
While super robots are usually associated with "super science" (highly implausible or just plain silly), and real robots are usually associeated with more conventional or "hard" science fiction, neither is a hard and fast rule. The setting for Evangelion placed a lot of emphasis not only on "hard" scifi but also on psychological science, even when the robots themselves had supernatural origins, and fantasy series such as Dunbine and Escaflowne took a very practical approach in presenting what were, essentially, military robots powered by magic.
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Worldbuilding for tabletop RPGs
It's not just a hobby, it's a megalomaniacal obsession
