Go for baroque! Ornate humanoid mecha.

I personally prefer "realistic" (and smaller-scale) humanoid mecha, more than the things often seen in SF animation and manga such as Mobile Suit Gundam or the like. Now don't get me wrong, often these shows/manga have great stories, etc. It just doesn't make much sense to have a human-shaped robot or armor of that size, to me. Anyhow, what about other large humanoid mecha that throw "realism" or practicality out the window? SOme of those I actually like even better than the "in-betweens" like Gundam, et al. (Although MS Gundam has some good less-human shaped stuff as well, see the Zeong , Neue Ziel , and S-Gundam with Booster Unit for good examples.)

Some of my particular favorites in the category of "Baroque mecha" would have to be the sentient war robot "Shaian" from Dragon's Heaven , a single 30min OVA from 1988. There was also a manga, although I have not seen it myself. As you may notice, the designs and art style in this animation were heavily influenced by the art of legendary French comicker/illustrator Jean "Moebius" Giraud.

Probably the champo as far as baroque mecha goes is Nagano Mamoru . He is the fellow who designed the mecha in Heavy Metal L-Gaim . He reused (and fancied-up) a few of the L-Gaim mecha in his own long-running manga serial Five Star Stories This manga, to me, is the undisputed champ of pretty robots. He also did the designs on another show with pretty robots, Brain Powered . BP is quite different from many other "mecha shows", which resulted in many unfavorable reviews. Personally, I like the BP show quite a bit, and Nagano's designs help too. :)