>>96889390
It's entirely based on the box art and models for a bunch of giant robot anime right after the "real robot" boom started. This means it's inspirations include the growing pains of these saturday morning cartoon anime about more grim, military settings.

The idea that it's a hardcore realistic predictive scifi about the future of warfare, I have no idea where those guys came from. It's always partly just been tabletop wargame robotech.