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I find myself disliking most mecha anime - that being said, I like two: Evangelion and Macross Plus. The reason why is pretty simple: neither of those anime center around mecha. This is the biggest weakness of the genre in my opinion. Macross Plus was great in my eyes because the mecha's where a far secondary aspect of the anime when compared to the character interaction - hell, the plot revolved around something completely detached from Evangelion to begin with.
So then I look to Evangelion. It's obviously and infamously an anime known for (among other things) the deconstruction of the mecha genre. I love it for all of the non-mecha aspects - character analysis, political overtones and the such (sure, Eva has its flaws, but I'm trying to come up with specific examples).
In either instance, I like the anime despite the mecha, not because of it. At this point, mecha really shouldn't be considered a "genre" in my eyes as much as an element of the anime. After all, if "mecha" anime can be romance, shonen, comedy, etc... why not just give the respective anime the genre of "romance," "shonen," "comedy," etc.? I tend to hate most mecha not because of the mecha, but because they are (in my eyes) bad anime. It's not the fault of the mecha, and conversely it's rarely due to a mecha that a show becomes phenomenal. Consequently, I find it hard to consider mecha a genre in my head.
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