The closest resource I've found is "Contemporary Anime" by Susan J Napier, which is great but not of much use in this field.
Got any opinions?
In Vision of Escaflowne, we can see that Gaea sees our world as a moon, which may or may not be reciprocal. Aside from the cliche alternate world devices and the quite frankly flawed physics description, this could mean several things.
A common theme in literature (and anime) is a mirror world. THis may or may not be explicitly describes as being a replicate priciple of our environment but may reflect or represent a certain state of the character, etcetra. What do you think this could mean in terms of Gaea?
By the way, I'm also trying to determine how this may apply to .hack/SIGN, however I hgave not yet finished the series and are therefore unable to make any conclusions.
Additionally in Escaflowne, there is a character named Allen Schezar, who pilots a big mecha named Schezerade. Querying Scherezade (derivative) returns a lot of obscure references to mythology, etc, including some TV show. Still trying to track down.
I'm also trying to make a large generic statement about mecha without covering what Susan Napier has already covered. According to "Contemporary Anime", mecha may represent power, force, or the technological ideal, etc. It is usually a influencing factor, positive or negative, as such.
What's interesting is that in many works, the mecha works in unison with the operator, whether by design (technology explanation ala M*c) or principle. The mecha usually even looks humanoid. And of course there's the usual mecha-a-mecha combat with swords, etc. What's the story?
As usual:

The Nitpicker's Guide wrote: After we see Dylan loading the single Nova bomb into the storage closet, on the door we see Vedran writing. The nit is that if you translate the text at the bottom of the door it says "Warrning explosives". Notice the two r's in warning