10 Cartoons to Watch If You Loved Exosquad

Finding cartoons like Exosquad is easy if all you want is another show with combat machines. The harder part is finding one where the war matters after the shooting stops. Able Squad had to live with the results of its missions. Occupied worlds stayed occupied until someone fought to take them back, and a victory on one front could leave another exposed. The E-frames brought viewers in; Exosquad’s continuing war story gave them a reason to keep watching.

The ten shows below offer different routes back to that experience. Roughnecks and Robotech are the first places to look for a sustained military story. Others belong here for their resistance movements or their machinery, with a few important differences worth knowing before you start.

1. Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles

Start with Roughnecks if what you miss most is the feeling of following a unit through a campaign. Its soldiers fight an interplanetary war against the Arachnids, with the squad remaining the center of the story as the battlefield changes around it.

The attraction is the time spent inside the unit: who can be trusted, how the soldiers work together and what happens when a mission goes wrong. That is a closer match for Able Squad than a show that simply gives its heroes bigger weapons each week.

The early computer animation takes some adjustment. Faces and movement can look stiff to modern eyes, so this is a recommendation for the military storytelling rather than the visual polish. Of the shows here, it is the clearest first stop for that particular Exosquad audience.

2. Robotech

Robotech is the stronger choice if you want the war and the machines to share the spotlight. Begin with The Macross Saga, where the SDF-1 carries a civilian population through a conflict that cannot be kept outside the ship.

That setting gives the battles a different weight. Rick Hunter and the other pilots are defending a place where people are also trying to work, form relationships and carry on with ordinary life. A battlefortress with a city aboard is a much more interesting home base than an interchangeable command room.

There is more romance and pop music here than in Exosquad; Minmei is a celebrity as well as a central character. Those elements may surprise someone arriving for the transforming fighters, but they give the civilian world an identity. Robotech is worth choosing for the lives surrounding the war as much as the combat itself.

3. Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

Gundam Wing asks for more patience with politics than most of the shows on this list. Operation Meteor sends Gundams from the space colonies to Earth, opening a conflict in which military power and competing ideas about peace keep pulling the story in different directions.

The comparison works best for viewers who liked following Exosquad beyond Able Squad: the leaders making decisions, the factions trying to gain an advantage and the people caught between them. A machine can win a battle without settling the argument that caused it.

Expect a more theatrical style, with emphatic speeches and pilots who feel larger than life. It is less convincing as a substitute for Exosquad’s day-to-day squad camaraderie, but a good next step if the political struggle held your attention as firmly as the E-frames.

4. Battletech: The Animated Series

BattleTech earns its place through the machinery. Major Adam Steiner’s unit faces the invading Clans in BattleMechs that look like military vehicles someone has to pilot, deploy and fight in. If the appeal of an E-frame was imagining yourself in the cockpit, there is plenty to enjoy here.

The story is a thinner match. It gives the action a military framework, but does not offer the same depth of occupation politics or character relationships as Exosquad. Choose it for the hardware and unit battles; Roughnecks and Robotech are better starting points for the wider war drama.

5. Voltron: Legendary Defender

Five robotic lions are a very different proposition from E-frames, but Voltron: Legendary Defender makes a useful bridge to a newer style of space adventure. Its pilots are pulled into an intergalactic war that soon demands more of them than learning to operate their machines.

The team’s problems grow as the story moves beyond the cockpit. Occupied worlds and alien allies give the war a geography, while the pilots have to work out how to act together when their responsibilities extend beyond one another. The expanding setting is a stronger reason to recommend it than the shared presence of giant robots.

It is also more playful and more openly heroic in tone. Someone looking for Exosquad’s comparatively sober military atmosphere may find that a substantial change. For viewers happy to trade some of that restraint for a more energetic space opera, it is a worthwhile direction.

6. Star Wars: The Clone Wars

The Clone Wars makes its best case when it stays close to the clone troopers. Their shared appearance does not prevent them from becoming distinct soldiers, with different views on duty and on the commanders asking them to risk their lives.

For a concrete example, look at the four-part Umbara campaign in season four, beginning with “Darkness on Umbara.” Captain Rex’s troops come under General Pong Krell, whose disregard for their lives turns obedience itself into a problem. The tension comes from soldiers trying to survive their own chain of command as well as an enemy battlefield. Viewers drawn to Exosquad’s most consequential battles will recognize that mix of combat and command decisions.

The series is broader and more uneven in tone than that example suggests: it also makes room for Jedi adventures, political episodes and comedy. Expect to find stretches that feel like a close companion to Exosquad within a much larger Star Wars show, rather than a direct replacement from the first episode.

7. TRON: Uprising

TRON: Uprising belongs here because of life under occupation. Beck, a young program in the Grid, becomes a resistance figure trying to free his home and friends from Clu’s regime and General Tesler. The visual world is all sharp silhouettes and light, but the pressure on its inhabitants is easy to recognize.

For someone drawn to Exosquad’s occupied worlds, the interesting question is how resistance begins when people have reasons to be afraid. Beck’s position brings that question down to the scale of a person and a community. There is no E-frame equivalent to sell this comparison; it is a choice for the rebellion story, with a strikingly different look.

8. Sky Commanders

Sky Commanders is a looser recommendation, and it helps to say that upfront. General Mike Summit’s team fights across a newly discovered continent using cable-based equipment, turning the landscape into part of the action. The technology is the hook: how the characters move, where they can go and what their gear lets them attempt.

That may appeal to someone who enjoyed Exosquad’s specialized equipment, but the resemblance mostly ends there. The storytelling is simpler and the world more fantastical. Think of it as a detour into the toy-driven adventure cartoons surrounding Exosquad, rather than the next chapter of the same kind of war story.

9. The Centurions

The Centurions offers the most literal version of the human-and-machine appeal. Ace McCloud takes the air missions, Jake Rockwell handles land combat and Max Ray specializes in underwater operations, with equipment built around each role.

The pleasure is in the outfitting: a person becomes the center of a larger combat system, and the mission determines which attachments are needed. The “Power Extreme!” sequences turn that process into the main event. E-frames work differently, but anyone who spent time studying their weapons and accessories will understand the attraction.

As a story recommendation, this is a much lighter choice. It is closer to a series of equipment-led adventures than Exosquad’s sustained conflict. Keep it on the list for the designs and the team specialties, especially if those were what first caught your eye.

10. Star Wars Rebels

Star Wars Rebels is best approached as a story about an occupied home. The Ghost crew’s fight against the Empire keeps returning to Lothal, so the setting becomes somewhere the characters want to recover, not simply another planet to visit.

That local attachment gives the expanding rebellion something to build on. The crew starts small, helps people and takes risks before becoming part of a larger organized fight. For an Exosquad fan, the connection is the relationship between a handful of characters and a war they cannot win on their own.

The early banter and adventure can feel lighter than Exosquad, and the Jedi side of the story grows increasingly important. It is a stronger recommendation for viewers invested in resistance and liberation than for anyone chiefly looking for mechanized military combat.

Which Show Should You Watch First?

For the closest match to the experience of following Able Squad, start with Roughnecks. Choose Robotech instead if the machines, civilian world and longer sweep of the war matter just as much to you. Those are the two recommendations that require the least explanation.

After that, let the part of Exosquad you miss guide the choice. Gundam Wing offers more political argument, TRON: Uprising concentrates on resistance, and BattleTech puts the combat machinery front and center. The differences are part of the value of this list: a good next watch does not have to reproduce the whole show.

Think you remember Able Squad? Test yourself with the Daily Rivet’s Exosquad knowledge quiz.