Gundam is just the same as Jane Austen but happens to include giant mech suits

That's not to say that the parts that aren't soap opera aren't meaningfully different. I disagree with the reductionistic claim that "everything is just a soap opera in the end", and leave it to the reader to determine whether or not the original link is making that mistake.

I would say it's more like salt in cooking for the vast majority of people; they expect a certain proper amount and trying to engage a normal human's taste without it is an uphill battle at best. As a result, across a wide variety of genres and styles, you'll find soap operas.

(I use soap opera as a bit of shorthand for things focusing on human relationships a lot. Soap operas tend to focus on the romantic end more than average, so the embedding is not quite perfect. But I use "soap opera" as the shorthand here because they are one of the more pure embodiments of the idea, because they are basically nothing but human relationships churning and spinning, with generally not much more going on. Yeah, a couple of them have a more exotic framing device, but all that does is move them slightly off the center of the genre, not really change them much.)

This article made me realize that despite writing stories that can be broad and melodramatic, Yoshiyuki Tomino has a keen sense of character. It's an interesting counterpart with his closest American counterpart, George Lucas. Both funneled 60s anti-war politics into their science fiction worlds, but Lucas was obsessed with Joseph Campbell and wrote plot driven stories while Tomino always puts the soap opera elements at the forefront.

Also, I suspect the author hasn't seen Turn A Gundam yet, and if not, they really should. That one is Tomino saying, "what if I took out 90% of the space combat and really just made a comedy of manners." It's wonderful.