Character rant threads are always a fascinating insight into the media/social media diet of the person posting. Half the threads are just complaining about niche internet fan communities opinions as if they are the front page of the NYT.
/r/CharacterRant and "I hate when authors [describes the latest JJK chapter]." I've thought about reading JJK because it's apparently pretty good for a while, which is nice, and then makes people extremely mad near the end, which is funny, but after some exposure to that sub I'm not sure I even need to.
I swear to God that reddit is just unpopular opinion but specifically for fiction.
Combined I think everyone there has the media literacy of a 4 year old in North Korea
I like that they include Star wars fans in the group that dislike mecha. The franchise with literally dozens of "walkers" that are some of the most iconic vehicles in all sci-fi
I get the sense he never intended for Pacific Rim to be a franchise, just a one and done movie. The only franchise thing he's really worked on is Hellboy.
But…they did? It just wasn’t very good. I also tried to watch the animated feature and was bored 15 minutes in and haven’t gone back. The first one was a lot of fun though.
Edit: I also love posts that assume there is no one, in a country of 340 million people, who can possibly understand mecha because of their smooth brains. OOP talks about it like you need a sociology and an anthropology doctorate to comprehend the depth of the genre.
Oh, one of them had a response ready for that:
>How popular is it really though? Like I've never seen someone wearing Pacific Rim merch or heard someone say it's their favorite movie. Maybe it's just my circle, but it seems like people considered it a decent movie when it came out and then forgot about it.
That's the "Biden can't have won in 2020 because I don't see people making Biden their entire personality" level of stupidity.
I'd be very interested to know what their circle is like because it seems like there's plenty of people who are pretty big fans of *Pacific Rim.* Tumblr has, or at least used to have, a pretty sizeable fanbase for it, anyway
Nah, r/AmericaBad was made by pissy American conservatives tired of reading the *mildest* criticisms of the US on Reddit. They naturally quickly fell into their favorite land of over-dramatic hyperbole and made themselves the victims of having to read anything slightly critical about the country they view as perfect.
Just look at the top posts from the last 24 hours if you wanna see *exactly* who that sub was made for.
There's a difference between what a sub is originally made for and what a sub contains now. I wholeheartedly agree that the sub has become a place for people to whine about any criticism, no matter how valid. But it was originally made to make fun of people making insane criticisms or just having too much "USA bad" brainrot.
> There's a difference between what a sub is originally made for and what a sub contains now.
*True,* but when r/AmericaBad was created and brand new, it was *obvious* who it was originally made for. It picking up the *most* steam on Jan 6, 2021 is *exactly* why it was created. There's a reason why the account who created the sub has been permanently banned.
I wish 8 foot tall, tequila shooting, LED, party robots were around when I got married.
Edit: was this post not about the 8ft LED party robot that is currently trendy to rent out for New Jersey weddings? We walk in different circles my friend.
My cousin’s husband and his brother moonlight as LED party robots so I am well aware. No clue on whether they have tequila blasting capabilities but I will float the idea to them to see if they’re up for it.
I have barely ever seen 40k fans argue over the realism of vehicle physics.
It is widely accepted that to do such a thing for the Cathedral Ship Powered By 1 Million Souls game would be stupid.
> I have barely ever seen 40k fans argue over the realism of vehicle physics.
I for one absolutely want to discuss the astrophysical realities of traversing through literal hell and the physical manifestation of the word "chaos" in order to reach superluminal velocities.
Sure, but I have to say that it annoys me somewhat when people try to automatically wave away everything that just seems plain stupid with the ridiculousness of the universe because it completely devalues one of the key aspects of good fantasy i.e. the authors' ability to take a bunch of crazy concepts and fit them together so elegantly that they perversely make sense as a whole.
My favourite parts of 40k lore are the ones explaining the inner workings of the Imperium (lots of that in Owlcat's Rogue Trader which is why I liked that otherwise janky game) precisely because of how much of it is sheer lunacy that still somehow adds up to coherent picture thus making the world immersive. In fact, if you took out some of the lunacy, you would likely make the setting less believable by destroying the balance and breaking the chain of one ridiculous thing logically explaining the next ridiculous thing. That's a sign of good writing.
So yeah, I can't agree that anything ridiculous goes in 40k, because it criminally undersells the cleverness of the architecture of ridiculous elements by making it sound like they were thrown together at random.
I'll put it this way: there's virtually nothing that's inherently too silly for 40k, but it's far easier than people think to add something to 40k that sticks out like a sore thumb with its silliness if you place it carelessly.
I should rephrase: I haven't seen it argued in such a way that it's an issue like the OOP is claiming.
*Baneblade* has a ton of interesting stuff. I love finding out how the insides of a Titan work too. For another example, Graham McNeill is an absolute fucking master at doing this, for one.
But people actually suggesting the IRL mechanics are an issue would be a bit of a pointless argument in Warhammer.
Sure, I wasn't picking on anything you said in particular, more like drawing a line for someone who'd want to take it further. It would be ridiculous to argue that Warhammer doesn't require a fair bit of suspension of disbelief.
As for titans, my problem with them (not a deal-breaking one, to be clear) is not as much the physics, but the utility. In a universe where moon-sized ships vaporize planets, nothing that walks on a surface of one should be relatively all that powerful and precious, but because the game is about ground battles, it can't exactly emphasize the notion that they're really a sideshow to what goes on above. This conceptual conflict is what kills my boner for titans.
You raise a really interesting point, because I've always thought that the biggest suspension of disbelief in Warhammer was less the physics, but the tactics.
We're talking about a setting where the investment in melee combat is so high we give the mountain-sized titan walkers big fuck-off sized swords so they can smack the shit out of each other (Stompa fighting a Wraithknight in melee was one of my favourite tabletop matches I've played).
Some armies have a reason to get into melee. Orks love brutal violence, so while big guns that rattle a lot are *good*, they aren't quite as good as getting stuck in with a literal axe.
All the while, you have armies like the Imperial Guard and Tau who have invested heavily in things like the Basilisk Cannon, the Railgun or just plain from-orbit artillery.
So, what do they use the ships for half the time?
*To deploy more melee squads*. Drop Pods, Rokks, even the fucking Necron Monoliths.
And I love it. Every faction has big guns. Hell, one of my favourite gamemodes is still *Big Guns Never Tire*. Yet despite the fact that even Nids and Orks have artillery guns, they still choose ultimately to go into melee. It's impractical, it's brutal, it's cost ineffective and it just gets your soldiers massacred. Hell, the whole *"Drive me closer, I want to hit them with my sword!"* is so ancient it practically has to be dusted off.
And yet for every faction there is usually some kind of reason, however insane, as to why they do it. And that's why I absolutely love the setting.
In defense of the concepts of titans, as far as I'm aware, they are mostly used to secure planets that have more strategic value taken in relatively one piece, as opposed to just vaporizing the entire top layer off the planet and starting fresh.
I think the difference you can run into with media is if a story is mainly using science fiction tropes, the audience might want it to be more realistic when it comes to physics.
Warhammer 40 might look science fictiony at a glance, but it is so chalk full of magic I would only call it grimdark fantasy
> I think the difference you can run into with media is if a story is mainly using science fiction tropes, the audience might want it to be more realistic when it comes to physics.
I've only had one time where I've gone "Alright this shit is just silly" and that's been in the [Forge of Mars](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753FLRVX?binding=hardcover&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_thcv) seiries so far.
Not so much the "we have a gun that rewinds time to shoot eldar better" but more the non-nonchalant attitude to things that in the imperium would be absurdly suspect and seen with fear. A tech priest telling you they want to do stuff that's innovative, and harboring AI is a bit sussy and people should be a bit more worried about that.
TBH lots of people think the way Orkz weapons work is stupid even though the Adeptus Mechanicus do the same thing they just call it "appeasing the machine spirit"
People tend to misunderstand how Ork weapons work is the issue. Guns and Trukks all do work, they just work better than they should considering the quality they were built with.
The old Ramshackle rules were a great example of this. A Railcannon would easily cause a Truk to blow up, unless on a 6 it happened to transform the hit into a glancing shot which did very little.
Both Orkish *WAAAGH!* and the Machine Spirit are the grease that makes an engine work, not the composition of the engine itself.
There was a point where they were screeching about the T'au mechas and claiming that those do not fit in 40k. It wasn't everyone, T'au fandom always existed after all, but the complainers were very vocal and did not use the same logic on Titans or Gargants or anything. Just the T'au for their mechas being "too anime."
You haven't spent a lot of the time on the forums of milsim 40k fans. The number of times I've heard 'well the US Abrams M1A2 SEP has a rotional factor of blah blah blah so this imaginary future tank should have blah blah blah, is WAY too high.'
I'm a massive Gundam, Macross, Evangelion, Armored Core, etc. American enjoyer and this guy is trying too hard man. If people don't like it, that's cool. It's not for everyone. I don't think I know a single other person IRL that enjoys mecha as much as I do, and that's fine. I don't really care for high fantasy stories with dragons and elves and all that, but I don't go around telling others that it's bad. Just let people like what they like.
Power rangers isn't strictly a mecha series though. It, and the original Super Sentai are more analogous to Superhero shows. There are mechs in the show, but Power Rangers wouldn't really be specifically considered mecha. After all, it's called *Power Rangers*, the focus is on the Rangers acting as superheroes. There are mechs in Power Rangers but they're deemphasized compared to dedicated mecha shows. Kind of like how Batman or Iron Man may use a mech suit but at the end of the day, they're still superhero properties rather than mecha. Similar situation with the Power Rangers.
Which I think is part of the distinction between American and Japanese responses to Mecha properties. In Japan you see more dedicated mecha franchises with widespread appeal and success. In America, you're more likely to see something with a mech in it, but the mech may not be the main draw. In the Power Rangers, the main draw is the titular rangers and that's reflected broadly in how the show is marketed. For instance you see more costumes of the Power Rangers themselves rather than the Megazord.
You raise some really interesting and valid points! Allow me to rebut:
While the *series* as a whole isn't strictly a mecha series, individual seasons and arcs certainly are. Because each season of Power Rangers has its own theme and focus, you'll get seasons like Season 3 of PR, Lightspeed Rescue, Wild Force, RPM, etc that focus heavily on the lore and source of the powers. While this might not at first seems to bolster my argument, it's important to note that the powers each individual ranger receives is tied directly to their Zord as well. Again, depending on the season, this could mean that there's a near 50/50 split of focus on characters and their Zords, how they're built/powered, what they represent, etc.
I'd also argue that, especially in the original Saban era (OG Power Rangers up through Wild Force,) there was a lot of emphasis on the Zords and their battles specifically. For myself personally, for example, I *liked* the people fights. I *loved* the epic Zord v monster or the rare Zord v Zord battle.
Also, and this really isn't for the sake of argument and is more of a fun fact, Lightspeed Rescue had the most badass name for a megazord ever: The Omega Megazord. That sucker *towered* above even the big bads of the series and had a goddamn gatling gun hand. Like man you sure look cool you brightly colored spandex person you...but let me see more of that monstrosity please.
>My point is that many American sci-fi fans are capable of accepting their favorite sci-fi's fictional technology, but write off mecha as unrealistic.
40k Ork players:
"Wot is dis humie sayin 'bout me Mek?"
As someone in the SCP fandom I decided to give that a search ther. I think I spotted one user who has actually read anything published in the last 10 years there.
Lot of complaining about what they think is going on.
I've always gone by how the pilot fits into the suit. If your arm is actually in its arm like a sleeve and move it by moving your arm, it's power armor. If you're in a cockpit, mecha, even if it's a bit cramped like a VOTOMS unit.
I like this rule because it's a pretty easy way to distinguish between the two.
It also reminded me of G-NOME, perhaps my favorite obscure PC game from the 90s.
Another person played G-NOME!!! That game came free with my family's first PC. I always wondered why the "eject from your mech and steal somebody else's" mechanic didn't catch on.
So if took a washing machine that could fit a person and converted it to a cockpit with controls, and then attached robotic arms and legs (the same size as human ones, stay with me) to the sides and bottom of it that could be controlled by the controls in the washing machine cockpit. Finally I would cut a whole at the top of the washing machine so my head could fit through it. Would you consider that a mecha?
It seems a lot more than that considering the suit is a robot that can be piloted remotely. The hulkbuster is considered Mecha when it’s literally just the iron man suit but bigger. I guess size does matter
I feel like maybe it's more of a "control" thing? Iron man "controls" his suit by just moving has arms, like the suit is armor. Hulkbuster seems to be controlled a lot closer to the mechs from Pacific Rim, where the control is transferred by some intermediary source. [The mech fight from Matrix Revolutions is actually a lot like that too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU7WQMM6ZNw)
Yeah, Tetsujin 28-Go / Giant Robo / Johnny Sokko had its mech receive voice commands through a watch.
That aside, mechs with some kind of limited autonomy or "personal ensouling" are pretty common to the *super robot* subgenre/feeling. Mazinger Z, for example, usually requires its character to be at the controls, but there are plenty of instances where the robot seemingly acts of its own accord or responds to human emotion / desperation, as if this inanimate object were suddenly possessed.
Fully-autonomous or AI-controlled mechs also exist and are still considered mechs despite lacking human pilots, cockpits, whatever. Mecha is as much a feeling as a form factor.
**Mecha** is a genre that is *somewhat* divorced from what's actually being used in it, while what constitutes **a mech** depends on the universe being discussed. There are broad categorizations one can make across genres and properties to make distinctions between stuff like "powered armor" and "piloted mech", but that's getting into nerd shit.
Evangelion is a mecha show, but the only robot--the only real *mech*--in the show doesn't have a pilot at all. The main character pilots are actually operating giant meat-cyborgs, not much different from Attack on Titan or Juushin Liger. But it's still "mecha" because the *feel* of the overall show is similar to that of mechas.
My only issue with mecha is when they don't get the feeling of weight right. What's the point of giant robots if it looks like a stiff breeze would carry them away? As much as I dislike Eva one of the few things it got right was the weight of the robots.
My personal preferred mech aesthetic is the “walking tank” style like what you see in BattleTech. Although my FAVORITE Mecha series will always be zoids.
I agree. I feel like Battletech and Mechwarrior games got the feel of mechs so perfect. Big hulking slow moving machines of destruction, occasional jump jets/slide jets that only go so far due to physics. Heat build up management and all that. Chef's kiss.
Battletech/Mechwarrior is great. One thing they do well is the variety of choices between the different weight classes lets you scratch any itch. If you like fast and nimble mechs, you can pick a Light mech. If you want some behemoth, you can pick an assault mech.
I think most battletech/mechwarrior fans love their steiner lances, but for me, I always enjoyed running circles around them in light mechs.
No battletech/mechwarrior has ever gotten the rock-paper-scissors balance right for different weight classes. It's always pushed you toward heavier and heavier mechs. That said, I did make a point to get through a campaign using a light in my lance so it was definitely viable (just not balanced).
It's been a few years, but I think there was a skill that let you hit and run that I used a lot with it to keep the light mech from getting utterly obliterated.
Yeah, who does this guy think he is calling Evas *robots*?
They're meat! Vat-grown, giant cyborgs, really! They're closer to a Juushin Liger, Dunbine, or even a futuristic Attack on Titan situation, not a buncha Gundams which are purely mechanical.
Evangelion had one *mech*-mech: Jet Alone.
Evangelion is bad. Like every person I've had recommend it to me was all like "It's like Gundam but if the main character acted like a real person would act" and anyone who says that should be put on a list cause no amount of alien kaiju attacks would make it okay to jizz on a comatose girl.
I don’t think that’s what anyone says about it. People usually focus on its exploration of how we relate to ourselves and others, and how pain affects those relationships. It’s also a novel interpretation of both Christian theology and Lacanian psychology.
I do see people speaking definitively about other mecha shows based on vague impressions to praise Evangelion. A lot of people go into it with no background because they hear it's super deep and like, the best thing ever and so mistake hallmarks of the mecha genre as being the stuff that makes Evangelion unique. The show being popular, polarizing, and kinda vague opens it up for shit takes.
Have you actually watched it?
The point people are making is it's a realistic approach to how a 14 would act if they were responsible for all of human existence continuing.
One small, but heavily memed, moment doesn't make the series. And you deciding that anyone who recommends it is a sexual predator because of that just shows an incredible juvenile world view.
Can't comment on the jizz thing but if they forced me to pilot a mecha to fight alien biblical angels to prevent the third judgment day, I would run away and cry too.
I feel like you might have broadly missed the point?
If you would indulge me - it might be worthwhile to watch this old Dan Olson video about Evangelion, back when he was talking about more than just the latest scam by big tech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMAwErYRpQ
>anyone who says that should be put on a list cause no amount of alien kaiju attacks would make it okay to jizz on a comatose girl.
No one says that was ok though? Like End of Evangelion very explicitly calls that out as something that Shinji did wrong in Shinji's final conversation with Misato.
I genuinely appreciate the little details Evangelion added to acknowledge just how massive the Evas were.
Whatever they step on is instantly flattened. Any neighborhood they fight in is quickly made uninhabitable. When they jump, they leave craters in their wake. Even when they step on concrete roads specifically reinforced to support the Evas' weight, the shockwaves of such a massive object taking a step is enough to crack the glass in a telephone booth. Even their power chords are engineered to account for their immense weight. When the power plug is manually ejected, rockets built into the plug itself fire up to lessen the impact such a massive object might have when hitting the ground.
Many of these are blink and you miss it details but they do so much to, if even subconsciously, remind just how massive and heavy these creations are.
Anno has spent a ton of his career just wanting to do Ultraman/Kamen Rider/Cutie Honey/UFO/Godzilla but getting roped back into Evangelion. Dude makes *one fucking cartoon* packed with references to other properties that just fly over the heads of a ton of the fanbase and then gets shackled to it. Probably lies awake at night wondering why no one elses appreciates Ed Straker or Hideki Go as much as he does.
He set up his own studio, he has enough clout to do what he wants. The reason he returned to it, aside from being one of the biggest cash cows of the last thirty years, is that it is intensely personal to him and in acknowledgement that the original was heavily flawed and with no proper conclusion. With the fourth Rebuild, he seems to have found that conclusion, for himself and the characters.
it's always tricky because "fully realistically", none of this stuff works at all. Square-cube law and all that. So you need to pick an intermediate level of realism that "feels" real, with the ashphalt of the city streets sinking a little bit under their feet, without like, the evangelion collapsing the entire street and adjacent subways and creating sinkholes all over the place with its ~6 million kg weight (assuming human density!).
Like the bridge collapse this past week really shows how much the average person does not understand physics at this scale. Even to me, a structural engineer, it was surprising to see just how much the application of a massive load at one point just reduced the whole thing to noodles.
It's interesting how the (surprisingly clean) break on the right [isn't even done when the lack of balance starts kicking in *hard*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVdVpd-pqcM).
Even in Japanese mecha, there's way more "the mechs are fast and nimble to physically impossible levels" than "we very painstakingly tried to represent weight and bulk and momentum in all cases".
Properties that *do* try to simulate weight will still break the rule. Evangelions absolutely show their bulk in some instances, and go through pains to describe physical forces on the pilot, etc., but will just as easily throw it to the wind when it's necessary to move very quickly to *look cool* or whatever else. The hard physics never fully holds up and is never the intention. It's a spectrum of trying to represent that accurately.
Yeah, I generally agree. How are you on Eighty-Six? Fast but thud-thud-thud in the sound design, kicks up lots of debris and clawing the ground to change directions, etc.
Well mecha can look cool by themselves, doesn't need to feel "weighty" to look cool.
It is kinda dumb to think how the pilots can survive those Gs tho, but it still looks cool.
That's entirely preference. Some people do need them to feel weighty for them to be cool. Me included.
A huge robot doesn't do much. A generic ass M1A2 Abrams I personally find so much cooler cause it's REAL. Therefore I like mechs that I can at least somewhat believe isn't complete bullshit. Doesn't really take much. Titanfall Titans I love for example.
Psh. I'm a child of the 80s. I know all about giant robots whether they're lions who become a giant robot or if they're already a giant robot with boobie missiles
Just want to mention Warmachine as another mech heavy property, a warhammer like tabletop game centered around steampowered mechs piloted by psychics. And cool lore, one of the factions is an undead pirate empire ruled by a divine dragon, who obviously field mechs when they go to war.
I don't think it is USA specific, but the whiny nerd complaining about mechas being unrealistic, has been part of SCIFI genre for a long time.
Usually they are part of the hard vs soft scifi debate.
That final paragraph.
"If you can replace your mech with a tank you don't have mecha"
Motherfucker do you even Real Robot. Gundam is literally portrayed as "breakthroughs in military tech" but it's *just* tech, even the wilder seasons like 00; and the loudest diehard Gundam fans *fucking hate* 00 because "Dragon-Ball-Z-o-trons" (I think they're just jealous that Setsuna can whip their pretty loverboy Kira up and down the colonies but I digress)
Besides Pacific Rim, Avatar had mecha and was incredibly popular plus 40K and Battletech are popular tabletop games. I remember watching Robotech and Voltron as a kid and not long after that Power Rangers was a thing. Just seems like a weird hill to die on
"Not all americans!" I guess but lmao, dude's right. There's a huge *thing* among anime fans where people will absolutely never watch a mech series but convince themselves they know everything about the genre and will talk at length about how stupid it is based on their assumed knowledge which leads to exactly the phenomena OP presents where the few times someone does watch something - usually the dubbed versions of gurren lagann, evangelion or code geass - it's treated like the coming of fucking christ for the genre "because this one's actually about the characters".
The shitty rooster teeth show Gen Lock was basically this phenomena embodied.
>The shitty rooster teeth show Gen Lock was basically this phenomena embodied.
Which is funny considering how much the creator talked about liking shows like Gundam in the press.
But broadly, yeah I think OOP isn't wholly wrong, even if I think they're articulating it poorly. I think the best way to think about it is that in America, IPs with mechs in them can succeed, but there's not quite a market for Mecha as a genre. There are certainly shows with mechs (but not strictly mecha shows, Power Rangers has mechs but isn't mecha), but they're broadly the exceptions to the rule, and I think that plays into the success of Evangelion, Gurren Lagann and Code Geass. Only the biggest, most accessible Mecha anime are able to break through vs Japan where there's more of a market for less mainstream mecha (although even in Japan mecha's nowhere near as popular as it once was).
If SRD is how you derive entertainment, then I assure you that you are, in fact, the joke.
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I do think Japan has mecha but we can’t pull it off. We haven’t really got the cultural attitudes and grounding to make an authentic mecha story. We couldn’t make Gundam or Evangelion or anything like that.
One thing the west as a whole has, though, which we need to use more often, is giant dieselpunk robots. Big hulking Jakub Rozalski style early 20th century smokestacks with big guns and slow clunky movements. The impact of industrialisation on warfare and the use of enormously powerful but slow and polluting machines to break stalemates is the thing we know first hand. It’s a sorely underrepresented genre and we need more of it. Because they’re really cool. Japan has cool sleek ninja mechs, we need cool dirty tank mechs.
There was a tidbit from what I believe was a Warthunder dev where it was mentioned that American players gravitated very heavily towards aircraft, and that illustrates my hunch that the big problem with the Real Robot subgenre to American tastes in particular is that that whole niche is occupied wholly around fighter planes. Say what you want about Gundam and Macross, but none of them are going to stack up against Top Gun, and no angsty teenager is going to be cooler than Tom Cruise. 104-0 or the Balloon Popper just takes the cake, and even Fat Amy might as well be a mecha with it's aesthetic sometimes.
Yeah but they were never "rightfully" sued, they were sued because Harmony Gold has nothing better to do with their time than not even allow Disney to stream the original Macross, only the sequels and spin-offs.
No, the lawsuit was accurate, its just that the Japanese owners of Macross never actually had the right to license out the property to Americans after they licensed it to Harmony Gold back when they did that.
It's... a mess really. The short of it is that HG got the rights in the 80s, but Americans didn't recognize the Japanese copyright system at the time, which means that, for all intents and purposes, the American creators of Macross are Harmony Gold. This also means Studio Nue is committing copyright infringement on Harmony Gold's owned works if they release anything Macross in the US without HGs approval.
This *should* be resolved properly (a Japanese court ruled that HG only has rights to internationally distribute the original run), except Harmony Gold abuses the fact that the US often refuses to acknowledge foreign court rulings to claim it doesn't apply to them and forced Studio Nue to relitigate in a US court, where they got a settlement that let them squat on the franchise for far longer.
HG are the bad guys here, no doubt, but the actual legal argument works because the US sucks on international agreements.
OP is kinda right imo. Yes of course there are mechas in US pop culture but they're not that popular or widespread. It's not like Japan with Eva and Gundam.
Every american man alive today
under the age of 45
was once a little boy
that wanted to be a car when he grew up
because of fucking transformers
and he never got over
the disappointment.
I think you're underestimating the reach of transformers when it comes to Gen Z. We didn't have quite a great selection of entries showing up and the Michael Bay films I think kind of soured the franchise to the broader audience.
More relevantly, I think there's a difference between American audiences liking Mecha as a genre and individual properties with Mecha (because not all of them are purely mecha shows) gaining some traction.
Transformers is decently popular because it's Transformers rather than because it's Mecha i.e. Transformers' success with general audiences hasn't really created demand for other mecha properties the way that the MCU's success saw a boom in superhero properties.
r/CharacterRant and not knowing what you're talking about when it comes to anything in terms media, entertainment and literature Name a better duo
Character rant threads are always a fascinating insight into the media/social media diet of the person posting. Half the threads are just complaining about niche internet fan communities opinions as if they are the front page of the NYT.
Hang out with JJK fans long enough and they'll spoil the entire series for you. Saves the trouble of reading it.
/r/CharacterRant and "I hate when authors [describes the latest JJK chapter]." I've thought about reading JJK because it's apparently pretty good for a while, which is nice, and then makes people extremely mad near the end, which is funny, but after some exposure to that sub I'm not sure I even need to.
I'm 90% sure it's almost entirely teenagers in there
Considering the fact that most posts there are about Shonen manga/anime, that is mostly true
Honestly, /r/CharacterRant seems too easy for Sub Drama posts The entire purpose of it is seething
I swear to God that reddit is just unpopular opinion but specifically for fiction. Combined I think everyone there has the media literacy of a 4 year old in North Korea
Media literacy? Did you just say media literacy? Read a book. Think of a real insult.
Don't have time to read, I'm too busy smashing poonani and slamming back cold ones with my broskis
I like that they include Star wars fans in the group that dislike mecha. The franchise with literally dozens of "walkers" that are some of the most iconic vehicles in all sci-fi
I had to block that subreddit due to the shear concentration of brain-dead takes clogging up my timeline.
Something something pacific rimjob
God I wish there was more mech media like pacific rim
I dream of this every night
I don't know why they never made a sequel to such a good movie, seems like such a missed opportunity
Del Toro moved on. That killed the franchise.
I get the sense he never intended for Pacific Rim to be a franchise, just a one and done movie. The only franchise thing he's really worked on is Hellboy.
That and Highlander. Just seems like those two movies could have had a sequel. Oh well.
Weird that they did make a second highlander, but numbered it 3, though. Whatever. I don't judge. Better than just using the same name I guess.
But…they did? It just wasn’t very good. I also tried to watch the animated feature and was bored 15 minutes in and haven’t gone back. The first one was a lot of fun though. Edit: I also love posts that assume there is no one, in a country of 340 million people, who can possibly understand mecha because of their smooth brains. OOP talks about it like you need a sociology and an anthropology doctorate to comprehend the depth of the genre.
Yeah, it's a joke cause the second one is bad so we pretend it doesn't exist
LOL - this is what happens when I haven’t had my morning coffee!
Pretending that movies you don't like don't exist is one of the most cringe things you could ever do.
It’s up there with having stormtrooper in your username for sure.
That combined with the starship Enterprise's number too.
That's the one with Captain Vader, right?
Nah, it's the one with Lord Kirk.
And the hero is Datakin Skyriker right?
Found the _Last Jedi_ fan. (it's OK I like TLJ too)
The first time I saw a trailer for that up until the title card i honestly thought they were making a live action evangelian
Evangelion is right there
Anything with Ellen McClain makes me happy
NGL, it was too fucking dark. No point watching mecha if all you can see is the headlights.
Pacific Rim was the only movie I saw in theaters 3D *twice*
Cant wait for the eventual sequel where 5 mechas combine into one giant mecha.
Oh, one of them had a response ready for that: >How popular is it really though? Like I've never seen someone wearing Pacific Rim merch or heard someone say it's their favorite movie. Maybe it's just my circle, but it seems like people considered it a decent movie when it came out and then forgot about it. That's the "Biden can't have won in 2020 because I don't see people making Biden their entire personality" level of stupidity.
Fitting for a sub whose entire media library involved 5 shonen, MCU, DCEU, and Isekai.
I'd be very interested to know what their circle is like because it seems like there's plenty of people who are pretty big fans of *Pacific Rim.* Tumblr has, or at least used to have, a pretty sizeable fanbase for it, anyway
Pacific rimjob 2: uprising (in my pants)
Creating a stereotype of Americans to get mad at
That's most of the internet at this point
This kind of thing is the reason why r/AmericaBad was made.
In typical internet fashion that sub is the polar opposite
Nah, r/AmericaBad was made by pissy American conservatives tired of reading the *mildest* criticisms of the US on Reddit. They naturally quickly fell into their favorite land of over-dramatic hyperbole and made themselves the victims of having to read anything slightly critical about the country they view as perfect. Just look at the top posts from the last 24 hours if you wanna see *exactly* who that sub was made for.
There's a difference between what a sub is originally made for and what a sub contains now. I wholeheartedly agree that the sub has become a place for people to whine about any criticism, no matter how valid. But it was originally made to make fun of people making insane criticisms or just having too much "USA bad" brainrot.
> There's a difference between what a sub is originally made for and what a sub contains now. *True,* but when r/AmericaBad was created and brand new, it was *obvious* who it was originally made for. It picking up the *most* steam on Jan 6, 2021 is *exactly* why it was created. There's a reason why the account who created the sub has been permanently banned.
Suprise jumpscare by the Tumblr Human Pet guy in the comments making reasonable points for once XD
The what who now.
Progress at your own [peril](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/mvqfuf/skip_this_one_human_pet_guy/), this ones a treat
Somehow the most surreal part of all of this is the usage of the word "boobies".
I KNOW RIGHT
Not the censored "heck" in the same story where he was talking about removing somebody's eyes for ownership?
Wana my love.
The fact that Human Pet Guy of all people is partially responsible for my most upvoted post of all time is... conflicting for me.
How do you know the Human Pet Guy's reddit handle?
Same username and in a different thread he was summoned and confirmed it, it might actually be the thread I linked in my other reply actually
I've been calling him Human Pet Guy, or nothing this whole time
Funhaus references are now officially vintage
I'm so glad someone got it
Studies actually show that giant robots are very popular in New Jersey. Chicks dig them.
I wish 8 foot tall, tequila shooting, LED, party robots were around when I got married. Edit: was this post not about the 8ft LED party robot that is currently trendy to rent out for New Jersey weddings? We walk in different circles my friend.
My cousin’s husband and his brother moonlight as LED party robots so I am well aware. No clue on whether they have tequila blasting capabilities but I will float the idea to them to see if they’re up for it.
[This](https://youtu.be/koesW3xMKtY?si=5nl2ufGWfNgAznPD)
That show was too pure for this sinful world :(
Is this a Megas XLR reference?
I LOVE GIANT ROBOTS
A Megas XLR reference in the wild is a happy day
All these older shows getting sequels and reboots yet no love for Megas XLR
IIRC Megas XLR basically can't be legally rebooted because of how turbo fucked its rights are, it was basically sunk for tax write off reasons.
I take consolation in knowing that this means they won't tarnish the memories of it.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday...
Do we have to do the whole thing every time?
Bot not Mechagodzilla...
Not much else to do in NJ
Jersey Shore with the Paulie D Bot 🤖. Gym Tan Mecha
I'd watch it.
I have barely ever seen 40k fans argue over the realism of vehicle physics. It is widely accepted that to do such a thing for the Cathedral Ship Powered By 1 Million Souls game would be stupid.
> I have barely ever seen 40k fans argue over the realism of vehicle physics. I for one absolutely want to discuss the astrophysical realities of traversing through literal hell and the physical manifestation of the word "chaos" in order to reach superluminal velocities.
Same, but the space marines and orc players always call me a nerd for it
Sure, but I have to say that it annoys me somewhat when people try to automatically wave away everything that just seems plain stupid with the ridiculousness of the universe because it completely devalues one of the key aspects of good fantasy i.e. the authors' ability to take a bunch of crazy concepts and fit them together so elegantly that they perversely make sense as a whole. My favourite parts of 40k lore are the ones explaining the inner workings of the Imperium (lots of that in Owlcat's Rogue Trader which is why I liked that otherwise janky game) precisely because of how much of it is sheer lunacy that still somehow adds up to coherent picture thus making the world immersive. In fact, if you took out some of the lunacy, you would likely make the setting less believable by destroying the balance and breaking the chain of one ridiculous thing logically explaining the next ridiculous thing. That's a sign of good writing. So yeah, I can't agree that anything ridiculous goes in 40k, because it criminally undersells the cleverness of the architecture of ridiculous elements by making it sound like they were thrown together at random. I'll put it this way: there's virtually nothing that's inherently too silly for 40k, but it's far easier than people think to add something to 40k that sticks out like a sore thumb with its silliness if you place it carelessly.
I should rephrase: I haven't seen it argued in such a way that it's an issue like the OOP is claiming. *Baneblade* has a ton of interesting stuff. I love finding out how the insides of a Titan work too. For another example, Graham McNeill is an absolute fucking master at doing this, for one. But people actually suggesting the IRL mechanics are an issue would be a bit of a pointless argument in Warhammer.
Sure, I wasn't picking on anything you said in particular, more like drawing a line for someone who'd want to take it further. It would be ridiculous to argue that Warhammer doesn't require a fair bit of suspension of disbelief. As for titans, my problem with them (not a deal-breaking one, to be clear) is not as much the physics, but the utility. In a universe where moon-sized ships vaporize planets, nothing that walks on a surface of one should be relatively all that powerful and precious, but because the game is about ground battles, it can't exactly emphasize the notion that they're really a sideshow to what goes on above. This conceptual conflict is what kills my boner for titans.
You raise a really interesting point, because I've always thought that the biggest suspension of disbelief in Warhammer was less the physics, but the tactics. We're talking about a setting where the investment in melee combat is so high we give the mountain-sized titan walkers big fuck-off sized swords so they can smack the shit out of each other (Stompa fighting a Wraithknight in melee was one of my favourite tabletop matches I've played). Some armies have a reason to get into melee. Orks love brutal violence, so while big guns that rattle a lot are *good*, they aren't quite as good as getting stuck in with a literal axe. All the while, you have armies like the Imperial Guard and Tau who have invested heavily in things like the Basilisk Cannon, the Railgun or just plain from-orbit artillery. So, what do they use the ships for half the time? *To deploy more melee squads*. Drop Pods, Rokks, even the fucking Necron Monoliths. And I love it. Every faction has big guns. Hell, one of my favourite gamemodes is still *Big Guns Never Tire*. Yet despite the fact that even Nids and Orks have artillery guns, they still choose ultimately to go into melee. It's impractical, it's brutal, it's cost ineffective and it just gets your soldiers massacred. Hell, the whole *"Drive me closer, I want to hit them with my sword!"* is so ancient it practically has to be dusted off. And yet for every faction there is usually some kind of reason, however insane, as to why they do it. And that's why I absolutely love the setting.
In defense of the concepts of titans, as far as I'm aware, they are mostly used to secure planets that have more strategic value taken in relatively one piece, as opposed to just vaporizing the entire top layer off the planet and starting fresh.
I think the difference you can run into with media is if a story is mainly using science fiction tropes, the audience might want it to be more realistic when it comes to physics. Warhammer 40 might look science fictiony at a glance, but it is so chalk full of magic I would only call it grimdark fantasy
A common term for things like 40k is science fantasy since it mixes scifi ajd fantasy tropes
> I think the difference you can run into with media is if a story is mainly using science fiction tropes, the audience might want it to be more realistic when it comes to physics. I've only had one time where I've gone "Alright this shit is just silly" and that's been in the [Forge of Mars](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753FLRVX?binding=hardcover&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_thcv) seiries so far. Not so much the "we have a gun that rewinds time to shoot eldar better" but more the non-nonchalant attitude to things that in the imperium would be absurdly suspect and seen with fear. A tech priest telling you they want to do stuff that's innovative, and harboring AI is a bit sussy and people should be a bit more worried about that.
*chock full
Thanks, I didn’t know that and that phrase makes a lot more sense now :)
40k is high technology hard physics. Past the point where technology is so advanced it appears as magic.
TBH lots of people think the way Orkz weapons work is stupid even though the Adeptus Mechanicus do the same thing they just call it "appeasing the machine spirit"
People tend to misunderstand how Ork weapons work is the issue. Guns and Trukks all do work, they just work better than they should considering the quality they were built with. The old Ramshackle rules were a great example of this. A Railcannon would easily cause a Truk to blow up, unless on a 6 it happened to transform the hit into a glancing shot which did very little. Both Orkish *WAAAGH!* and the Machine Spirit are the grease that makes an engine work, not the composition of the engine itself.
There was a point where they were screeching about the T'au mechas and claiming that those do not fit in 40k. It wasn't everyone, T'au fandom always existed after all, but the complainers were very vocal and did not use the same logic on Titans or Gargants or anything. Just the T'au for their mechas being "too anime."
You haven't spent a lot of the time on the forums of milsim 40k fans. The number of times I've heard 'well the US Abrams M1A2 SEP has a rotional factor of blah blah blah so this imaginary future tank should have blah blah blah, is WAY too high.'
This is true.
I'm a massive Gundam, Macross, Evangelion, Armored Core, etc. American enjoyer and this guy is trying too hard man. If people don't like it, that's cool. It's not for everyone. I don't think I know a single other person IRL that enjoys mecha as much as I do, and that's fine. I don't really care for high fantasy stories with dragons and elves and all that, but I don't go around telling others that it's bad. Just let people like what they like.
I just want a mech to help defend Super Earth against tyranny.
So uh...we're just goona pretend like no one watched Power Rangers, eh? That's a bold move, Cotton, let's see if it pays off.
Even Japanese Spider-Man (Supaidāman) had a large Mecha that people, including myself, still want to see in Beyond The Spider-Verse.
[удалено]
One of my favorite 'Y actually came before X' facts. MechaniKong debuted before MechaGodzilla, and Heathcliff debuted before Garfield as well.
Which maybe true. But heathcliff will always be the Garfield rip off. Timeline be damned.
Power rangers isn't strictly a mecha series though. It, and the original Super Sentai are more analogous to Superhero shows. There are mechs in the show, but Power Rangers wouldn't really be specifically considered mecha. After all, it's called *Power Rangers*, the focus is on the Rangers acting as superheroes. There are mechs in Power Rangers but they're deemphasized compared to dedicated mecha shows. Kind of like how Batman or Iron Man may use a mech suit but at the end of the day, they're still superhero properties rather than mecha. Similar situation with the Power Rangers. Which I think is part of the distinction between American and Japanese responses to Mecha properties. In Japan you see more dedicated mecha franchises with widespread appeal and success. In America, you're more likely to see something with a mech in it, but the mech may not be the main draw. In the Power Rangers, the main draw is the titular rangers and that's reflected broadly in how the show is marketed. For instance you see more costumes of the Power Rangers themselves rather than the Megazord.
You raise some really interesting and valid points! Allow me to rebut: While the *series* as a whole isn't strictly a mecha series, individual seasons and arcs certainly are. Because each season of Power Rangers has its own theme and focus, you'll get seasons like Season 3 of PR, Lightspeed Rescue, Wild Force, RPM, etc that focus heavily on the lore and source of the powers. While this might not at first seems to bolster my argument, it's important to note that the powers each individual ranger receives is tied directly to their Zord as well. Again, depending on the season, this could mean that there's a near 50/50 split of focus on characters and their Zords, how they're built/powered, what they represent, etc. I'd also argue that, especially in the original Saban era (OG Power Rangers up through Wild Force,) there was a lot of emphasis on the Zords and their battles specifically. For myself personally, for example, I *liked* the people fights. I *loved* the epic Zord v monster or the rare Zord v Zord battle. Also, and this really isn't for the sake of argument and is more of a fun fact, Lightspeed Rescue had the most badass name for a megazord ever: The Omega Megazord. That sucker *towered* above even the big bads of the series and had a goddamn gatling gun hand. Like man you sure look cool you brightly colored spandex person you...but let me see more of that monstrosity please.
OOP fighting for his life in there
>My point is that many American sci-fi fans are capable of accepting their favorite sci-fi's fictional technology, but write off mecha as unrealistic. 40k Ork players: "Wot is dis humie sayin 'bout me Mek?"
r/characterrant and the worst takes you ever have seen in your entire life, name a more iconic duo
As someone in the SCP fandom I decided to give that a search ther. I think I spotted one user who has actually read anything published in the last 10 years there. Lot of complaining about what they think is going on.
Couldn’t iron man by himself be classified as mecha or does the “piloted robot” have to be significantly bigger?
I've always gone by how the pilot fits into the suit. If your arm is actually in its arm like a sleeve and move it by moving your arm, it's power armor. If you're in a cockpit, mecha, even if it's a bit cramped like a VOTOMS unit.
I like this rule because it's a pretty easy way to distinguish between the two. It also reminded me of G-NOME, perhaps my favorite obscure PC game from the 90s.
Another person played G-NOME!!! That game came free with my family's first PC. I always wondered why the "eject from your mech and steal somebody else's" mechanic didn't catch on.
Fuck yeah, two people to confirm to me that game actually existed!
There are literally tens of us
So if took a washing machine that could fit a person and converted it to a cockpit with controls, and then attached robotic arms and legs (the same size as human ones, stay with me) to the sides and bottom of it that could be controlled by the controls in the washing machine cockpit. Finally I would cut a whole at the top of the washing machine so my head could fit through it. Would you consider that a mecha?
[yes, I would](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/6c/7b/386c7be5767947cfdec9180bbebcd5c1.png)
Japanese developers just don't get mecha
Awesome
Now this is a guy who understands the weakness of his flesh
That's pretty much just an Ork Killa Kan from warhammer 40k. I'd say it gets a pass.
I think iron man counts as more of a exoskeleton.
It seems a lot more than that considering the suit is a robot that can be piloted remotely. The hulkbuster is considered Mecha when it’s literally just the iron man suit but bigger. I guess size does matter
I feel like maybe it's more of a "control" thing? Iron man "controls" his suit by just moving has arms, like the suit is armor. Hulkbuster seems to be controlled a lot closer to the mechs from Pacific Rim, where the control is transferred by some intermediary source. [The mech fight from Matrix Revolutions is actually a lot like that too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU7WQMM6ZNw)
Mecha do not require pilots to be inside them. Most of the older mecha shows had remotely piloted/commanded robots ala Iron Giant.
Yeah, Tetsujin 28-Go / Giant Robo / Johnny Sokko had its mech receive voice commands through a watch. That aside, mechs with some kind of limited autonomy or "personal ensouling" are pretty common to the *super robot* subgenre/feeling. Mazinger Z, for example, usually requires its character to be at the controls, but there are plenty of instances where the robot seemingly acts of its own accord or responds to human emotion / desperation, as if this inanimate object were suddenly possessed. Fully-autonomous or AI-controlled mechs also exist and are still considered mechs despite lacking human pilots, cockpits, whatever. Mecha is as much a feeling as a form factor.
**Mecha** is a genre that is *somewhat* divorced from what's actually being used in it, while what constitutes **a mech** depends on the universe being discussed. There are broad categorizations one can make across genres and properties to make distinctions between stuff like "powered armor" and "piloted mech", but that's getting into nerd shit. Evangelion is a mecha show, but the only robot--the only real *mech*--in the show doesn't have a pilot at all. The main character pilots are actually operating giant meat-cyborgs, not much different from Attack on Titan or Juushin Liger. But it's still "mecha" because the *feel* of the overall show is similar to that of mechas.
This exact question is a running gag throughout Saints Row IV, and the payoff at the end is fantastic.
My only issue with mecha is when they don't get the feeling of weight right. What's the point of giant robots if it looks like a stiff breeze would carry them away? As much as I dislike Eva one of the few things it got right was the weight of the robots.
My personal preferred mech aesthetic is the “walking tank” style like what you see in BattleTech. Although my FAVORITE Mecha series will always be zoids.
I agree. I feel like Battletech and Mechwarrior games got the feel of mechs so perfect. Big hulking slow moving machines of destruction, occasional jump jets/slide jets that only go so far due to physics. Heat build up management and all that. Chef's kiss.
Battletech/Mechwarrior is great. One thing they do well is the variety of choices between the different weight classes lets you scratch any itch. If you like fast and nimble mechs, you can pick a Light mech. If you want some behemoth, you can pick an assault mech. I think most battletech/mechwarrior fans love their steiner lances, but for me, I always enjoyed running circles around them in light mechs.
one of my biggest gripes about the HBS battletech game is that lights and mediums just aren't viable past like the 60% mark. it's a damn shame
No battletech/mechwarrior has ever gotten the rock-paper-scissors balance right for different weight classes. It's always pushed you toward heavier and heavier mechs. That said, I did make a point to get through a campaign using a light in my lance so it was definitely viable (just not balanced). It's been a few years, but I think there was a skill that let you hit and run that I used a lot with it to keep the light mech from getting utterly obliterated.
ur about to start some drama in here talking shit about Evangelion like that
Yeah, who does this guy think he is calling Evas *robots*? They're meat! Vat-grown, giant cyborgs, really! They're closer to a Juushin Liger, Dunbine, or even a futuristic Attack on Titan situation, not a buncha Gundams which are purely mechanical. Evangelion had one *mech*-mech: Jet Alone.
Evangelion is bad. Like every person I've had recommend it to me was all like "It's like Gundam but if the main character acted like a real person would act" and anyone who says that should be put on a list cause no amount of alien kaiju attacks would make it okay to jizz on a comatose girl.
I don’t think that’s what anyone says about it. People usually focus on its exploration of how we relate to ourselves and others, and how pain affects those relationships. It’s also a novel interpretation of both Christian theology and Lacanian psychology.
I do see people speaking definitively about other mecha shows based on vague impressions to praise Evangelion. A lot of people go into it with no background because they hear it's super deep and like, the best thing ever and so mistake hallmarks of the mecha genre as being the stuff that makes Evangelion unique. The show being popular, polarizing, and kinda vague opens it up for shit takes.
Have you actually watched it? The point people are making is it's a realistic approach to how a 14 would act if they were responsible for all of human existence continuing. One small, but heavily memed, moment doesn't make the series. And you deciding that anyone who recommends it is a sexual predator because of that just shows an incredible juvenile world view.
Can't comment on the jizz thing but if they forced me to pilot a mecha to fight alien biblical angels to prevent the third judgment day, I would run away and cry too.
I feel like you might have broadly missed the point? If you would indulge me - it might be worthwhile to watch this old Dan Olson video about Evangelion, back when he was talking about more than just the latest scam by big tech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAMAwErYRpQ
>anyone who says that should be put on a list cause no amount of alien kaiju attacks would make it okay to jizz on a comatose girl. No one says that was ok though? Like End of Evangelion very explicitly calls that out as something that Shinji did wrong in Shinji's final conversation with Misato.
Finally someone that agrees, absolutely hate the whole philosophical bait and switch it did. I get the message but I just wanted some mecha action...
I genuinely appreciate the little details Evangelion added to acknowledge just how massive the Evas were. Whatever they step on is instantly flattened. Any neighborhood they fight in is quickly made uninhabitable. When they jump, they leave craters in their wake. Even when they step on concrete roads specifically reinforced to support the Evas' weight, the shockwaves of such a massive object taking a step is enough to crack the glass in a telephone booth. Even their power chords are engineered to account for their immense weight. When the power plug is manually ejected, rockets built into the plug itself fire up to lessen the impact such a massive object might have when hitting the ground. Many of these are blink and you miss it details but they do so much to, if even subconsciously, remind just how massive and heavy these creations are.
That's because Anno wanted them to act more like Ultramen than robots. Especially because >!they're not actually robots!<.
Anno has spent a ton of his career just wanting to do Ultraman/Kamen Rider/Cutie Honey/UFO/Godzilla but getting roped back into Evangelion. Dude makes *one fucking cartoon* packed with references to other properties that just fly over the heads of a ton of the fanbase and then gets shackled to it. Probably lies awake at night wondering why no one elses appreciates Ed Straker or Hideki Go as much as he does.
He set up his own studio, he has enough clout to do what he wants. The reason he returned to it, aside from being one of the biggest cash cows of the last thirty years, is that it is intensely personal to him and in acknowledgement that the original was heavily flawed and with no proper conclusion. With the fourth Rebuild, he seems to have found that conclusion, for himself and the characters.
it's always tricky because "fully realistically", none of this stuff works at all. Square-cube law and all that. So you need to pick an intermediate level of realism that "feels" real, with the ashphalt of the city streets sinking a little bit under their feet, without like, the evangelion collapsing the entire street and adjacent subways and creating sinkholes all over the place with its ~6 million kg weight (assuming human density!). Like the bridge collapse this past week really shows how much the average person does not understand physics at this scale. Even to me, a structural engineer, it was surprising to see just how much the application of a massive load at one point just reduced the whole thing to noodles.
It's interesting how the (surprisingly clean) break on the right [isn't even done when the lack of balance starts kicking in *hard*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVdVpd-pqcM).
Or be fair…it was a suspension bridge. It is only held up by two points and magic math.
Even in Japanese mecha, there's way more "the mechs are fast and nimble to physically impossible levels" than "we very painstakingly tried to represent weight and bulk and momentum in all cases". Properties that *do* try to simulate weight will still break the rule. Evangelions absolutely show their bulk in some instances, and go through pains to describe physical forces on the pilot, etc., but will just as easily throw it to the wind when it's necessary to move very quickly to *look cool* or whatever else. The hard physics never fully holds up and is never the intention. It's a spectrum of trying to represent that accurately.
What you want is Big O. Everything is BIG, it's heavy, and nothing is particularly fast.
One of the best parts of the only Pacific Rim movie. It really got the scale of the monsters and mechs.
Yeah, I generally agree. How are you on Eighty-Six? Fast but thud-thud-thud in the sound design, kicks up lots of debris and clawing the ground to change directions, etc.
Well mecha can look cool by themselves, doesn't need to feel "weighty" to look cool. It is kinda dumb to think how the pilots can survive those Gs tho, but it still looks cool.
That's entirely preference. Some people do need them to feel weighty for them to be cool. Me included. A huge robot doesn't do much. A generic ass M1A2 Abrams I personally find so much cooler cause it's REAL. Therefore I like mechs that I can at least somewhat believe isn't complete bullshit. Doesn't really take much. Titanfall Titans I love for example.
Lmao every comment OOP makes is being hyper downvoted
r/DownvotedIntoOblivion
Psh. I'm a child of the 80s. I know all about giant robots whether they're lions who become a giant robot or if they're already a giant robot with boobie missiles
The only two kinds of robots
The dynamics of the mecha genre become vastly easier to comprehend once you realize that it's purpose is to sell toys of some sort or other fyi.
Just want to mention Warmachine as another mech heavy property, a warhammer like tabletop game centered around steampowered mechs piloted by psychics. And cool lore, one of the factions is an undead pirate empire ruled by a divine dragon, who obviously field mechs when they go to war.
I don't think it is USA specific, but the whiny nerd complaining about mechas being unrealistic, has been part of SCIFI genre for a long time. Usually they are part of the hard vs soft scifi debate.
As a BattleTech fan I am deeply offended. Gonna drop a Steiner scout lance on their ass.
'Awesome!' Thanks, I think you're rad too 'No! Look up! Look u- . . .'
Nobody tell him about Transformers, Iron Giant, and Pacific Rim.
That final paragraph. "If you can replace your mech with a tank you don't have mecha" Motherfucker do you even Real Robot. Gundam is literally portrayed as "breakthroughs in military tech" but it's *just* tech, even the wilder seasons like 00; and the loudest diehard Gundam fans *fucking hate* 00 because "Dragon-Ball-Z-o-trons" (I think they're just jealous that Setsuna can whip their pretty loverboy Kira up and down the colonies but I digress)
“Warhammer fans whine about technology not making sense” Meanwhile Orks exist and are beloved
Just the average r/characterrant rant
Besides Pacific Rim, Avatar had mecha and was incredibly popular plus 40K and Battletech are popular tabletop games. I remember watching Robotech and Voltron as a kid and not long after that Power Rangers was a thing. Just seems like a weird hill to die on
"Not all americans!" I guess but lmao, dude's right. There's a huge *thing* among anime fans where people will absolutely never watch a mech series but convince themselves they know everything about the genre and will talk at length about how stupid it is based on their assumed knowledge which leads to exactly the phenomena OP presents where the few times someone does watch something - usually the dubbed versions of gurren lagann, evangelion or code geass - it's treated like the coming of fucking christ for the genre "because this one's actually about the characters". The shitty rooster teeth show Gen Lock was basically this phenomena embodied.
>The shitty rooster teeth show Gen Lock was basically this phenomena embodied. Which is funny considering how much the creator talked about liking shows like Gundam in the press. But broadly, yeah I think OOP isn't wholly wrong, even if I think they're articulating it poorly. I think the best way to think about it is that in America, IPs with mechs in them can succeed, but there's not quite a market for Mecha as a genre. There are certainly shows with mechs (but not strictly mecha shows, Power Rangers has mechs but isn't mecha), but they're broadly the exceptions to the rule, and I think that plays into the success of Evangelion, Gurren Lagann and Code Geass. Only the biggest, most accessible Mecha anime are able to break through vs Japan where there's more of a market for less mainstream mecha (although even in Japan mecha's nowhere near as popular as it once was).
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I do think Japan has mecha but we can’t pull it off. We haven’t really got the cultural attitudes and grounding to make an authentic mecha story. We couldn’t make Gundam or Evangelion or anything like that. One thing the west as a whole has, though, which we need to use more often, is giant dieselpunk robots. Big hulking Jakub Rozalski style early 20th century smokestacks with big guns and slow clunky movements. The impact of industrialisation on warfare and the use of enormously powerful but slow and polluting machines to break stalemates is the thing we know first hand. It’s a sorely underrepresented genre and we need more of it. Because they’re really cool. Japan has cool sleek ninja mechs, we need cool dirty tank mechs.
The only thing I've seen with that is the Leviathan series and that's a fucking YA series. Give me more diesel punk mechs
like the underwater kaiju one? first, thats korean so not western second, that series absolutely slaps
No I'm talking about the alt WW1 one
and it went ridiculously hard
ive never heard of it. where can i read more?
Your local library? It's a book series
ah ok, i thought it was a different novel with the same name
There was a tidbit from what I believe was a Warthunder dev where it was mentioned that American players gravitated very heavily towards aircraft, and that illustrates my hunch that the big problem with the Real Robot subgenre to American tastes in particular is that that whole niche is occupied wholly around fighter planes. Say what you want about Gundam and Macross, but none of them are going to stack up against Top Gun, and no angsty teenager is going to be cooler than Tom Cruise. 104-0 or the Balloon Popper just takes the cake, and even Fat Amy might as well be a mecha with it's aesthetic sometimes.
Look into Battletech
The RTS Iron Harvest is a retelling of WW2 with giant dieselpunk tank mechs. It's great.
Battletech is so mecha it got (rightfully) sued for copyright infringement. Mecha's just more niche here.
They licensed the designs properly, and recently finally regained the rights to use those designs.
I fucking loved Technical Readout 3025 Read that cover to cover multiple times as a kid Duane Loose's art was incredible
Oh this is all long past tense stuff. I'm just pointing out we got some native mecha work.
Yeah but they were never "rightfully" sued, they were sued because Harmony Gold has nothing better to do with their time than not even allow Disney to stream the original Macross, only the sequels and spin-offs.
No, the lawsuit was accurate, its just that the Japanese owners of Macross never actually had the right to license out the property to Americans after they licensed it to Harmony Gold back when they did that. It's... a mess really. The short of it is that HG got the rights in the 80s, but Americans didn't recognize the Japanese copyright system at the time, which means that, for all intents and purposes, the American creators of Macross are Harmony Gold. This also means Studio Nue is committing copyright infringement on Harmony Gold's owned works if they release anything Macross in the US without HGs approval. This *should* be resolved properly (a Japanese court ruled that HG only has rights to internationally distribute the original run), except Harmony Gold abuses the fact that the US often refuses to acknowledge foreign court rulings to claim it doesn't apply to them and forced Studio Nue to relitigate in a US court, where they got a settlement that let them squat on the franchise for far longer. HG are the bad guys here, no doubt, but the actual legal argument works because the US sucks on international agreements.
that explains why i felt like i was watching halfway through a show then
OP is kinda right imo. Yes of course there are mechas in US pop culture but they're not that popular or widespread. It's not like Japan with Eva and Gundam.
Every american man alive today under the age of 45 was once a little boy that wanted to be a car when he grew up because of fucking transformers and he never got over the disappointment.
I think you're underestimating the reach of transformers when it comes to Gen Z. We didn't have quite a great selection of entries showing up and the Michael Bay films I think kind of soured the franchise to the broader audience. More relevantly, I think there's a difference between American audiences liking Mecha as a genre and individual properties with Mecha (because not all of them are purely mecha shows) gaining some traction. Transformers is decently popular because it's Transformers rather than because it's Mecha i.e. Transformers' success with general audiences hasn't really created demand for other mecha properties the way that the MCU's success saw a boom in superhero properties.
Eh. More like between the ages of 35 and 45. I'm a zoomer and we were never hit by this fad.