Pet peeve: the primer includes Robotech/Harmony Gold (ip squatters) rather than Macross/Studio Nue (actual pioneers). The Macross Design Works series are much better artbooks, and actually contains production notes because they _actually produced Macross_.
Also, there has been a bunch of follow-on Macross media that shows gradual development of the same mecha model series in-universe, with changes to control schemes, production models of machines that were prototypes in previous series, weird offshoots as an explicit result of the complications of military vehicle development, and so on.
FASA is as shameful about never crediting creators as HG. Kawamori stated in an interview that they overextended the "package illustration" rights that they bought to Studio Nue mecha:
I'm not saying FASA is in the right here, but it's HG that sued FASA and continues to do so (harebrained, piranha...) post settlement. In fact, HG claims rights to designs that aren't from anything they licensed, including original FASA designs.
HG seems to operate like they own "Mecha" outside of Japan.
If I ever get fabulously wealthy, I'm totally commissioning the construction of a 1:1 scale Mad Cat to be placed across the street from Harmony Gold offices.
Current holders of FASA's IP are getting sued by HG for designs completely unrelated to those, not just the fixed, non-violating versions of the Unseen mechs but completely unrelated original designs.
FASA had a license that they misinterpreted to the point of abuse and they settled that lawsuit ages ago.
Harmony Gold tries to sue tons of companies trying to claim infringement on Macross IP for things that are unrelated. For example, Hasbro is the US licensee of the Transformers IP and HG has tried suing them for violating their Macross rights with _Transformers characters_.
Harmony Gold and its founder act like criminals. That's not hyperbole either, look up their multi-million dollar tax fraud cases.
It's weird to claim that a studio which flagrantly plagiarizes "also has some redeeming original work." It's not like there's this clear line in the creative process that can partition theft, derivative-but-still-infringing, and "merely inspired" homages. Once you commit the original sin of failing to cite your sources, it's all suspect. I don't think HG should take them to court, but I _do_ wish Big West could.
Nobody's stopping Harebrained Schemes or Piranha Games from making that credit. Call me when they do. What's wild is that FASA _used to_ (Studio Nue _produced the Japanese BattleTech handbook_: http://www.gearsonline.net/series/battletech/), and then changed their tune when it became clear that it was a legal liability to, you know, admit to being plagiarists.
BTW Hasbro _did_ market the Macross Strike Valkyrie as a Transformer, "Jetfire."
The lawsuit against Hasbro was dismissed with prejudice. So clearly the court did not agree on any infringement.
To discount the whole of other original work that has been done in the decades indicates more fanaticism than just a strong bias on your part and honestly I find despicable. I won't discuss this with you further.
Meanwhile, if you want to play a game that supports the original creators, you can play Armored Core or the more recent Daemon X Machina, which "bought the band back together", including Shoji Kawamori doing lead mechanical design :)
While I agree with you I still think much "lack of progress" is down to mismanagement.
I enjoyed MWO a bit. But after sooo long it didn't go anywhere other than team deathmatch.
Really?!? A whole universe of lore. Of heroic stories and legendary characters. Many novels (some better than others admittedly) in the same universe. A whole aerotech and space warfare angle never properly explored.
So. Friggin'. Much. They. Could. Do.
And they stopped at team deathmatch.
The owners strangled the IP with zero ambition and maximum "for the dollar" care...
HBS - who seem to be good at the story telling side - seem to be convincing them otherwise but it is well past due.
Played Battletech game for many hours. Much of it with mods made by the people who care.
I am still waiting to buy the latest Mechwarrior, after it comes out on Steam. And after the modders fix it. Maybe September.
I was mainly referring to the tabletop game then the IP itself, but fair. MWO is an abomination, but at least was better then MW5.
The HBS game is great in a lot of ways and it's a shame that they didn't build it a little bit more flexibly to be a tabletop-replacement. MegaMek is really long in the tooth.
The lore is damn near unapproachable at this point if you didn't come up with it alongside the game, especially with today's cultural sensibilities. Much of it boils down to "space racists". I think it's best to treat with broad brush strokes.
I think the IP future is more computer based these days. Logistics favours computer games unless you enjoy the specific activities involved like painting, terrain modelling etc.
I agree that the "nation per house" theme has dated poorly but you may note I was talking more about the characters and stories. Most of which are not house royalty.
The story telling potential is there and could allow for such a variety of gameplay experiences the sky is the limit.
I have hopes that HBS peoples will gain control of the IP and leave the original owners to do "Stan Lee"-like cameos...
Missing from the list, and one of the best SF animes I've seen: Top wo Nerae! Gunbuster, or just Gunbuster. Mecha play a big role, but not the only role: there are alien invaders, spaceships approaching lightspeed, giant space battles, etc. etc. but all draped in hard SF:
It's probably one of the best PC games I've ever played, and at the time was magical. The game was very well done; stylistic and atmospheric excellence. Monolith knocked it out of the park.
To my knowledge there's been nothing like it since. It's a shame, because the market would eat it right up.
There was a small boom this past decade that seems to be over atm. Nothing groundbreaking, but some decent entertainment (and also some I would never, ever recommend, either due to quality or objectionable content). Off the top of my head: several Gundam entries - including AGE, IBO, Reconguista, Unicorn, Thunderbolt, the OO movie, and the Build Fighters and Build Divers series - Rideback, Star Driver, Valvrave, Suisei no Gargantia, Majestic Prince, Cross Ange, Buddy Complex, Aldnoah.Zero, Darling in the Franxx, Heroman, SSSS Gridman, the Evangelion Rebuild series, several mecha musume series, Macross Delta, Muv-Luv Alternative, several Code Geass sequels... I'm sure there are more. One might even consider Attack On Titan a sort of mecha series (it certainly has more in common with Gundam than, say, Godzilla). I think it's only been in the past year that we haven't seen multiple concurrent releases.
(I want to reiterate that these are not in any way recommendations or endorsements. I watched and enjoyed many of these shows, but also dropped or never began several because of the questionable nature of one or more of their aspects.)
> One might even consider Attack On Titan a sort of mecha series
My take on it as well. The titans are not robots, but they're mecha-size creatures, and their pilots have a designated cockpit, which they open occasionally to interact with others. The other classic mecha scene is the take from inside the cockpit, so you can see the pilot's reactions.
They're mecha- only biological in origin. There is precedence also, in the Tager faction from the RPG Cthulutech:
Factions include the "Tagers," a group of warriors who work for the mysterious Eldritch Society and bond with alien symbionts that produce alien-like suits of flesh over their bodies, giving them enhanced strength and other abilities.
These are basically flesh mecha, though it's been a while since I read the rulebook and I don't remember if they're large or small. Anycase I wonder if they could have been an inspiration for the titans.
[SPOILER SPOILER] There is a hint of alien provenance of the titans on the AoT world. That thing that looks like a slug?
Edit: Oops. It's really been a while since I read the Cthulutech manual. The bio-mecha are the New Earth Government's Engels, which are Evangelion-big, with pilots always on the cusp of insanity:
Engels are giant monstrous creatures fused with human and Nazzadi DNA, encased in locking mecha armour, and controlled by a pilot sitting inside a uterine-like control chamber within the Engel. They are essentially organic mecha. The pilot controls the Engel via the Engel Synthesis Interface, or ESI, and often bonds emotionally with it during their service lifetime. Engels have been known to go on rampages provoked by bloodlust or strong emotions, and consequently are considered very dangerous battlefield weapons.
I've always thought that one sadly unexamined aspect of mecha is how incredibly vulnerable pilots are outside their machines, and how incredibly dangerous they become once they manage to get in. AOT did make some strides there, by spending a lot of time focusing on how crucial to the shifters' effectiveness their ability to actually shift in a given circumstance is (and how much damage they do once their containment, both physical and strategic, is inevitably breached).
Unicorn was seriously epic. The opening battle between the Stark Jegan and Kshatriya has to be one of the most blood-boiling battles in the Gundam universe. Hiroyuki Sawano’s music also really helped.
Depending on who you ask, pretty much everything but the Gundam Builds.
I jest. But, to be specific: Valvrave and Cross Ange were criticized for their depictions of rape; several series feature racy imagery, sometimes of underage characters (including the otherwise fantastic Gargantia - skip the dance scene); AoT, IBO, and a few others skirt some politically-sensitive material. And, frankly, a good number of the shows mentioned end up being offensively mediocre, squandering some quite strong openings (Rideback and Aldnoah.Zero especially). Probably the most objectionable thing of all.
Objectionable content aside, I would agree that outside of the Gundam Build shows, the quality of that list is pretty poor and there was absolutely _nothing_ in the market for Super Robot fans. TTGL set a really high bar.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed quite a few of the others - Valvrave was a glorious trainwreck, IBO finally committed to and even doubled-down on subverting the expectations of gunota, and Majestic Prince was a solid action dramedy that proved CG mecha was viable and beautifully prefaced Orange's work on Houseki no Kuni and Beastars. (I mean, I can't fault any series that can do this to a Hiraiface. https://imgur.com/a/Eey0x31)
I dunno where we go after TTGL as far as Super Robot goes. It finally defined and crystallized the essence of that genre - the GAR - and in its thorough reconstruction didn't leave much room. You basically have to introduce real elements to not be a retread. I am glad we got Pacific Rim, that was close. If Super Robot gets its character from emotional directness and intensity, you might have to follow TTGL with something more Ideon or Bokurano-like, turned up to 11.
Thing is, after GaoGaiGar, I was saying that series would be impossible to top. It took a decade, but TTGL did happen.
I think leaning into super robot tropes might be the thing, rather than some mix of real robot shows. It's not like those are doing any better in the market right now.
New Super Robot show with a brand new IP this summer, for the first time in more than a decade: Megaton Musashi.
Sadly Mecha is indeed mostly dead. I'm not sure where you can take the Super Robot genre after TTGL, GaoGaiGar and Getter Robo: Armageddon.
The most popular Gundam shows as of late have been the Build shows and honestly I don't mind in the slightest. They're so fun.
The suggestions in the link are really weird though. It's like a real surface understanding targeted at people who only have been watching Anime for a decade or less. There's tons more good stuff worth watching and mostly from the 80s.
> I'm not sure where you can take the Super Robot genre after TTGL, GaoGaiGar and Getter Robo: Armageddon.
What about the real robot genre? Gundam shows are great because they seem to be grounded in reality despite all the futuristic technology. It's so fun just observing the immense attention to detail the creators put into their work.
I don't know how much attention you've been paying to Gundam series, but they're pretty much all trending towards being direct-to-video now and sales are in significant decline.
The Build shows buck this trend and are a huge success. And model kits are selling more than ever.
The apetite for those stories just isn't there anymore.
Coincidentally I recently started watching the Pacific Rim anime series (on Netflix). I found it surprisingly great; much darker than any of the movies, real character archs, great Kaiju, highly recommend.
Word of warning to anyone that might give Neon Genesis Evangelion a watch after seeing this - a lot of people include it in the "mecha" genre but if you're looking for a light-hearted, Saturday-morning, big-robots-punching-each-other kind of experience that's definitely not what Evangelion is.
It certainly includes big robots as a plot point, but that's really just a backdrop for the character drama and deeper (and pretty heavy at times) emotional themes of the story. Things get very avant-garde towards the end, and the studio producing the series basically ran out of money to animate the last few episodes so you'll have to jump between the movie adaptations if you want a complete experience. I'd still probably recommend at least giving it a try sometime, as it's personally one of my favorite anime series and a landmark work in the medium as a whole.
I'm pretty adamant that the unconventional TV ending was not due to a lack of budget, but rather from the messy production schedule. Anno did something similar with his earlier Gunbuster, where the final episode is monochrome and the action scenes are just pans and zooms of still frames.
Confusing isn't really the term I'd use, I think complex probably fits better. It is incredibly dense and there is a lot to take in. I can understand why its reputation is controversial. Among friends I know who I've recommended it to there's roughly a 50/50 split between people who love it and people who can't stand it so it is a fairly divisive work.
I saw the series when I was a teenager it first aired on Australian television (SBS) in late 90's it had a profound impact on me growing up. I'd never seen anything like it before then and it absolutely blew me away.
I personally think the whole series in an absolute masterwork. I do agree with the original commenter though it is kind of an outlier amongst mecha genre.
Looking at Anno's influences, it really draws upon a hodgepodge of non-mecha media like tokusatsu and sci-fi to the point where the inclusion of robots seems like a marketing pull. Interestingly, the Evas are are rarely, if ever, referred to as "robots." They're officially classified as 人造人間, "artificial humanoids," which is apparently what robot-like things were called before Čapek invented the word.
In an odd way, it's the same lightning-in-a-bottle formula that made the Golden Era of The Simpsons so endearing: a deconstruction of a worn-out formula coupled with shameless-yet-tasteful references to other media.
They really are artificial humanoids (less artificial and more humanoid than most characters and most viewers would like), with enough additional inanimate components to obtain enough of a giant mecha "look and feel" to cause a wrong first impression. But let's avoid excessive spoilers, since the nature of EVAs is a major plot issue.
I'm not really into either "mecha" (or anime for that matter). But man I loved "Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot" in the U.S. in the 1970's. (I know, I know — it was "Giant Robo" in Japan.)
Like "B movies" this was "B television". Easy to dismiss — but having seen the series again (with horrible dubbing) as an adult, I can see now why young me was attracted to it: there was an attempt at a story arc across the series with the robot becoming more human and less machine-like by the end (in fact, disobeying a direct order in the final episode).
There was something kind of weird and wild about the times when small, independent television stations across the midwest would try to go toe to toe with the "Big Three" by importing "Speed Racer", "Ultraman", and other bargain television from overseas for the after-school time slot.
Similar, I didn't get any anime exposure really in the 70's. My intro to mecha was through Space Giants (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061299/) after school on TBS.
Mecha holds a really special place in my heart. From watching Filipino localizations of Voltes V, to watching Gundam and building Gunpla as a kid, to experiencing Evangelion for the first time as a teenager, I owe a lot of my interests and identity to mecha. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that my current pursuit of a PhD in robotics stems from my love of the genre.
While I don't think mecha will ever be on its way out, it is concerning that many of the recent works keeping the genre afloat are from established properties like Gundam and Evangelion. I can't think of any original series after TTGL (and, by extension, Pacific Rim) that really piqued my interest. It's a shame considering how dominant it used to be; Astro Boy was a prototype not just for the mecha genre, but for anime as a medium.
Several of these titles are on Netflix. Evangelion, Gurren Lagann, at least two Gundams.
Gundam Unicorn is beautifully animated and very detailed. I notice something new every time I watch it. Very fun and a great introduction to the genre.
[I moved this comment; it was accidentally under the wrong parent.]
Netflix sometimes(?) carries "Knights of Sidonia". I only ever saw season 1, but I was really surprised by how bad (IMO, obviously) the animation was [0].
It reinforced my perception that "Netflix Original" was a mark of poor quality.
[0] And my standards are probably lower than most of this crowd. I barely noticed the animation quality of Arifureta, because of how much I liked that series' other aspects.
I wasn't too impressed with the animation of Netflix original anime either. Netflix Originals in general seem to be very low quality shows these days. It appears competition with other copyright holders drove them to pump out large quantities of shows with less focus on quality.
"Netflix Original" anime (and many other foreign media, e.g. K-Dramas) aren't produced by Netflix; Netflix just throws money at them to get exclusive US distribution rights. There's competition here, but it's with other US anime distributors to get rights to Japanese-produced content aimed at a Japanese audience.
Can someone guide me to a shorter synopsis so that I can justify purchasing Gunpla to my family?
I bought a very tiny one (SD) with a friend when we were in Taiwan based off of his knowledge and I love how they look. I want to convince myself (and my wife) that I should be getting a bigger MG piece.
> so that I can justify purchasing Gunpla to my family
I don't think you need cultural significance as a supporting argument: the better Gunpla kits are good toys, with more accessories and better poseability than most dolls, a fun introduction to model kits, and a nice presence to stand guard on a shelf.
a post on mecha... without go nagai and the others superobots???? Mazinger (Great and Z), Grendizer, Daitarn 3, the various Getter Robo, but also Vultus V, Balatack, Daltanious, Gordian, Trider G7, Zambot 3, Albegas and some other thousand...
