Why are there so few western mecha series? And why is it always super shit? Where are my reals? I want Gundam but MURRICAN, dammit!
Also, combiners are fricking stupid.
Mecha
Why are there so few western mecha series? And why is it always super shit? Where are my reals? I want Gundam but MURRICAN, dammit!
Also, combiners are fricking stupid.
gundam gays are so fricking moronic
Said the actual gay
... is what I would say if I was an actual homosexual.
GWitch, Gundam Wing, and Seed combined are less homosexual than (you)
>Why are there so few western mecha series?
Cause it's mostly a japanese genre and gunpla as toys are more suited to teens and adults than children.
What is Build Fighters?
The Rinko mecha.
Because people like Tom Rothman exist
There are also a couple of /m/ comics and cartoons but nowhere near prevalent outside of existing franchises like Transformers and Voltron which brings up one reason why there are so few western /m/ content
Toy sales or lack thereof for a new IP
Action cartoons already have had a rough history after all so mixing them with a genre niche to Americans (especially the real robot genre) is gonna make things even more risky
Because there are thousands of Japanese mecha shows and it's cheaper to import and dub/sub them than to commission new shows.
Fifth post best post
Also, another thing
This kind of relates to when I was looking at old trends and wondering why there weren't as many Pokemon "clones" as you'd expect during Pokemania the same way you'd see TMNT get a crap ton of derivatives during Turtlemania
At best you'd have incredibly niche and forgotten stuff like Creepy Freaks and Skannerz
And then it hit me, it's because large companies would rather just license out stuff from Japan to compete with rather than build something in house
Hell, when Cardcaptor Sakura was brought to the USA it was localized hard to be as unisex appealing as possible to cash in on the gender neutral Pokemon audience despite the show itself being an unapologetic magical girl series
Marketing would actually hype up Li as Sakura's equal and even had his debut be the first episode to air as a result
It's like why when Power Rangers became big, Saban went ahead and licensed other Toei tokusatsu series' or how DiC went ahead and worked with Tsuburaya with the sole attempt at riding on Rangermania that was 100% original being Tattoeed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills
This extends to Western /m/
Transformers, Voltron, BattleTech, Go-Bots, etc all have roots in being Japanese imports and I recall one Anon saying that the reason why Hasbro went ahead and licensed other robot toys for Transormers was to wienerblock any competitors from doing so
I'd like to talk more but I need rest, it's late
Good night
>MUH TOYS
Every time with this bullshit lie of an excuse. I swear, the entire human species has been brainwashed by corporate bullshit.
homie there's literally a manga about Tomino making Mobile Suit Gundam and dealing with toy companies was part of it
Because toy sales were what funded those shows
Even it isn't toys, some company needs to benefit for there to be funding. whether you're selling cereals, Japanese sausages, Kidz Bop CDs, whatever.
If I had to guess, the concept seems weird to westerners and Americans in particular?
The Diaclone toys were quite clearly meant to be mechs, if you ever wondered why you could open the chest of the original Optimus Prime toy, it's because the Battle Convoy version originally came with pilots that were removed from the American release. Yet for some bizarre reason, despite most of them turning into normal vehicles and the notion of them being piloted was clearly built into the design, Hasbro still chose to make them self-sufficient aliens with no human origin at all, quite possibly because Americans see robots and assume they must control themselves. Of course the whole "Aliens disguised as Human Machines" is possibly much more strange than mechs regardless of your preconceived notions of what robots should be like.
Not that the basic idea is foreign to Americans of course. Aside from the armor being just small enough to wrap around Tony's body, Iron Man isn't too far removed from the Mecha genre and that was 9 years before Mazinger. But there are some asterisks attached to this stuff, like how Iron Man is mostly just bridging the gap with superhumans or how the Walkers in Star Wars are barely relevant.
I really think it's just the "robots should walk on their own" attitude.
>I really think it's just the "robots should walk on their own" attitude.
The attitude you are pulling directly out of your ass. Seriously, if you don't actally know why Americans are paradoxically disdainful of giant robots, you can just say so instead of making up bullshit.
Robots don't deserve rights btw.
Pretty sure the main answer is that there just plain hasn't been an American made show about a giant robot that reached the super huge mainstream popularity levels to inspire about ten more knockoffs that constitute a whole new genre, which later inspires more content down the road.
Nearly every reasonably popular big robot show is Japanese, a sequel/remake of a Japanese series, or a parody of a Japanese series.
A few responses in here got it right.
It's a little bit of this
and this
There have not been any major successes that turned the genre into a huge thing in the west that had lots of other creators making their own robot show. It just remained niche. There is no common familiarity that makes it a safer genre for studios to try. Plus no bigger successes makes it harder for the common public to digest since Godzilla movies have been considered more of a wacky goofy parody to hatewatch or make fun of than legit movies to more people.
Insightful answer, thank you.
Do you weebs not realize that mecha is niche in japan? BattleTech has probably made more money than any mecha series that isn't Gundum.
Yes, however, I am inclined to believe Macross, Yamato, Mazinger could be potential rivals. Lifetime sales data for all would be useful.
I don't even think the whole "westerners hate mecha" is true anytime there's anything remotely decent they eat it up (like with transformers, even though I consider them robots not mechs, or in live action Pacific Rim). It's just the lack of good Western mecha content that's the issue.
I for one think it's quite true. Transformers fundamentally isn't quite robot fiction, it's superhero or ayylmao fiction. It has a robot skin and some metalheads really like it but it's a very western story in the sense that it's about a very specific, constantly recycled and reused cast of individuals fighting each other in what amounts to duels. You can try to apply this same argument to mecha in general involving human characters, and it's true, but Transformers isn't quite IMO about the same kind of really autistic love for machinery that spurs people to actually want to drive or work on cars, tanks, planes, etc.
Pacific Rim is a bit of a red herring IMO as well. The first movie was "well received" but this was thanks to its international release. Back home in the USA the movie got very lukewarm reception. The entire thing was also heralded by a weeb who actually appreciated mecha as it already existed.
Again, there's zero question that in the west there are talented mechanical designers, and there's no question there's people who like robot media for the robots. Look in that fricking shithole twitter and you'll see talented, skilled people making excellentship, robot, or other machine designs. But who is getting the jobs? What's getting made? And is anyone buying?
>I for one think it's quite true. Transformers fundamentally isn't quite robot fiction, it's superhero or ayylmao fiction.
Thanks for stating that I could never count Transformers as mecha but didn't see where to really place them until you said that, they really are just metal cape shitters lol.
>Look in that fricking shithole twitter and you'll see talented, skilled people making excellentship, robot, or other machine designs. But who is getting the jobs? What's getting made? And is anyone buying?
Yeah that is a good point meddling executives and the current push for certain animated media to prevail over others puts the chances of having good original western mecha at a disadvantage sadly. Sucks too since the whole "selling toys" excuse doesn't really matter since these animated works aren't limited to children's networks solely anymore
Half the main G1 cast having legit superpowers also drives this one home.
>What's getting made? And is anyone buying?
That reminds me of a point an Anon made, Alex Milne's a really good comic artist for robots but because western /m/edia (especially comics) are such a niche he's stuck doing Transformers smut commissions
>literally nobody knows why western audiences reject giant robots
The frick.
You reject the people who actually made the shit from which all modern American mecha are descended. You are a part of the problem without even realizing it, but I won't write about that yet.
Pic related. Battletech, one of the single arguably largest poster children of American mecha centric media, was quite literally born by tracing Japanese designs, and very poorly at that. After that, the genetics remained.
No, there are definite and actual reasons which we can pinpoint but there's multiple. There are cultural and economic factors at play at the same time.
I'll start with a very simple example. One of the single biggest robot centric pieces of American media and by extension common American thinking about robots is Terminator and Terminator styled media. If you ask Japanese about robots, one of the single biggest originating examples is Astro Boy, a series which both follows a robot which almost always tries to help people, has significantly more complicated themes about robots, which normally want to help and serve humans.
This is something I could and will write about for a little while if this thread stays up.
Japan has been making giant robot stuff since at least the 60s. Gigantor etc were pretty popular shows for a long time. Plus the kaiju films and series also kept the concept of the big monster/robot in the public view for decades. Audiences were used to the big character fighting in downtown among the buildings.
Americans had a long problem of sticking random prejudices into their output. Kaiju movies were largely considered silly and stupid. With more people watching them to make fun of them than actually enjoy it. Robots are nerdy and only dorks take it seriously when it's anything but a horror movie. Studios did not want to make silly dumb movies, those are not prestigious. Directors did not want to make nerd media, or something that critics and audiences will make fun of and hurt their reputation.
FASA actually licensed the designs from TCI. The extra linework is basically greebling.
A mecha otaku would probably not be into machinery outside giant robot except for maybe minimechs and power armor. The other side to your argument is that having everything designed by otaku will eventually get you increasingly repetitive and derivative designs as inspiration pools stagnate.
Anon, my friend, I don't give a single shit about whether Battletech was "allowed" to use Dougram designs, and they used other shows' designs alongside those. The point is that those shows became the fundamental basis of all Battletech design and western design in general for decades to come. You are also conveniently ignoring what "mecha" actually means to nips, which is machinery in general, not giant robots specifically.
You're the one making the implication that BattleTech is a ripoff instead an actual business arrangement to use existing designs. And you're trying to "but actually" the term mecha despite it's clear context in this thread to refer specifically to giant robots. You're also greatly overestimating the awareness of BattleTech within wider culture.
Hold up. I said Battletech traced stuff, which is true objectively, but if we must get into semantics, I never said anything was stolen- everything which was taken was taken legally by people under the impression they had an option and right to do so. I'll gladly acknowledge if I overestimate awareness of Battletech as a western mecha property, but I struggle to think of any others with nearly as much prominence that aren't Transformers.
No, I'm not trying to "but actually" mecha as in giant robots, which is why later I started posting spaceships. I was using mecha, as in "mecha otaku", as in metalheads and people who care about the depiction of machines, which I went into detail about in my wall of text post.That's literally the point of the post with the tank image, that "mecha otaku" doesn't just refer to giant robots but machine nerds.
We had Shogun Warriors. And Hedrax.
Battletech. The Big O, Megas XLR.
Pacific Rim.
I guess Gammarauders was more Kaiju.
Armoured Gideon. Metalzoic. Dinotrux. The Iron Giant. Robo Machines. Sym-Bionic Titan. Robotix. Zoids. Starriors.
Nah, we got LOTS of mecha, you just have to go looking a little harder.
Missing the forest for the trees. Two of your examples are anime, two suffered absolutely horrible deaths, and many others are dead and forgotten whomst'ves. If anything, again, this is extremely fricking telling as to just how mecha is viewed in the West.
>Nah, we got LOTS of [genre], you just have to go looking a little harder.
have a nice day, disingenuous frickrag.
One day, one day samegay will learn what "disingenuous" means.
Ok sorry I meant to say moronic instead of disingenuous
See this? Say what you will about it but this is actual machine porn. This comes from love of a universe, concern and interest about how machinery in that universe works, and drawing it well. There are western machine pornographers: where is their work in the mainstream?
He's not wrong thoughever
Big O is literally anime.
Yeah he is being disingenuous even more so the fact that most of what he listed came out over a decade ago at minimum
Big O is anime, Zoids is anime, Shogun Warriors is all based on anime.
Oh wow I didn't know of the other 2 so it makes his list even less legitimate. Damn
Based western mech poster. Everyone else here are fake fans
Half the shit he posted was made in japan
>Battletech. The Big O
Black person those are literally anime
>Pacific Rim
Look how they massacred my boy. How can you trust the West with mecha when they literally booted Del Toro off Pacific Rim 2?
>Proceeds to list things that were one-off anomalies, flops or canceled as tax writeoffs
Wow...
Shogun Warriors is also just reskinned anime
What about the Marvel comic?
Oh please link me the Battletech anime. I'll wait. I mean I wouldn't want you to think I'm being disingenuous.
YOU DARE TO REFUSE MY BATCHALL!?
PATCHOULI IS FOR HIPPIES YOU FILTHY CLANNER
Don't forget The Big Guy And Rusty as well as ExoSquad. Runts of the litter but still mecha.
Ah damn, in fact, in my frustration, I didn't even fricking remember that "Shogun Warriors" is, once again, entirely (pilfered!) anime examples. Here we have Reideen, Great Mazinger, Getter Robo G, Gaiking, and Daimos, all of whom had "western" labels slapped on them.
I ought to dig up the Robotech Dougram comics. The geniuses in charge of those decided to take a perfectly good human on human guerilla war setting and turn it into talking robots fighting ayylmaos. Dougram being so stupidly popular with westerners such that it was copied not once but twice ought to also tell you a lot.
Mecha is shit genre, and one of the few genres worse than capetrash, including the rest of tokusatsu and zombies.
Something about this is almost poetic in how ridiculous it is.
Whhy Dougram is talking??
A story about guerilla warfare, revolution, politics, and a father and son butting heads was too gay and lame so instead we got ayylmaos and brain transplants and all that jazz.
Playing pic related probably went a long way in stopping me from being a weeb. I can't take japanese mecha seriously.
Taking it seriously is kind of the problem though. You are not supposed to. It's big robots holding big guns, none of that is serious.
But it is more of a cultural view point and what people are used to forming what they will accept. Japan has lots and lots of big robot media so they are used to seeing and accepting a giant robot doing backflips and slicing cheaper robots apart with a giant lightsaber.
Meanwhile Americans are used to superheroes and never really ask questions when Superman lifts up an oil tanker and flies off with it, or Aquaman mind controls a pod of whales. They are used to it and do not thinks it's weird to see a guy in bright colored tights fly so they can take it seriously. It's all familiarity.
>Taking it seriously is kind of the problem though. You are not supposed to. It's big robots holding big guns, none of that is serious.
No, that's not true, while JP fans know a lot of this stuff isn't plausible the whole mentality is to absolutely take it seriously and suspend disbelief, but also being interested in the rules and history established in certain universes.
Exactly it's no different than cape shitters running around in funny costumes. Of course it's absurd to a degree but IN UNIVERSE it isn't and it's up to the writer to have it such that the person consuming the content can have the level of suspension of disbelief to go along with it.
>Exactly it's no different than cape shitters running around in funny costumes.
But that's the other thing, for DECADES Hollywood has messed with the superhero formulas to make the suspension of disbelief work with general audiences. Making Batman all black and the Joker's smile be the result of botched surgery, making the X-men wear all black, making Galactus a cloud, etc. It's not like they're making the concept whole-scale off the original IP.
Where as when Japan makes a live action adaptation they'll straight up keep the spiky anime hair as close as they can.
>"You're not supposed to take it seriously."
Not how that works. If you put out a product, I'm going to take it seriously, because I am trying to approach the work on its own terms. What, you want audiences to be disrespectful plebians? Come on.
>us Yanks
Speak for yourself. Combiners are a fricktarded concept in any context. The sheer logistics and impracticality would cause any professional engineer to immediately punch you in the face.
Do I have to though? Because depending on when you were born Devastator is older and has been more popular than whatever not combining robot media we Americans have been putting out. This should tell you a lot. Are you interested in hearing it? Or do you just wanr my (you)s? If you so wish i can try to do both.
Yes because little robots plugging into each other to make a bigger robot is an inherently stupid concept for stupid people that have no idea how machines even work.
>Not how that works. If you put out a product, I'm going to take it seriously, because I am trying to approach the work on its own terms. What, you want audiences to be disrespectful plebians? Come on.
No, this is what autistic people do. And they are eternally no fun allowed, fantasizing and using imagination is not real anti fun types.
>"Only autistic people respect art enough to take it seriously."
...
>literal rocket scientist
Challenger 2.0 incoming if this idiot is anywhere near involved with a launch.
Here's the part where we go
>It's a fricking cartoon...made to sell toys
No one should ever give a shit about how real it is or how plausible. The only thing that matters is does it look cool, would you want to buy that.
>>It's a fricking cartoon...made to sell toys
I don't care. You are still making a product, and that product is going to be scrutinized on its own terms.
>No one should ever give a shit about how real it is or how plausible.
And that attitude is why everyone is an ignorant moron who actively supports fascism. Anti-intellectualism is going to be the quite literal death of us all.
Thing is, no one in a studio gives a flying frick if some grown childless weirdo complains about it not being realistic or serious enough when they are in no way connected to the target demographic. Are not who they are targeting for the toys, and not who the advertisers are targeting when paying for episodes. If anything it has ever always been fully expected for boring adults to complain about how dumb the cartoon is. It's not going to have any bearing on the decisions when producing it.
Actually, I'll double (you) this because this is a really silly mindset to have and because I remembered pic related. Well done (you) farmer.
>Speak for yourself. Combiners are a fricktarded concept in any context. The sheer logistics and impracticality would cause any professional engineer to immediately punch you in the face.
There's something to be said where JP mecha designers will have ridiculous concepts but figure out how they could work, the American mentality is
>lol naval ships won't work in space, are you stupid?
Americans also loved Yamato and turned it into Star Blazers. Go figure.
>I take my cartoons extremely seriously!
Great you are the kind of butthole that forced Nolan and 2021 REAL Batman who is 110% REALLY REAL shit to become a reality. Frick you.
Tenkai Knights crashed and burned.
I think I could perhaps use this as a springboard for the longer stuff I wanted to write.
On a very fundamental level, Japanese metalheads who are actually legitimately into machinery seem to manifest a bit differently from western types, or at least this was the case some forty years ago. In a lot of early Battletech development, it seems often to me at least that the people doing the early design work didn't really "understand" the machinery they were looking at or machines in general. Battletech machines were 'designed' a bit arbitrarily, you add extra lines for extra detail because real military machines are detailed, right? And that stuck around as a Battletech design philosophy even though it didn't necessarily make sense. Japanese metalhead nerds who are really, truly interested in machinery, where they are allowed to work, tend to make machines that are in a sense a little closer to what actual machinery can be like, though this will depend on the designer and their level of actual machine love. Detail goes here or there because that is where it needs to be, some surfaces can be clean, whole parts because they don't need ornamentation as slabs of armor, etc. etc. This is not a universal truth by any means, because if you look at 70s-80s era Japanese art meant to make machinery really look detailed it will be absolutely chock full of nonsense surface details, but at the same time the people who were responsible for doing stuff like designing the machines for toy shows actually did need to spend time to sit down and design them as toys, which leads to some small level understanding.
You think it might be due to Americans are much more familiar with vehicles and machinery? Way more Americans will tinker with their cars or bikes and machine up weird creations and make muscle cars, choppers, or any kind of custom work, to the point where almost everyone knows a guy that makes mad science shit in their garage and nearly everyone has seen someone's home made custom job in person at some point?
Whereas maybe people in Japan are not nearly as familiar, customizing cars and bikes is actually illegal, and hardly anyone has a garage full of tool and experiments like that so they can stay in the fantasy much more. You don't have legions of guys that have worked on cars, make customs, or had an uncle that made custom bikes, or knew a guy that made gearhead shit in their garages to have that same
>Actually that's now how that works!
mindset when it comes to machines and cool stuff.
I think to a degree it might be true but something about it seems off as a claim. Americans being all familiar with machinery varies wildly by area and lifestyle. An American who lives in a city might never work on or know how to work on their own car for their entire life, but they aren't necessarily the ones becoming machine otaku. American hard sci fi nuts seem to come from all different walks of life and were already interested in machinery to begin with. However, I think it's absolutely true that an American into hard machinery will more often just try and draw that machinery as it is, or if they make fantasy machinery that really comes from true machine love, they sure as shit either don't get hired at all or are exec'd into making generic slop as
mentions.
Not really, car and air shows have been a thing since the invention of the car and plane. People living inside bigger cities still work on cars or at least are personally connected to someone that does so they are still familiar.
Also you are forgetting how fricking huge the military is and how many people are in it/have been in it. Lots and lots and lots of Americans have served on big ships, big planes, big tanks, big trucks, and piloted every small vehicle in between. There is a very noticeable percentage of Americans that are very familiar with vehicles of all sizes and in all terrains.
I do remember such shows and the military itself, but I think you are oversestimating the volume of Americans who go to those shows and actually care about the nuts and bolts of things. The Americans who do that and want to be engineers or mechanics go out and do it in some way physically, but I think there's a line, basically, between this and machine otakudom which leads to being an actually good mechanical illustrator, and then between the machine nuts and their work becoming a part of mainstream published media. Maybe I should visit the /k/ art threads more.
Thing is, I don't think it is a situation of machine otaku at all. If anything it's the opposite, a higher population of Japanese are unfamiliar with vehicles and machines so they are more willing to accept a pure over the top fantasy.
Meanwhile way more Americans are personally familiar with vehicles of all shapes and sizes and have personal history with them that they are not as willing to stomach a wacky robot that can do backflips.
That's a good point, I didn't consider that at all. However, my problem with it is that I feel like it's "not what we see", so to speak. I say this because I feel like when I look at some Japanese works, they actually do come from that autistic love for machinery even when they are fantastical- meanwhile the Americans, more familiar with the realistic, don't actually necessarily produce more realistic content in their media.
Nu-Star Wars or perhaps even Star Wars in general is a pretty good example of this. If you go into a work like Star Wars ships can go from atmosphere to ground within minutes, travelling vast distances is no problem, etc. Machines have that famous and good looking boilerplate aesthetic but at heart there's not a lot of science behind them. Meanwhile in something like Gundam just entering or exiting the atmosphere is an arduous and dangerous task, ships and the mecha themselves have verniers and actually need fuel to get from A to B, artificial gravity is reserved for ships built with gravity blocks, stuff like that. Something about it doesn't jell with me.
You said basically what I was thinking when I wrote
. Funny.
We're in a funny thread talking about funny stuff, since there's information at hand I think it's natural we can boil it down to a set of real conclusions, even if they don't answer the fundamental "why don't westerners make mecha" question. At the least we can pin down some of the weirder info about the whole shebang, which is useful when trying to analyze the whole thing from breasts to toes.
A lot of old popular/cult live action american sci-fi shows had authors that had shit knowledge regarding physics. I don’t think that’s a porblem.
In the west, metalhead designers who actually do know and understand machines simply again tend not to make or think about robots. They do stuff like draw for movie productions or become peculiar recluses who don't really do a whole lot, and then the actual weapon and machine designs get handed to people who are good illustrators but not metalheads, which is how you get stuff like the Fallout 4 abominations.
There's a specific term for this I believe. Japanese guys use the term 'otaku' IIRC to refer to many types of specific fanboy. In Japan, the guys responsible for designing robots often tend to be mecha otaku, which does not mean they're necessarily into giant robots but machinery in general. In the west you also can get machine otaku, but once again their focus and energy is elsewhere. The western machine otaku are busy in their garages or at conventions or on forums yelling at each other, and you don't quite get as many machine otaku actually responsible for things like making cartoons or entertainment, and the broader western public won't appreciate it. So instead of getting a designer who cares about, say, tanks, you just get any old artist who doesn't care about designing a sensible machine or making something thoughtfully, and you get mechanical abominations, while the audience, broadly ignorant already, doesn't care or notice the problems with machinery in the media they consume.
Because over the last 60 years, Americans have been notoriously fricking terrible at designing mecha of any type.
They are so hung up on trying to make it realistic and working realistically like an actual giant metal man might move and walk, that they totally forget that they are working in a nonsense fantasy genre that is 100% defined by look and rule of cool.
Some particulars I've noticed about western media in general, or at least American media (which other smarter people than me talked about first) is that in general you always want the audience to see the actors. I think that J-Lo movie with the robot is a pretty good example of this, the main robot character is a glass-dome-headed contraption instead of a sealed machine like an Armored Trooper. Marvel made the peculiar Iron Man face view famous and that movie also seems to want to make use of it. Americans have always been A-OK with superheroes and wizards but pilots aren't as popular most of the time if they're in something like a tank. Maybe aircraft are better 'cause you can see the pilot inside of them?
Maybe there's a conclusion to be drawn somewhere but I find it difficult to arrange my thoughts. There is much to consider and a million exceptions to everything, and then exceptions and annotations on the exceptions.
Redpilled post. I think there's a kind of irony to muh realismhomosexualry in general considering how everything began. It's a peculiar sort of paradox, Americans don't like mecha because it's "not realistic" (everything else gets a pass), but then we try to make it more realistic and nothing happens. Pacific Rim and Megas XLR are often considered "popular" western mecha properties but both largely abandoned the idea of realism. Meanwhile, Battletech, the posterchild "realistic" western mecha franchise has puttered on for years and never quite been so mainstream as its less realistic contemporaries.
I feel like if you boil it down there's some kind of cicular logic or self-feeding cycle here.
>It's a peculiar sort of paradox, Americans don't like mecha because it's "not realistic" (everything else gets a pass), but then we try to make it more realistic and nothing happens. Pacific Rim and Megas XLR are often considered "popular" western mecha properties but both largely abandoned the idea of realism. Meanwhile, Battletech, the posterchild "realistic" western mecha franchise has puttered on for years and never quite been so mainstream as its less realistic contemporaries.
At this point I think the whole MUH REALISM argument is a meme, I think the truth of the matter is that most Western m stuff frankly sucks realistic or not. Megas isn't good simply because it's not realistic, it's good because it has likeable characters and a great comedic direction. It knew how to cater to its Western audience, same with Pacific Rim. If these writers and artists were actually good at what they were doing then this whole myth about Westerners hating mecha could be put to rest
> I think the truth of the matter is that most Western m stuff frankly sucks realistic or not
If I'm totally honest I also think so. It really stings because I love robots and I also don't want to be a hardcore weeb or some dumb shit but God fricking damn is it frustrating looking at the absolute fricking state of western moving picture robot media.
It really does suck while I do lean more heavily to the eastern stuff I like seeing the what the west can put out also. What's funny is that there is a well spring to take inspiration from in producing western mecha that is both good and also caters to westerners . I've been mulling over essentially what is Rambo but with mechs.
What's really irritating is that it's not like Japanese /m/ stuff is some wellspring of quality. Most of it sucks and the genre itself isn't as popular as it used to be, it's just when you apply Sturgeon's Law to a set with 1000 entries and then compare it to a set with a dozen entries the first set is going to win by sheer volume.
Literally the last 2 notable mecha related stuff to come from the west is symbionic Titan and Megas XLR... both were cancelled
American marketing is really aggressive and tries to keep things into no more than a three-dog race.
Transformers aggressively targeted any other mecha brand and to this day you have Gen Xers who can talk shit about Go-bots or oldgays who call Power rangers a ripoff of Voltron(even though Voltron was using the Sentai formula).
It's why Marvel and DC bought up or destroyed every other company they could and made Image eventually be more known for movie/sjow pitches or books with a finite cape universe like Invincible.
Japan likes to have variations of things of a genre because so much of their media is planned on finite cycles. Even long running ones like Sentai are planned around ending in a year for a new series and theme. Americans don't do that. It's why they took Zyuranger and tried to get 3 years out of the designs, because the American marketing machine is built to milk a single idea instead of improving.
West belongs to the almighty robot
Getter Robo is pretty cool for a combiner.
OP is just being a hypocrite. Voltron is another Japanese property Americans picked up and have jacked off forever and it's a combiner, us Yanks fricking love Devastator because it's a combiner and recycle him over and over and over. Nothingburger statement OP managed to squeeze out through his mouthful of wieners.
We had a show…once
Well, take your picture for example.
Nu-Voltron was pretty alright for like 3 or 4 seasons, then it completely slipped into cringe and mediocrity. Lotor was wasted and then he died. We got two seasons of virtually nothing but filler, and the ending was downright insulting.
Nu Voltron was also barely about the robot combat and largely fujobait.
Hey guys, wanna see how another fricking western mecha property turned out? All fricking original this time.
I disagree with the notion Voltron was mostly fujobait. I've never understood that claim. Until the last 2 or 3 seasons there wasn't a single gay character on the screen.
Fujo bait is based off moody boys having issues with each other, not actual gay characters
>Hey guys, wanna see how another fricking western mecha property turned out? All fricking original this time.
They create shit and then go "westerners just don't like the genre"
VLD had some great robot designs and it wasnt very fujo-oriented at all. The fans however only cared about the characters, and by characters they meant their slash ship
The answer is related to what
said but it's in the case of these creators saying "Well I don't like the genre". V:LD's crew hated fricking forming Voltron and didn't like doing Voltron fights, meanwhile over at Boom! They fricking hate doing Zord/Megazord fights and try to reduce them to the bare minimum 90% of the time or focus on a ranger fight happening at the same time.
You see a similar thing in the IDW Transformers where when the author autism really got going and they had more and more control they basically stopped fricking transforming most of the time and are just treated like they're regular ass people who can sometimes fly or something. Similarly species smaller than them became rarer and rarer outside of the Earth plot they had ongoing that the writers hated and kept trying to burn down in the hopes they could drop it.
>V:LD's crew hated fricking forming Voltron and didn't like doing Voltron fights, meanwhile over at Boom! They fricking hate doing Zord/Megazord fights and try to reduce them to the bare minimum 90% of the time or focus on a ranger fight happening at the same time.
Both are combiners. Coincidence?
>Zord/Megazord fights and try to reduce them to the bare minimum 90% of the time or focus on a ranger fight happening at the same time.
Wow, so it's like the actual show
>combiners are fricking stupid
I think you should be exploded with Dynamite op
This is western machine porn. The person who drew this clearly cares about machinery itself, they want to draw it well, and they want to make cool original stuff with it. You might see something like it in a live action production but never a cartoon. Why is that so?
Say what you want about the MCU but Iron Man 1 should have been the gold standard for mainstream Western /m/
it was at first, then became literally magic with the nanobots trash.
Most western cartoon writers have the perception that you can only ever tell gritty war dramas or hyper toyetic kiddy stories with mecha. The latter's a hard sell because it would inherently have to be an adult/mature animation that isn't a comedy. With the former, they either go whole hog into the parody aspect or they are actually selling toys in which case 90% of the time they don't actually care about telling an interesting story. Then on top of this you have people that inherently don't understand the appeal of mecha and say shit like "Actually my pitch for a mecha series would be about the characters, not the mecha." which is moronic because 1. every story is about its characters to at least some degree and 2. if you're ashamed to write a mecha series, don't write a fricking mecha series in the first place.
Also the Japanese have been doing this for decades and still pumping out more mecha content than the west despite its decile in popularity. So in much the same way western action cartoons can't compete with anime western mecha has a hard time competing with Japanese mecha.
Will western media in these departments reform or become completely obsolete?
Different tastes.
Japan loves lifeless mechs and hate sentient robots. America prefers living robots and are indifferent to mecha.
>namegay is wrong and moronic
News at eleven
Kids mechCinemaphile has largely disappeared, too. There are more Korean and Chinese mecha cartoons now than Japanese ones. Outside of Shinkalion and the shortlived Zoids relaunch, I genuinely can't name any modern kids mech/a/. Even the teen/young adult market has cooled off. Megaton Musashi just launched internationally and no one gave a shit.
Mecha is lame
America doesn't have Shinto. While America created the idea of giant robots in cases like the Steam Man or the Steam House (and further back, mythic examples of giant metal men like Talos), Japan pioneered the giant robot as Mecha within the context of Shinto. Within Shinto is the idea of "life energy" shared by all things and exists within everything: plants, animals, even objects. This is why Japan is known for being so clean and showing dutiful care towards material possessions: the things and animals around you have parts of other things, living or not, having rubbed off of them. This is also why "kami" can manifest: if something or someone with enough makoto (dedication/will) and life energy exists, then they can become powerful.
America does not have this care and tenderness towards nature or physical objects: things are disposable and lacking humanity, to the point there's a common fear of objects or animals showing humanity.
So when we get to Mecha, America and Japan expressed the "giant robot" in two very different ways. With Shinto, the implication is that the machine was always full of humanity/life and that by being cared for and loved, it is no different than a human in spirit.
>The closest example in American culture would be the love men have for cars (which is the modern equivalent to loving horses).
There's also the history regarding Japan's navy. Mecha is the modern day warship: a giant metal hulk that exists to protect the people it fights for and is only able to do so by the many people who operate it. America doesn't have this kind of history when it comes to sea warfare.
>America doesn't have this kind of history when it comes to sea warfare
Are you seriously trying to claim that the premier sea power of the past century doesn't have that kind of naval history? Anyways, a lot of mecha anime doesn't even align with your argument. They're depicted and treated as inanimate objects, very large suits of armor for the ersatz warrior-heroes to wear; you're conflating a subset of the genre with the whole. And getting down to brass tacks, the Super/Real definition is bullshit made up by a video game.
Define obvious picks.
That's a very interesting thought especially when you highlight the many western stories with robots that do become popular (ie terminator)
IMHO all the energy that could go into mecha in the west goes towards planes or spaceship centered fiction, like how much would battlestar galactica (even remake) really change if they sed mechas instead, different flavour for similiar ideas, if you read Sanderson's cytoverse books its just fricking mecha,it even has newtypes
as a random addition, there is something to be said about the common anglo phrase "instead of the robots this one is about the people" that clearly illustrates how art is perceived between genre conventions
> towards planes or spaceship centered fiction,
I can’t think of many cartoons with those either and talking about normal books, there are of course some western ones made by gundam or eva
>gundam or eva *fans
frick i also forgot about cars
mecha is pretty much a dead genre in japan at this point
These kids are likely adults now
kids being into trains seems to be timeless
has there ever been a mecha series with the designs heavily based on trains
Shinkalion
Hikarian
You just fricking know had this come out in Burgerland in the 2000's there would have been this active autistic fanbase. Not sure if we dodged a bullet or not.
You guys seem to be the experts, what's something good mecha stuff outside of the obvious picks?
>spoonfeed pls
Frick off.
Contribute to the conversation or don't, no need to stamp your feet like a child.
Mech Cadet Yu
Hmmmm I never hear anyone talk about Hiwou War Chronicles. Very unconventional and niche but very good in my opinion
Bokurano
Planet With
You know what's another thing that gets me about western mecha, why don't they take more inspirations from the designs of the 50s to 60s like imagine a cartoon with some kid piloting a mech which is a homage to The Mighty Tor.
No one watched The Iron Giant or Big Guy & Rusty.
I think Murrica largely associates mech with children media automatically. Not just because the only recognizable mech is transformers (show made to sell toys) but because the concept of "giant robot" seems childish. Capeshit had also suffered from this; it didn't matter how grimdark the comics of the 90s were, superheroes were silly. The public sentiment that superheroes aren't just for kids is a new one.
Personally it does seems like mech are experiencing a revival same as capeshit. It'll take some years to get into full swing
Fricking Voltron could have been so good but the executives bungled it. I still think a decent follow up to VLD could save it and ideally the fujos from back then have grown up enough not to have a meltdown over klance or shit not happening
The real reason that mecha isn't a thing in the us is because it didn't occur to anyone here to do it like japan does it. piloted robots aren't concerned a genre, here. Mechs are usually just part of sci fi action (AT-ATs for example) or super hero action stories (anytime some goes after Superman with a giant robot). It's not generally a thing unto itself. It could be, they just got to make something at would attract attention.
the 70s gave us the widespread adoption of industrial robots and the 80s gave us the computer revolution, so it was natural mecha thrived during this time
but anymore it seems like our collective imagination has moved past this. everyone now is focused on virtual worlds, virtual people, and AI
How did kino-era Mainframe dun goof this badly?