I sure hope so. I wouldn't be surprised if the pink thing is from an american on deviant art.
As for why the US doesn't make mecha shows, its because
1. Cartoons are considered to be a thing for children. But cartoons are the only affordable way to make good looking mecha shows.
2. The few American written mecha cartoons like Mighty Orbots were considered falures despite it being the fault of other company's suing them for their failure more than interest from kids.
3. Its cheaper to licence Japanese toys (transformers) or licensing and dubbing the toys and cartoons than making your whole new thing (everything else)
4. American shows won't allow themselves to take their own premise seriously, thus undercutting their own advertising. They also tend to not make merchandise (Megas XLR, Sym-Bionic Titan) leaving money on the table.
5. Giant living robots seem to do better for some unknown reason. Maybe american kids are just more imaginative (transformers, iron giant).
>Orbots
Orbots actually did really well but IIRC Tonka spazzed the frick out and murdered it with frivolous litigation, which is the real reason Mecha never became much of a thing in the west, literally every single major mecha series that had serious presence in the west was caught in a clusterfrick chain reaction of shithead executives throwing their legal dicks around, leaving Go Bots and Transformers as the main contenders and later Power Rangers to an extent, and Go Bots was A. shit and B. died, TF went low power mode [and had its own legal dickery going on], and Power Rangers became rooted deeply in culture as being perceived as something for toddlers and preteens.
Harmony Gold, infamous for managing to make Robotech, make it actually pretty good particularly given what it was, and then managing to make it unironically hallmark television [unironically a shitload of live action and animated serialized storytelling owes a whole fricking lot to Robotech it's fricking weird as shit], and most of all being legal lot lizards who blatantly bribed judges on multiple occasions, made it really fricking hard to go anything with mecha in the west. They're unironically responsible for crippling japanese imports, multiple cartoons, and destroying the native US wargaming market, inadvertently helping enable Warhammer 40k to gain ground in the market meaning that Cinemaphile, /m/, Cinemaphile and /tg/ all have very strong reasons to fricking hate them.
They finally backed off a bit and stopped pulling shit recently. Nobody knows why but the current theory is that someone in the family who owns them died or a younger member came to prominence and has dreams of being a cartoon mogul or owning a major sci-fi franchise. Robotech despite everything still has a lot of fans, particularly in S.America, but helping rebuild and prime the market for /m/echa and establishing some good will has to happen before they have any chance of going anywhere with this, hypothetically.
curiously right around the time they and the guys who own BT and the guys who own Macross finally settled down and established a truce, not only did we immediately start getting promises of Macross imports for the first time in decades and BT shit...but Bandai Namco mysteriously started being able to clean up legal litigation around some of their own licenses and started thinking "Maybe the west actually WOULD like having Mecha and Gundam shit in particular that isn't total garbage." which some have had schizo theories about, largely related to either Bandai Namco wanting to cut off a threat before it can manifest or that Harmony Gold had secretly been backdoor politicing and bribing people to make sure that those rights stayed a mess, which sounds insane but this is a company that once had a judge tell them outright that they were in the wrong, breaking the law, and had none of the rights they claimed, before ruling in their favor anyway back in the late 80s-90s.
It did just remind me of the odd coincidence of square doing remakes of both front missions and we got armored core 6 a year later. But guess I can't complain, mecha fans are eating better than a while.
6 months ago
Anonymous
despite some of /m/'s Cinemaphile and Cinemaphile infection whining, we really do live in a relative new golden age. Gundam had a series that wasn't total dogshit, got a new SRW, got a bunch of new BT, had good kaiju movies, got PC western releases of a bunch of games, some of which are even actually good, new AC sold so fricking well that it was at the top of the charts for a good healthy while there and is still up there, some Front Mission for the people who still pretend those are playable, so on and so forth.
It's a low fricking bar admittedly but compared to even 3 or so years ago we're fricking blessed.
We still can't get OG Macross shit without someone paying them through the nose, I'm not sure if Plus is still affected by that but my limited understanding is that we only got Plus in the West at all because HG didn't have them legal funds to block Manga UK from putting it out because they'd just got done with a fresh load of lawsuits.
it never really took off in anywhere outside of japan
japanese /k/ gays slowly turned into /m/ gays due to japan's post-war pacifist policies and the stigma on real weapons in japan
that's part of the reason why realistic shooter games didn't really take off in japan. splatoon mogs all of them in japan
>it never really took off in anywhere outside of japan >japanese /k/ gays slowly turned into /m/ gays due to japan's post-war pacifist policies and the stigma on real weapons in japan >that's part of the reason why realistic shooter games didn't really take off in japan. splatoon mogs all of them in japan
I suppose it is point of reference then. Hand guns are so alien to them. But everyone in japan rides the subway, bikes, motorcycles, those small little pickup things, heavy construction equipment. Everyone over there has used a large machine at some point. So they can probably better self insert as a pilot.
I kinda wonder why more grounded(read not super robots) ones don't appeal to the west. Or maybe it's bad marketing I would feel that VOTOMS abd front mission could do well with proper marketing.
Grounded ones are never grounded enough for that section of the Western audience. Every single new Gundam that comes out there's a hardcore crowd who just wants Band of Brothers with Zakus, and complains when they get the inevitable psychic teenagers with super prototypes. VOTOMS is close but you only Space Rambo's increasingly depressing retcon adventures don't hit the itch of Space Cambodia that the TV series hit forty years ago. We're getting new Patlabor in two years but that's about it as far as realism goes. Front Mission and Armored Core are all that niche needs and they're finally getting more of it.
Well, even using VOTOMS as an example, you're going to have a hard time selling it to most western milshit autists. "How can you take it seriously and say it's grounded if they're piloting goofy-ass anime humanoid superhero mechs rather than chickenleg battlemechs that're actually realistic to how a real mech would look like?" mentality
You're not selling mechs to milshit autists at all.
Tanks are grounded and realistic. They're good for milautists.
Mecha is the stuff of dreams and aspiration. They're good for men with the hearts of children and minds of children.
We all know milshit autists are the kids who never grew out of playing soldier, they just hide it behind a veneer of rote memorized technical specs. They're below airsoft LARPers because airsofters actually bother to go outside and get some exercise while pretending they're soldiers.
I wish it had. Giant robots are cool as hell but not enough to offset the cringe of anime. I can only watch Megas XLR and play the Cybertron games so many times on repeat before it starts to get a little monotonous.
>Giant robots are cool as hell but not enough to offset the cringe of anime
I can’t even imagine having such a joyless life. Maybe I am not that unfortunate.
Is the Escaflowne more of a super robot or a 'grounded' mecha?
It transforms into a dragon and it's magic, but when it's fighting it's just a big robot wailing on another robot with a sword. It doesn't float and charge its' sword with energy.
Super = Soft Science/Magic and grounded = attempt at hard science + military setting and trappings. People get super autistic about defining something that is very loose and indistinct when they're mostly basing it on a gameplay distinction from a non-canon crossover franchise.
Huh, I thought super robots were basically flying superheroes (infinite ammo on a ludicrous scale, armour/shields that protect against bullshit attacks, attacks that should come out of a battleship, not a individual fighter, etc.) and grounded was more along the lines of 'you're in a fricking tin can, don't get hit'
Kind of. Mazinger Z has a bad guy called Dr. Hell and another that's a man and a woman that are cut in half and stitched together down the middle but some of the robot shit in there is arguably more realistic than Gundam. Mazinger is shown being rearmed and refueled, just like Gundam, it's constantly being upgraded and refined and the last episode has it getting smashed to pieces only to be saved at the last minute by the new improved model. Dancouga has a "super robot" powered by the pilots' life energy but they're all trained soldiers operating in the military against an evil alien overlord who actually values his underlings. VOTOMS features crappy tin can robots that blow up after a few bullets but it's about a literal alien Ubermensch who can warp reality groomed by a physical god supercomputer to take over the universe. Dunbine's a post-Gundam Tomino show set in a fantasy world where the robots use guns and missiles but they also have crazy aura sword magic that lets them grow giant or do Draqonball Ki attacks that blow up cities. Patlabor's a deliberate attempt to be as grounded and realistic with the robots as possible and there's still three episodes (and a movie!) where they take on genetically modified mutants and kaiju, or deal with ghosts and sewer gators, just like any Japanese policemen.
Realism in mecha's just a trapping or a storytelling convention, if any of them are humanoid robots to begin with that's already a red card.
Real vs. Super is best thought of as a chart with one axis labeled "Mecha Operation" and the other labeled "Setting/Plot." Escaflowne could be considered a Real Robot series within the context of itself as it takes place in a fantasy setting where magic is normal, but it's a Super Robot in a general context. Then you've got something like Full Metal Panic!, where it being a Super Robot in a Real Robot setting is a major aspect of the story which revolves around black box technology and the people who can create it.
/m/ here to tell you you're a fricking moron.
Honestly the robot on the right makes me think of a Gundam Wing Leo.
If you want a mecha thread, just have one. Don't bring in your shitty East vs West BS.
How is asking about why it never caught on in the west an east vs west thing? It would be ridiculous to deny the premise.
Because that's what OP's image is.
But the right is from Japan. Is that the joke?
Yes. Let's be real. This is not tuly east vs west. This is dynamic mecha vs military industrial mecha.
It is true though in terms of general preference. The left pic is obviously trying to invoke a sense of eastern kawaii"-ness. like overwatch D.Va.
>Is that the joke?
I sure hope so. I wouldn't be surprised if the pink thing is from an american on deviant art.
As for why the US doesn't make mecha shows, its because
1. Cartoons are considered to be a thing for children. But cartoons are the only affordable way to make good looking mecha shows.
2. The few American written mecha cartoons like Mighty Orbots were considered falures despite it being the fault of other company's suing them for their failure more than interest from kids.
3. Its cheaper to licence Japanese toys (transformers) or licensing and dubbing the toys and cartoons than making your whole new thing (everything else)
4. American shows won't allow themselves to take their own premise seriously, thus undercutting their own advertising. They also tend to not make merchandise (Megas XLR, Sym-Bionic Titan) leaving money on the table.
5. Giant living robots seem to do better for some unknown reason. Maybe american kids are just more imaginative (transformers, iron giant).
The left one is a skin from Air Mech, a MOBA styled RTS game based on the old console RTS, Herzog Zwei.
>Orbots
Orbots actually did really well but IIRC Tonka spazzed the frick out and murdered it with frivolous litigation, which is the real reason Mecha never became much of a thing in the west, literally every single major mecha series that had serious presence in the west was caught in a clusterfrick chain reaction of shithead executives throwing their legal dicks around, leaving Go Bots and Transformers as the main contenders and later Power Rangers to an extent, and Go Bots was A. shit and B. died, TF went low power mode [and had its own legal dickery going on], and Power Rangers became rooted deeply in culture as being perceived as something for toddlers and preteens.
Harmony Gold, infamous for managing to make Robotech, make it actually pretty good particularly given what it was, and then managing to make it unironically hallmark television [unironically a shitload of live action and animated serialized storytelling owes a whole fricking lot to Robotech it's fricking weird as shit], and most of all being legal lot lizards who blatantly bribed judges on multiple occasions, made it really fricking hard to go anything with mecha in the west. They're unironically responsible for crippling japanese imports, multiple cartoons, and destroying the native US wargaming market, inadvertently helping enable Warhammer 40k to gain ground in the market meaning that Cinemaphile, /m/, Cinemaphile and /tg/ all have very strong reasons to fricking hate them.
>Harmony Gold
I'm amazed their shit was still going on, like I think their last lawsuit against battletech ended in 2019. Insane shit.
They finally backed off a bit and stopped pulling shit recently. Nobody knows why but the current theory is that someone in the family who owns them died or a younger member came to prominence and has dreams of being a cartoon mogul or owning a major sci-fi franchise. Robotech despite everything still has a lot of fans, particularly in S.America, but helping rebuild and prime the market for /m/echa and establishing some good will has to happen before they have any chance of going anywhere with this, hypothetically.
curiously right around the time they and the guys who own BT and the guys who own Macross finally settled down and established a truce, not only did we immediately start getting promises of Macross imports for the first time in decades and BT shit...but Bandai Namco mysteriously started being able to clean up legal litigation around some of their own licenses and started thinking "Maybe the west actually WOULD like having Mecha and Gundam shit in particular that isn't total garbage." which some have had schizo theories about, largely related to either Bandai Namco wanting to cut off a threat before it can manifest or that Harmony Gold had secretly been backdoor politicing and bribing people to make sure that those rights stayed a mess, which sounds insane but this is a company that once had a judge tell them outright that they were in the wrong, breaking the law, and had none of the rights they claimed, before ruling in their favor anyway back in the late 80s-90s.
It did just remind me of the odd coincidence of square doing remakes of both front missions and we got armored core 6 a year later. But guess I can't complain, mecha fans are eating better than a while.
despite some of /m/'s Cinemaphile and Cinemaphile infection whining, we really do live in a relative new golden age. Gundam had a series that wasn't total dogshit, got a new SRW, got a bunch of new BT, had good kaiju movies, got PC western releases of a bunch of games, some of which are even actually good, new AC sold so fricking well that it was at the top of the charts for a good healthy while there and is still up there, some Front Mission for the people who still pretend those are playable, so on and so forth.
It's a low fricking bar admittedly but compared to even 3 or so years ago we're fricking blessed.
We still can't get OG Macross shit without someone paying them through the nose, I'm not sure if Plus is still affected by that but my limited understanding is that we only got Plus in the West at all because HG didn't have them legal funds to block Manga UK from putting it out because they'd just got done with a fresh load of lawsuits.
This, and also aggressive marketing campaigns by Hasbro telling you their robot toyline was the only "real one".
Or it’s also straight housed a Bandai Godmars toy for their prototype. It was kinda doomed
>Is that the joke?
I'm not sure why you wouldn't immediately think it was.
Warhammer WHM-6R best
it never really took off in anywhere outside of japan
japanese /k/ gays slowly turned into /m/ gays due to japan's post-war pacifist policies and the stigma on real weapons in japan
that's part of the reason why realistic shooter games didn't really take off in japan. splatoon mogs all of them in japan
>it never really took off in anywhere outside of japan
>japanese /k/ gays slowly turned into /m/ gays due to japan's post-war pacifist policies and the stigma on real weapons in japan
>that's part of the reason why realistic shooter games didn't really take off in japan. splatoon mogs all of them in japan
I suppose it is point of reference then. Hand guns are so alien to them. But everyone in japan rides the subway, bikes, motorcycles, those small little pickup things, heavy construction equipment. Everyone over there has used a large machine at some point. So they can probably better self insert as a pilot.
I kinda wonder why more grounded(read not super robots) ones don't appeal to the west. Or maybe it's bad marketing I would feel that VOTOMS abd front mission could do well with proper marketing.
Grounded ones are never grounded enough for that section of the Western audience. Every single new Gundam that comes out there's a hardcore crowd who just wants Band of Brothers with Zakus, and complains when they get the inevitable psychic teenagers with super prototypes. VOTOMS is close but you only Space Rambo's increasingly depressing retcon adventures don't hit the itch of Space Cambodia that the TV series hit forty years ago. We're getting new Patlabor in two years but that's about it as far as realism goes. Front Mission and Armored Core are all that niche needs and they're finally getting more of it.
Well, even using VOTOMS as an example, you're going to have a hard time selling it to most western milshit autists. "How can you take it seriously and say it's grounded if they're piloting goofy-ass anime humanoid superhero mechs rather than chickenleg battlemechs that're actually realistic to how a real mech would look like?" mentality
You're not selling mechs to milshit autists at all.
Tanks are grounded and realistic. They're good for milautists.
Mecha is the stuff of dreams and aspiration. They're good for men with the hearts of children and minds of children.
We all know milshit autists are the kids who never grew out of playing soldier, they just hide it behind a veneer of rote memorized technical specs. They're below airsoft LARPers because airsofters actually bother to go outside and get some exercise while pretending they're soldiers.
I wish it had. Giant robots are cool as hell but not enough to offset the cringe of anime. I can only watch Megas XLR and play the Cybertron games so many times on repeat before it starts to get a little monotonous.
>Giant robots are cool as hell but not enough to offset the cringe of anime
I can’t even imagine having such a joyless life. Maybe I am not that unfortunate.
Is the Escaflowne more of a super robot or a 'grounded' mecha?
It transforms into a dragon and it's magic, but when it's fighting it's just a big robot wailing on another robot with a sword. It doesn't float and charge its' sword with energy.
Super = Soft Science/Magic and grounded = attempt at hard science + military setting and trappings. People get super autistic about defining something that is very loose and indistinct when they're mostly basing it on a gameplay distinction from a non-canon crossover franchise.
Huh, I thought super robots were basically flying superheroes (infinite ammo on a ludicrous scale, armour/shields that protect against bullshit attacks, attacks that should come out of a battleship, not a individual fighter, etc.) and grounded was more along the lines of 'you're in a fricking tin can, don't get hit'
Kind of. Mazinger Z has a bad guy called Dr. Hell and another that's a man and a woman that are cut in half and stitched together down the middle but some of the robot shit in there is arguably more realistic than Gundam. Mazinger is shown being rearmed and refueled, just like Gundam, it's constantly being upgraded and refined and the last episode has it getting smashed to pieces only to be saved at the last minute by the new improved model. Dancouga has a "super robot" powered by the pilots' life energy but they're all trained soldiers operating in the military against an evil alien overlord who actually values his underlings. VOTOMS features crappy tin can robots that blow up after a few bullets but it's about a literal alien Ubermensch who can warp reality groomed by a physical god supercomputer to take over the universe. Dunbine's a post-Gundam Tomino show set in a fantasy world where the robots use guns and missiles but they also have crazy aura sword magic that lets them grow giant or do Draqonball Ki attacks that blow up cities. Patlabor's a deliberate attempt to be as grounded and realistic with the robots as possible and there's still three episodes (and a movie!) where they take on genetically modified mutants and kaiju, or deal with ghosts and sewer gators, just like any Japanese policemen.
Realism in mecha's just a trapping or a storytelling convention, if any of them are humanoid robots to begin with that's already a red card.
Real vs. Super is best thought of as a chart with one axis labeled "Mecha Operation" and the other labeled "Setting/Plot." Escaflowne could be considered a Real Robot series within the context of itself as it takes place in a fantasy setting where magic is normal, but it's a Super Robot in a general context. Then you've got something like Full Metal Panic!, where it being a Super Robot in a Real Robot setting is a major aspect of the story which revolves around black box technology and the people who can create it.
It did, but, as giant robots the likes of Transformers rather than piloted vehicles.
Right > Left
Right actually looks cool, left looks like some gay transformers-overwatch crossover shit.
Already did snoops
Westerners have shit taste and no imagination. They only like shitty boxmen that move at 1mph while instantly overheating if th4y fire 1 gun.
first of all this picture is essentially backwards
secondly, too expensive.