[Last Sinner]

Oh Westlo, you just can't resist stirring up any place that's a guarantee to react to you.

Since this is absurd even by your standards, I'll bite for once.

Firsty, if I read correctly what R3 said, he was talking about traditional mecha, not mecha as a whole. And seriously, using Gundam AGE an excuse to vent about how Unicorn beats almost any title in sales? I think most people have enough of a brain to know about Unicorn and its success in appealing to the more old-school Gundam fans.

Mecha isn't dead but it has morphed substantially with the times. Still, it should be noted that those higher end titles are mainly featuring titles that have had long-standing value/fanbases/merchandise.

On that sales point, you mentioned Gundam, Macross, Yamato and The War as well as Infinite Stratos. But funnily enough...if you look at those sales figures from 2000 onwards beyond that top 11 or so (let's extend it to around 15 to include IS)....there aren't that many more titles that are mech. Code Geass, a bit more Gundam, Tiger and Bunny, TTGL, the Yamato remake.

But let's be fair and remove the established, continually marketed for decades franchises. We're left with Code Geass, Infinite Stratos, Tiger and Bunny and Guren Lagann. To be even fairer, IS isn't exactly a mech show and more of a service/harem show. Tiger and Bunny is more of a parody of superheroes than a straight mecha show. Guren Lagann is a continuation of the FLCL experiments which was already a parody of mecha + other stuff and made to make The Pillows sound even more awesome. Code Geass kind of is but is genre fusion in droves - the mechs are only one slice of the cake.

So....as far as I see it, R3 has a point. Outside of the necromanacy marketing freight train, there's barely a handful of successful shows containing mechs and those doing well weren't strictly mech. Genre fusion has become a necessity of shows involving mechs to be successful. And even then, they're still not blowing the charts to pieces. It's the well-established or well-marketed titles that are (face it, Code Geass had plenty of help in getting itself out there.)

But more to R3's point, a significant shift from traditionalist mecha to modern mecha is the director's intentions and the symbolism. If you read enough about what the directors in the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s in some way, were intending to do and what the focus/point of the show was. In the days of Astro Boy, Mazinger and Gundam, mechs were vessels of spirituality helping the protagonist achieving their goal, fulfilling the guardian role for the usual mech cliche of their usually dead relative that left them the mech to save the world, that the pursuit of their goal was to find balance and redeem the soul of the enemy rather than wipe them out or scream justice, which is more typical of Western superheroes. Mechs were essentially Japan's version of superheroes but mixed in their spiritual beliefs.

Is that the point of modern mech shows? Hell no! The point of them is to allow as much merchandise via figues and model kits to come out and sell like hotcakes (merch really is the profit section), to keep the brand known and set a precident to allow other future financially successful ventures in similar veins. There's a reason Japan still hasn't got over The War and perhaps never will - it's the benchmark for success despite its numerous flaws and general insanity. The characters and mechs are marketable, the title is controversial and easy to keep current/known and the possibility of remakes was always there. And in an age where anime is no longer able to experiment and train but more oriented towards likely financial success since the budget allowances of the 70s and 80s just don't exist now, sales will drive what is made.

At least be an amusing troll if you're going to stir up trouble, Westlo. Or provide a more substantial argument than relying on the franchise titles. With that logic, manga is just fine at present because One Piece is setting records all over the place - yet its sales for the industry in total are only 1/4 of what they were in 1995. We know you love your sales, Westlo. We really do. And we know you love to go after Triple_R whenever you're bored. But seriously, at least try. We know you're capable of far better.