Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama
Historically it's about my favorite genre, though lately TV entries have been abysmal to mediocre at best while OVA's and movies tend to have kept what I've liked from mecha series past and don't have that weird incongruity between cours that virtually every TV mecha series has had for about the past 3-5 years.
The way I see it it's possible to break mecha anime down into about 5 different sub-categories, though many tend to share at least some crossover:
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Not gonna quote your entire post, but I appreciate this synopsis and mostly agree with you.
I think the mecha anime that I tend to like the most are ones that seriously imagine the emotional impact of mecha, like
Evangelion,
Bokurano and also
FMP: TSR as well as anime which present mecha in a novel and refreshing manner like
Escaflowne ,
Big O although I think that there are a lot of interesting possibilities which have been surprisingly left mostly unexplored, to my knowledge.
I think one thing that bug me about mecha shows is the convention whereby in most mecha shows, mecha are presented like some kind of ultimate weapon. (There are some notable exceptions like
08th MS Team) The reality is that such a fighting vehicle would have a lot of weaknesses and in any universe where such weapons where present, there would undoubtedly be some cheap utilitarian defense devised to counter them.
For example, you rarely see chains and other entangling barriers used against mecha in anime, but in reality this kind of major vulnerability to it's locomotion (the tendency to trip and fall , being carried down by your own extreme weight) is a huge weakness that could be exploited in a number of ways (cables, pit traps, oil slicks, enormous ball bearings etc.) that are all cheaper than a mech itself.
Moreover, in any universe in which you could build a mecha, vehicles like tanks and fighter aircraft would have similarly fearsome specifications that would make them superior to mecha in some ways. There is no way, at any level of technology, that the design of a mecha is much harder to armor than a tank. Yet I cannot remember a time in a mecha anime where a better armored tank defeated a poorly armored mecha with it's heavy firepower at long range.
By that same token, a mecha would never be able to fly as quickly as a purpose designed fighter aircraft. Yet you often see mecha easily flying down and destroying fighter aircraft in mecha shows.
I'm not saying that I need my mecha shows to be realistic. Far from it. But why do the majority of mecha shows choose a mundane near to distant future military premise if they aren't going to even acknowledge the tactical realities of human warfare? If you want to make a absurd, and unrealistic show, why not have an absurd and unrealistic premise?
For example, you could have a mecha show where necromancers with gigantic medieval bone mechas fight wizards in golem mechas made out wood and stone? Why not more mecha shows like EVA where people are actually controlling gigantic organisms? Why not shows like
Angelic Layer where fighting robots aren't even weapons at all?
Instead we get stuff like
Gundam W most of the time.