Mecha
- For the Chicano organization, see MEChA.
A large, bipedal machine is not the most flexible of designs, and aside from occasional use in things like heavy construction work, mecha are most often built for combat purposes. As such, their status varies widely between different settings, from one type of unit among others to undisputed rulers of the battlefield.
The distinction between smaller mecha and their smaller cousins (and likely progenitors), the powered armor suits, is blurred; according to one definition, a mecha is piloted while a powered armor is worn. Anything large enough to have a cockpit is generally considered a mecha.
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2 The mecha genre of anime 3 Grammar 4 Other meanings |
East vs. West
Mecha are quite popular in Japanese anime, and by extension manga. In Western entertainment, they are occasionally seen in gamess, especially the action, strategy and simulation genress, but the most well-known Western context for mecha is BattleTech. The original BattleTech - a table-top strategy game - has been the basis of numerous MechWarrior computer games and a role-playing game. Other products bearing the BattleTech name in
clude a collectible card game, books and an animated TV series.
Though designs vary widely in both eastern and western mecha, there is a general difference in style. Japanese ones tend to be sleeker as opposed to the rougher and more rugged western ones, and it's not unusual for Japanese mecha to perform maneuvers that verge on acrobatics while some western machines would have trouble getting up. Hands are much more common on eastern mecha; western designs often just have upper limbs with permanent weapon emplacements.
Realism tends to be a higher priority in the west. In particular, most BattleTech games are heavily concerned with the realism and feasibility of their technologies, at least within the fictional setting, and have a very fine level of detail (compare Star Trek paraphernalia). Whereas technical data is usually scarce in anime (with some notable exceptions), BattleTech players can and do find themselves designing their vehicles right down to the armor plating and internal component composition of single limbs.
The word 'mech' is used to describe such vehicles considerably more often in western entertainment. In Japanese, 'mecha' is the more frequent term (see 'Other meanings' below), though in the series themselves they are seldom known as such; for example, the mecha in the Macross saga are referred to as veritechs and destroids, in the Front Mission games they're known as wanzers, et cetera.
The mecha genre of anime
In anime, 'mecha' is a genre that features the vehicles and their pilots as the central characters. Here, the average mecha are usually twenty feet tall at the smallest, outfitted with a wide variety of weapons, and quite frequently have tie-ins with toy manufacturers. The Gundam franchise is an excellent example: Gundam toys and model kits (produced by the Japanese toymaker Bandai) are ubiquitous in Japan. In this genre teenage pilots are more common than would be feasible.
Mecha anime and manga differ vastly in storytelling and animation quality. As often happens with anime, many titles have a level of detail and plot dynamic that's unheard of in western TV animation. Shows tend to focus more on the characters than western ones would, and content ranges all the way from childrens' shows to ones containing adult material. Some mecha shows feature surprising depth of intellectual content: examples include Neon Genesis Evangelion, the three feature Patlabor films, and the more recent RahXephon series. The introduction of Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979 introduced a sort of paradox: a war show about giant war machines that was in fact anti-war at heart.
Some mecha (see Macross) are capable of transformation or combining to form even bigger ones (see Voltron). Go Nagai is often credited with inventing this in 1974 with the television series Getter Robo.
One notable console game that focuses on the mecha anime genre is Banpresto?s Super Robot Wars series (also known as Super Robot Taisen), which in each instalment of its games depict an elaborate crossover of popular and less-known mecha anime series.
The genre may have started with Go Nagai's Mazinger Z in 1973. It is possible to trace its roots farther back, to Tetsujin 28-go from the 1960s, though the young protagonist there rode atop his giant robot rather than inside.
Other notable series include but are by no means limited to Macross, which led to the breakthrough of anime in the USA, Gunbuster, which along with Macross is considered the pinnacles of anime in the 1980s, the police-focused Patlabor, and as examples of older shows, Gigantor and Giant Robo.
In Japanese the word mecha (or meka) is an abbreviation of the English "mechanical" and used to refer to all mechanical objects, real-world or fictional. In this sense, it's extended to humanoid, human-sized robots and such things as the boomers from Bubblegum Crisis, the similar replicants of Blade Runner, and cyborgs can be referred to as mecha.
This is far less frequent among English speakers. There are exceptions; in the film '', the word is used to describe 'mechanicals' (robotic humanoids), as opposed to 'orga' for 'organics' (humans).History
Grammar
The general consensus is that the term "mecha" is both singular and plural, as is the case in Japanese. However, there is no official line, as the word has been adopted back into English from Japanese; variants include "mechas" as the plural of mecha, or "mech" as the singular.Other meanings