Poll: Japanese or Western Mecha?

[John Funk]

As Western mechs consist of Space Marine Dreadnoughts and ANYTHING from Mechwarrior series, and at a stretch Metal Gear REX since it's painfully obvious just how much Western influence there was in its design, Western mechs win automatically.

...Western influence on its design? Pretty much every major Western mecha was originally influenced by Japanese design, so if you're going to go by that, then Japanese mecha win automatically thanks to a lack of competition. Besides, the best Mechwarrior designs were the ones stolen from Macross et al anyway

But the exact same fight could have been done by two Jedi with jetpacks and a bunch of fancy motion lines. Mechwarrior-style mecha actually fight like giant robots would, while the gundams are only robots for the sake of the rule of cool, otherwise they could have just been oversized Power Rangers and no one would be able to tell the difference.

I didn't know Jedi could get their heads and limbs off and keep fighting. That was almost an article I wrote back for the robot issue, actually - anthropomorphized robots let us automatically understand what's going on in a fight, who's winning or losing, while still letting the combatants keep on fighting far beyond what a human could do. Like the famous Last Shooting [http://nanochan.org/board/src/1249338003708.jpg] scene from the first Gundam - you don't need to know any of the specs to know that if the guy's missing his head and arm, he's in bad shape. But he's still fighting and it adds a dramatic touch that Western mecha lack.

Mechwarrior-style mecha don't fight like giant robots would, they fight like tanks would if they were elevated above the ground. They're only robots for the sake of the Rule of Cool, otherwise they could have just been tanks that hover above the ground and no one would be able to tell the difference. The fights are still infinitely less interesting.

Some people like tanks.

Great. Tanks are cool. But if I want a tank, I'll have a damn tank. Oh, and their combat is still much less interesting.

Actually, mecha like AT Votoms or Heavy Gear are somewhat plausible because they're essentially armoured infantry.

Bipedal mecha are inherently implausible no matter what. The closest thing to plausible would be an exoskeleton or power armor - being presented in a more realistic fashion doesn't actually make them more realistic.

Gundam sucks buddy.

Some Gundam, sure. Some of it's awesome. But I'd take Gundam over WH40k or Mechwarrior any day of the week. But here's the thing - I'm not talking about the quality of the franchise or the quality of the show, I'm talking about having a dynamic, interesting fight.

If you can link to a fight half as interesting or dynamic that goes beyond just BIG GUNS SHOOTAN with Western designs, then sure, I'll give it a watch. But until you put up, nothing you can say is going to change the fact that fast-paced melee combat is more interesting to watch than sluggish shooting at distances. Why do you think so many action movies end in fistfights rather than tank shootouts?

 

[ThreeWords]

Why do I sense an incoming anime bashing/western supremacy spree? Seriously, this is will end something like "Warhammer 40k pwns your stupid anime mechs," I just know it with our community.

Defensive, much?

Anyway. Personally, I prefer the Eastern-style mechs when it comes to visual aspects. They tend be more humanoid, more agile and maneuverable, and come equipped with all kinds of awesomely retarded over-the-top weapons. It usually leads to better-paced and more impressive action scenes.

In videogames though, I prefer the Battletech-style Western mechs. Eastern-style mechs often feel... lacking. It's just 'normal' action scaled up a bunch. The bulky, clunky, somewhat unwieldy feel of Western mechs really enhances the idea that you're strapped to a 90-ton engine of mass destruction. The fact that they usually come equipped with stuff that's on the right side of the suspension-of-disbelief barrier helps, too.

Of course, there's plenty of cross-pollination in the genre, with Eastern mecha taking on aspects of 'traditional' Western mechs and vice-versa.

I'm with this guy

I like to watch the Japanese mecha, with their agility and improbable weapons, but I'd rather play as the pilot of a huge heavy engine of death. Maybe that just has to do with my play style though...

 

[RYjet911]

As Western mechs consist of Space Marine Dreadnoughts and ANYTHING from Mechwarrior series, and at a stretch Metal Gear REX since it's painfully obvious just how much Western influence there was in its design, Western mechs win automatically.

...Western influence on its design? Pretty much every major Western mecha was originally influenced by Japanese design, so if you're going to go by that, then Japanese mecha win automatically thanks to a lack of competition. Besides, the best Mechwarrior designs were the ones stolen from Macross et al anyway

That's like saying that because anime was based on Walt Disney's early cartoons that all anime is therefore western animation.

Just because Western design originally used influence from Japanese-style mechs (A statement you haven't backed up particularly well... At all...) doesn't make them Japanese mechs. They have evolved into their own breed, to the point where it's viable to say Hideo Kojima got his ideas for Metal Gear Solid from American culture, including the design for Metal Gear Rex, as reading up on interviews with him will suggest.

EDIT: Also, you must never have seen a great fight between two mechs in a Mechwarrior game. Seen my friend who loves Mechwarrior 3 play, and the fights are fricking intense.

 

[demoman_chaos]

I'm split, but I go with Western.
Jap mechs are normally more awesome and capable of doing much more, but Western mechs are usually more varied and more practical. All the Gundams are mostly the same, but there are very few MechWarrior mechs that are alike.
But the best example of a western style mech is actually Japanese, Metal Gear Rex. If only I could find a mod to put that into MechWarrior 4 (anyone know of one I could download?).

 

[Rolling Thunder]

None of the Western mechas posted in this thread have done anything to change the fact that for the most part, Western mecha combat is dull as all hell. It's as thrilling as watching two tanks exchanging fire.

They look blocky and ugly, they're no more practical than their Eastern counterparts (let's face it, ALL mecha are inherently impractical), and their fights are boring. Oh, and the vast majority of Western design aesthetic was originally taken from Japan.

I don't know, it seems just so clear-cut to me.

And besides, nobody's posted any Western mecha combat half as cool as the final battle of Gundam 00 I linked a page or two back

Abstract: The concept of the mech should not be that of 'tank-with-legs', rather, we should consider it as 'mobile, legged artillery', as the tank was originally conceived as.

1. Someone didn't really see that Warlord Titan, did they? That's not built for mech-to-mech combat, it's built to apply enough overwhelming force to the target of choice, be it an armoured coloumn, a trenchline or a city. It's not meant to fight mechs, it's meant as a mobile direct-fire artillery platform. For an army group.

And frankly, that's your personal aesthetic, much as I'd rather not have mechs flouncing around like a pair of ballerinas with glowsticks attached. Of course, there's always personal taste, but really

2. Actually...no. It's what might be called 'cross polination'. The original concept of powered armour/fighting robots emerged somewhere in the 30s in America, wheras the concept of giant fighting robots is around the era of HG Wells - his Martian Tripods, and earlier concepts. These ideas got taken on, refined, altered, changed, bounced around, modified, mailed off to a friend in Japan, who wrote up his own ideas and sent them back - in essence, there is no clear-cut 'source'. Mechs evolved from power armour and personal war machines. The idea of personal war machines stems from the idea of personal armour - knights. Knights stem from....you get the idea. Claiming something as ubiquitous as mechs is Japanese is rather like saying that curved sword blades began with the development of the Katana.

3. Really?

Spoiler

I

CAST

SUMMON

BETTER

MECH

 

[Xom]

[chunky post is chunky and needs trimming]

'cept the tanks are jumping around with boosters and such, and bits of them can be blown off dynamically just like Eastern mecha and unlike real tanks, which are usually destroyed in one go and remain mostly intact on the outside.
Man-sized 'bots lose limbs and keep fighting.
Also, so can Jedi, but not the heads.

This thing is less of a tank with legs and more of a battleship with legs...

 

[tkioz]

Western (apart from early Robotech which is just plain cool) mecha wins, mainly because it makes sense, as I get older my Sci-Fi/etc needs to make a modicum of sense to me, otherwise I find it hard to get into it.

Plus Japanese Mecha always has teenagers and kids flying them, which I'm so sick of. I like adult characters.

 

[tkioz]

oh yea. just remembered, Warhammer 40k Titans > *

"I have fought as a God fights. I am Imperius Dictatio. Kneel before me and beg for you lives!" - Princeps Ervin Hekate, commander of the Warlord-class titan Imperius Dictatio

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

I love anime (as anybody who knows me, or as others may tell by my avatar), but I have to go with Western here.

 

[orangebandguy]

I think western mechs are better, then again I don't know all that much about them.

 

[John Funk]

That's like saying that because anime was based on Walt Disney's early cartoons that all anime is therefore western animation.

Just because Western design originally used influence from Japanese-style mechs (A statement you haven't backed up particularly well... At all...) doesn't make them Japanese mechs. They have evolved into their own breed, to the point where it's viable to say Hideo Kojima got his ideas for Metal Gear Solid from American culture, including the design for Metal Gear Rex, as reading up on interviews with him will suggest.

EDIT: Also, you must never have seen a great fight between two mechs in a Mechwarrior game. Seen my friend who loves Mechwarrior 3 play, and the fights are fricking intense.

As for the point about design, I'd like to refer back to Ollie Barder's post on the subject [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/18.159198.3992466], seeing as he's a lot more knowledgeable about individual designers and the history of it than I am.

I'm not talking about playing a game, in which case a good game is a good game, and a shootout can be intense to partake in (while the same shootout would be much less fun to watch were it a movie or TV show). I'm talking about being a pure observer in a battle.

That's a matter of opinion.

No, really? ALL of this is a matter of opinion, dude. Doesn't mean we can't discuss it.

First, dude have you even seen Empire Strikes back?

Action movies end in fistfights for two reason:
-People are cheaper than tanks
-People tend not to care about tanks or machines of any kind, they care about people. That's why Saving Private Ryan is infantry vs tanks not tanks vs tanks.

Besides the fact, one thing you need to realize is that the excitement of a fight scene is due to the direction of the cinematography/animation not the nature of battle. Macross (which is btw better than Gundam) has a lot of good non-melee fight scenes. In fact when they do get into melee it is almost always pretty dumb.

AT Votoms has very little hand to hand combat as well. But a lot of the fight scenes are awesome.

Gundam likewise has very little melee for that matter either, since Gundam is prone to the "super mega weapon of death" syndrome where one dumb Gundam can take out a colony with a beam rifle. And heat axes and beam sabres are inherently less super.

But you're right there are not a lot of western animations that show good battles period, just because people can't die in western animation. That's why the heroes are always killing robots and guys are always bailing out of tanks and airplanes at the last possible moment.

Okay, wait. Hold on. I'm not sure what ESB has to do with anything, but let me quote one very specific part of your post.

-People tend not to care about tanks or machines of any kind, they care about people.

That. Right there. THAT'S why Eastern mecha combat is so much more interesting to watch, because they're anthropomorphized. It makes them relatable in a way that Western mecha simply don't have. That is the exact reason why they work so much better in a visual medium.

I've seen Macross. There's good Macross and there's bad Macross, just like there's good Gundam and bad Gundam. I'll take 0080 War in the Pocket over anything Macross any day of the week. Though I'm getting that you've probably only seen Gundam Wing, maybe even SEED? I mean, the main character's MS in Gundam 00 was codenamed "Seven Swords" for a reason - it doesn't spend much time at range.

Macross' fight scenes work at range because they're still sleek and fast-paced. The Itano Circus is just cool, period, as is seeing a Valkryie spin and dive to get through the misslespam. I think you're kind of undermining your own arguments by pointing out how a Japanese take on the idea of ranged combat is a lot more entertaining to watch than the Western version of said combat.

Abstract: The concept of the mech should not be that of 'tank-with-legs', rather, we should consider it as 'mobile, legged artillery', as the tank was originally conceived as.

Are you saying just Western mecha, or mecha in general? I don't know if I can agree with a fairly narrow definition, because part of what appeals to me about mecha is having a good variety in the mix.

1. Someone didn't really see that Warlord Titan, did they? That's not built for mech-to-mech combat, it's built to apply enough overwhelming force to the target of choice, be it an armoured coloumn, a trenchline or a city. It's not meant to fight mechs, it's meant as a mobile direct-fire artillery platform. For an army group.

And frankly, that's your personal aesthetic, much as I'd rather not have mechs flouncing around like a pair of ballerinas with glowsticks attached. Of course, there's always personal taste, but really

Okay, even if the Titan isn't built for mech to mech combat, it's still essentially standing in one spot and firing lots and lots of guns. That combat is incredibly boring to me, and could be replaced with, say, a really big hovertank.

2. Actually...no. It's what might be called 'cross polination'. The original concept of powered armour/fighting robots emerged somewhere in the 30s in America, wheras the concept of giant fighting robots is around the era of HG Wells - his Martian Tripods, and earlier concepts. These ideas got taken on, refined, altered, changed, bounced around, modified, mailed off to a friend in Japan, who wrote up his own ideas and sent them back - in essence, there is no clear-cut 'source'. Mechs evolved from power armour and personal war machines. The idea of personal war machines stems from the idea of personal armour - knights. Knights stem from....you get the idea. Claiming something as ubiquitous as mechs is Japanese is rather like saying that curved sword blades began with the development of the Katana.

I didn't say that the idea of combat robots is Japanese, because you're right that the idea started with Verne and Wells (though I'm fairly sure that the idea of powered armor was Heinlein's in the 50s, but there could be something I'm not aware of). I'm saying that the design aesthetics for many - if not most - of what we would term Western mecha originated from Japanese designs. Look at Battletech, for instance.

Hell, even the term "mecha" is Japanese.

I'm not talking about the IDEA of giant fighting robots and power armor, I'm talking about specific design aesthetics. But again, I'll leave this point to Mr. Barder as he's more familiar with the subject matter than I am.

3. Really?

Spoiler

CUTTING LOTS OF IMAGES

First of all, I was looking for Western mecha combat. As in, a video of a fight scene.

Second of all, I think WH40k mecha look dumb as hell. Sorry. :/

Spoiler

Superior mecha are superior. And this is just using the one franchise. There are WAY more Japanese mecha beyond Gundam that kick ass.

 

[A random person]

Mechwarrior-style mecha don't fight like giant robots would, they fight like tanks would if they were elevated above the ground. They're only robots for the sake of the Rule of Cool, otherwise they could have just been tanks that hover above the ground and no one would be able to tell the difference. The fights are still infinitely less interesting.

Thank you for saying what needs to be said; there is no point to western mechs being mechs, they're essentially tanks on legs. All being a mech does is give them the weak points of legs (see Empire Strikes Back) without the maneuverability advantages that are the whole point of giving something legs (besides rule of cool, of course).

Also, it seems a good bit of Japanese mech hate comes from the dislike of kid heroes, as does some hate for JRPG's and anime, apparently. All I can say is that while I'm no longer the crazy youth rights guy here, this "kids and teens suck, have adults do the action" rhetoric with fiction appalls me. They can be heroes too, let them.

 

[JWAN]

The idea itself is pretty fucking stupid. Why would you waste billions of dollars on a one-man giant robot that punches things up when you can do that yourself? Even with added weapons such as lasers and missiles, the cost of manufacturing such monsters and the sheer amount of collateral damage they cause is enough to put one nation's army a billion steps in front of the competition and plunge the same country into an eternal economic abyss, just like America! Swords don't count as weapons for mechs either, because it is much more cost-effective to use a butcher knife. Besides, you don't need to punch things, you're a giant tank! All a mech has to do to be effective in melee is to fly into the air and land on things, assuming that doesn't destroy it.

I choose Western Mechs, because it's much more logical to stick machine guns or missiles on a 50 ft walking tank than it is to give it arms to pick stuff up or punch.

^ this

why use a sword when you can launch a cruise missile or a 16 inch shell, or use 30mm cannons that use API rounds

adaptability into multiple combat roles with little cost, intimidation factor. One of the main things Psychologists have found is that a humanoid shape is terrifying, if you ever saw a Mecha in real life you would shit your pants scared thank looking at a tank simply because of the human shape.

That's not counting terrain advantages, weapon capacity.

Then we get into the transformable ones like the Zeta Gundam.

Of course those are the real robots, if you have a Grungust or a Daitarn 3 nothing on gods green earth could stop you.

And even without those things like the Guymelaf, Arm Slave, Victory Gundam era Mobile Suits, Tekkamen, Valkyries...

Really the list goes on 'Mecha' does not mean 20 story giant target

yea but if its using legs you have to think of height problems. During WW2 Sherman tanks were so tall that pulling them behind cover would only expose everyone else behind the so called cover to more devastating long range fire.

 

[FolkLikePanda]

Japanese

 

[Ollie Barder]

In regards to Battletech, the Dougram [http://sarna.net/wiki/Shadow_Hawk]. There are many instances, in Battletech alone, were this type of design plagiarism took place.

Western mecha design is consequently hugely derivative.

 

[Robert632]

i'm leaning toward japan because they look slighlty more streamlined, generally.

 

[IxionIndustries]

My vote goes for wester mechs... I mean, the Japanese mechs always seem to follow the gundam look. I have never seen a mech in an anime that didn't just scream "GUNDAM!".

I mean, western mechs have all these:

-snip-

EDIT: Although, I will have to say that I love the Tachikoma robots from Ghost in the Shell, but they don't count..

A: What kind of mech anime have you even seen if you think it all looks like gundam? Ever seen Macross (or that American rape of it called Robotech)? Ever seen an Orbital Frame? Ever played Metal Gear for that matter? You'll actually be hardpressed to find the Gundam look. Even Gundam itself has created mechs don't look anything like gundams.

B: Why don't tachikomas count? Just a scaled down version of other multiped tanks.

They don't count as mechs.. A mech is basically a giant, pilotable, walking suit of armor. The Tachikomas are robots, since they think on their own.

I did not think of Metal Gear at first, so I'll have to say that they are pretty badass, but I have never heard of any of the others you are referring to, so therefore I did not consider them.

 

[hinuhws]

I think Japanese mech design is superior myself, if for no reason than that there's just so much more of it.

Also people saying that either is "more realistic" is a laugh.