Misconceptions people have about mecha anime.

So I'm a big fan of mecha anime and have watched quite a few series, new and old. Regardless of if its exceptionally well written sci-fi or just over the top action with bright explosions, its my cup of tea. Sadly the genre is one of the least popular right now, even in japan we don't see as many mecha series being produced each year as we once used to. Even so we have seen a handful of newer series become really popular even amongst people that say they don't even like the mecha genre, for example Code Geass and Gurren Lagann to mention a couple. I personally think that these two examples are good series and all... I just don't see how people can claim they like them but not other anime. Its not like they are unique in any way, shape to be honest.

But there is a reason behind it I have figured out. Namely that people think they know what mecha anime is all about and based on those misconceptions they write it of as something they don't like. Then, somehow, they actually get around to watching one and end up loving it. In my previous two examples an explanation could be that people heard mention of Code Geass being made by well known manga group CLAMP (which is incorrect. CLAMP only designed the characters) and therefore gave it a shot, probably with a lot of skepticism and low expectations in mind, and ended up liking it. Same thing with Gurren Lagann. It was made by Gainax, a company well know name even to people that don't watch mecha anime, and they saw a few images of the character Yoko from the anime and watched a few episodes and got hooked.

So my conclusion, simple as it may be, is that people think mecha anime is one way, and when they finally give a series a try they end up liking it because they don't have any expectations. We have seen this with other series like Evangelion, The Big-O and several waves of Gundam series. They all got a lot of people watching... but nothing else in the genre once they were done, just because the misconceptions made them think they found that unique mecha anime that was different and so much better written, animated and produced compared to everything else available. Well, I watch all mecha anime I can get my hands on and I know this to be untrue. Same thing with statements I hear all the time like "I really hate mecha anime, but Eureka Seven did focus on the characters instead of the robots so I loved it" Well, if you go back 40-30 years this statement would make sense, but after the first Gundam anime came out in 1979, its expected that you need to have well written characters in a mecha anime if you want to tell a story at all. And even if all you want to have in it is action, you need strong characters with strong personalities (even if thy are otherwise flat) to keep people interested.

So my point with all this is probably that I just find it sad that people found one or two series they liked in the genre, but are still to afraid to bother watching more mecha anime. It means a lot of great series are being overlooked by people that would probably love them. So in a feeble attempt to remedy this, at the least amongst the A4 readers that happen to stumble upon this thread, I'm going to give a short list of example shows to watch based on some of those mecha anime people might have watched already.

Gurren Lagann.
Godannar: Has good action, gatai and explosions on par with Gurren Lagann, but with much better characters. The strongest point of the series story is how different types of relationships are explored through the different characters. Also has the fan service thing going if you are into that.
Gunbuster and Diebuster: Gainax first super robot anime. Without this, no Gurren Lagann. If you liked the epic space battles in Gurren Lagann, Gunbuster does it quite differently, but probably more epic. And well, the final scene is the only anime that actually had me shed tears. Watch the anime to find out why.
GaoGaiGar: Although there are almost no parts of this series that can be said to be original, it does everything better then most other similar series. Each episode build upon the previous to be better and better. Strong characters, great action and it just builds and builds to be better with each episode.

Code Geass and Eureka Seven:
Overman King Gainer: This is the show that Eureka Seven stole all their ideas from. Like all of them. Characters are really similar, the story is about a group of rebels fleeing from government oppressors, mecha being partly organic and they even use similar green light to make the robots fly. I like OKG better is all.
Full Metal Panic: I guess people have heard about this, but still worth mentioning. Not a lot of direct similarities, but FMP has a great mix of action drama and comedy. Sometimes blending all three and other times focusing on one exclusively to great effect.
Gundam: Seriously, give Gundam a try. I would recommend starting with Turn-A Gundam for a great story, lots of drama and interesting characters as its the most unique and story heavy Gundam series. And for something with more action, Either Gundam X or Gundam 00. I could also lump in Macross here, either Macross Plus or Frontier. Any one of these can be seen without watching anything else in their respective franchise beforehand.

Evangelion:
Soukyuu no Fafner: Dead Aggressor: The only thing I will recommend here. Feels almost like a remake of Evangelion, and its much more enjoyable for someone like me who felt Evangelion was mediocre. I wont go into why, I talked about it in countless threads before. Fafner is really similar in many ways but much better. Has a better main character, similar dangerous villains but without the hollow thought of possible depth and symbolism and the overall production value with story and animation is potent.

So... anyone else here that feel the same way I do. Maybe you are one of those that never really gave mecha a fair chance. Discuss!

I will say an unpopular one I really enjoyed was Gasaraki but I chose my anime not on some silly sub genre like Mecha or what ever the others ones are I don't bother remembering but on primary genres or the people behind it having a good track record. I also listen to recommendations from people who's opinions I have yet to determine are complete ****. I know people say its not an anime but Big O is another great well loved Mecha series. I think people who say they dislike mecha animes are saying it because the bulk of those they have seen are from a primary genre they didn't like or were just poorly done.

I'm just not drawn to the genre. By and large, I find the plots silly like in Gurren Lagann or badly contrived like Gundam Anything. The characters tend to be vapid and emo or butch and over the top. There's just nothing there for me to relate to. I don't think there are any misconceptions about the genre that don't have to do with fans of the genre.

When a new one comes out, I give it a try and I'm almost always disappointed. I can't think of a true mecha that I actually enjoyed.

I cannot wrap my head around mecha - I here giant robot and the first thing that comes to mind Transformers. I tried NGE and I hated every minute of it :/.

NGE is a terrible anime all around I would seriously look at just about any other Mecha anime the closest thing to NGE I know of is Gasaraki and as I said I enjoyed it many dont becuase it is a bit slow and its fairly complex IIRC. I need to rewatch that one.

What is a good anime with he old type of animation (from the 80's I think) where the anime is much more detailed? I am looking for a mecha from the 80's anything that comes to mind?

Mecha definitely seems to have a rep for being more "hardcore" and unapproachable than some of the newer genres.
But hey, anything thats been going on for as long as gundam has is bound to be intimidating.

I like the odd mecha but the trend i seem to notice is that their story and characters come out as hald baked, second fiddle to the action and scifi lore itself, which is a bit of a shame.
Though many still disregard it as a mecha entirely, TTGL is my fav,broke down a lot of barriers and showed people that giant robot fights could still be kinetic and entertaining. It substituted in depth technical explanations and y'know "the entire universe rests on this battle" stuff with just pure rage and adrenoline, focused on the human spirit, which i thought was cool.

Still there are some that when they try to take the focus off of the action and onto the story they fail miserably.
Like Kurogane no Linebarrels. That show was just crappy. Lame characters, dumb narrative developments, and there was this random angsty teen feel behind everything the leading guy did.

Thanks for the informative post, Lance. Gotta check some of those series out. ^^

Also, Rahxephon is another anime similar to Evangelion. While it doesn't have an audience as devoted or as big as Evangelion's, it is also somewhat divisive. Some love it, others hate it, and almost for the exact same reasons as Eva.

I'm sure anime fans hold plenty of misconceptions about mecha, being that it is a very niche genre. I've never really discussed it at length with anyone, so I can't draw from personal experience. But I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head, Lance. It's an easy genre to dismiss. Even a cursory look at some descriptions of shows would probably confirm the limited, inaccurate view that some people have. And I can further attest to your argument that popular mecha shows are treated as the exception, not the rule about the genre as a whole. That's at least what I've witnessed on this site. ^^

hey guys, NGE was not popular because of the story, but because the ridiculous amount of doujinshi about NGE. the popular one is the doujinshi, not the original story. it is especially famous among fujoshi -female otaku- because the legendary yaoi pairing of shinji x toji i forget~ wait toji x shinji ?.. ugh i am sorry i am not well versed in that world.

the hype may be similar to haruhi suzumiya's dance.. hare hare dance.. was popular so popular that i read thousands of letters flood the office to get the whole choreography of the hare hare dance.. and the office did release the whole choreography, before edited with music and special effect, and Melancholy of suzumiya haruhi's popularity was skyrocketed heck they even held contest in comiket for the best hare hare dancer LOL. why the dance popular? beats me. so to why, NGE doujinshi popular. i was there when the whole world was hyping NGE ~.~ and these doujinshi of NGE which was popular was hentai doujinshi.. maybe they enjoy imagining asuka langley or rei hayanami in sexual situation. for further question an NGE-doujinshi maniac should explain them better than me.

^Regarding NGE it was f*cking creepy how Rei wanted to f*ck the kids dad every step of the way =.=

ah i have been loving mecha for ages and from what i see, general misconception of mecha as genre is that they equate the genre to bipedal giant robot that swings like crazy and have like "drill punch" <- LOL.

mecha as genre is short of mechanized.. naval ship battle in "tactical roar" is a proper mecha genre. Infinite stratos breed new kind of mecha, with no cockpit. "ghost in the shell stand alone complex" can be said of mecha genre. you can even categorize "strike witches" as mecha. mecha is acknowledged as major genre because such wide selection and possibility. cyborg, android, armored bipedal robot, mechanized tank, mechanized submarine, mechanized spaceship, andropod, bioroid, armored suit are all of proper mecha genre.

@ProtoManX and Gamma:
I can see your arguments but I just don't feel any of them apply to only mecha anime. And as I said, I see plenty of exceptions where people find a mecha anime they like, but still feel they want to stay away from everything else. Comments like "I generally hate mecha anime but (insert popular title here) I really enjoyed a lot" backed up by statements that are untrue as the qualities people seem to like with that one mecha anime they watched are common in the genre and have been for decades.

@Excalibolg:
I would go with Gunbuster. Its from 1988 and its easily one of the best anime around if you go by animation quality and attention to detail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gm6czdcp3k
I could make an entire new tread talking about the misconceptions people have with old an new animation styles (or Cel animation and CG animation to be precise) but my main problem is that people seem to not understand that computer graphics can look really bad as well even though it has a "cleaner" look to it when compared to cel animation.
Macross: Do You Remember Love is another fine example from 84. Most OAV and Movies from the 80s had great animation if they had some budget behind them.

@Chatterbox:
This is once again something I don't feel is unique to mecha anime in any way. There are loads of anime released each year with boring and unoriginal stories and forgettable characters. You could possibly ague that the action should come first with a mecha anime, for obvious reasons, but the same thing can be said for any genre that isn't a pure drama anime. And even then I can think of plenty of mecha series that have interesting characters and and original story on par with any other genre in anime.

And its easy to think that Gundam is to complex to get into, but thats because people think that all of the stories are connected, which they are not. As you can watch any Gundam series as your first, this shouldn't be a problem but then we have another problem with psychology, where people think they want lots of options, but if they are presented with even a few they get scared and want to avoid making a decision. With some research its easy to find both the information that you can watch any series first and also what one you might enjoy the most, but its to daunting to even get to that step for most people.

@ Sakura:
I haven't watched Rahxephon myself so thats why i didn't add it to the list although I know its supposed to be similar to Eva. Might have to give it a try at some point.

I also find it strange that people mistake preconceptions as fact about the genre. I can admit that the anime people usually mention they like are some of the better ones in the genre, but I know they are far from the only ones people would enjoy based on their reasoning for liking said series. And of course some of the things people say are all true about the genre overall. Depending on the sub-genre there are some tropes that almost if not every anime will follow. No way getting around that, although once in a while someone try something completely different and succeed, or more often fail horrible.

Its kind of funny how the fans often demand something new and different from a new installment in a long running series, be it anime or games or what have you, and then when they actually get something a bit different, people instead complain that its gone to far from the original mold. Just look at how Turn-A Gundam was really disliked when it was fairly new, but then we got SEED, 00 and now AGE that are all of a sudden rather standard again, making Turn-A a forgotten classic. Or Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask if you want to take a video game example.

@ Almite:
The doujinshi had very little to do with the success to Evangelion overall. It might have got some people interested, but the reason it became a huge phenomenon like it did is that it tried something new when most other mecha anime during the mid 90s had run stale with little originality. And although Eva at heart is a straight forward monster-of-the-week super robot anime, the well written characters and cleaver use of christian imagery meant there was a lot more to talk about compared to everything else going on in the genre at the time. People were speculating left and right about the supposed hidden meanings and clever depth behind it all. We now know that nothing came of all that talk and its kind of interesting how you can convince people that something rather flat has way more depth then it has, but thats talk for another thread I think.

I feel that a lot of the misconceptions people have is at the fault of the terminology used. Simply labelling something as Mecha tells us nothing about the show, it can range from Zeta to Burst angel, from a tactical space conflict to a group of bounty hunters who just happen to have a giant robot. . and 60% of their clothes. You are right in pointing out that there are a variety of different types of Mecha, but a lot of people don’t label them beyond that. If someone were to ask me what type of show Gurren Lagann was I wouldn’t simply call it Mecha I would address it as a “super robot show,” where the hero has to defeat evil with the power of friendship and/or masculinity, like G-Gundam and GaoGaiGar, basically a sub genre of Mecha which is similar to Sentai. If I was asked the same question about Zeta Gundam, I would class it as “Mecha-Warfare,” something more tactical, is meant to be taken seriously and the villains tend to be a shade of grey, like in the first Gundam when we saw Zeon soldiers with pictures of their families, not shot down civilian transport ships when they easily could have, etc.

There are other ways you can class them but my Mecha knowledge is pretty limited, I wouldn’t know what to label something like Evangelion for example. My point is that since Mecha is such a broad term more of an effort should be made to breaking it down into different categories, which will make the genre as whole more accessible to new comers as it will be very easy for them determine what they may and may not like.

People seem to be stuck on the idea that mecha means big robots and nothing else, however as shows like Code Geas and Gurren Lagann show quite clearly it is more than just robots fighting. However even when they see this they still avoid others in the genre for some bloody reason. I guess it just takes a certain type of fan. Not everyone is bound to enjoy big sci-fi battles and maybe one series is enough for them. I don't really know.

It does seem to present itself as more complicated than it really is and I guess that deters some people but this still doesn't explain why people will love one mecha anime and forsake all others. Maybe the generation gap. The prime time for mecha seemed to be in the 70's and 80's and some people just can't get into older anime as sad as that is.

Oh wait, I think I thought of something. I just remembered the way certian mechas try and utilise cgi only to fail miserably. That may deter people from watching older series for they come to think they will have dodgy and bad quality effects. However that is not the case, only some series use silly effects like that, not all of them.

By the way does Appleseed count? I loved Appleseed, it was very different but refreshing. They managed to compensate for using cgi by making the whole thing in cgi.