Except they really didn't... clearly these guys are viewing it through a Gundam-centric lens. So many things that were mentioned as minor gripes BattleTech does an AMAZING job with. And they just kept coming back to the Gundam-esq stuff...
@@mrkojak-ci1zm definitely, they even have heat management as a major part of operating a mech with energy weapons, at least in the books that started the battletech / mech-warrior universe.
yeah.. what a missed opportunity. Heck, I didn't expect TTBT-levels of detail but at least SOME mention of that side of the setting would have been nice.
I like that battletech acknowledges that mechs are incredibly expensive and completely embraces it. 5 mechs showing up on a planet is like the biggest deal ever. They don't have a lot in common with tanks in their use, Their role on a battlefield is more comparable to some centralized military asset like a battleship. Tanks are way more common and still maintain their niche in war
They are terror weapons, and delicate for their size. Not battleships. Using the battletech rules I found that tanks are more useful and more combat-capable. Just not as cool.
Well even in BT mechs are still pretty absurd. They do a *lot* of handwaving as to why vehicles aren't just way better. But it does enough to suspend disbelief unlike mecha franchises.
A similar thing happens with Titans in Warhammer 40k. A single Battle Titan is a rare enough occurrence for any given battle, but an entire Maniple or Battlegroup represents an enormous escalation of the conflict. And for an entire Legion to be deployed to a campaign is the stuff of legends, let alone the really big ones.
@@XMysticHerox There is not as much hand waving as you might expect in Battletech. There are real reasons why mechs are better than tanks in a lot of spaces. Logistics is a big one, but also survivability in the lore. The game rules do a bad job of showing just how much tougher a mech is to a tank in the setting, mostly because if things were lore accurate the game would not be fun. The problem with Tanks that has recently been shown in Real Life conflicts, is that they are too easy to disable. One decent hit and they die because of how compact everything is, there are very few places that can take a penetrating hit and not be fatal/crippling. Add to that how their movement parts are external and thus easier to damage, and it's not that hard to disable/destroy a tank with a decent weapon.
Two quick personal remarks: First: there's something REALLY satisfying about 80s mecha design in anime. The level of detail in some anime is AMAZING and still worth watching today. And it doesn't matter whether it's a House sized mecha or power armour like in MD GEIST or Bubblegum Crisis. Second: Neon Genesis Evangelion starts as your usual Mecha Anime but both the movies and the series go WAY beyond that. I'd even categorize the franchise as psychological drama.
@adamshafeeq8685 nope couldn't ever really get into the design in that series. One of the reasons I've never finished it even though it's said to be great.
If you want to see some mechs with large crew compliments, I suggest you do a deepdive into the Titans of Warhammer 40k, and particularly the big ones like the Warlord, Warmaster, and Imperator. While all Titans have a Princeps, who is basically the main pilot of the Titan who has a neural connection to control it and is commonly fully interred into it permanently for larger Titans, there are always at least two and commonly more than two Moderati who are pretty much the copilots of the Titan, who will control key weapon systems in order to lighten the Princeps' workload. Additionally, there are scores of tech adepts and even a few techpreists who maintain and repair all of the Titan's systems while in battle, and larger Titans will regularly carry an infantry component usually consisting of guardsmen, space marines, sisters of battle, or Skitarii. Every Titan will also have dozens if not hundreds of servitors integrated and onboard, but it's debatable as to whether or not those should count as crew. Granted, Warhammer 40k's Titans do kind of straddle the line between mech and walking structure, with the Imperator especially leaning toward the latter of the two and only the Warhound having the mobility to match what most people expect from mechs, so they may not be what you're looking for. I was going to also mention Ork Stompas and Gargants, as they have truly enormous crew components due to a general lack of automation in most Ork constructs, but those lean even more heavily into being walking structures rather than mechs.
I think youd enjoy battletech, and the mechwarrior/mech assault games. they are all in the same setting, and cover a lot of what you talked about. one of the mechs you showed in the video was the Raven, a birdlike EW scout mech. its not helpless in a fight, but it really shines as a support unit. the mechs in that setting feel as big as they are, and are a bit more realistic as well! they also use some neat tech you dont see much in science fiction at all, like ablative armor and other armor systems like reactive. theres also trophy systems, drones, and electronic warfare(the raven again). And its all wrapped up in a world where mechs are merely a component of combined arms strategy. tanks, aircraft and infantry can all take down a mech if the pilot isnt careful, and theres in return mechs specialized to try and keep other mechs safe from them, like the Rifleman and the Vulcan
One of my absolute favorite things about Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans is just how much they stress proper maintanence in that anime. The machines are constantly going back to their carrier to refuel and re-arm. Pilots quickly getting a bite to eat while their mechs get serviced before being set out again. Idk, there's just something to freaking cool to me that, this all happens in mechs and in space and as lover of IRL Aircraft carriers, it definately scratches that itch so well to me.
While I honestly cannot judge to what extend IBO goes; maintenance, limited ammo, longer term battle-damage and simple obsolescence have always been a key factor in Gundam, even 0079. In Zeta they extend it where machines get send out with temporary repairs and when the protagonists are able to steal three Gundam Mk-IIs, one gets send off to R&D, one is immediately scrapped for spare parts and only is brought into operational service.
To be fair, you can split mechs into two general categories: "Human scaled up", which is what most franchises do. This is where mech is, as you said, basically a human scaled up, using scaled up human weapons. Where mech becomes stand-in for the pilot in their behavior and appearence. A general vibe with these is that they have non-integrated weapon systems that they can pick up and drop as they want. But then there is "Mech as a platform". This is what Battletech does, where mechs humanoid shape is usually a lot more restricted (not that BattleMech doesn't have human looking mechs...) and they act more like walking weapons platforms. Their weapons are build directly into the mechs frame and changing the "loadout" requires specialized operation. "Human scaled up" mechs are usually depicted as agile and speedy, but "mech as platform" are shown as these lumbering beasts of the battlefield. Ones that don't rely on dodging or quick maneuvers, but rely on their armor or shields to tank the damage and take down enemies before they are taken out. Warhammers Titans especially fall into this category.
I think this throws into relief the shortcoming of the "super robot" vs "real robot" dichotomy. Gundam is credited with pioneering the latter, but I'd argue that Battletech and Pacific Rim, despite PacRim being an homage to super robots, exemplify "real robot" even better than the trope creator. Gundam falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum itself, since they lack the actual machines trappings that make the Pacific Rim Jaegers feel weighty and believable but still anchor the mobile suits to the 'practical weapons of war' trope that the Real Robot genre is known for. Essentially, the spectrum of real vs super is wider than it looks, and franchises can land in places on that spectrum you wouldn't expect, given the popular perception of those franchises.
The best part is when a setting has both, like Macross with its Valkyries and Destroids (in particular, the Monster), Gundam with its Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors (occasionally "piloted" by mobile suits like the GP-03 Dendrobium Orchis). Its applying both schools of thought to the problem of combat - sometimes you dont need something quick and nimble and versatile, sometimes you need a battlefield juggernaut that will glass everything in a ten mile radius if you look at it funny. When the thief and the bard fail, its up to the Barbarian to fix the problem. Few problems arent fixed by hitting something hard enough. :3
What's doubly good about battletech is that they have a specific reason why mechs are mech shaped. They move using the power of myomer, which is basically synthetic metal muscles, which precludes using anything that spins to move. Instead, they are installed as muscle groups on limbs. Additionally, while mechs are powerful, they haven't completely replaced "combat vehicles" as they are referred to as in-universe. In fact, there are some legitimate benefits to using one over a regular mech. On top of that, many mechs are equipped to deal with specialized, non-combat roles, such as having cranes to pick stuff up instead of hands
@warmachine5835 Gundam is credited to pioneering the real robot genre because it was the first one to have mecha being more like mass produce machines of war than super heros in mechs. Gundam seems very much happy to be in the half way of true real robot like battletech and votoms, and super robot like Gurren lagann, although gundam seems to be sliding more and more towards super robot as of late.
If you want a Mecha show that reinforces how huge & heavy the mech is; try "Big O". The titular mech is slow & chunky; plus while it's still humanoid, the giant piston fists really give you a sense that the mech is huge.
The superhero vibes might be because of how they started, as there is a spectrum between "Real Robots" (Gundam, Patlabor and Pacific Rim) and "Super Robots" (Mazinger Z, Getter Robo and Gurren Lagann) with the first mecha anime in 1972/1973 with Mazinger Z, with Mobile Suit Gundam coming out in 1979 which is the first Real Robot mecha.
Yeah, really wish he touched on real vs super robots. Though it's not like he focused on one over the other. SOmething like 86 with its arachnid mechs would have given him something to think about
You know, there's a really interesting potential use case for a Mech even in realistic settings. Take a quad or hexapod design the size of a Horse or a Cow, have the pilot operate it lying prone, and you now have an all terrain tankette that you can take in doors for urban warfare and maybe even boarding actions of enemy ships and stations. You could mount a decent load of heavy weaponry on it and then have essentially a Weasel Tankette that can climb stairs.
Obviously this is all hypothetical and I like the idea, but i think you could get the same thing with a powered exosuit. Like the ones they have now but just with better battery power, armor, and faster mobility. You could in theory have a small walking "tank" that you could probably get most anywhere a normal sized human could just with more protection and heavy weaponry. Now that i think about it, arent exosuits just small mechs?
@@Hel1mutt I think a quadroped or hexaped form factor might offer some benefits over a biped design, like a lower profile and faster gait. Though at some point the control difficulties beg the question of why even put a human inside, and instead just go for an autonomous design.
@@Hel1mutt The traditional separation between exosuits and mechs is how the pilot fits inside - if some or all of a pilot's limbs are inside the vehicle's limbs, and simply moving your arm moves the vehicle's arm etc, then it's an exosuit. If the pilot is fully encased and the vehicle limbs are controlled by wire (either via controllers or motion capture, doesn't matter), then it's a mech.
As someone who grew up watching Robotech, Voltron, and other 80s cartoons/anime, the superhero/power aspect is part of it. I would say the other part is the "neat factor" of the transformations/abilities of the mechs. In the pilot episode you would usually see the gears of the transformation moving inside during activations/transformation which added another "neat factor" moment.
5:40 pretty much, the new Secret Level episode is a good look inside, but common to all Armored Core canons, the technology evolved from industrial "Muscle Tracers" that read neural signals externally and anyone can pilot, to dubiously ethical augmentation surgery that directly interfaces with the pilot neurologically, and may repurpose some parts of the brain/nervous system for controlling the mech. The only look we get of the protagonist of AC6 is essentially a body-bag with a breathing tube attached, and its shown they are able to control the mech in that state, leaving it unclear if they have any actual ability to function as a human left, and explaining their initial motivation to "buy their life back" by getting out of debt-slavery and undoing the augmentation surgery.
The problem with Battletech is it's not a visual series. It has tons of books, but almost no animation to show, aside from game cutscenes. Only recently we got Hired Steel that is closest thing you can show to somebody. That is why It gets overlooked in these videos.
Yeah, Im' beginning t osee a pattern. For most of the space stuff? WE have lots of threads about the honorverse and how it references the gripes, yet honorverse is never brought up. For mecha? BATTLETECH.
I think it's because even though they're mechs, they aren't the same sort of feel. Anime mecha are basically just power armor that's scaled up to the size of the setting, while Battletech is walking tanks, artillery, and intelligence vehicles. It's slow and deliberate, and more tactical, while anime mecha are fast and flashy.
@@ggamer2 Ten years ago I would have agreed with you, but recently there's been a ton of games that gives a lot of visual fodder for the video format here, as well as more and high quality artwork from the source books.
@@ggamer2he showed a bit of the games intros, and there are tons of them. then you have all the cutscenes, and good ones from Clans. Add in the animated series for a bit of fun, and there is plenty of media to show off the setting. After all, he already shows older stuff too...
The fabled Gundam Spacedock episode, we've never been so back. If you want a multi-crewed mech story where they treat it similarly to a tank, you're best bet would be Warhammer 40k titan stories like Titanicus or Mechanicum if you're willing to brave the cesspool of the 40k novel ecosystem. They're in my backlog but Titans are basically giant mechs with cities on their back that can raze a battlefield in seconds if the magical Machine Spirit isn't trying to kill their commander/princeps.
4:29 warhammer's Titans being the opposite. theres a small team up to dozens of operators controlling a titan. it ends up being more akin to captaining a ship except you're wired to the thing and the princepts is the one who's fully immersed in driving the mech while the others in the maniple might be running individual subsystems or weapons
One limitation of mechs that I haven't seen in media (though I admittedly haven't watched/played *that* much mech media) is ground pressure: Scaling up a human (or animal, in the case of mechs with >2 legs) form leads to huge ground pressures that would make it hard to find solid footing.
Given the nature of this channel I was kind of expecting (hoping for?) a video about ladders, the EVA plug system, detachable heads etc. for getting in to mecha
Steel Battalion was a game on the original Xbox where the controller was built to mimic the actual controls of the mechs in game, although the mechs aren't classified as mechs they are really called vertical tanks or vts. The idea was to remove the abstraction of control, give the player a sense of realism and believability. So if you want to move forward you push forward on the controls and push the gas pedal, you had to manually change gears to go faster, press buttons and pull the trigger to fire and change weapons. At the start of a battle you had to go through the proper start up procedure by pressing the right switches and buttons in the right order, and this did nothing but start the level and was simply for the player immersion. The game even caused you to fall over if you turned a corner too tight or too fast, you also had a few seconds to eject if your vt was too badly damaged, and if you didn't press the eject button you had to start over from the very beginning of the game. It is a highly detailed game that had an expensive controller setup, operator manual, that just looked overall fun to experience. I never played it but I recommend checking out some gameplay on TH-cam, if you can find it.
In the mechwarrior/battletech universe the mechs requires a nuerohelmet to pilot. Battlemechs are not nearly as fast or mobile as thier anime counter parts, but they are more grounded in reality
Which were based on Battletech which have very grounded versions of mechs, so yeah. Mech Assault is actually one of the less grounded games based on Battletech, considering you have pickups and you play in third person.
Try Brigador, its a pixel-art isometric top-down tactical shooter that has Mechs, Tanks and Hovercraft and a good variety of weapons you can equip them with. You play as a mercenary that works for a galactic megacorp that wants to take over a banana-republic of a planet whose late Great Leader died of high velocity lead poisoning. It also has an excellent companion audiobook on audible, its one of the few i re-listen on a regular basis.
The thing alot of people miss with Battletech, is in universe they develop a technology called Myomer, artificial muscle-like strands that amplify force dependant on how much energy is induced through it. So, legs make much more sense. Theres also the nerual interface helmet I cant remember the name of. Also, with mecha specifically i heavily recommend Full Metal Panic!
I find it funny that real-world tech is moving in the direction of legged vehicles, such as the 'mule' robots being used to transport supplies across rough terrain.
I do think it's easier with regards to imagining on spot if it will be able to cors given tertian. In the end we are legged creatures and we do have god grasp what we can cross and what we can't.
Unfortunately the reason for this isn't quite that funny. Tracked vehicles aren't very useful in current urban warfare scenarios, going through tight streets covered in rubble and such. A multi-legged mechanical unit is far more effective in this role.
@@ExploringInterests This is the reason for the shift from tracked tanks to wheeled IFVs and other light combat vehicles more effective in tighter areas and over rough terrain. There is actually very few scenarios I can think of where a mech would out perform a wheeled vehicle beyond infantry support in areas unsuitable for vehicles. Every other scenario tank beats mech every time.
Battletech is also good for "when a group of humans goes off, gets weird, then comes back" and for how communication and logistics influence political systems.
Regarding control systems in mecha anime, I've got two stand out examples for you: _Gasaraki_ has what feels like the most "realistic" version of a control scheme for it's mechs. They're only slightly bigger than bulky power armor (combining the fire power of a tank with the tactics of infantry) but the control scheme is almost entirely walk-by-wire. The pilot wears a VR headset in the cockpit and the mech's motive system project possible paths onto it, which the pilot selects via joystick or verbal commands. It's explicitly likened less to a vehicle driver and more to a commander ordering an infantryman about. _Full Metal Panic!_ on the other hand has the pilot wearing articulating braces around their arms and legs, with a motion-sensing bit of headwear for further control. They move their arms, legs, and head, and the mech moves it's arms, legs, and head. Of course, they can't have a full range of motion inside the cockpit, so they have what amounts to a sensitivity setting where the mech will exaggerate the input movements so the pilot only has to move a little bit to get the mech to move a lot. Inexperienced pilots will usually have this set very low to avoid overbalancing the mech, while experienced pilots will tend to set it higher to get more performance out of it.
It's always good, especially as you get older, to specifically and purposely try things that are out of your interest or comfort zone. It pushes back against the crystallization of the neural pathways and preserves mental fluidity. Not to mention, you may find something fun or cool you never expected! Good on you for trying media out of your immediate interst. 😁
Another example of mind/machine interface piloting is exo-squad. 80s sci-fi cartoon where the pilots have a neck implant that link them to their slightly larger mecha.
I like when they link the human shape of the mech to the ability to pilot it, through some sort of brain link or something. When the universe explores this well is when they have mechs that have non-human elements that put strain on the pilot and thus every deviation from the human form becomes extra meaningful.
what i like about the justification for mech use in super dimensional fortress macross is that the ship that crashed on earth that provided humanity with the tech to achieve space flight and make its mechs was obviously a military vessel crewed by giant humanoid creatures, so it freaked out the earth goverment to produce mechs that could fight as infantry against aliens who would be roughly the same size as the mechs, and even then the mechs arent good enough despite being the best humanity had when a conflict with aliens did start. so in a single move the writers justified giant humanoid robots and the technology to make them work
On top of that the mecha form of the SDF1 wasn't part of the plan and more an accident. After their first jump the Space Fold systems went somewhere else than the ship did and they needed to change the SDF1 so that they could connect the reactor to the main gun again. Just as attaching the two aircraft carriers they attached to the ship were improvised after the jump and they needed more 'aircraft' capacity.
my setting does the half-and-half thing where the arms are near one to one (the controls are sometimes gloves, but not all mechs have hands so they're kinda floating joyticks suspended by wires or anti-gravity BS in super advanced things) and the legs are controlled directly by the nervous system with an uplink connected directly to the spine or with an exterior sensor, which is less accurate. The Hero mech, which is the only mech (in recent memory) built entirely from scratch, uses simple pedal systems, which is inelegant but gets the job done. Alice (the hero) built it that way because while she's an engineering prodigy, she doesn't know much about anatomy and couldnt get the system to work.
Happy to see a bit of footage from Phantom Brigade! It really ate up my time when it first came out and the new plans they have in the works will almost certainly draw me back in for another round as they flesh out some of the underutilized aspects from the initial release.
I love the way the gameplay in that allows the mechs to be animated in a way that actually "sells" their scale. Verniers fire when a mech begins to go into a sprint, they lean backward and kick up a literal ton of dirt when slowing back to a stop, etcetera. It feels like they actually have to deal with inertia.
Welcome to the start of your journey in discovering the many kinds of mechs people come up with. I got something that are cool that I want to share. Here are some great world building from the mechs of Muv-Luv (the military sci-fi part of the series). In this alternative timeline of this world, aliens called the BETA invaded during the Cold War. Nations around the world started developing TSFs or Tactical Surface Fighters, the mechs of this series, due to the overwhelming air defenses of the BETA. One of the cool details about the mechs is that since the nations of the world stopped developing fighters and bombers, the TSFs started getting the names of the planes we have irl, like the F-16, or the MIG-27, and so on. They are also split into generations with each generations having something better than the previous generation. As for how they control the mechs, the pilots use a mix of mechanical controls and man-machine interfaces . That was mostly fine and all, until our dimension crossing main character of the series suggested adding controls like we see in fighting games, which this alternative timeline never saw due to endless war. This would allow a pilot to activate combo moves with a press of a few buttons or cancel it immediately, making it so that pilots can now make perform new actions that used to be impossible. So many more things to discover about the mecha genre.
A lot of mech media also does what patlabor did. BattleMechs came from construction vehicles after discovering how to make artificial muscle bundles. Even why legged vehicles exist was mentioned as wheeled vehicles can become immobile on impassable terrain and tracked vehicles can be bogged down or rendered useless in some tarrians like rocky and mountainous areas. So a legged bulldozer would just walk right over and continue the work
a pretty cool of semi-modern day mechs is portrayed in the Evan Curie Odyssey one i believe the 3rd or the 2nd part in particular. Mechs are clumsy and basically all terrain tanks rather than combat suits. If one falls it cannot get itself up and thats it. It lies there until the battle ends.
Code Geass knightmare frames are also mecha, but they use wheels and there's some variation within the factions in the Code Geass world, including one type in Europa that crawls.
One thing that scales up well is armour thickness. Can’t put 250mm thick armour on a jeep, but you can on a Maus. In space, where the square cube law doesn’t make mobility as much of a problem, I can see a natural progression of exo-suits just getting bigger and heavier to resist larger and more powerful weaponry. MS Gundam’s Balls and other non-combat vehicles are cool and all, but I think we need more space exo-suits.
It is worth mentioning that mechs are often a metaphor for growing into adulthood (the cool part, at least). After all, they provide a power fantasy where kids and teenagers can "magically" become bigger and fight in the world of adults. Of course, you can take that metaphor of growth to the extreme (like in the masterpiece Tengen Toppa Gurren Laggan), but it is generally more interesting when the mechs are roughly the same size as the enemy species they are designed to battle (the first and *only* Pacific Rim being a great example of this).
I think you would find "Mobile Suit Gundam : Iron Blooded Orphans" control scheme interesting. The hero Gundam in that uses a combination system where the pilot is directly connected, and also uses stick and console controls.
I think a reason for Gundam feeling like "Scaled up Humans" or "Fighter Pilots" is because that was part of the point. Gundam is surprisingly anti-war in it's message, but a big way it does that is humanizing the conflict. The Mobile Suits are suppose to feel like real humans fighting for what they believe in because it's easier to empathize with them. Also, yes the Augmented Humans from AC6 are essentially plugged into their mechs. Gundam also does this in Iron Blooded Orphans. Not to mention parts of UC (the original Timeline) with the psychic Newtypes having interfaces to directly control machines with their minds.
Good news. There is an Armored Core episode in that new Amazon series Secret Level. So you can get an idea about how they work without digging into the games themselves yet.
Warhammer has some good options, like Ork Big Meks, more akin to the sort of half suits, dreadnoughts who have an interred pilot hardlined in who are put on life support in a walking tank to keep them alive. Knights also make a good showing of the Mind Impulse Unit in the books, Assassinorum Kingmaker and Titanicus for titans both come to mind where the larger vehicles like knights and titans have their own personality that can carry impressions of former pilots. The larger knight/titan pilots act more as a guide and sometimes restrictive measure for a their mounts. The knights use a single pilot, and the titans use crews. The Tau use battlesuits as well, but I’m less familiar with them, along with their Eldar wraithknights, which I believe house the spirits of deceased Eldar as pilots
Main thing is that Japanese mech media is broken into two subgenres (named by the Super Robot Wars franchise). Super Robots are “mechs as superheroes”. Exemplified by shows like Mazinger and Super Sentai, these are godlike machines that are often ancient technology or built by a mad scientist to battle invading aliens or Dai-kaiju. Real Robots are “mechs as military machines”. Invented by Gundam and best exemplified in the works of Ryosuke Takahashi such as VOTOMS and FLAG, these stories often use the mech as a symbol for the military industrial complex. Due to the influence of Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, mech shows of either stripe have a tendency towards exploring psychological themes, as well as having subversive streaks when it comes to the tropes of shonen action. The mech is simultaneously armor, crutch, womb, and symbol of resolve.
Patlabor is the best and most realistic because labors are primarily for construction work and the first time they tried using they in a battlefield things gone horribly wrong and the unit got annihilated.
with the superhero thing you mentioned, i'd recomend looking into real-robot and super-robot mecha, super-robot is basicly just like what you said and real-robot is more using a mech as an analog of a tank or fighter jet and feel much more like military hardware instead of just a guy. hope that was helpful if you didn't already know. EDIT: gundamiron blooded orphans also goes into the control method in an interesting way that's different from the tratitional gundam joistick thingys
The RPG Lancer actually touches on why mechs are the main point of the setting. I boils down to " we can make the ultimate weapon look like we want , and we made them look like us!"
Maybe look into the Warhammer 40k Titans and Knights. One is piloted by a single person linked to a Computersystem with underlying personalities. The other is piloted by a Team who has to coordinate and everyone has special tasks
Mech stories tend to come in 2 flavors with some bleed between them. The 'super robot' and the 'real mech'. It can be hard to distinguish when mech are literally intended to boost a human pilot to superhuman levels and mass. For instance, mobile suits in the primary (U.C.) Gundam universe make sense as 'real mechs', because of 3 main things: 1. The invention of mobile fusion generators allowing explosive power. 2. The invention of improved materials that allow for bodies to utilise that explosive power, and also the resulting speed and agility. 3. Minovsky particles, which ruin radar, forcing line of sight combat and laser assisted targeting/comms. If being massive is no longer a detriment cos you can move and dodge faster than a human, and aren't a sitting duck due to radar based combat and our modern missile warfare, things can 'almost' plausibly escalate. THEN, what leads the mobile suits (mechs) into more extremes, is that the humans themselves are becoming superhuman. In U.C. Gundam, the humans are evolving, both naturally and artificially into 'NewTypes' and those mechs, are changed to *reflect* the new humans. Not only faster, and smarter, but some are self aware, many are tuned to human 'psychic' abilities, etc. That's why most mobile suits in 'The one year war' are just enhanced humanoids with some gimmicks and special weapons. But after that was, things get weirder and weirder, until things like the Unicorn Gundam.
Yeah man you really might want to check out Battletech a lot more. Their stuff is a lot closer to walking tanks than most contemporaries. And While they haven't made it to any video games (outside mods) there are some mechs with multiple crew members! Usually acting as additional technical officers to assist with secondary functions. Though the Tripod mechs (of which there aren't enough) do have dedicated pilots and gunners
If you're on the "real robot" side of the mecha spectrum check out 08th MS Team and 0083 Stardust Memories. There's also Iron Blooded Orphans that plays with more grounded mecha connected to the nervous system of the pilot. Muuuuch more grounded and tactical than "super robots" like Gurren Lagann that might as well be magic.
An arcology is a proposed structure first elaborated by Paolo Soleri. A massive self contained structure able to accommodate all the functions of a city under its massive roof.
my biggest issue with most Mechs (and Kaiju) is that roads and bridges etc which have ruts and holes from regular size vehicles can magically hold their weight (until plot requires)
I can definitely see where in some cases having a giant humanoid war machine wouldn’t really be a good idea. For instance, there’s the simple fact that if you have something, the size of a small or even a large building plotting around on a battlefield well it’s going to be a very big target. In fact, this isn’t even something that is relegated to mechs. In World War II, the Germans had a pair of massive artillery guns called Gustav and Dora. These things were absolutely huge, literally requiring a pair of parallel railway tracks to be set up so that they could be moved. They required so many men to operate that the gun captain Was a major general. When in reality, a gun captain would’ve been something like say a second Lieutenant or something normally. But as interesting as big weapons are again, that makes them very big targets. Now, as mentioned in the video in many ways, this is all down to “the rule of cool“. It doesn’t matter how much sense it makes or how little sense it makes as long as it looks good. In many ways, this is actually something that’s done in filming. It doesn’t matter that The machine gun that’s firing from the bad guys looks like a flamethrower. Because it looks cool. Now, in a practical sense, I can’t really see most giant robots being useful or even viable weapons. But going towards the Patlabor series, I can definitely see where machines like these could potentially be seen as useful for things in areas like heavy industry. In fact, they’re actually our businesses out there in the world right now that are testing potential uses for machines that could potentially be used in everything from construction to even forestry. If I remember correctly, the John Deere company is actually working alongside. I believe it’s Boston dynamics to potentially develop a new variation of a logging vehicle that in place of wheels or treads uses. I believe it’s either six or eight articulated legs that is designed to move through forced areas with the hope, being that the various individual foot pads will deliver much less ground pressure than wheels or Tank style treads in a hope of not severely damaging the ground. I don’t know if this thing will ever actually become a viable tool, but I can definitely see where something like it would be useful. Especially if you wanna consider having it work in areas where wheels or treads may not be a viable alternative. Personally, I think a more practical size for units like this would be more Akin to things like what we see from the amp suits from avatar or the APUs from the matrix franchise. I will say this, though I definitely do agree that having a single operator might not be the best idea especially if you have a machine that could be as large as your standard Gundam type unit. Having a single person have to do all of the various manipulation and movements of an entire unit such as that would probably be extremely difficult. Now, for many shows, they never really go into detail as to the sheer amount of controls that need to be manipulated and used by the operator. However, there are a couple of small examples. Gundam 08th MS Team is actually a relatively good example of this. While we only see it in little fleeting moments, there are a couple of occasions in the show where we see just the sheer number of controls and everything that the operators need to utilize to make their units move. For instance, on the control sticks that the pilot holds onto there are actually individual buttons that are likely meant to be used to manipulate the individual fingers. There are additional triggers essentially on the ends of these control sticks to use some of the fixed weapon systems. In one shot, we are shown that there are anywhere between three and potentially even 4 foot pedals that need to be manipulated to make the unit walk or at the very least utilize its legs. This is one of the reasons why I definitely agree with the idea of having like a mechanical apparatus that the operator would wear on their body and then they simply do a movement, which is then mimicked by the machine is probably the best option. This is one of the reasons why I’ve always really liked the control systems of the Jager units from Pacific Rim . I also like the fact that Pacific Rim decided to do a thing where we discover that because of the sheer size of the machines, a single human cannot operate one without either extreme difficulty or possibly even death.
I'll have to look more into them in the future! I wanna do them justice thus why I haven't touched them before now, and why this video was very much me from the angle of someone entering the subgenre. - hoojiwana from Spacedock
I personally think the most realistic mech will be any kind of quad legged design, maybe similar to a centaur or a low to ground spider tank. Especially if you have multiple legs which act both as redundancy and armor since they need to be protected pretty well.
In the original 70s gundam the gundam has a on bord computer that helps move the gundam. There's a episode where amaro is updating the computer when the ship gets attacked and has to go out befor it's finished and he falls all over himself
When the Principality of Zeon first introduced Mobile Suits, the Earth Federation laughed as they believed their fleets of spaceships would shoot them down with ease. If it weren't for the Minovsky Particles scrambling their radar and targeting systems, it would be true. At the Battle of Loum, near majority of the Federation's fleet was lost to Zeon's Mobile Suits and it gave the Federation a wake up call. It forced them to concede that Mobile Suits are the new face of warfare. With that, they initiate Operation V project with Tem Ray in charge where their first 3 Mobile Suits were made: the Guntank, the Guncannon and... *THE GUNDAM.*
Some of my favourite mech desings come from Aldnoah Zero, the Martian ones are all pretty unique and interesting, but I just adore the the more conventional military look of the Terran mech that still have a ton of personality. Also, Kataphrakt is probably my favourite alternate name for mechs ever, its carries a lot of history and just sounds awewome
That series was at it's best when it shows pilots of Kataphrakti that are bound by conventional engineering go up against Kataphrakti that use super-science. The laws of physics still apply, and figuring out how to exploit that to take down a technologically superior foe was thrilling.
In many Japanese games vs Western, the weapons are a static extension of the player, while a lot of western games design the weapon as a neutral item which can even be dropped and replaced or broken. This apparently relates to Bushido traditions of the largely ceremonial Katana, while the West/USA's tradition is a less spiritual warrior culture and one of revolution/manifest destiny. This is maybe why mecha shows do this 'human superhero thing'
Piloting in Armoured Core seems all over the place. Secret Level has an episode which actually shows a version of whats its like, which is similar to operating heavy machinery, this seems to be the trend. In AC4 they have something called NEXTs which are more advanced and seem to be piloted via neural link of sorts (I havent actually played AC4 btw, only AC6) As far as I know theres nothing super specific of the tech inside ACs
It all comes down to the two main parts of the mech vindiagram: "Super" Robots and "Real" Robots. Gundam is the grandpa real type series, while megazords and the like are Super types.
I think Titanfall gets the scale to movement ratio right in an appealing way. Its obviously a massive machine, it requires a transhuman methed up super solider to drive it but they die just like any other piece of military equipment if they get in a bad situation.
Big fan of the channel, would've loved you to cover some 40k dreadnoughts or titans in this though... A 100 meter tall walking cathedral that can deploy tanks and legions of soldiers from it's legs and weapons that can melt the ground below just from the muzzle flash... c'mon.
As other said, you shouldn't just check out the Battletech universe because they have more ""grounded""(i won't say realistic) mech tech and style, but they also have cool warships, dropships, tanks and aerospace fighters, even armored infantry. There's something for everyone!
In the book I m currently working on the engines (my version of mechs) are intended to be early colonisation machines. They are constructed in a way that even the most primitive humanoid shaped beings can bring it to move (as long as they recognise the easy pattern and access the cockpit). The alppioneer pattern for example is ment for mountainous construction work. Therefore the mech is good at climbing and has several cable launchers it can use to secure itself with and assist in construction. A laser welder is also included on all types for self repair.
in my own writing I try to handwave a little of the mech human form with it being a querk of the human machine-interface. Most human brains don't like being plugged into a machine that isn't human shaped, meaning it's an exceptional pilot who can use additional or non human limbs, articulated thrusters or other such.
The appeal of Gundam is that they are spacecraft, and that seems to work out. Other mechs I love are small mechs, Heavy Gear, VOTOMS, Blue Gene, AMP suit... I think everything else is unreal. I think Gundams as spacefighters is realistic, or a general utility ship in the outer planets..,
2:46 "I just want them to be more than mechanical stand-ins" while showing Gunbuster, the manifestation of all humanity's will to survive and to protect one another at any cost, on top of representing Noriko's conquering of her own self doubts AND Coach's belief in her. I choke up when she grabs the front of the one mothership and it cuts to all the reaction shots and the one for Coach is just the glasses but with a twinkle in them, like he knew all along she was going to make it. I can't get through Gunbuster without crying at multiple points though, so I'm not exactly an objective observer of anything BUSTAAAH-related. But hey, different strokes for different folks! That's what so great about fiction of any kind. You can enjoy it for so many different reasons, to deep character stuff or philosophy or just because giant robots are neato.
In one of my Gundam timeline ideas, I'm basing the Mobile Suit on real world tanks, with outliers like the Gundams, special mechs for a role or factions, along with alien ones. As for the tank, they are used as Mobile Suit hunters thanks to their powerful gun that could successfully be used by the Mobile Suits due to the size and recoil.
"Evangelion" and "Armored Core" mentioned! I'd highly recommend playing "Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon" to rather getting into the mecha customization bug. Or barring that, watching Vaatvidya's 5hr+ vid breaking down every friggin aspect of the game.
Turn A Gundam within a minute is already impressive to me, lovely. Also, if you want another Gundam series that REALLY makes the Mechs feel huge and dangerous jjust to stand around, Requiem for Vengeance does a fantastic job of that, anytime the Mecha are fighting, it feels like the Protagonists are in danger just because they're standing near them.
Huge mech fan here: one thing that can help you navigate getting into more mecha anime is the spectrum of "Super Robot" to "Real Robot." Many mecha works, particularly early ones, trend towards treating the mechs like superheroes. This is the "Super Robot" direction. Usually, the mechs are all distinct one-offs with outlandish, ill-defined powers and the stories tend to be more grand in scope. Like superhero stories though, your mileage may vary on how serious the show takes things. Ancient examples include Mazinger Z or Voltron, but you've also got things like Gurren Lagann or for an extremely recent example Bang Bravern. The other side of the coin, that I think you and your audience is more likely to enjoy, is the "Real Robot" direction. This is where the mechs are treated more like military equipment. Your protagonist is likely to have some cool prototype, but you'll see plenty of assembly-line mechs. There will often be a focus on logistical and maintenance concerns, and generally trying to make things feel more grounded. The original Gundam series is the "grandfather" of this direction, but there are other similarly-aged, and more strictly Real Robot, examples in Dougram or Votoms. My favorite modern example would be 86, but you've also got classics you've already watched like Gundam War in the Pocket and Patlabor. Consider also Macross (aka Robotech), the other big extensive mecha franchise, but only if you believe in the power of music. Most mecha anime fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, including most Gundam entries to be honest. 08th MS Team is firmly on the Real Robot side, but then you've got things like Witch From Mercury where, while it checks a lot of Gundam's usual boxes, the mechs pull abilities out of their ass left and right. There is of course the extreme example of G Gundam that is the textbook definition of Super Robot despite carrying the Gundam name and designs. Outside Gundam, the famous Evangelion obviously straddles this line, and there are plenty of other shows in the middle that wiggle around in the middle like Code Geass or... I dunno, Sakura Wars? I think I've gotten my point across that you can find mecha shows in varying degrees of what you're looking for. In particular, I think Votoms and 86 will address your issue with scale. My parting shot, which might not be up your alley but I'm compelled to mention anyway, is Nadesico: the Real Robot show where half the pilots grew up watching a Super Robot show-within-a-show. Truly a love letter to all mecha kind.
Me: "This better finally mention Battletech"
Me, noticing the background music: "Ok, yeah, we good!"
Except they really didn't... clearly these guys are viewing it through a Gundam-centric lens. So many things that were mentioned as minor gripes BattleTech does an AMAZING job with. And they just kept coming back to the Gundam-esq stuff...
I do love both Robotech and Battletech.
Battletech definitely makes things more realistic.
@@mrkojak-ci1zm definitely, they even have heat management as a major part of operating a mech with energy weapons, at least in the books that started the battletech / mech-warrior universe.
yeah.. what a missed opportunity. Heck, I didn't expect TTBT-levels of detail but at least SOME mention of that side of the setting would have been nice.
The voice is to load so i cant hear the music good, what bt Referenz is it?
You dig giant robots. I dig giant robots. We dig giant robots. Chicks dig giant robots. - from Megas XLR
You beat me to it. XD
@@patroclusilliad233 I miss Megas XLR. Best finale is Coop teaming up with Gorrath and his Glorft Army against Evil Coop and his Zakus.
Nice!
"Living here is Jersey, fighting villains from afar. You've gotta find first gear in your giant robot car!"
"I just need to find the right way to smash it"
I like that battletech acknowledges that mechs are incredibly expensive and completely embraces it. 5 mechs showing up on a planet is like the biggest deal ever. They don't have a lot in common with tanks in their use, Their role on a battlefield is more comparable to some centralized military asset like a battleship. Tanks are way more common and still maintain their niche in war
They are terror weapons, and delicate for their size. Not battleships.
Using the battletech rules I found that tanks are more useful and more combat-capable. Just not as cool.
Well even in BT mechs are still pretty absurd. They do a *lot* of handwaving as to why vehicles aren't just way better. But it does enough to suspend disbelief unlike mecha franchises.
A similar thing happens with Titans in Warhammer 40k. A single Battle Titan is a rare enough occurrence for any given battle, but an entire Maniple or Battlegroup represents an enormous escalation of the conflict. And for an entire Legion to be deployed to a campaign is the stuff of legends, let alone the really big ones.
@@XMysticHerox There is not as much hand waving as you might expect in Battletech. There are real reasons why mechs are better than tanks in a lot of spaces. Logistics is a big one, but also survivability in the lore. The game rules do a bad job of showing just how much tougher a mech is to a tank in the setting, mostly because if things were lore accurate the game would not be fun.
The problem with Tanks that has recently been shown in Real Life conflicts, is that they are too easy to disable. One decent hit and they die because of how compact everything is, there are very few places that can take a penetrating hit and not be fatal/crippling. Add to that how their movement parts are external and thus easier to damage, and it's not that hard to disable/destroy a tank with a decent weapon.
@@LordCommander-ui2fw And then you know that shit went tits up if the Imperium has to deploy an Imperator class Titan lol
Cant believe supreme commander didn't get a mention. I always loved the idea that a mech was the command centre for an entire battlefield.
If you're a fan of Battletech, you'll be a fan of Dougram. Similarly if you're a fan of Dougram, you'll be a fan of Battletech.
Two quick personal remarks:
First: there's something REALLY satisfying about 80s mecha design in anime. The level of detail in some anime is AMAZING and still worth watching today.
And it doesn't matter whether it's a House sized mecha or power armour like in MD GEIST or Bubblegum Crisis.
Second: Neon Genesis Evangelion starts as your usual Mecha Anime but both the movies and the series go WAY beyond that.
I'd even categorize the franchise as psychological drama.
Madox-01 is a classic
Am i the only one who doesn't like Eva?
@adamshafeeq8685 nope couldn't ever really get into the design in that series. One of the reasons I've never finished it even though it's said to be great.
If you want to see some mechs with large crew compliments, I suggest you do a deepdive into the Titans of Warhammer 40k, and particularly the big ones like the Warlord, Warmaster, and Imperator. While all Titans have a Princeps, who is basically the main pilot of the Titan who has a neural connection to control it and is commonly fully interred into it permanently for larger Titans, there are always at least two and commonly more than two Moderati who are pretty much the copilots of the Titan, who will control key weapon systems in order to lighten the Princeps' workload. Additionally, there are scores of tech adepts and even a few techpreists who maintain and repair all of the Titan's systems while in battle, and larger Titans will regularly carry an infantry component usually consisting of guardsmen, space marines, sisters of battle, or Skitarii. Every Titan will also have dozens if not hundreds of servitors integrated and onboard, but it's debatable as to whether or not those should count as crew.
Granted, Warhammer 40k's Titans do kind of straddle the line between mech and walking structure, with the Imperator especially leaning toward the latter of the two and only the Warhound having the mobility to match what most people expect from mechs, so they may not be what you're looking for. I was going to also mention Ork Stompas and Gargants, as they have truly enormous crew components due to a general lack of automation in most Ork constructs, but those lean even more heavily into being walking structures rather than mechs.
I think youd enjoy battletech, and the mechwarrior/mech assault games. they are all in the same setting, and cover a lot of what you talked about. one of the mechs you showed in the video was the Raven, a birdlike EW scout mech. its not helpless in a fight, but it really shines as a support unit.
the mechs in that setting feel as big as they are, and are a bit more realistic as well! they also use some neat tech you dont see much in science fiction at all, like ablative armor and other armor systems like reactive. theres also trophy systems, drones, and electronic warfare(the raven again). And its all wrapped up in a world where mechs are merely a component of combined arms strategy. tanks, aircraft and infantry can all take down a mech if the pilot isnt careful, and theres in return mechs specialized to try and keep other mechs safe from them, like the Rifleman and the Vulcan
The titular machine from 'Turn A Gundam' gets used for all sorts of non-combat roles, like doing laundry for a field hospital and moving farm animals.
the 1/100 model kit comes with a 1/100 scale cow
Also Turn A Gundam: *brings an end to civilizations*
I think you would like the Battletech universe since it has combine arms so you have tanks,and helicopters alongside mechs.
Check the background music
One of my absolute favorite things about Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans is just how much they stress proper maintanence in that anime. The machines are constantly going back to their carrier to refuel and re-arm. Pilots quickly getting a bite to eat while their mechs get serviced before being set out again. Idk, there's just something to freaking cool to me that, this all happens in mechs and in space and as lover of IRL Aircraft carriers, it definately scratches that itch so well to me.
While I honestly cannot judge to what extend IBO goes; maintenance, limited ammo, longer term battle-damage and simple obsolescence have always been a key factor in Gundam, even 0079. In Zeta they extend it where machines get send out with temporary repairs and when the protagonists are able to steal three Gundam Mk-IIs, one gets send off to R&D, one is immediately scrapped for spare parts and only is brought into operational service.
To be fair, you can split mechs into two general categories:
"Human scaled up", which is what most franchises do. This is where mech is, as you said, basically a human scaled up, using scaled up human weapons. Where mech becomes stand-in for the pilot in their behavior and appearence. A general vibe with these is that they have non-integrated weapon systems that they can pick up and drop as they want.
But then there is "Mech as a platform". This is what Battletech does, where mechs humanoid shape is usually a lot more restricted (not that BattleMech doesn't have human looking mechs...) and they act more like walking weapons platforms. Their weapons are build directly into the mechs frame and changing the "loadout" requires specialized operation.
"Human scaled up" mechs are usually depicted as agile and speedy, but "mech as platform" are shown as these lumbering beasts of the battlefield. Ones that don't rely on dodging or quick maneuvers, but rely on their armor or shields to tank the damage and take down enemies before they are taken out. Warhammers Titans especially fall into this category.
I think this throws into relief the shortcoming of the "super robot" vs "real robot" dichotomy. Gundam is credited with pioneering the latter, but I'd argue that Battletech and Pacific Rim, despite PacRim being an homage to super robots, exemplify "real robot" even better than the trope creator. Gundam falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum itself, since they lack the actual machines trappings that make the Pacific Rim Jaegers feel weighty and believable but still anchor the mobile suits to the 'practical weapons of war' trope that the Real Robot genre is known for.
Essentially, the spectrum of real vs super is wider than it looks, and franchises can land in places on that spectrum you wouldn't expect, given the popular perception of those franchises.
The best part is when a setting has both, like Macross with its Valkyries and Destroids (in particular, the Monster), Gundam with its Mobile Suits and Mobile Armors (occasionally "piloted" by mobile suits like the GP-03 Dendrobium Orchis). Its applying both schools of thought to the problem of combat - sometimes you dont need something quick and nimble and versatile, sometimes you need a battlefield juggernaut that will glass everything in a ten mile radius if you look at it funny.
When the thief and the bard fail, its up to the Barbarian to fix the problem. Few problems arent fixed by hitting something hard enough. :3
@@kendrakirai it helps to have someone around to give the Barbarian rocket fists annnnnnnd now I'm in my D&D Artificer class fantasy again.
What's doubly good about battletech is that they have a specific reason why mechs are mech shaped. They move using the power of myomer, which is basically synthetic metal muscles, which precludes using anything that spins to move. Instead, they are installed as muscle groups on limbs. Additionally, while mechs are powerful, they haven't completely replaced "combat vehicles" as they are referred to as in-universe. In fact, there are some legitimate benefits to using one over a regular mech. On top of that, many mechs are equipped to deal with specialized, non-combat roles, such as having cranes to pick stuff up instead of hands
@warmachine5835 Gundam is credited to pioneering the real robot genre because it was the first one to have mecha being more like mass produce machines of war than super heros in mechs. Gundam seems very much happy to be in the half way of true real robot like battletech and votoms, and super robot like Gurren lagann, although gundam seems to be sliding more and more towards super robot as of late.
If you want a Mecha show that reinforces how huge & heavy the mech is; try "Big O". The titular mech is slow & chunky; plus while it's still humanoid, the giant piston fists really give you a sense that the mech is huge.
"Showtime!" 😁
Im an Armored Core guy. Seeing Keanu Reeves in an AC makes me a very happy man.
Nuh uh uh, they're called cores now, not ac's lol
❤AMEN TO THAT!❤
The last time i was this early, Zeon hadnt done anything wrong... yet.
And they never did
That we know of
@@redhood1060 Colony Drop is what they did like Abaddon done to Cadia with Blackstone Fortress.
And they never will again.
What is up with fans of media with fascist villains saying they "did nothing wrong"
The superhero vibes might be because of how they started, as there is a spectrum between "Real Robots" (Gundam, Patlabor and Pacific Rim) and "Super Robots" (Mazinger Z, Getter Robo and Gurren Lagann) with the first mecha anime in 1972/1973 with Mazinger Z, with Mobile Suit Gundam coming out in 1979 which is the first Real Robot mecha.
Yeah, really wish he touched on real vs super robots. Though it's not like he focused on one over the other. SOmething like 86 with its arachnid mechs would have given him something to think about
for mechs i am a fan of battletech wich combines space and mech sci fi pretty well
Check the background music
You know, there's a really interesting potential use case for a Mech even in realistic settings.
Take a quad or hexapod design the size of a Horse or a Cow, have the pilot operate it lying prone, and you now have an all terrain tankette that you can take in doors for urban warfare and maybe even boarding actions of enemy ships and stations. You could mount a decent load of heavy weaponry on it and then have essentially a Weasel Tankette that can climb stairs.
Exactly. While mechs are terrible in anti-tank roles, a light mech would be excellent as a heavy weapons platform for infantry support.
Obviously this is all hypothetical and I like the idea, but i think you could get the same thing with a powered exosuit. Like the ones they have now but just with better battery power, armor, and faster mobility. You could in theory have a small walking "tank" that you could probably get most anywhere a normal sized human could just with more protection and heavy weaponry. Now that i think about it, arent exosuits just small mechs?
Holy shite, that's a good idea. I kinda want to use that.
@@Hel1mutt I think a quadroped or hexaped form factor might offer some benefits over a biped design, like a lower profile and faster gait. Though at some point the control difficulties beg the question of why even put a human inside, and instead just go for an autonomous design.
@@Hel1mutt The traditional separation between exosuits and mechs is how the pilot fits inside - if some or all of a pilot's limbs are inside the vehicle's limbs, and simply moving your arm moves the vehicle's arm etc, then it's an exosuit. If the pilot is fully encased and the vehicle limbs are controlled by wire (either via controllers or motion capture, doesn't matter), then it's a mech.
As someone who grew up watching Robotech, Voltron, and other 80s cartoons/anime, the superhero/power aspect is part of it. I would say the other part is the "neat factor" of the transformations/abilities of the mechs. In the pilot episode you would usually see the gears of the transformation moving inside during activations/transformation which added another "neat factor" moment.
5:40 pretty much, the new Secret Level episode is a good look inside, but common to all Armored Core canons, the technology evolved from industrial "Muscle Tracers" that read neural signals externally and anyone can pilot, to dubiously ethical augmentation surgery that directly interfaces with the pilot neurologically, and may repurpose some parts of the brain/nervous system for controlling the mech. The only look we get of the protagonist of AC6 is essentially a body-bag with a breathing tube attached, and its shown they are able to control the mech in that state, leaving it unclear if they have any actual ability to function as a human left, and explaining their initial motivation to "buy their life back" by getting out of debt-slavery and undoing the augmentation surgery.
Sad to see Battletech getting snubbed again, especially when so much of the lore delves into all of your gripes about mechs in general.
The problem with Battletech is it's not a visual series. It has tons of books, but almost no animation to show, aside from game cutscenes. Only recently we got Hired Steel that is closest thing you can show to somebody. That is why It gets overlooked in these videos.
Yeah, Im' beginning t osee a pattern. For most of the space stuff? WE have lots of threads about the honorverse and how it references the gripes, yet honorverse is never brought up. For mecha? BATTLETECH.
I think it's because even though they're mechs, they aren't the same sort of feel. Anime mecha are basically just power armor that's scaled up to the size of the setting, while Battletech is walking tanks, artillery, and intelligence vehicles. It's slow and deliberate, and more tactical, while anime mecha are fast and flashy.
@@ggamer2 Ten years ago I would have agreed with you, but recently there's been a ton of games that gives a lot of visual fodder for the video format here, as well as more and high quality artwork from the source books.
@@ggamer2he showed a bit of the games intros, and there are tons of them. then you have all the cutscenes, and good ones from Clans. Add in the animated series for a bit of fun, and there is plenty of media to show off the setting. After all, he already shows older stuff too...
The fabled Gundam Spacedock episode, we've never been so back.
If you want a multi-crewed mech story where they treat it similarly to a tank, you're best bet would be Warhammer 40k titan stories like Titanicus or Mechanicum if you're willing to brave the cesspool of the 40k novel ecosystem. They're in my backlog but Titans are basically giant mechs with cities on their back that can raze a battlefield in seconds if the magical Machine Spirit isn't trying to kill their commander/princeps.
4:29 warhammer's Titans being the opposite. theres a small team up to dozens of operators controlling a titan. it ends up being more akin to captaining a ship except you're wired to the thing and the princepts is the one who's fully immersed in driving the mech while the others in the maniple might be running individual subsystems or weapons
One limitation of mechs that I haven't seen in media (though I admittedly haven't watched/played *that* much mech media) is ground pressure: Scaling up a human (or animal, in the case of mechs with >2 legs) form leads to huge ground pressures that would make it hard to find solid footing.
Given the nature of this channel I was kind of expecting (hoping for?) a video about ladders, the EVA plug system, detachable heads etc. for getting in to mecha
Lmao maybe next time
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
@@hoojiwana The fact that the title is "Getting into..." implies the possibility of further exploration in the future, I hope.
I, too, like the idea of a video on Ladders in Science Fiction.
A vid on ladders could be presented as an April Fools joke but the joke would be that it's played straight.
Steel Battalion was a game on the original Xbox where the controller was built to mimic the actual controls of the mechs in game, although the mechs aren't classified as mechs they are really called vertical tanks or vts. The idea was to remove the abstraction of control, give the player a sense of realism and believability. So if you want to move forward you push forward on the controls and push the gas pedal, you had to manually change gears to go faster, press buttons and pull the trigger to fire and change weapons. At the start of a battle you had to go through the proper start up procedure by pressing the right switches and buttons in the right order, and this did nothing but start the level and was simply for the player immersion. The game even caused you to fall over if you turned a corner too tight or too fast, you also had a few seconds to eject if your vt was too badly damaged, and if you didn't press the eject button you had to start over from the very beginning of the game. It is a highly detailed game that had an expensive controller setup, operator manual, that just looked overall fun to experience. I never played it but I recommend checking out some gameplay on TH-cam, if you can find it.
In the mechwarrior/battletech universe the mechs requires a nuerohelmet to pilot. Battlemechs are not nearly as fast or mobile as thier anime counter parts, but they are more grounded in reality
I think you should look into battletech as they treat them much more like combat vehicles than super heros.
He almost completely overlooked Battletech in favor of highly 'ultra' unrealistic anime stuff. Typical.
@@QuantumNova Well its what people know but BT certainly deserved more discussion as "the other side of the mech genre".
The video I've been waiting for!
The Mech Assault games on the original Xbox were much more like evolved tanks than stand ins for people. I really liked those.
Which were based on Battletech which have very grounded versions of mechs, so yeah. Mech Assault is actually one of the less grounded games based on Battletech, considering you have pickups and you play in third person.
@@LupusGr3yMech assault is one of the best gateway drugs to the universe, super entertaining, but yes, it's an arcade shooter.
Try Brigador, its a pixel-art isometric top-down tactical shooter that has Mechs, Tanks and Hovercraft and a good variety of weapons you can equip them with. You play as a mercenary that works for a galactic megacorp that wants to take over a banana-republic of a planet whose late Great Leader died of high velocity lead poisoning.
It also has an excellent companion audiobook on audible, its one of the few i re-listen on a regular basis.
The thing alot of people miss with Battletech, is in universe they develop a technology called Myomer, artificial muscle-like strands that amplify force dependant on how much energy is induced through it. So, legs make much more sense. Theres also the nerual interface helmet I cant remember the name of.
Also, with mecha specifically i heavily recommend Full Metal Panic!
I find it funny that real-world tech is moving in the direction of legged vehicles, such as the 'mule' robots being used to transport supplies across rough terrain.
I do think it's easier with regards to imagining on spot if it will be able to cors given tertian. In the end we are legged creatures and we do have god grasp what we can cross and what we can't.
Logistics is one thing. Combat is another. In every aspect a tank is more effective on the battlefield than a mech.
Unfortunately the reason for this isn't quite that funny. Tracked vehicles aren't very useful in current urban warfare scenarios, going through tight streets covered in rubble and such. A multi-legged mechanical unit is far more effective in this role.
@@christophergroenewald5847 I see. Can I see the field test?
@@ExploringInterests This is the reason for the shift from tracked tanks to wheeled IFVs and other light combat vehicles more effective in tighter areas and over rough terrain. There is actually very few scenarios I can think of where a mech would out perform a wheeled vehicle beyond infantry support in areas unsuitable for vehicles. Every other scenario tank beats mech every time.
Please for the love of the mech fans, PLEASE cover Battletech. I know it's a bit niche, but you are seriously missing alot.
Check the church the background music
Battletech is also good for "when a group of humans goes off, gets weird, then comes back" and for how communication and logistics influence political systems.
Regarding control systems in mecha anime, I've got two stand out examples for you:
_Gasaraki_ has what feels like the most "realistic" version of a control scheme for it's mechs. They're only slightly bigger than bulky power armor (combining the fire power of a tank with the tactics of infantry) but the control scheme is almost entirely walk-by-wire. The pilot wears a VR headset in the cockpit and the mech's motive system project possible paths onto it, which the pilot selects via joystick or verbal commands. It's explicitly likened less to a vehicle driver and more to a commander ordering an infantryman about.
_Full Metal Panic!_ on the other hand has the pilot wearing articulating braces around their arms and legs, with a motion-sensing bit of headwear for further control. They move their arms, legs, and head, and the mech moves it's arms, legs, and head. Of course, they can't have a full range of motion inside the cockpit, so they have what amounts to a sensitivity setting where the mech will exaggerate the input movements so the pilot only has to move a little bit to get the mech to move a lot. Inexperienced pilots will usually have this set very low to avoid overbalancing the mech, while experienced pilots will tend to set it higher to get more performance out of it.
Hygogg glazing today, can't blame you they are gorgeous
It's always good, especially as you get older, to specifically and purposely try things that are out of your interest or comfort zone.
It pushes back against the crystallization of the neural pathways and preserves mental fluidity.
Not to mention, you may find something fun or cool you never expected!
Good on you for trying media out of your immediate interst. 😁
Another example of mind/machine interface piloting is exo-squad. 80s sci-fi cartoon where the pilots have a neck implant that link them to their slightly larger mecha.
Spacedock discovers that big stompy robots are big and stompy. And that's what makes them cool.
I like when they link the human shape of the mech to the ability to pilot it, through some sort of brain link or something. When the universe explores this well is when they have mechs that have non-human elements that put strain on the pilot and thus every deviation from the human form becomes extra meaningful.
what i like about the justification for mech use in super dimensional fortress macross is that the ship that crashed on earth that provided humanity with the tech to achieve space flight and make its mechs was obviously a military vessel crewed by giant humanoid creatures, so it freaked out the earth goverment to produce mechs that could fight as infantry against aliens who would be roughly the same size as the mechs, and even then the mechs arent good enough despite being the best humanity had when a conflict with aliens did start. so in a single move the writers justified giant humanoid robots and the technology to make them work
On top of that the mecha form of the SDF1 wasn't part of the plan and more an accident. After their first jump the Space Fold systems went somewhere else than the ship did and they needed to change the SDF1 so that they could connect the reactor to the main gun again. Just as attaching the two aircraft carriers they attached to the ship were improvised after the jump and they needed more 'aircraft' capacity.
What would be really cool is some sort of crew inside a mech, with old battleships vibes
Battleships...mechs...
*Macross intensifies*
@@owensimpson7895Macross Attack!!
Voltron vehicel force
Ever heard of a titan from 40k?
Me: sees mecha episode
Also me: *LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO*
my setting does the half-and-half thing where the arms are near one to one (the controls are sometimes gloves, but not all mechs have hands so they're kinda floating joyticks suspended by wires or anti-gravity BS in super advanced things) and the legs are controlled directly by the nervous system with an uplink connected directly to the spine or with an exterior sensor, which is less accurate. The Hero mech, which is the only mech (in recent memory) built entirely from scratch, uses simple pedal systems, which is inelegant but gets the job done. Alice (the hero) built it that way because while she's an engineering prodigy, she doesn't know much about anatomy and couldnt get the system to work.
Happy to see a bit of footage from Phantom Brigade! It really ate up my time when it first came out and the new plans they have in the works will almost certainly draw me back in for another round as they flesh out some of the underutilized aspects from the initial release.
I love the way the gameplay in that allows the mechs to be animated in a way that actually "sells" their scale. Verniers fire when a mech begins to go into a sprint, they lean backward and kick up a literal ton of dirt when slowing back to a stop, etcetera. It feels like they actually have to deal with inertia.
Welcome to the start of your journey in discovering the many kinds of mechs people come up with.
I got something that are cool that I want to share. Here are some great world building from the mechs of Muv-Luv (the military sci-fi part of the series). In this alternative timeline of this world, aliens called the BETA invaded during the Cold War. Nations around the world started developing TSFs or Tactical Surface Fighters, the mechs of this series, due to the overwhelming air defenses of the BETA.
One of the cool details about the mechs is that since the nations of the world stopped developing fighters and bombers, the TSFs started getting the names of the planes we have irl, like the F-16, or the MIG-27, and so on. They are also split into generations with each generations having something better than the previous generation.
As for how they control the mechs, the pilots use a mix of mechanical controls and man-machine interfaces . That was mostly fine and all, until our dimension crossing main character of the series suggested adding controls like we see in fighting games, which this alternative timeline never saw due to endless war. This would allow a pilot to activate combo moves with a press of a few buttons or cancel it immediately, making it so that pilots can now make perform new actions that used to be impossible.
So many more things to discover about the mecha genre.
A lot of mech media also does what patlabor did. BattleMechs came from construction vehicles after discovering how to make artificial muscle bundles. Even why legged vehicles exist was mentioned as wheeled vehicles can become immobile on impassable terrain and tracked vehicles can be bogged down or rendered useless in some tarrians like rocky and mountainous areas. So a legged bulldozer would just walk right over and continue the work
Glad you took the time to get into Gundam, its an amazing franchise
a pretty cool of semi-modern day mechs is portrayed in the Evan Curie Odyssey one i believe the 3rd or the 2nd part in particular. Mechs are clumsy and basically all terrain tanks rather than combat suits. If one falls it cannot get itself up and thats it. It lies there until the battle ends.
Code Geass knightmare frames are also mecha, but they use wheels and there's some variation within the factions in the Code Geass world, including one type in Europa that crawls.
One thing that scales up well is armour thickness. Can’t put 250mm thick armour on a jeep, but you can on a Maus. In space, where the square cube law doesn’t make mobility as much of a problem, I can see a natural progression of exo-suits just getting bigger and heavier to resist larger and more powerful weaponry. MS Gundam’s Balls and other non-combat vehicles are cool and all, but I think we need more space exo-suits.
It is worth mentioning that mechs are often a metaphor for growing into adulthood (the cool part, at least). After all, they provide a power fantasy where kids and teenagers can "magically" become bigger and fight in the world of adults. Of course, you can take that metaphor of growth to the extreme (like in the masterpiece Tengen Toppa Gurren Laggan), but it is generally more interesting when the mechs are roughly the same size as the enemy species they are designed to battle (the first and *only* Pacific Rim being a great example of this).
Roy: The legs are controlled by the foot pedals.
Rick: Huh? Which foot pedals? There must be 50 different controls in here!
Roy: 57, to be exact.
There's no more Rule of Cool in scifi than mechs. Even more if they transform, have super modes, that sort of thing. Loved them since I was a child.
cough… Macross / Robotech if you want mech’s that change and do things!
I think you would find "Mobile Suit Gundam : Iron Blooded Orphans" control scheme interesting. The hero Gundam in that uses a combination system where the pilot is directly connected, and also uses stick and console controls.
I think a reason for Gundam feeling like "Scaled up Humans" or "Fighter Pilots" is because that was part of the point. Gundam is surprisingly anti-war in it's message, but a big way it does that is humanizing the conflict. The Mobile Suits are suppose to feel like real humans fighting for what they believe in because it's easier to empathize with them.
Also, yes the Augmented Humans from AC6 are essentially plugged into their mechs. Gundam also does this in Iron Blooded Orphans. Not to mention parts of UC (the original Timeline) with the psychic Newtypes having interfaces to directly control machines with their minds.
Battletech covered the control issue by inventing the "Nuero- helmet" and then added some interesting and sometimes creepy lore around them.
I really like the spider mecha Feldreß from Eighty-Six. They're essentially just a multi-legged Strv 103.
Good news. There is an Armored Core episode in that new Amazon series Secret Level. So you can get an idea about how they work without digging into the games themselves yet.
Ya should look at Battletech, you might like its mix of hard and soft sci-fi as well as the universe/world building that's gone on.
Warhammer has some good options, like Ork Big Meks, more akin to the sort of half suits, dreadnoughts who have an interred pilot hardlined in who are put on life support in a walking tank to keep them alive. Knights also make a good showing of the Mind Impulse Unit in the books, Assassinorum Kingmaker and Titanicus for titans both come to mind where the larger vehicles like knights and titans have their own personality that can carry impressions of former pilots. The larger knight/titan pilots act more as a guide and sometimes restrictive measure for a their mounts. The knights use a single pilot, and the titans use crews. The Tau use battlesuits as well, but I’m less familiar with them, along with their Eldar wraithknights, which I believe house the spirits of deceased Eldar as pilots
Main thing is that Japanese mech media is broken into two subgenres (named by the Super Robot Wars franchise).
Super Robots are “mechs as superheroes”. Exemplified by shows like Mazinger and Super Sentai, these are godlike machines that are often ancient technology or built by a mad scientist to battle invading aliens or Dai-kaiju.
Real Robots are “mechs as military machines”. Invented by Gundam and best exemplified in the works of Ryosuke Takahashi such as VOTOMS and FLAG, these stories often use the mech as a symbol for the military industrial complex.
Due to the influence of Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, mech shows of either stripe have a tendency towards exploring psychological themes, as well as having subversive streaks when it comes to the tropes of shonen action. The mech is simultaneously armor, crutch, womb, and symbol of resolve.
Patlabor is the best and most realistic because labors are primarily for construction work and the first time they tried using they in a battlefield things gone horribly wrong and the unit got annihilated.
with the superhero thing you mentioned, i'd recomend looking into real-robot and super-robot mecha, super-robot is basicly just like what you said and real-robot is more using a mech as an analog of a tank or fighter jet and feel much more like military hardware instead of just a guy. hope that was helpful if you didn't already know.
EDIT: gundamiron blooded orphans also goes into the control method in an interesting way that's different from the tratitional gundam joistick thingys
The RPG Lancer actually touches on why mechs are the main point of the setting. I boils down to " we can make the ultimate weapon look like we want , and we made them look like us!"
mechs in general ivefound really shine when you apply the island hopping doctrune to them they are less planes and more helicopters
Maybe look into the Warhammer 40k Titans and Knights. One is piloted by a single person linked to a Computersystem with underlying personalities. The other is piloted by a Team who has to coordinate and everyone has special tasks
Mech stories tend to come in 2 flavors with some bleed between them.
The 'super robot' and the 'real mech'.
It can be hard to distinguish when mech are literally intended to boost a human pilot to superhuman levels and mass.
For instance, mobile suits in the primary (U.C.) Gundam universe make sense as 'real mechs', because of 3 main things:
1. The invention of mobile fusion generators allowing explosive power.
2. The invention of improved materials that allow for bodies to utilise that explosive power, and also the resulting speed and agility.
3. Minovsky particles, which ruin radar, forcing line of sight combat and laser assisted targeting/comms.
If being massive is no longer a detriment cos you can move and dodge faster than a human, and aren't a sitting duck due to radar based combat and our modern missile warfare,
things can 'almost' plausibly escalate.
THEN, what leads the mobile suits (mechs) into more extremes, is that the humans themselves are becoming superhuman.
In U.C. Gundam, the humans are evolving, both naturally and artificially into 'NewTypes' and those mechs, are changed to *reflect* the new humans.
Not only faster, and smarter, but some are self aware, many are tuned to human 'psychic' abilities, etc.
That's why most mobile suits in 'The one year war' are just enhanced humanoids with some gimmicks and special weapons.
But after that was, things get weirder and weirder, until things like the Unicorn Gundam.
If you look for it and can stand the cheese, the 90s Battletech cartoon series is on TH-cam.
Just remember: a mech has a chair, powered armor doesn't. There, no more blurry lines.
So the Jaegers in Pacific Rim are power armor?
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
Then explain to me what makes a Gundam a "suit"?
@@PrinceAlhorian why their dapper sense of style ofc
Yeah man you really might want to check out Battletech a lot more. Their stuff is a lot closer to walking tanks than most contemporaries.
And While they haven't made it to any video games (outside mods) there are some mechs with multiple crew members! Usually acting as additional technical officers to assist with secondary functions. Though the Tripod mechs (of which there aren't enough) do have dedicated pilots and gunners
If you're on the "real robot" side of the mecha spectrum check out 08th MS Team and 0083 Stardust Memories. There's also Iron Blooded Orphans that plays with more grounded mecha connected to the nervous system of the pilot. Muuuuch more grounded and tactical than "super robots" like Gurren Lagann that might as well be magic.
I would also HIGHLY recommend you check out the OVA version of Macross Plus.
0083 is quite excellent which suggest you have good taste,
An arcology is a proposed structure first elaborated by Paolo Soleri. A massive self contained structure able to accommodate all the functions of a city under its massive roof.
my biggest issue with most Mechs (and Kaiju) is that roads and bridges etc which have ruts and holes from regular size vehicles can magically hold their weight (until plot requires)
I can definitely see where in some cases having a giant humanoid war machine wouldn’t really be a good idea. For instance, there’s the simple fact that if you have something, the size of a small or even a large building plotting around on a battlefield well it’s going to be a very big target. In fact, this isn’t even something that is relegated to mechs.
In World War II, the Germans had a pair of massive artillery guns called Gustav and Dora. These things were absolutely huge, literally requiring a pair of parallel railway tracks to be set up so that they could be moved. They required so many men to operate that the gun captain Was a major general. When in reality, a gun captain would’ve been something like say a second Lieutenant or something normally.
But as interesting as big weapons are again, that makes them very big targets.
Now, as mentioned in the video in many ways, this is all down to “the rule of cool“. It doesn’t matter how much sense it makes or how little sense it makes as long as it looks good. In many ways, this is actually something that’s done in filming. It doesn’t matter that The machine gun that’s firing from the bad guys looks like a flamethrower. Because it looks cool.
Now, in a practical sense, I can’t really see most giant robots being useful or even viable weapons. But going towards the Patlabor series, I can definitely see where machines like these could potentially be seen as useful for things in areas like heavy industry. In fact, they’re actually our businesses out there in the world right now that are testing potential uses for machines that could potentially be used in everything from construction to even forestry.
If I remember correctly, the John Deere company is actually working alongside. I believe it’s Boston dynamics to potentially develop a new variation of a logging vehicle that in place of wheels or treads uses. I believe it’s either six or eight articulated legs that is designed to move through forced areas with the hope, being that the various individual foot pads will deliver much less ground pressure than wheels or Tank style treads in a hope of not severely damaging the ground. I don’t know if this thing will ever actually become a viable tool, but I can definitely see where something like it would be useful. Especially if you wanna consider having it work in areas where wheels or treads may not be a viable alternative.
Personally, I think a more practical size for units like this would be more Akin to things like what we see from the amp suits from avatar or the APUs from the matrix franchise. I will say this, though I definitely do agree that having a single operator might not be the best idea especially if you have a machine that could be as large as your standard Gundam type unit. Having a single person have to do all of the various manipulation and movements of an entire unit such as that would probably be extremely difficult.
Now, for many shows, they never really go into detail as to the sheer amount of controls that need to be manipulated and used by the operator. However, there are a couple of small examples.
Gundam 08th MS Team is actually a relatively good example of this. While we only see it in little fleeting moments, there are a couple of occasions in the show where we see just the sheer number of controls and everything that the operators need to utilize to make their units move. For instance, on the control sticks that the pilot holds onto there are actually individual buttons that are likely meant to be used to manipulate the individual fingers. There are additional triggers essentially on the ends of these control sticks to use some of the fixed weapon systems. In one shot, we are shown that there are anywhere between three and potentially even 4 foot pedals that need to be manipulated to make the unit walk or at the very least utilize its legs.
This is one of the reasons why I definitely agree with the idea of having like a mechanical apparatus that the operator would wear on their body and then they simply do a movement, which is then mimicked by the machine is probably the best option. This is one of the reasons why I’ve always really liked the control systems of the Jager units from Pacific Rim .
I also like the fact that Pacific Rim decided to do a thing where we discover that because of the sheer size of the machines, a single human cannot operate one without either extreme difficulty or possibly even death.
Y'know, Battletech is a mech-centric franchise that deals with a lot of things that you discuss here.
Finally 🎉 . Thank you for your videos.
Also, I think many would agree that we would love to see more videos about Sci-Fi Mecha.
I'll have to look more into them in the future! I wanna do them justice thus why I haven't touched them before now, and why this video was very much me from the angle of someone entering the subgenre.
- hoojiwana from Spacedock
I personally think the most realistic mech will be any kind of quad legged design, maybe similar to a centaur or a low to ground spider tank. Especially if you have multiple legs which act both as redundancy and armor since they need to be protected pretty well.
In the original 70s gundam the gundam has a on bord computer that helps move the gundam. There's a episode where amaro is updating the computer when the ship gets attacked and has to go out befor it's finished and he falls all over himself
When the Principality of Zeon first introduced Mobile Suits, the Earth Federation laughed as they believed their fleets of spaceships would shoot them down with ease. If it weren't for the Minovsky Particles scrambling their radar and targeting systems, it would be true.
At the Battle of Loum, near majority of the Federation's fleet was lost to Zeon's Mobile Suits and it gave the Federation a wake up call. It forced them to concede that Mobile Suits are the new face of warfare.
With that, they initiate Operation V project with Tem Ray in charge where their first 3 Mobile Suits were made: the Guntank, the Guncannon and... *THE GUNDAM.*
Some of my favourite mech desings come from Aldnoah Zero, the Martian ones are all pretty unique and interesting, but I just adore the the more conventional military look of the Terran mech that still have a ton of personality.
Also, Kataphrakt is probably my favourite alternate name for mechs ever, its carries a lot of history and just sounds awewome
That series was at it's best when it shows pilots of Kataphrakti that are bound by conventional engineering go up against Kataphrakti that use super-science. The laws of physics still apply, and figuring out how to exploit that to take down a technologically superior foe was thrilling.
In many Japanese games vs Western, the weapons are a static extension of the player, while a lot of western games design the weapon as a neutral item which can even be dropped and replaced or broken. This apparently relates to Bushido traditions of the largely ceremonial Katana, while the West/USA's tradition is a less spiritual warrior culture and one of revolution/manifest destiny. This is maybe why mecha shows do this 'human superhero thing'
Piloting in Armoured Core seems all over the place. Secret Level has an episode which actually shows a version of whats its like, which is similar to operating heavy machinery, this seems to be the trend. In AC4 they have something called NEXTs which are more advanced and seem to be piloted via neural link of sorts (I havent actually played AC4 btw, only AC6)
As far as I know theres nothing super specific of the tech inside ACs
It all comes down to the two main parts of the mech vindiagram: "Super" Robots and "Real" Robots. Gundam is the grandpa real type series, while megazords and the like are Super types.
The prototype knightmare Gawain from Code Geass has two pilots.
I think Titanfall gets the scale to movement ratio right in an appealing way. Its obviously a massive machine, it requires a transhuman methed up super solider to drive it but they die just like any other piece of military equipment if they get in a bad situation.
Big fan of the channel, would've loved you to cover some 40k dreadnoughts or titans in this though...
A 100 meter tall walking cathedral that can deploy tanks and legions of soldiers from it's legs and weapons that can melt the ground below just from the muzzle flash... c'mon.
As other said, you shouldn't just check out the Battletech universe because they have more ""grounded""(i won't say realistic) mech tech and style, but they also have cool warships, dropships, tanks and aerospace fighters, even armored infantry. There's something for everyone!
In the book I m currently working on the engines (my version of mechs) are intended to be early colonisation machines. They are constructed in a way that even the most primitive humanoid shaped beings can bring it to move (as long as they recognise the easy pattern and access the cockpit). The alppioneer pattern for example is ment for mountainous construction work. Therefore the mech is good at climbing and has several cable launchers it can use to secure itself with and assist in construction. A laser welder is also included on all types for self repair.
in my own writing I try to handwave a little of the mech human form with it being a querk of the human machine-interface. Most human brains don't like being plugged into a machine that isn't human shaped, meaning it's an exceptional pilot who can use additional or non human limbs, articulated thrusters or other such.
The appeal of Gundam is that they are spacecraft, and that seems to work out. Other mechs I love are small mechs, Heavy Gear, VOTOMS, Blue Gene, AMP suit... I think everything else is unreal. I think Gundams as spacefighters is realistic, or a general utility ship in the outer planets..,
Starting off Gundam with 0080? Oof!
I mean, yeah, it's not at all a bad intro, but also it's also THE grimmest one until Iron-Blooded Orphans.
2:46 "I just want them to be more than mechanical stand-ins" while showing Gunbuster, the manifestation of all humanity's will to survive and to protect one another at any cost, on top of representing Noriko's conquering of her own self doubts AND Coach's belief in her. I choke up when she grabs the front of the one mothership and it cuts to all the reaction shots and the one for Coach is just the glasses but with a twinkle in them, like he knew all along she was going to make it. I can't get through Gunbuster without crying at multiple points though, so I'm not exactly an objective observer of anything BUSTAAAH-related.
But hey, different strokes for different folks! That's what so great about fiction of any kind. You can enjoy it for so many different reasons, to deep character stuff or philosophy or just because giant robots are neato.
It might be an interesting topic to compare and contrast mechs and mecha.
In one of my Gundam timeline ideas, I'm basing the Mobile Suit on real world tanks, with outliers like the Gundams, special mechs for a role or factions, along with alien ones.
As for the tank, they are used as Mobile Suit hunters thanks to their powerful gun that could successfully be used by the Mobile Suits due to the size and recoil.
"Evangelion" and "Armored Core" mentioned! I'd highly recommend playing "Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon" to rather getting into the mecha customization bug. Or barring that, watching Vaatvidya's 5hr+ vid breaking down every friggin aspect of the game.
I think the best entry point would be Steel Battalion.
These things are mostly portraiyed as a battle machine. One could say that they are a........... wait for it............. mech warrior! 😁😁🤘🤘
Turn A Gundam within a minute is already impressive to me, lovely.
Also, if you want another Gundam series that REALLY makes the Mechs feel huge and dangerous jjust to stand around, Requiem for Vengeance does a fantastic job of that, anytime the Mecha are fighting, it feels like the Protagonists are in danger just because they're standing near them.
Huge mech fan here: one thing that can help you navigate getting into more mecha anime is the spectrum of "Super Robot" to "Real Robot."
Many mecha works, particularly early ones, trend towards treating the mechs like superheroes. This is the "Super Robot" direction. Usually, the mechs are all distinct one-offs with outlandish, ill-defined powers and the stories tend to be more grand in scope. Like superhero stories though, your mileage may vary on how serious the show takes things. Ancient examples include Mazinger Z or Voltron, but you've also got things like Gurren Lagann or for an extremely recent example Bang Bravern.
The other side of the coin, that I think you and your audience is more likely to enjoy, is the "Real Robot" direction. This is where the mechs are treated more like military equipment. Your protagonist is likely to have some cool prototype, but you'll see plenty of assembly-line mechs. There will often be a focus on logistical and maintenance concerns, and generally trying to make things feel more grounded. The original Gundam series is the "grandfather" of this direction, but there are other similarly-aged, and more strictly Real Robot, examples in Dougram or Votoms. My favorite modern example would be 86, but you've also got classics you've already watched like Gundam War in the Pocket and Patlabor. Consider also Macross (aka Robotech), the other big extensive mecha franchise, but only if you believe in the power of music.
Most mecha anime fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, including most Gundam entries to be honest. 08th MS Team is firmly on the Real Robot side, but then you've got things like Witch From Mercury where, while it checks a lot of Gundam's usual boxes, the mechs pull abilities out of their ass left and right. There is of course the extreme example of G Gundam that is the textbook definition of Super Robot despite carrying the Gundam name and designs. Outside Gundam, the famous Evangelion obviously straddles this line, and there are plenty of other shows in the middle that wiggle around in the middle like Code Geass or... I dunno, Sakura Wars?
I think I've gotten my point across that you can find mecha shows in varying degrees of what you're looking for. In particular, I think Votoms and 86 will address your issue with scale. My parting shot, which might not be up your alley but I'm compelled to mention anyway, is Nadesico: the Real Robot show where half the pilots grew up watching a Super Robot show-within-a-show. Truly a love letter to all mecha kind.