Towline wrote:I'd like to ask this question again since we're typing about Transformers and anime.
Why is it that most robot anime post transformers went back to robots being piloted by humans and robots fighting each other with swords instead of guns.
I felt that transformers revolutionized the robot anime genre with robots who pilot themselves and use guns and military styled fist fighting instead of the old fashioned human piloted mech and sword fighting.
And also the japanese have an over-reliance on combining robots where as in transformers the combining robots are special teams.
thanks for reading
Towline.
There's a few things wrong with what you just said.
1. They didn't "go back" to mechs being piloted by humans, they just did what they were always doing. In Gundam's case, it would have made no sense at all, not simply the sudden switch from piloted machines to sentient ones but on a thematic scale as well, since at it's core, the theme of Gundam is the kind of impact war has on people, typically an everyman thrust into the conflict whether he likes it or not.
2. A work's popularity doesn't dictate the rules of the genre. (Regardless of Star Wars and Star Trek doing exactly that) In fact, attempting to cash in on another work's popularity by emulating it is usually Step 1 in a recipe for disaster.
3. G1 isn't anime, I can't count the number of times I've had to explain this to people. I'm not even sure why people make that mistake.
4. Despite swords being an all-around popular choice of weapon in all manner of fiction, I know, for a fact, guns are still the weapon of choice in both Gundam and Macross, two of the leading giant robot anime franchises, prefer guns as their weapon of choice, at least in Gundam, melee weapons are only used as a back-up weapon.
5. There is no such thing as military-styled fist-fighting.
6. Transformers do use swords on occasion, along with melee weapons in general. Optimus and Megatron used an axe and a mace in the second episode! (Which would later go on to be signature weapons of theirs, second only to the Ion Blaster and Fusion Cannon)
7. Transformers didn't revolutionize anything outside of using cartoons to sell toys to children.
8. Gundam never had combiners, neither did Code Geass, and as far as I know neither did Macross. Gurren Lagann had one, but JUST one, and it was the title unit which really was special. I can't speak for a lot of the old Super Robot series', though.
Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2012 2:15 pm
