All roads lead to Pacific Rim

I figured they mimicked our shape because we intrinsically understood the engineering more, that they were meant to inspire hope, that they embody humanities attempt to ascend to something more powerful than our weak flesh.

A giant crane can't chase me?

Someone has never played Nier Automata obviously.

Jaegers from Pacific rim being recognised always makes me feel so proud for some reason

The AT-AT isn't a robot. It's a transport vehicle

If you want to see the AT-AT done right, look no futher than the Clone Wars era's AT-TE, the All Terain Tactical Enforcer. Lower to the ground with six legs, a cockpit not separate from the main body, front and back mounted main cannons, and a top-mounted heavy cannon.

Uprising only has one good thing going for it for me. If i hadn’t discovered it, i wouldn’t have discovered the entire franchise.

“Gundam”
Shows the Perfect Gundam , which is literally the Psycho Zaku but decked in the Full Amour Gundam’s amour plating

The ATAT should've just been showed off as a water vehicle like in other iterations of it out of that movie, imagine you are on a huge war ship in the middle of the ocean, stocked with heat seeking torpedoes and see something not swimming, not surfing, not even sailing towards you... But WALKING towards you as your terrain advantage is now ITS terrain advantage. Your torpedoes doing nothing as underwater flares shoot out and the guns on the head breach the hull before you even see them come out of the fog.

I'm gonna have to fight you on Showa Mechagodzilla.  Or any Mechagodzilla.  It's obvious what it's job is.  Be a robot Godzilla that fights regular Godzilla.  Does it help it fight Godzilla to fly, have a bunch of missiles, and everything else?  Yes, and it keeps you guessing what else it will throw out in the fight.

Now the Megazord, the original was built from needing a practical toy.  They had to make the toy, the toy had to combine, and it had to look like in the show.  That means the combination much be something that can be replicated in the toy.  They have to be honest about it.  The movie?  They didn't care or worry about it at all.  They figured they can just say CG and Space science.

The AT-AT works in the manner of showing the mindset of the Empire.  Same bunch that would build a planet destroying moon thinking everyone would be terrified into obedience, and not check for direct paths to the reactor core.  Big intimidating, you see it coming, and are suppossed to have an atavistic fear of being crushed.

Uprising slimmed down the Jeagers and didn't give that sense of weight.  That's the thing the first Pacific Rim made sure to do.  No matter what the Jeagers or Kaiju did, there was that sense of Weight.  Even underwater with nothing around, you knew they were huge.  Even when moving fast you felt that.  They wanted sleeker, faster Jeagers, which can still work, in the sequel, but they lost that sense of weight.  That enormous Power was needed to make them move.  And didn't do as well on the introductions and build for them and the pilots.


ED 209 is perfect.  Because it does exactly what it is suppossed to.  Look scary, until you realize how stupid it actually is, just like a lot of corporate products.  And instantly recognizable.  I give it full marks.


Mechagodzilla's are always interesting, because they always end up different takes on making a robot Godzilla.  My favorite is 2002's Kiryu, because it looks the most like just a metal Godzilla.  And it is, since they built it around the original's skeleton, and it's haunted by it's soul.

Sometimes the motion is essential to the design.  TARS is one of those.  And movies are, as the name states, about movement.  I definetly think it works.

The other interesting thing that is in the Pacific Rim Jeagers and Kaiju, and how this builds the big twist.  You can shield electronics against EMPs.  You don't need to be analog.  Notably, Cherno Alpha is taken out before Leatherback reveals that trick.  It's because that wasn't a natural ability of an animal, it's because the Kaiju were weapons, and humans were building the right tools, but fighting the wrong fight while their enemy could create all the countermeasures they needed.

As for Striker's design, it works because it looks like Gypsy but newer.  We know Gypsy was effective for a long time.  Striker does the same, but with additional sleekness.  It's the sexy new model of car 10-15 years after Gypsy.

I'm planning to write a webnovel based on japanese Tokusatsu heroes (Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, etc.) and plan to add some giant mech in it starting from the second arc. However, thinking back on things, the "Zords" in that story don't exactly serve a purpose. They just have a reason for existing, but no actual working purpose. In the story, I have two deuteragonist that becomes japanese tokusatsu inspired super heroes. One is a Ranger, the other a Rider. These two characters are written to be Tokusatsu Otakus that are living the dreams of becoming like the heroes they admire. There is also another character, a scientist/engineer working for a secret criminal organisation, who had the organisation build giant robot when he was task by the upper management to build war weapon of tomorrow to sell to the highest bidder. Turns out, that scientist/engineer character, he's a genius in his field, but also a mecha otaku and he somehow found a way to make giant robot work (within the context of the story) when the rest of the world kept telling him that giant mechas are impracticle compared to tanks and whatnot.

Also, the mechas the secret criminal organisation have build, they don't even get to use or sell them. The mechs get stolen by the Rider, who gives them to the Ranger team, because starting from Arc 2 and the reveal (to the reader) of the existence of the secret criminal organisation, they also start selling to the alien invaders the Rangers are fighting a drug that turns the MOTW enforcers into giants. Alike to how the early seasons of the Super Sentai franchise, the Rangers don't have Zords or giant mechs, so for the first arc, the ennemies don't turn giant, nor do the alien invaders have giant mech for invasion. The battle stays human size, until much later.

The purpose of this story is because I want to write an hommage to my favorite japanese franchises. Anyway, what I want to ask is: Do you think I'm going the wrong way about this by putting a reason before a purpose?

6:22 it worked really well but it was so loud that it’s not practical in specs ops or littering ringing dinner bell to be pick off

0:24 i think our body is the most movable

I will say with the AT-AT, the point of the legs is that it's not close to the ground. Being elevated so high gives it a greater vantage point with its main weapon. It is also slightly higher than an average multi-story building that's not a skyscraper. With its heavy armor and main body elevated off the ground plus the vantage point provided by said height, you get a fairly effective occupation vehicle (which unfortunately we've never really seen on screen). It's invulnerable to conventional weaponry, elevated away from ground level explosives (e.g. IEDs, mines, etc.), and is level with or slightly elevated over the rooftops of most population centers. On top of that, it's not as easy to topple as pop culture makes out. After all, it took a snowspeeder wrapping a heavy duty towing cable around one's legs multiple times for it to finally fall (and even then, it wasn't destroyed by the fall, only crippled until it could be finished off by heavy ordinance).

The Jägers are most likely Human-shaped, because the Human pilots are mind-linked to them, so making them roughly Human-shaped probably makes it easier on the pilots.

As far as stability goes, a spider-like mech like in Earth 2150 or the anime 86 makes a lot more sense. I wonder why we get so few of those, or quadrupel ones like the dog-like mechs from Gundam SEED (I know, far from the best Gundam series, but still some cool mecha designs) or the not-yet combined Zords for that matter, who are mostly there to combine, not function on their own.
Take out one leg on a Humanoid mech and it's incapacitated. Take out a leg on something with six or eight legs and it's still able to move. Plus the weight is distributed over more surface area touching the ground, making it less likely to break the floor or sink into the ground, on top of the stability and redundancy, while retaining the futuristic/mysterious sense of not having wheels or tracks, but still retaining more grit than hover-tech. And come to think of it... if you want a machine that brawls, hover tech would be a bad fit.

Honestly the rule should be, does the reason for this Mech reveal itself easily? The silhouette wouldn't really really explain a forklift without some movement. I believe the AT-AT actually is good in that regard because Imperial Doctrine is shock and awe, which if you were a Rebel in that trench slowly watching these  lumbering fortresses slowly grow towards you out of the snow, you would probably start growing yellow icicles from your crotch.

The new megazord still fails this test along with the Robocop Droid.

02:56 pr wild force has solved the problem of realistic/natural animal shaped zord turning into one giant humanoid one. But of course no one in Hollywood got the memo

This is very useful for someone who wants to draw or design a robot giant or a normal one of their own!

5:00 There are probably optional attachments on their feet to allow all-terrain, but they are pretty much useless when there are rows upon rows of pylons before them.

8:36 adding a part that says something like “and/or has a consistent in lore explanation for it not doing so”