I think mecha is not just an extension of any military unit in particular, it's a combination of everything we romanticize.
> It's has the form of a knight in shining armor.
> The brute force of a tank that can barge into any enemy territory.
> The speed and agility of a fighter jet.
> The caliber and firepower of heavy artillery.
> Sometimes even the sheer amount of weapons of a battleship.
> A complex piece of machinery that can satisfy the intellectual thirst while having an artistically simple design to ease the mind.
> The ability to ascend beyond the limitation of the flesh without loosing the beauty of the human form.
> An object that greatly rewards mastery over it.
> A big, shiny, expensive thing that you can flex with.
> Is a single or multiple crew vehicle depending on if you're feeling lone-wolf, comradery, romantic, or even-

"Some cultural critics point out that the reason for the popularity of mechanized chassis is likely far less technical: we made them the most powerful fighting machines that could stride across the earth, and we made them look like us." - Lancer TTRPG Core Rulebook

I think mecha is an extension of the Medieval Knight.

1. Expensive, state-of-the-art equipment to which there is no counter
2. A sense of ordainment of being superior to any footsoldier by a wide margin
3. Heavily romanticized
4. Called upon sparingly

"War is bad, robots are rad" true. Though, coming from Battletech, would replace bad with "lucrative", man gotta pay his bills to Space AT&T before they send the hit squad

Keep in mind that Mazinger Z, the starter of the whole mecha genre, was described in-universe as a weapon that can make you a God or a Devil, capable of singlehandedly destroy the world or save it. In Super Robot shows you have a single invincible mech  crushing entire empires without breaking a sweat. Gundam made it a little more realisticby having the mechs being mass produced.
And tgen later reinterpretations of Nagai's classics like Mazinger and Getter asked if it is really in humanity's best interest to have such ungodly powerful weapons.

The manly urge to die due to your opponent being a much more skilled pilot

Funny how Gurren Lagann is one of the only mecha anime to not only acknowledge this, but incorporate the meta idea that "the robots have superpowers because they're shaped like humans, because it's all just a masculine power fantasy" into the actual plot and lore of the show.

On a purely primal basis, the reason I love mecha, power armour, and other humanoid mechanisms used for warfare is because I like the idea of one guy being able to punch a mountain sized dinosaur in the face. On an even baser level, I like to pretend that I could be that guy punching the dinosaur in the face.

When I'm not listening to the monkey brain though, I enjoy these media because of the reasoning behind the machine's creation. If there's a genuine reason that mecha are used over tanks other than just "they're stronger" then I find that pretty interesting.

“It’s almost as if the obsession with Mecha is fantasy, and not thought out speculative futurism”

I mean…yea.

credits roll 😂

Something to add to the points you list:

Mechas are like superheroes, they give the ability for awesome scale while still being recognisable avatars of the protagonists. You can have big explosions, have the protagonist destroy lots of military equipment without having to show much in terms of actual human casualties. Its a sanitised form of depicting large-scale war. Gundam puts some emphasis on the death caused by Mobile Suit battles when they show grunt enemies die or show footsoldiers or civilians in the crossfire but goes to greater length in Hathaway.

There's always the Battletech answer to why mecha replaced conventional military hardware of "because everyone in the entire setting is a psycho."

There is a very nice review of the BTA3062 mod for Battletech (still up on Vice) that I'm just going to quote verbatim:

"The majority of BattleMechs are designed to look like people. This serves a few aesthetic functions. First, it makes the violence they suffer readable to an audience. I, a human woman with blood and bones, do not know what it feels like for an axle to break, but I do know how it feels when a shoulder is torn from its socket. The slow violence of vehicle combat becomes intelligible through a mostly human body.

Second, it does not allow you to forget who is doing the violence—that a human hand is pulling a trigger."

I like what Armored Core 6 did with their "core theory" to explain why mechs exist. An Armored Core is so fast and agile that traditional ranged weapons like artillery can't hit them or even properly lock on. The only thing that can reliably beat an AC is another equivalent fast close-range mech of some kind, like another AC or the PCA's Light and Heavy Cavalry mechs. AC's are also piloted via some sort of neural link, so pilots actually have some sort of feeling of having this giant robot body.

It doesn't quite explain Muscle Tracers aka MT's (basically just a tank with tiny little arms and normal sized legs), but still.

Heavy Gear takes the Patlabor approach to mechs.

"Why did Gears make tanks obsolete?"

Every faction with tanks, "They didn't."

CEF: "They really, really didn't."

To add to the point of romanticized infantry, Mechas, especially anthropomorphic ones, are somewhat futuristic depictions of knights. I practice and compete in Armored Fighting and when people ask me how I got into it, I tell them it’s the closest thing I can get to piloting a giant robot.

Honestly, a crab mech would be really good. It's a solid shape with a low center of gravity, and it still has the all terrain versatility that limbs would offer

I think Mecha is an inherently Japanese idea that draws on the conception of a "warrior" rather than a "soldier," as you see in western takes on the idea. Gundam vs BattleTech, for instance. In Mecha, the warrior and the mech are one in the same. The warrior is special. The mech is special. In western properties, where the mech is a weapon, then the idea is that anyone can pick up a weapon and become a warrior; the warrior is not a warrior, but a soldier, and the soldier is not special. The weapon can be modified to accomplish any task and wielded by anyone willing to put themselves in danger.

Oh hey I witnessed the same discussion you're talking about at 1:36 on Twitter. Yes. All fiction is inherently romanticized and trying to be 100% realistic is a zero sum game because your mind (or the mind of the creator of your favorite mecha show) can't account for everything that real life entails. What separates the good from the bad, as Tolkien said, is respect for the rules that govern the fiction, making the work seem more "realistic" (suspension of disbelief).

I honestly think Code Geass did a great job of showing how the nightmare frames replaced tanks: they hit just as hard while being twice as maneuverable.  Combine that with the grappling hook blades and the wheels attached to their legs and they become the undisputed kings or urban combat.  Even when the mechs start geting more powerful and ridiculous they keep it interesting by introducing an arms race between Britania and the Black Knights, both sides constantly trying to one-up each other.

Heck even in Battletech, conventional warfare is absolutely devastating and can easily trounce a Battlemech, its just that Battlemechs are created because they are cool in universe. The Mackie was the first Battlemech was an absolute money pit and passion project of one man, said man was the leader of the largest Star Empire (Terran Hegemony).  It became the core of warfare because after the Age of War, using battlemechs in limited engagements to reduce collateral damage became a matter of order. Untill the first two Succession Wars threw that out the window to engage in total war.  In fact, Zelbregin (Clanner Rules of Conduct in Battle) was an extension of that idea, so everything is decided by a duel, where they try to underbid in what they will use to prove who is a bigger bad ass.