When you're watching Japanese animation, it's not unusual for you to notice the giant robots in these series that walk around, do battle with large guns and missiles, destroying everything for miles around? If you have, then what you just watched was definitely mecha anime! By now, much of the under-30 crowd has seen much of the great mecha anime, especially with the rise of the Voltes V and Gundam Wing generations. But what is the mecha genre exactly?
Actually the term 'mecha anime' is a term not popularly used in Japan and is used primarily by fans of the genre around the world. The mecha anime is an anime in which the plot is centered around a robot, usually 20 feet tall or more, outfitted with a variety of weapons, and is usually manned and piloted by the protagonist of the story (and probably by its antagonist and other characters as well).
The size of the robots usually range from the height of a tank (Eureka Seven) to the size of a small building (Gundam, Escaflowne), a tall skyscraper (Space Runaway Ideon), an entire city (Macross), an entire planet (Transformers) and even large galaxies on rare occasions (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann).
The genre started with Mitsuteru Yokoyama's 1956 manga 'Tetsujin 28-go', whose anime version, 'Gigantor' was released in 1963, although the inclusion of this anime is usually debated by experts because the machine was controlled by remote instead of from a cockpit within the robot. The author, Go Nagai, made one of the most memorable creation, the first popular Super Robot anime series: Mazinger Z. This started the revolution that culminates in the growth of mecha anime to this day.
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