He walks, kneels, moves his arms, articulates his fingers. The giant gundam built in Yokohama Bay, Japan is fully functional. With its 18 meters high and a weight of 25 tons, the robot, still in the test phase, is a perfect 1: 1 scale replica of the ‘Mobile Suit gundam rx-78-2’ model, the unit that appeared in the anime of 1979.The Dragonar-1 and the other mechs in the series are very reminiscent of Gundam mobile suits and have beautiful heads. Coming to us on VHS in the 90s, the series was also broadcast on Sky, first on the defunct Italia Teen Television (2005) and then on Man-Ga (2010).
Masaaki Nagumo built this colossus himself, inspired by the animated series Mobile Suit Gundam born in the early 80s. It took six years to complete his work, which began in 2011. The man works in a company that also designs agricultural machines as life-size robots that have no other vocation than the fun
The mecha or mech are robots present in numerous fictional works, from literature to manga and anime, which are characterized by extraordinary dimensions, always superior to human ones and usually more than mammoth (but also not gigantic dimensions), and for the fact of being controlled by at least one pilot present inside the metal structure of these vehicles. The term is also used to specifically refer to the robotic science fiction genre.
The term “mecha” is used to describe war robots far more often outside of Japan than in their homeland. “Mecha” as a noun comes from the BattleTech series (where it is often written as’ Mech, short for BattleMech or OmniMech), and is not used in Japan in other contexts, except as an involuntary spelling error of “mecha” (except of the Japanese version of BattleTech, which tries to keep the English word). In Japan the term “robot” is much more frequent, and in Japanese stories themselves they are rarely known as “mecha”.
The best-known western context of mecha is BattleTech, which was originally a three-dimensional wargame (only to be transported to the world of video games with the MechWarrior saga), which has been very influential, representing a basis for much of the games and products in other media. FASA, the company that produced it, was however sued for copyright infringement for using several designs from series such as Macross and others without a license (its first edition, initially called BattleDroids, included two sets of 1/144 Japanese models from the anime. Fang of Sun Dougram).
Inside and outside the Japanese country there is also a difference from a graphic and functional point of view. In Japan automata are usually agile, fast fighting machines that are imagined to be much more humanoid in appearance and movement (with very few exceptions such as Gundam’s Guntank). Non-Japanese automata, on the other hand, are much more mechanical and less agile, portrayed as massive and powerful but not graceful and not always humanoid machines, such as the Metal Gear (which is Japanese in any case) in the video game series of the same name (also here some albeit less sporadic exceptions, such as Heavy Gear or Shogo, which are very influenced by Japanese souls in design). It can therefore be seen that, while in Japan the mechas are much more similar to extensions at the gigantic and robotic level of the pilot, that is, of the warrior himself, on the outside they are conceived more as simple armored vehicles on mechanical limbs rather than wheels or tracks.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 