Cosplay US 01612

iant walking fighting machines, like so many

beloved science fiction tropes, can trace their origin

back to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. But whereas a

couple of Brits may have invented them, it was the Japanese

who took them seriously.

They called them mecha, and now we do, too. Cartoon fans of A

Certain Age will remember Gigantor (“Bigger than big! Stronger

than strong!”) from the early 1960s. Gigantor may have been the

first giant robot anime distributed on American TV, but Jimmy

Sparks’ metallic BFF was more day-saving deus ex machina

than mecha. Mark Gibson, in his A Brief History of Japanese

Robophilia, credits the prolific manga artist Go Nagai’s Manziger

Z as the first mecha. Both the eponymous manga and anime

debuted in 1972.

There was a small but steady trickle of mecha media during the

rest of the 70s as writers, animators and audiences alike tried

to wrap their minds around heat sinks and neural links. Then the

floodgates – or, rather, the mechbay doors – opened.

Mobile Suit Gundam, which dropped in Japan in 1979, served

up complex politics-driven plots and was less about the

machine than the men inside them. Still, it would all have been

for naught were it not for the toys.

The Gundam series caught the eye of plastic model makers

Bandai, who commenced producing frighteningly detailed

versions of the Gundam mecha for enthusiasts to assemble and

paint (a hobby now referred to as “Gunpla”). Despite the show’s

hasty cancellation in 1980 due to low ratings, enthusiasm for

the new kits sparked a quick resurrection. Bandai went on to

become the largest toy manufacturer in Japan and have a hand

in both the production and distribution of the many Gundam

series to follow, creating one of the richest legacies in all anime.

The Macross and Robotech series debuted in Japan in the

80s, but back in the U.S., giant robots really took off by getting

small. The game company FASA Corporation brought mecha to

the tabletop in 1985 with its BattleTech miniatures game and

spawned an unlikely and uneven entertainment empire that

ranged from a Saturday morning American cartoon series (bad!)

to networked, early VR “BattleTech Centers” in which players

entered cockpits and dueled other “mechwarriors” around the

country (so awesome it hurt!).

(Fun Nerd Fact: FASA originally called their mecha game

BattleDroids until they received a letter from LucasFilm’s legal

department, recommending otherwise...)

If Gundam gave mecha anime its brains, then Neon Genesis

Evangelion gave it soul. The anime famously brought Christian

Photo by Dara Phan

COSPLAYCULTURE