Astro Boy-type mecha are also still prevalent. Just look at Saber Marionette. The marionettes are human-like mecha. Cutey Honey is also a mecha. Hand Maid May and Mahoromatic are very recent anime with female mecha that might as well be human seeing as how their personalities are much like any other female anime character. Key The Metal Idol questions what it is to be human. So what is it that makes mecha so incredibly popular? They're versatile for one thing. You could give a mecha a very human appearance but extraordinary strength or phenomenal intelligence so as to make them stand out as special. Or you could design a giant mecha to function as the world's new weapon of war, or relegate it to mere construction work. Mecha can be superheroes or the enemies of mankind. It's a way to create something human without it actually being human. It creates a type of drama and feeling unlike anything else. Design a mecha with character, and then one episode, take away that mecha's emotion chip or whatever. Suddenly the character has lost all human quality and it's horribly depressing. Watch the hero pilot's giant robot get destroyed at the end of the series and it too will be a sad event.

Mecha anime is here to stay. It's one of the most formidable genres in anime and has a near infinite amount of possibilities. There is so much in terms of mecha anime that it needs to be sub-categorized into even smaller groups. There are mecha in series you've never thought of as having mecha before. OK, take Adventures of Mini-Goddess. Remember the scene with mecha Gabira? I know it's stupid, but still a mecha. There's so much mecha anime I feel I could never cover it all, and as I result, my article on this subject is lacking. I could easily write several pages just on a single mecha anime, but doing them all as such would be unfeasible, not to mention irrational. So I'll leave off with one of my many biased mantras. As I've often said, "Every good anime has a mecha in it." From what I've seen so far, it's true about 80% of the time.

The views and opinions expressed in Confessions of the World's Greatest Otaku are solely those of Ron Ferrera and do not necessarily represent the views of Digital Manga, AKADOT or its sponsors.