Over the last few years I've gone out of my way to revisit alot of /m/ adjacent Western media. Nowadays I'm wondering if I've overlooked any major examples. Feel free to bring up some of your own favorites.
Bumping with a list compiling various related works.>ABC Warriors>Big Guy and Rusty>The Iron Giant>Megas XLR>Titan Maximum>IGPX>MLAATR>Dexter's Lab>KND>Shogun Warriors (Marvel Comic)>Marvel Megamorphs (Comic and toyline)>DC and Revell's 2 issue pre-Harmony Gold Robotech comic (totally unrelated to the HG/Macross localization)>Robotech itself>Voltron>Sym Bionic Titan>Pacific Rim>Transformers>Bionicle>The Zeta Project>The Botsmaster>Bionic Six>Silverhawks>Automan>Gobots>(pic related)Feel free to add more
>>23928036Not really. Mecha became somewhat more common in Scifi comics after the 90s, and there are some examples of actual mecha comics from the last two decades or so, but they're clearly still struggling to figure out what to do with the genre that really makes sense within US comics/BD.
>>23928048If you ask me the major dividing line between eastern and western approaches to the genre is the handling of robots. Western audiences on average will more willingly embrace a robot as a character rather than a robot as a vehicle. Eastern audiences, Japan specifically, tend to prefer the opposite. For years now I've had this theory that the Japanese pioneered the genre from the beginning specifically because of how intrinsically linked their notion of a mecha is with their concept of being. They see the human body as a vessel for the soul, while Western audiences expect the robot itself to be the character and driving force of the larger narrative. Anytime Westerners recreate the Japanese approach it does fare well financially despite the niche but devoted audience. Pacific Rim and Sym Bionic Titan being the best examples of this. Maybe the ideal solution is trying to create more Battletech-lites? [/spoiler] It's what I'd do with Robotech at this point
>>23928048Like Mech Cadet Yu mostly seems to be about the Asian migrant experience in the US and Hellcyon never got the chance to tell its story. The French Dieselpunk/Alt-History WW2 mecha comics were not even mid by the standards of of the market and the decent stuff that frequently features mecha incidentally (Travis, Sillage) are Cyberpunk/Scifi thriller.
>>23928056>Anytime Westerners recreate the Japanese approach it does fare well financially despite the niche but devoted audience. Pacific Rim and Sym Bionic Titan being the best examples of thisDidn't both of these bomb and die
>>23928058You have to wonder if it's just a consequence of the genre itself falling out of fashion or the failing Western media institutions. I cant help but see alot of parallels between giant robot fiction and capeshit at this point in that they've both declined so drastically while losing sight of what made them engaging and entertaining from the start.
>>23928063Fuck, I had a brain fart. I meant to write "doesnt fare well financially". Sorry for the flub anon.
I guess it's worth asking, what can Western efforts do to stand out from their Japanese counterparts? I sometimes worry they end up too derrivative.
>>23928056Legend of the Galactic Heroes/BT-type stories aren't exactly mainstream either, I feel.There are genres in western comics that prominently feature man-machine interaction, mainly french fighter pilot and racing comics. Their stories are about situations characters get into because they're around and operating machines, which seems to work better than trying to ape the Japanese approach of machines as a larger embodiment of an acting character.Though it does require a different approach, like if you'd try to sell Sakura Wars as a BD, it'd have to be about Ayame Fujieda's generation's time in the trenches of the Demon War rather than the Flower Division.Which reminds me, The Sentinels (french comic series about WW1 cyborgs) was pretty good. Also there's the OG Kamen Rider story from Blake and Mortimer - The Yellow M.
>>23928066Outside of Battletech and Transformers, giant robot fiction straight does not exist in the West to begin with. It's all imports.
>>23928075The US could do Horse Girl comics about recreational vehicles, I guess? Cars don't work well, because they've become almost exclusively associated with fucking on the back seat and driving really far while shooting shit with your pals.
>>23928103Cars don't work because young people don't drive or own one.
>>23928105That they don't own giant robots never seemed to have been a problem.
>>23928119Fiction and reality are different, strange
>>23928120Look, the basic US fiction featuring cars are road movies.The basic road movie plot is derived from Kerouac's On the Road, which is about driving around with your nutty friend, getting stranded nowhere (often by your friend) and having sex with your girl.The current most common type of film about people using cars are shorts of some dude talking to the camera about politics. While that may have been how Heinlein framed many of his scifi stories, it's not an optimal format for giant robot fiction.
>>23928075I think one problem with taking too much inspiration fron anime and Japanese media is that unless you are Japanese or intimately familiar with the culture, you get repetition without understanding. Does that make sense? Like I've found that when I brainstorm some fake mecha show in my head when I'm bored, my first instinct is to ape Gundam since I'm mostly familiar with it.
>>23928185This is also a problem with recent Japanese media itself. Fans becoming creators just create rehashes. When all you know all your life is anime tropes, what else can you produce?
>>23928190Fans becoming creators is always a bit of a double edged sword. It can result in good stuff and it's also very useful for someone making a parody work.
>>23928089Going forward the smart decision may become an embrace of the niche. Otherwise I dont see the needle moving much as is. >Which reminds me, The Sentinels (french comic series about WW1 cyborgs) was pretty goodNoted, I'll look into it. I wasnt certain how many capeshitty titles to include in my earlier list btw. Sharknife, DC's Giantkiller, and Kaijumax all did cross my mind however. Consider them some worthwhile reads too.
>>23928096It does but in extremely small quantities. Most of it riffing off one of the three landmark imports (in Voltron, Transformers, or Robotech) or working off similar framework to drastically different results. Frankly I wish this werent the case but I can easily imagine Western audiences growing tired of super robots. That fascination is just too few ans far between here for whatever reason. In retrospect it makes sense that Genndy was one of the few to deliver on an American super robot series considering how many Dexter episodes tinker with the idea.
>>23928185>>23928190>>23928210All really good points, especially considering how god awful the plague of western faux anime has been for the past decade. Short of some new small scale group coming along and delivering something really in the know, it'd be a bumpy ride otherwise.
Heard that Akiman and many a designer at Capcom were inspired by Western designs in the early days?
You would think the West would understand that mecha is just an extrapolation on the knight and his steed dynamic, it's not like we're at a dearth for stories about sailors who love their ship.
>>23928433If you have more to share I'm all ears. The pic ypu shared did remind me of Stan Lee's Heroman, which I suppose counts as another Japanese/American coproduction in the vein of TF or the other big imports.
>>23928036>WesternBig O Season 2: Tomato kino theatre.
>>23928435Not mecha per se
>>23928448
Does MD Geist 2 technically count as a Western /m/? It was partially funded by Central Park Media wasn't it?
>>23928449
>>23928481
>>23928434>You would think the West would understand that mecha is just an extrapolation on the knight and his steed dynamicUnless the horse is a girl, only girls will read horse stuff. And if you make the mech a girl, you're going down the Forever Peace slippery slope, which ends in multi-genital full pack futanari gestalt global peace.
