so if u want to hear us REALLY get granular about Robot Jox in a way OUR pod format doesnt super capacitate, you should absolutely check it out.
Not to Scale
A giant robot power hour* podcast discussing mechs across media, their stories, and why we love them. Join friends Alice, Brian, and Niko as we talk about war, transhumanism, design, narrative shape, and beg child soldiers to make better decisions.
*a power hour is a unit of measurement equaling somewhere around longer than an hour and WAY longer than an hour
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www.osgpod.com
https://media.zencast.fm/on-the-shoulders-of-giants/rss
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we spoke at length with Stephen and PMC about the middle chunk of Robot Jox, the vibes were immaculate, alice bullied everyone, and hot dogs were everywhere. become a GRFM patron (or wait a week, is my understanding, which could be wrong) to listen!
ive been so excited for this freaky nightmare movie episode forever RIP tex conway gods worst texan
there is something to be said about the western media imaginary, especially when it comes to media covering war, that is inescapably attached to our attitude of what it /means/ to go to war, and that's very much on purpose.
we see on the daily how much reach the american military industrial complex has its hands in the fibers of our mainstream entertainment production processes--most of it is money, to be sure. the military offers Marvel a billion zillion dollars so that they can make sure Iron Man comes out looking like a respectable red blooded American that loves the Marines. They pay Unity, on a similar level, a billion zillion dollars to rehash their software technology for direct combat purposes.
By contrast, Japan's relationship with its own military is EXTREMELY COMPLICATED and by virtue of such a lot of the media, especially the media produced in the Showa period which would go on to define so much of what the mecha genre space imagines war is like, is taking extremely close and critical looks at their own military history in a way that is a lot more jurisidictionally unlevered by their military having their hands in it.
It's similar to something George Lucas once talked about, which is that American filmmakers are imaginarily crippled by the fields of military involvement, both because of the funding issue I mentioned above and also because of our incessantly rah-rah post WWII nationalism, versus soviet filmmakers who are living under fascism but have maybe one or two rules about what they're allowed to make movies about.
I think this is inseparable with the final design product of a Western mech. It looks like a tank because the cultural imaginary, or at least the one that tends to give studios money, LOVES to see dudes rock piloting tanks, that is the symbol of what it means to go to war in American media. That is what victory looks like in American media. Mecha as a genre tends to explore the machine as a direct extension of the human body, and by that logic, the human experience, which has thousands of other variables when it comes to design and theme work.
To reinforce what was said in the OP, this isn't to say one is necessarily better than the other one, and this also isn't to say we shouldn't assume that Japanese cultural hegemony isn't reinforced through exploration of mecha, but the direct pipeline involvement has something to do with that final design, the tank on chicken legs versus the samurai armor with butterfly wings.
i think i will have a lot more to say about this when that comes out because i need to remember what the fuck i said about the cold war 🧍♂️🧍♂️🧍♂️🧍♂️🧍♂️