Mechapocalypse

Abstract

In 1988, Tomino Yoshiyuki released Char’s Counterattack, the filmic conclusion to the nine year saga he had begun with the original anime series, Mobile Suit Gundam (1979). Set in a distant and alternate future where war is fought in giant humanoid robots known as “mobile suits,” Char’s Counterattack centers on the final battle between the Democratic Earth Federation and the fascist Neo Zeon Empire. This essay examines Char’s Counterattack as its own watershed moment for the Gundam franchise wherein Gundam would begin to spin-off into multiple media and other franchises, including more anime and films, but also manga, toys, novels, and later video games, all of which would be exported throughout the world, giving rise to Gundam’s global popularity. In reading the explosion of the Gundam franchise alongside its roots in the genre of “real robot” anime, this essay postulates that the destruction of real robots in Char’s Counterattack allegorizes the concept of C ool Japan. In doing so, this essay traces the production and exportation of Gundam’s media to both East Asia in the 1980s and North America in the early aughts, thereby repositioning the pivotal role Char’s Counterattack plays in the growth of otaku culture alongside other works in the anime canon, such as Akira (1988) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995).

Newtypes, Angels, and Human Instrumentality: The Mecha Genre and its Apocalyptic Bodies

“…Anthony Dominguez writes that "the fragility of the real robot mirrors the fragility of the human body," arguing that this imagery of the body comes to be "linked to the nation of Japan, and so the body's own mutilation signals the metaphorical collapse of the Japanese border." 5 Frenchy Lunning argues that the image of a mecha is a visual metaphor, illustrating "a gap: a symbol of a yawning sense of lack suffused with a complex of narratives that lie between the child-pilot subject and his or her mecha-ideal image of power." 6 Similarly, Tatsumi Takayuki understands the appeal of Gundam, and other anime mecha works, through the lens of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto," coining the term "Japanoid" to describe what he sees as a uniquely Japanese interest in robotic embodiments resulting from post-occupation cultural bifurcation.…”