Comments on: Gundam are Way Cooler Than Transformers

By: Dilara TAN

Dilara TAN — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:06:42 +0000

I am very happy that i’ve found your blog. I’m getting married next october and than moving to japan for living . Even if i love Japan and japanese people i am anxious and excited about living there since i’ve never lived anywhere else beside my country (Turkey). I traveled to Tokyo last july and saw everywhere you told about in your blog. I am very happy to see and remind al those days i passed with full of joy…

Thank you very much!…

By: Pat W

Pat W — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:28:27 +0000

Yeah that’s definitely something that doesn’t make a ton of sense. The comics and cartoon tried to explain but it is kind of thin.

The basic idea is that Autobots were worker robots and Decepticon were military robots. They had native alternate forms intended to aid in those tasks. When they crash on earth their ship reconfigures them to better operate in the new environment.

Like I said thin. I always kind of liked Transformers post the animated movie in which they basically introduced an entire robot universe kind of removing it from our universe which was interesting in a comic book kind of way. I was older when the cartoon came out so I guess I kind of looked at it a little differently.

I never actually watched Force Five but my best friend in 4th grade had this huge Grandizer figure. I still have a Gaiking figure that he gave me somewhere. It’s like 2 feet tall with a shooting fist of doom.

Star Blazers of course is awesome.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:59:02 +0000

Hi Pat - I could never get past the premise of Transformers. Making them sentient was definitely interesting, but why would an alien robot be designed to turn into a truck, or a helicopter? It makes for good toys, but I never got into the story. I think tastes with this stuff depends a lot on what you grew up with though. Transformers were after my time - I grew up glued to Force Five and Star Blazers.

By: Pat W

Pat W — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:39:16 +0000

The one thing that I always thought made Transformers cooler as a concept than most mecha was that fact that they weren’t suits. Transformers aren’t piloted they are sentient which I always thought was neat.

Most mecha, all the way back to Gigantor and MazingerZ (and of course Macross, Giant Robo and Patlabor) are suits that are controlled by pilots.

There are some Japanese examples of this, although I can only think of Appleseed bioroids at the moment but I don’t keep up with Anime much these days.

That Gundam statue is pretty awesome though.