Japanese Animation and New Media
Week Four: Chapter Eight: Giving Up the Gun
Mecha design might be considered a subset of character action. After all, vehicles are in a sense characters, especially when they are giant robots or tactical bipedal armored suits. But I have tentatively separated mecha design from character movement for two reasons. First, I wished to call attention to how Miyzaki’s animations use whimsical designs for mecha and rather slapstick or gag-style action sequences with cars and trains in order to lessen their ballistic tendencies. Second, I have separated mecha from character animation because, as we will see later, there is lineage of Japanese animation in which girls are mecha. This is precisely the lineage that Miyazaki and Ghibli deliberately avoid, sustaining a divide between mecha and humans at a certain level: robots may be humanized, but humans are not to be roboticized.
