History Main / ImpossiblyGracefulGiant

* ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'' has a silly little moment featuring tangoing mecha. It's justified in that to do that it took weeks if not months to code all the movements to make it look fluid and it's later subverted when one of the [[AMechByAnyOtherName Arm Slaves ]] slips off at the end and crashes into some stuff.

* {{Lampshaded}} and {{handwaved}} in ''Anime/{{Kuromukuro}}'', because the Geoframes explicitly feature [[ImportedAlienPhlebotinum gravity manipulation technology]], which allows 300-ton giants to have an effective mass of a paperclip. In one episode it allows the heroes to transport the titular mecha over a dinky bridge that in no way could support its 320-ton bulk without the phlebotinum. This is also what gives the mecha in the series their otherwise impossibly fluid mobility.

* Downplayed in ''Anime/{{Patlabor}}''. The Ingrams and other humanoid Labors ''can'' perform any action a human can do despite being at least two stories tall, but they can't do anything too strenuous for very long without their joints breaking down. At once point after watching one perform an UnnecessaryCombatRoll, Shinohara winces because he knows that stunt just flushed a significant portion of the Special Vehicles Unit's budget down the drain due to the dozens of man-hours and replacement parts needed to restore its motors after the grinding down they took.
* ''LightNovel/TheRisingOfTheShieldHero'': Fitoria, the Filolial Queen, is bigger than a house in her bird form, yet moves faster than the wind.

* ''Film/DudeWheresMyCar'' zigzags this trope. The giantess that shows up during the climax is nimble enough to [[LiteralManeater grab a guy for a quick snack]], she is mostly lumbering combined with a SexyWalk.

* ..Franchise/{{Gundam}}'':

* ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamWing'': The Gundam Heavyarms, despite being the heaviest Gundam in its series, can do circus acrobatics just because its pilot can (To be fair, it is also the leanest and least-bulky in design too, so go figure). Later taken to ridiculous heights when it does a spinning flip carrying four in-scale gatling guns.
* This trope forms a minor plotpoint in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans''. One of the most reliable ways to tell whether or not a mobile suit is piloted with the use of the Ālaya-Vijñāna control system is to simply look at the way it moves. A suit with that control system will both have much more fluid and life-like movements as well as much faster response time when compared to traditional control systems. This is because the Ālaya-Vijñāna involves plugging the mobile suit's controls directly into the pilot's own nervous system (via cybernetic implants in their spinal cord), and obviously simply thinking about what you want your machine to do is both faster and more precise than operating control sticks and pedals.

* In ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', we have the titular Evangelions. They're huge, taller than most of the buildings in Tokyo III, and take this trope UpToEleven in the Rebuild continuity, where they're seen '''breaking the sound barrier''' by ''running.'' Not flying, not jumping, but ''running.'' This is a [[VoodooShark justified]] example of this trope because they [[spoiler:only ''look'' like robots; they're actually giant ''biological'' humanoids cloned from aliens placed in armor so constricting that they can't control their own movements, and the pilots are controlling them with their minds, not with physical controls.]]

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* One ''Series/BattleBots'' match had two of its largest robots, Mammoth and HUGE, face each other in a "big bot battle" where the former was ''somersaulting and flipping'' as it attempted to and eventually did {{ring out}} the latter by flipping one of HUGE's big wheels out of the box, immobilizing it for the knockout.

* The episode of ''Series/RedDwarf'' where the Cat not only steers one massive earth-moving robot as if it were Fred Astaire, he gets an entire deck of similar machines to act as a synchronised line of backing dancers.

* This trope forms a minor plotpoint in ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamIronBloodedOrphans''. One of the most reliable ways to tell whether or not a mobile suit is piloted with the use of the Ālaya-Vijñāna control system is to simply look at the way it moves. A suit with that control system will both have much more fluid and life-like movements as well as much faster response time when compared to traditional control systems. This is because the Ālaya-Vijñāna involves plugging the mobile suit's controls directly into the pilot's own nervous system (via cybernetic implants in their spinal cord), and obviously simply thinking about what you want your machine to too is both faster and more precise than operating control sticks and pedals.

{{Kaiju}} tend to have the same problems, for similar reasons; you'd be bored if Godzilla threw an enemy and it took 30 seconds between the start of its trajectory and it hitting the ground.

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* Most real animals of imposing height move with remarkable grace, because they wouldn't survive otherwise. Case in point, giraffes. They aren't the fastest moving animals (top speed approximately 60km/h, 37mph), but they always move gracefully as a broken neck would be disastrous.
* One episode of ''Series/{{Mythbusters}}'' had them decide to test the phrase "bull in a china shop" by setting up a bunch of shelves and china in a bull pen and then releasing bulls into it. To their surprise, the bulls were ''incredibly'' careful to maneuver around the shelves without ever disturbing them. A grand total of ''one'' shelf got knocked over in the course of ''two'' separate tests.
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** Justified for ''Striker Eureka'' as it is a top-of-the-line Mark V Jaeger. ''Gipsy Danger'' is a rebuilt Mark III that is noticeably slower and less graceful while the old Mark I ''Chernyl Alpha'' is very clunky and brutish.

* The Titans in ''Anime/AttackOnTitan'' have a {{Justification}}: they're a lot lighter than they should be for their size, and their musculature is in most cases nearly identical to a human's, so they're able to move with nearly as much grace and fluidity as a human (it varies from Titan to Titan exactly ''how'' graceful they are in practice). The Colossal Titan, however, is an exception. Being over five times as large as any other Titan, it is also extremely slow and moves rather clumsily. If it didn't have the power to vent superheated gas from its flesh, it would be virtually helpless against the human soldiers, who are used to dealing with much smaller and faster targets.

* The [[spoiler:Prawn mechsuit piloted by Wikus in the FinalBattle]] in ''Film/District9'' is twenty feet tall yet able to leap several metres in the air and possesses surprising agility for something so massive. It can also land gracefully without shattering its legs.

Apparently, nobody told this to Japan -- watch any given mecha anime, and you'll see hundred-meter battle machines moving with the lithe, fluid grace of martial artists. Even more confusing: the pilot can pull off these amazing feats with nothing more than [[IKnowMortalKombat a pair of joysticks and a set of pedals]]. Why is this? Probably because, if the robots moved like the multi-ton walking tanks that they are, then the series would bore its viewers to death. A carryover from the SuperRobot days considered [[AcceptableBreakFromReality too catchy to dismiss]] along with the humanoid form -- thus making this a rather obvious sub-trope of RuleOfCool. It often dissipates when a smaller character is in the scene, where from their perspective the machine is [[MagicCountdown actually lumbering]].