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alt title(s): Giant Robot 
Ask about my Power Sword.
Who needs an Abrams tank when you can have a 100-foot man-shaped robot with a glowing sword and a fist that fires off like a missile? There's no argument - fighting robots are just infinitely cooler than ordinary vehicles. Whatever their shape, though, they are all known as "mecha".
The "mecha", or "giant robot", concept is ubiquitous in Japanese pop culture, and is more than adequately represented in anime. Despite the name, the robots need not actually be "giant" - some are merely human-sized, and some even smaller. They range from the boomers and hardsuits of Bubblegum Crisis to the larger than the universe Demonbane.
Surprisingly, they're not limited to high tech or rubber science settings, either. For example, Vision Of Escaflowne is high fantasy with magical mecha with Power Crystals, and Sakura Taisen is a 1920s Steam Punk setting with rare but powerful psi/magic talents.
Normally, the series just tries to ignore the elephant in the living room, namely, the fact that the humanoid forms are not particularly effective or efficient for combat, movement, or almost any other purpose to which they are assigned. Or that there's vast choice of time-proved layouts made of hard shells and linear motors like, say, entire phylum Arthropoda. And speaking of control problems, their neural systems are mostly unbelievably primitive yet efficient. 1... but then, it would be just tank with legs. When used in a series that involves magic or psi abilities, however, the mechas often seem to have a spiritual or supernatural link to their pilots, which suggests that they have a symbiotic relationship aided by their humanoid construction. Other series have come up with alternate solutions; Mobile Suit Gundam created an entire fictional branch of physics to explain it. The simplest one may be the one used in Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers - the idea that a mech is easier to pilot because it simply takes feedback from the pilot's own physical movements, thus allowing him to use millions of years of evolution's worth of fighting instincts to control his machine. The line between mecha that actually follow their pilots' movements ("Powered Armor") and mecha that are piloted using controls in a cockpit is thinner than one might at first think; as well as the line between full body armor and vehicle. 2 Naturally, this is an area where the Rule Of Cool applies frequently.
Also waved in many cases are the tremendous requirements for such a high-performance machine. Some notable series do explore the idea of limited expenditure; others make no mention whatsoever. Moving a gigantic piece of jointed metal is a small undertaking in many universes, often when seemingly less-problematic tasks aren't. Even if issues of power availability and portability can be explained, the necessary materials capable of withstanding extreme accelerations, pressure differentials, shear forces, and precision-applied destruction are barely glossed over.
Please flee or be stepped on at your own expense. — Megatokyo
Teams of Humongous Mecha are traditionally piloted by a group of plucky kids or a mismatched band of misfit pilots who are all in love with the beautiful daughter or niece of the robots' designer. Either one of these may be a Five Man Band, and if they are, their robots will probably combine into one. Mech pilots have an alarmingly high likelihood of Falling Into The Cockpit.
A subcategory of mecha is the transforming mecha - robots, vehicles and equipment that unfold, rotate and shift parts of themselves to turn into other mechanical devices. Similarly, there are combining mecha - where several smaller robots or ships combine to produce a larger, far more powerful single mech. There are two distinct kinds of Humongous Mecha, the Real Robot and the Super Robot. Either kind, although the Super Robot is more likely, can be a Transforming Mecha or a Combining Mecha.
A series focused on Mecha as its main gimmick is called (appropriately) a Mecha Show. See A Mech By Any Other Name for the various names for mecha in fiction.
History of the trope:
Mythology as a whole is replete with artificial humans and similar automatons (eg. Talos, the great bronze automaton built by Hephaestus), but special mention goes to Hindu mythology. One of the three tasks the gods set to protect their elixir, the Amrita, was a robot with rotary saws for hands.
Jumping forward over a millennium, the second earliest examples of the trope are the Martian tripods from War Of The Worlds. Wikipedia claims the Lensman novels of the 1930s contain the earliest example of the hardsuit/powered armour type. It is difficult to determine whether these depictions influenced later the later Japanese works at all.
The giant robot genre is considered to be the creation of Mitsuteru Yokoyama, creator of Tetsujin 28-go ( Gigantor) and Giant Robo ( Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot). Both of these featured the early trope of The Kid With The Remote Control. The genre was further defined and refined by Go Nagai. His Mazinger Z ( Tranzor Z in the United States) holds the distinction of being the very first piloted giant robot. In that series and others ( Getter Robo, UFO Robo Grendizer, etc.), Nagai singlehandedly invented nearly every classic trope of the Super Robot genre: the rocket-fist, the blazing sword, the amazing entrance from a secret launch bay, and the first transforming and combining robots.
Yoshiyuki Tomino ( Brave Raideen, Zambot 3, Combattler V) started out emulating Nagai. Wanting to write a serious war story but under contract to crank out robot anime, he finally said "let's watch both!" and created Mobile Suit Gundam, the first step toward the Real Robot subgenre. In its wake, such series as Dougram and VOTOMS refined the concept with robots that looked as though actual military people had designed and built them. Macross, in this context, was merely the first anime to come up with transforming robots that still looked like reasonable examples of military hardware.
For the interested, Here ◊ is an image with the relative sizes of most of the various Humongous Mecha throughout history. Notice how the Super Robots are typically much larger than the Real Robots in the far lower left.
Spider Tank is a variant for people who want something big and walking, but don't want to Fail Bionics Forever.
Examples:
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Anime and Mania
- Tetsujin 28-Gou, or Gigantor as it's better known in North America, was probably the first "giant robot" anime imported to the United States. This black-and-white series was aired during the 1960s in many markets.
- Go Nagai's Mazinger Z was the first series to feature giant robots piloted by humans, the convention which came to define the entire genre. It also created the Super Robot as we know it, featuring, if not originating, many of the tropes that have come to be associated with the genre. The series, along with sequels Great Mazinger and UFO Robo Grendizer, have been aired worldwide.
- The Gundam metaseries more or less launched the Real Robot subgenre, and its dozen or so sequels, prequels, and Alternate Universes refined it perhaps more than any other series. The original series had Transforming and Combining Mecha, due to its Super Robot roots, but these were retconned out in the movies. Recently, Gundam SEED brought back Transforming Mecha, and its immediate sequel, Gundam SEED Destiny, features a new Combining Mecha, the modular-design Impulse Gundam.
- In Gundam Wing, a bit of Lampshade Hanging goes on for the humongous mechas in the series where Lt. Noin explains that the advent of the mechas came about when the Alliance wanted a physically intimidating weapon.
- Super Dimension Fortress Macross features some of the earliest transforming mecha, with the Valkyrie jet/space fighters that could turn into humanoid robots and a hybrid semihumanoid/semijet ("gerwalk") form. The Macross itself was a huge spaceship that could rearrange itself into a pointlessly humanoid configuration.
- When SDF-1 performed Hypespace Fold at the beginning of the show, it's fold drive misteriously disappeared along with a chunk of other machinery and major powerlines. So, the whole point of Modular Transformation was to reconnect Macross Canon to the power supply.
- It was intercut and dubbed with with Mospeada and Southern Cross by Carl Macek to create the frankenseries that is Robotech.
- Getter Robo, the first transforming and Combining Mecha, which also features some of the most humongous mecha in the medium. The mecha progressively increase in size and ridiculousness over the series, ending with the Getter Emperor which stands over a freakin' galaxy.
- On the other hand Freeder Bug, also created by the late Ken Ishikawa has some of the least humongous Humongous Mecha in anime or manga, not counting power suits. They're essentially just heads with stumpy limbs and a chair fixed to the back, and are smaller than an adult man.
- Giant Robo is a descendant of a 1960s live-action series brought to the U.S. as Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot.
- Subverted in 20th Century Boys. The Big Bad, Friend, holds a robotics engineer hostage so that he can construct a fifty-foot giant mecha to use on the Bloody New Year's Eve. However, throughout the brainstorming process, the aformentioned engineer is on the verge of snapping because he can't get them to understand that a robot construted in such a way probably couldn't even stand, much less cause massive havoc and destruction.
- Gasaraki is a recent release which attempts (amidst an incomprehensible mass of mysticism) to show a "realistic" view of giant war robots in a contemporary setting. The "Tactical Armors" of Gasaraki are not much larger than a main battle tank, require extensive support squads, and can have their joints fouled by blowing sand.
- Infinite Ryvius subverted this by having the characters burst into laughter when they first saw a giant humanoid robot because it seemed so impractical. Needless to say, they were proven wrong.
- Full Metal Panic, like Gasaraki, attempts to show "realistic" robots in a "modern" setting, but is considerably more relaxed about what constitutes "realistic", not to mention much lighter-hearted. It also acknowledges that man-shaped robotic fighting machines are at the very least unlikely, but promptly handwaves the objection away with a mysterious source of ultra-advanced technology.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion superficially resembles a mecha show, but this is intentionally misleading; the show is in fact a post-modern Deconstruction of the giant robot genre, thoroughly shot through with dysfunctional characters caught on a depressing apocalyptic downslide ( not to mention the fact that said mecha, the Evas, are actually alive, and the robotic armor only allows the unwitting pilots and mostly unwitting scientists to restrain them).
- Parallel Trouble Adventure Dual gently parodies Evangelion and giant robots in general while still having an upbeat and entertaining plot. It features an Ordinary High School Student who gains The Unwanted Harem when he turns out to be the only male capable of operating a "Core Robot", an apparent Real Robot, but later updates to a Super Robot similar in appearance to the mecha of Escaflowne.
- Eureka Seven also uses mecha similiar to Evangelion, where the mecha are more than simple robots. The LFO and KLF units, as they are called, have a form of sky surfing applied to their operation. Additionally, the units are Transforming Mecha, as most can change into land vehicles.
- The immensely popular Martian Successor Nadesico not only features a battle mecha class called the "Aestivalis", but also incorporates a 1970s-style Super Robot anime called Gekiganger 3 as a Show Within A Show. "G3" is a clear homage to the early classic Getter Robo, and manages to hit all the classic melodramatic cliches of the genre.
- The popular Japanese franchise Sakura Taisen employs not-so-Humongous mecha (only about 10-12 feet tall), powered entirely by steam (and empowered by the pilots' psychospiritual ability, or "reiryoku"). The mecha fight demons and evil spirits who, in turn, pilot their own appropriately evil steam-powered robots. The franchise's mecha are entirely super, though, with a whole list of named super-moves and various highly improbable weapons, including a revolver, gun-barrel sword, and giant psychically animated teddy bears.
- Patlabor is likely the most feasible Humongous Mecha anime, featuring short, non-combat robots used for civilian purposes such as construction. The only combat robots belong to the protagonists, the police, who prevent mecha-related crimes.
- A recent example is Soukou No Strain, which, though it may not be what it seems, is certainly about mecha pilots.
- Utawarerumono has a nation composed of a religious minority who have giant mecha given to them by their god to defend themselves. Considering the rest of the world hasn't even invented gunpowder, this is probably overkill. Then again, their god is a psychotic nihilist.
- Tenchi Muyo! GXP: the main character Seina, already the captain of his own ship, finds a giant mecha in a late episode, and after using it to trash a few pirate landcruisers, decides, "Ships are great and all, but real men need giant robots!" His giant robot also looks suspiciously similar to one from another anime from the same creator.
- The leaders of the Nobuseri bandits in Samurai 7 are massive cyborgs, with swords the size of houses.
- Sky Girls contains about every cliche in this trope, including Lolicon-like female pilots wearing extremely skin-tight and revealing g-suits.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann pushes the "humongous" part to ridiculous degrees. Each Gunman can synch to its pilot to the degree that it can power-up directly from the pilot's sheer emotional determination! The last few episodes of the series feature increasingly giant power-ups to the titular robot, each one surpassing the last, culminating in Chouginga Gurren-Lagann, which is larger than the Moon, and finally Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, which uses entire galaxies as stepping stones!
- Stepping stones? You forget throwing stars.
- *ahem*◊
- And that image is too small. It's 100 times the size of the MILKY WAY. DAMN.
- Gunbuster and its sequel Diebuster have Mecha even more Humongous than most- Gunbuster is hundreds of meters tall, and Diebuster is approximately the same height as the Earth itself.
- The Xephon from Rah Xephon, although obviously and definitely not mechanical, follows many of the genre's tropes to a T.
- The Rune Gods in Magic Knight Rayearth take form of not just beastly creatures, but also Humongous Mecha based on those said creatures.
- This funnily creates a fan-wishing to include Magic Knight Rayearth in Super Robot Wars, despite the difference in theme of story. Well, who wouldn't want to see Rayearth teaming up with, say, Gao Gai Gar? This troper is actually one of them.
- Let's not forget all the Humongous Mecha that Team Rocket wields in the Pokemon anime. One has to wonder where they get the money for all those giant robots, considering that they're both deep in debt and far out of favor with their boss...
- In one episode (In the recent Diamond/Pearl series), it was noted that Team Rocket stole various parts from a factory, which they used to build that episode's mecha. That seems to help keep their expenses down.
- Played with in an episode of Wolf's Rain in which the wolves accidentally reawaken an ancient defensive mecha while making their way through a ruined city.
- The main villains in Scrapped Princess are capable of transforming into Humongous Mecha. They are forced to use power limiters to maintain a normal human guise until they are authorized to carry out their mission.
- Mecha are part of the central conflict in Code Geass. A one-sided war was won with them, and now they're being used to reclaim the country from The Empire.
- In Gad Guard, the mecha aren't piloted, per se. Rather, the person they "belong to" rides around on their shoulder, or some such. While some of them occasionally give their mechs orders (especially the villain), they tend to act on their own. In battle at least...
- The Armor Troopers from VOTOMS (Verticle One Man Tank for Offense and Maneuvers) are perhaps among the most perceivable (combat based) humongous mecha in real life. They are no taller than 4 meters, do not transform, don't fly, and generally don't have any unique powers. They are more like bipedal tanks than anything else.
- See also many of the other series created by Ryosuke Takahashi, such as Dougram and SPT Layzner. While they're not as realistic as VOTOMS, they are compared to the majority of mecha shows and have a similar gritty atmosphere.
- Geneshaft has a very weird mecha, which looks more like a set of cranes welded together to vaguely resemble a human outline. It is also totally unclear why it should look remotely human anyway, given its function in the story.
- Funnily enough, Saber Marionette J parodies this when the Imperial Palace eventually transforms into a Giant Robot, who is then used to attack and stop a Giant Bomb.
- The Brave franchise is a series of mecha shows each starring a different Super Robot and their respective crews. They will often feature a pair of main characters, rather than a single one (usually a young boy and a grown man, who often serves as a big brother feature). By far the most famous of these is The King of Braves Gao Gai Gar, a series which managed to recapture the feel of fun and Hot bloodedness of mecha from the 70's amidst a wave of Darker And Edgier mecha series in the wake of Evangelion. Also had a sequel OVA a few years later which managed to be of better quality (especially the fight scenes!) than most series of its kind. And even that proved so popular it got a special edition just five years later, linking it to Betterman, a much different kind of mecha show from the same company.
- The Big O puts Victorian-looking giant robots in a creepy retro-future film noir setting reminiscent of recent Batman cartoons.
- Ramrod from Saber Rider And The Star Sheriffs
- Dai-Guard turns its focus on the giant robot's pilots and all of the red tape they have to cut through to save the world.
- The robots from Bokurano are freaking enormous. Zearth is half a kilometer tall, and is estimated to be able to destroy the entire military forces of the U.S. in two days.
- Demonbane which combines mecha with Lovecraftian mythos and pushes the "humongous" part so far that the titular mecha pops the universe.
- Each of the different nationality random girls in Rizelmine has one, each almost more ridiculous than the last.
- The mecha in Irresponsible Captain Tylor seem to be specifically designed to subvert the "Humongous" part of this trope, in fact most of their pilots are huge and shown to be very cramped inside their mecha. The big butch leader is in a pink one. The general design of the mecha is similar to the squat egg-shaped ones found in Sakura Wars.
- Even a series like Mahou Sensei Negima has them (maybe the series is just like that). They were created using the Proto Type data from a sealed demon god.
- (Much) Later on, Haruna uses her artifact to create a life-size robot body for Sayo. Of course, Sayo can only use the robot body by possessing a small voodoo doll and climbing inside the robot body and piloting it Humongous Mecha style.
- Zoids manages to buck the trend in giant robots by having its titular robots patterned after nearly every animal imaginable except humans. This ranges from tractors shaped like beatles to flying battleships that look like whales. A recurring theme through the various editions of the franchise is that the hero tends to pilot a Zoid based on a large feline (usually called a "Liger"), while his rival pilots a robotic dinosaur.
- In "Project A-Ko" B-Ko creates these although she is perhaps better known for her Bikini Battlesuit.
- Busou Renkin has an example in the form of Great Warrior Chief Shosei Sakaguchi's Busou Renkin, Buster Baron, which resembles a 57m knight armed with a pair of knuckle dusters and a jet pack and is capable of using giant forms of the Busou Renkin of alchemy warriors who are riding in it.
Comic Books
- X-Men has the Sentinels, mutant-hunting Humongous Mecha. They started out small (when compared to Evangelion, Super Sentai, etc.) but worked their way up to standard mecha size. Much worse (in terms of design impracticality) is that they were created in a "Master Mold," which is actually a much larger Sentinel. Since AI Is A Crapshoot, Sentinels are known for getting out of their creators' hands in short order (Especially Master Molds, Sentinel-shaped factories which wouldn't need any decision-making ability.) It seems the government types finally learned their lesson, because lately, Sentinels tend to be standard Humongous Mecha - Sentinel-shaped vehicles piloted by humans.
- Does anyone remember First Comics' Dynamo Joe? (Sometimes scripted by Phil Foglio.)
- The BGY-11 of Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot is secretly a humongous mecha; the world at large and Rusty in particular assume that it is a sentient robot, and maintaining this secret complicates several episodes.
- Back when Marvel had licenced Godzilla as a character, they also created the Red Ronin giant robot to fight him. Godzilla has faded away from the Marvel Universe, but the Red Ronin still shows up. Occasionally.
- In Earth X, Tony Stark has secretly redesigned the Red Ronin into a Transforming Mecha that spends most of its time as his "Iron Avenger" factory. We don't know this till the end of the story (making Tony appear to be a useless recluse), when he pilots it into battle against the even larger Celestials, who are energy being versions of the same—their energy bodies need Humongous Mecha to give them shape.
- Marvel also, for a short time, ran a Shogun Warriors comic, featuring the Super Robots Combattler V, Brave Raideen, and Dangard Ace
- Kazu Kibuishi's Amulet features a house which sprouts arms and legs and starts walking.
- Warren Ellis' Tokyo Storm Warning.
- No love for the Vaultraun Force from GoldDigger? Seriously, a bunch of shoes that merge together and make a large (for tiny Leprechauns) mecha?
- The Man-Robots from the Disney Comics story "The Giant Robot Robbers" by Carl Barks.
- Jack Hawksmoor of The Authority can actually turn cities into Humongous Mecha. As in, walk into the middle of Tokyo, ask it very nicely, and come out wearing battle armour made of concrete and skyscrapers.
Commercials
- Several advertisements for the Citroën C4 feature the car transforming into a Humongous Mecha.
- There's also a Singapore Army ad featuring a Navy Cruiser Transforming Mecha. Now that's what I call firepower!
Film
- Spaceballs has Spaceball One/Mega Maid, which is apparently so big it can take the entire atmosphere of a planet. It is also a Transforming Mecha.
- The Star Wars AT-ST's (chickenwalkers) and the AT-AT's are among the most visually distinctive mecha in popular culture. The ease with which the various Imperial Walkers are defeated demonstrates the impracticality of the whole concept. Rebel fighters literally trip up the AT-AT's, and a band of teddy-bear like people set up Bamboo Technology traps in a forest to obliterate a group of AT-ST's. Darth Vader should remote-strangle the whole R&D team. There's a reason why real-life tanks are built with as low a profile and as low a center of gravity as possible.
- And then there's the Transformers: Crossovers toy line which features an AT-AT which transforms into a giant robot.
- The same line also features a Transforming DEATH STAR.
- Mecha-Godzilla.
- Most of WALL-E's robots are smaller than the average human (let alone the obese humans of the future), but at one point we meet two giant versions of the titular trash compactor robot.
- The Iron Giant The title says it all.
- Matrix: Revolutions: Humanity fights off a flood of enemy machines with 20' tall humanoid mecha. Hilariously, the pilots are almost completely exposed in the suits, making them pretty worthless once the machines get close.
- Speaking of arthropoda, Wild Wild West features steampunk, spider-shaped giant mecha.
- Robot Jox was a low budget western attempt to exploit this genre. In a dystopic future, wars are resolved by duels between two giant mecha, much like a sporting event.
- Aliens: Ripley in the Power Loader, leading to a Crowning Momentof Awesome.
Literature
- Empire, by Orson Scott Card.
- Built in secret by evil liberal ''pacifists'' to slaughter U.S Service personnel out of naked hatred for American men-in-uniform, no less.
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe, again, features lots of big walking war machines aside from the AT-AT and AT-ST models.
- Perhaps, collectively, the army of giant golems in Making Money.
- Moist also introduces the idea of thirty foot killer golems, since "If you don't invent thirty-foot killer golems first, someone else will".
- William Keith's Warstrider series.
Live Action TV
- In live-action, giant transforming and combining mecha have been a staple of the Super Sentai franchise since its third installment, Battle Fever J, having borrowed the concept from a live-action Japanese adaptation of Spider-Man. Yes, that Spider-Man.
- Later installments of the franchise (from Dinosaur Task Force Zyuranger onwards) would be adapted into Power Rangers.
- Doctor Who had a 100-foot tall Steampunk Cyberman in the latest Christmas special
Newspaper Comics
Music
- Parodied in the Beastie Boys' "Intergalactic" video.
- The video for Jason Forrest's 'War Photographer' features a pair of humongous mecha. That transform out of giant robots. Crewed by vikings. Who battle it out with the power of rock and roll. No, seriously. And you know what? It's awesome.
- Linkin Park's video for Points Of Authority features CGI Humongous Mecha, each of which is based on the band members. So if the trope wasn't Awesome But Impractical enough already, you have one that's as skinny as the lead singer.
Table Top Games
- The classic western Humongous Mecha RPG is Mech Warrior, the role-playing side of the Battle Tech tactical miniature games. They feature everything from 3-meter tall battle frames to hulking 25-meter tall Humongous Mecha, and even had Transforming Mecha before their uncanny similarity of those models to Robotech's more famous mecha was noticed.
- Possibly the weirdest Humongous Mecha RPG is the Steampunk/Magitek crossover Dragon Mech.
- Exalted's Warstriders.
- Every race in Warhammer 40000 has at least one type of giant mech, though the Tyranids' uses Organic Technology; the sizes grow from Space Marine Dreadnoughts and Tau Battlesuits about thrice as tall as a man to at least 150 foot tall (the accounts contradict each other; some claim the heights go all the way up to 2km) Emperor-class Titans mounting cathedrals, housing a full company of troops in their legs and able to pull ground-to-orbit duty against enemy spaceships. It is said there are mechs large and powerful enough to metaphorically mop the floor with even Emperor-class Titans...
- I don't think the necrons have any Humongous Mecha. They don't NEED them.
- Tomb Stalker. An enormous, spider-like walker, which DID mop the floor with multiple Imperators. Also, the humongous mecha that is powered by a contained star.
- Even Dungeons And Dragons gets in on the act with the Eberron campaign setting. The warforged are a playable race. Their "ancestors"—or more accurately, prototypes—called warforged titans, are not.
- Some golems can get pretty humongous, as well, in particular the iron, mithral, and adamantine golems. However, the biggest autonomous constructs are undoubtedly the colossi, 100-foot tall humanoids of stitched flesh, hewn stone, or cast iron, only ever created by the mightiest wizards.
- Dating back the the first edition Dungeon Master's Guide is the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o, something of a giant mecha which is controlled from a cockpit containing something like one hundred unlabelled levers, each with a different function.
- Heavy Gear, which features smaller robots than Battle Tech's average, but which are definitely more than just body armor.
- Rifts features a wide variety, from the Triax Devistator which can step on things up to the size of a two-story house, to designs such as the Ultimax and Terror Trooper which stand about twice the height of a man and blur the line between powered armor and mecha.
- GURPS Mecha gives players the wherewithal to design and build just about any of the above concepts. Of course, this troper (having tried just that) finds that doing this results in a quite startling mix of Tech Levels for any but the simplest battlesuit (quick note: GURPS Mecha defines a "battlesuit" as powered armour where the pilot's arms and legs extend into the suit's arms and legs. A "mecha" is piloted from a cockpit. So the Iron Man armour is a battlesuit, while an AT-AT is a mecha).
- The Pyramid Magazine adventure for GURPS Discworld "A Little Job For The Patrician" features a Discworld Mecha. Based (of course) on a design by Leonard of Quirm, adapted by a brilliant Agatean nobleman whose narrative causality tends towards anime tropes, and powered by five trolls. The trolls even go through an Invocation as the thing assembles ("Other leg troll, put it together!"), although since they're trolls in a warm climate, it's possible they'd forget which one went where otherwise.
- Mekton is a tabletop RPG that is meant to run just about any humongous mecha. Admittedly, there is no size scale for something on par with the Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, bust still...
Video Games
Web Comics
- Xuan, R2, and Sanna discover that their guardian is a mecha in this page of Between Two Worlds. Xuan then becomes the mecha's pilot.
- Webcomic subversion: In Mechagical Girl Lisa ANT, the A.N.T is a Humongous Mecha... for ants. To a human, it looks more like a Powered Armor.
- In Mega Tokyo, the police cataclysm division (which facilitates cataclysms like 'zilla, zombie, and alien attacks, as long as they are done in an orderly fashion) employs mecha. They turn out to be less effective than robot-girl Ping.
- In this Loserz strip. Just for fun, in this case.
- You do realize that you didn't link the actual strip, right?
- Sluggy Freelance parodies this a few times, most notably in the GOFOTRON arc
- Girl Genius has plenty of them, given that Sparks love to build stuff like that. In fact, the first time that Agatha is without her Restraining Bolt, she builds one out of spare engines and parts in her sleep. It leads Baron Wulfenbach straight to her door.
Western Animation
- Transformers and the various series showcase a Western version of the archetypical transforming mecha. It's especially notable because unlike the usual mecha show, there are no pilots or crew to be the stars - the mecha themselves are the stars, being sentient robots.
- It has been speculated that the on-and-off popularity of Transformers in Japan is because it lacks pilots or other very important human characters... usually. When annoying kids are put in, the American fanbase, which is much larger and more consistent, shudders.
- The Japanese versions of Transformers appear to support the theory that giant transforming robots without pilots are alien concepts in Japan. While the Western series give reasons for their alternate modes (disguise, protection from radiation, etc.), the Japanese series, such as Transformers Armada, generally disregard them-although, as the series exist to advertise toys, they transform anyway. This reached ridiculous heights in Transformers Energon, where the Transformers, capable of flying around in space in robot mode, transform and drive in space.
- Voltron was, for a time, the best-known example in America. It was a Macekre of two fairly obscure shows, Go Lion (Lion Voltron) and Dairugger XV (Vehicle Voltron), along with some Lion Voltron episodes produced by Toei especially for the American market.
- Cartoon Network's Megas XLR is possibly the best Western parody, with an alien robot from the future crash-landing in a New Jersey junkyard, where the main character, Coop, buys it for two bucks...which he never actually pays.
- Parodied occasionally in Dexters Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls.
- Parodied in Total Drama Island, where Duncan, while trying to catch a raccoon, faces a hoard of raccoons forming a huge machine-like army by standing on top of one another. Duncan comments that it's "more than meets the eye!"
- As another American example, Codename Kids Next Door had too many mecha count, probably because its creator is an anime fan. These are normally possessed by their enemies, especially the Delightful Children from Down the Lane, who have a seemingly inexhaustible supply. However, Numbuh Three (who is, incidentally, of Japanese descent) has her own mecha, Hippy Hop. Then again, Hippy Hop never seems to get the chance to do anything each time it's deployed.
- In one episode of South Park Chef's giant plasma TV transforms into a humongous mecha at the end and goes on the rampage.
- In another episode of South Park, Barbra Streisand transforms into a humongous mecha and goes on the rampage. However, it's not a not humanoid but a godzilla-like machine. The word 'mecha' is used in the episode to describe Ike, who's merely giant and not mechanical in any way.
- And who could forget when Brian Boitano traveled through time to the year 3010, fought the evil robot king and saved the human race again?
- Go Bots
- Futurama got in the act after Nixon got re-elected.
- The Batman builds a mecha suit in order to fight a Venom'd up Bane, and keeps it around just in case.
- Batman Beyond also had Bruce Wayne designing powerful cybernetic suits to offset his advancing age; the strain of working the largest of these damaged his heart and contributed to his retirement.
- And in the Crapsack World of the Kingdom Come series, an aged Batman fielding an entire army of computerized mecha is the reason why Gotham City, along with the Flash's Keystone City (constantly patrolled by the Flash at ultraspeed), are the only two really safe places for a normal human to live.
- Insektors had Koa the Frog/Operation Frogbucket, which resulted in an army of giant mechanical frogs.
- Aladdin: the Series: Clock Punk inventor Mechanikles must have read this entry, because most of his giant mecha are based on arthropods. One exception was a Humongous Mecha shaped like himself, but he soon lost it to a boy who fell into the cockpit.
- Kim Possible has plenty of giant mechas. Examples the robot from the pilot, the robots from The Movie, the robots from the Grand Finale and a big flamingo.
- Parodied in Pinky And The Brain: Brain and his archnemesis Snowball the hamster are battling in their robotic human disguises when suddenly Snowball's suit transforms into a Humongous Mecha, complete with rockets blasting out of its shoulders...
- In an homage to Lex Luthor's Powered Armor, resident Rich Bitch Alexis apparently built her own (relatively small) mecha-suit on Legion Of Super Heroes.
- The Lizard Slayers in Godzilla The Series.
- Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! is about a kid and a bunch of robot monkeys who live in a Mecha.
Other
- Bionicle's Mata Nui is a Chouginga Gurren Lagann sized robot containing the entire Matoran World. And the Great Spirit inhabiting this body was exiled by Makuta when he committed Grand Theft Me. Makuta apparently has plans to use this new body to conquer the universe.
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◊ is an image with the relative sizes of most of the various Humongous Mecha throughout history. Notice how the Super Robots are typically much larger than the Real Robots in the far lower left.
Spider Tank is a variant for people who want something big and walking, but don't want to Fail Bionics Forever.
