The Ryosuke Takahashi Real Robot thread.

This thread is for on-topic debate about Ryosuke Takahashi's body of mecha and science fiction work.

Ryosuke Takahashi is a director and science-fiction writer best known for bringing many interesting ideas to the table. While most of his work was Real Robot related, he was also a capable Super Robot writer as well. However, this thread will cover his Real Robot works.

He's most known for being the director of Fangofthe Sun Dougram and Armored Trooper VOTOMS, he was also the creator of the controversial Blue Comet SPT Layzner. he more recently did Gasaraki and FLAG.

Fangofthe Sun Dougram aired in the early 80s, which strengths lied in the limited power and scale of the Combat Armors, and the need for proper battlefield tactics, a key one being air support, playing a major role in the story, through a complex political landscape of the Fereration brass that hates the Deloyerans and enjoy oppressing them to make money off of occupying Deloyer, and the Earth officials sympathetic to the titular "Fang of the Sun" resistance's cause.

Armored Trooper VOTOMS was a TV anime that aired in 1983 that strengths lied in it's used of a really fleshed out, gritty setting, , involving some of the most hard science fiction seen in Mecha anime, the mecha require refueling, have limited ammunition, Beam weaponry is rare to non-existant, the only melee weapons are "pile=bunker" style weapons that are designed to be a last resort, and it also has an interesting cast of characters, the villains fight amongst each other, not for the petty good v.s. evil reasons that have become synonymous with the Real Robot Genre genre today, but over teritory and resources. a setting where even the supersoldiers barely survive, and are NOT made out to be perfect. VOTOMS has had a number of OVA's released over the years, most relating directly to the TV series, but one was different. Armor Hunter Mellowlink, which sole purpose was to explore the idea of a soldier on foot being able to fight and survive against mecha in combat, a subject vary rarely touched on. It more recently had two OV As, VOTOMS CASE IRVINE and VOTOMS FINDER, which were a vast depearture from the the style of the others but set in the same universe, and has such became a Sore spot amongst us VOTOMS fans decrying it for being a cheap stunt to make VOTOMS like other, more sucessful Mecha shows.

Please try to keep this on the topic at hand. Please be cool when you post. Please avoid derails about other more successful Mecha programs than these and arguing, if you want to argue, take it to P Ms if you must.

I see you finally took my advice, although I suppose you didn't have any choice.

Yeah, I know..

To be back on the topic, I really don't know why some people thought the AT's arm-punch is so rediculous, I don't get what they meant by it breaking the AT's hand and stuff. I mean, It Makes Sense in Context.

Different strokes I guess. It's probably only as rational as my hate for Laser Blade weapons and robot-scale knives.

edited 29th Aug '11 5:05:35 PM by Clawshrimpy

Almost done with VOTO Ms, Ep 47.

I wonder if they could have cut costs by having Fyanah's actor say "CHIRICO!" once, and then stock footage soundtrack it for the rest of the show.

Its all she fucking says...

The love story is the only thing I'll admit about VOTOMS's writing that was pointless and stupid.

I mean, looking back at Dougram, at least Crin didn't have much of a love interest. I just wish Dougram was freaking shorter so I could finish it.

Well obviously they needed something for him to fight for.

IF they just made Fyanah not so...Faux Action Girl it wouldn't be so bad.

There is nothing Perfect Soldier about her. She kicked some ass during the space ship part (Do we ever find out who put them there and was playing the video? Dont tell me, just tell me if they actually tell us) but thats it.

edited 29th Aug '11 5:52:44 PM by Thorn14

Thankfully by Shining Heresy and Alone Again, she's replaced but the much better Teitania, even though she's a Cyborg Broken Bird with Daddy Issues she at least gets to do stuff.

edited 29th Aug '11 5:57:39 PM by Clawshrimpy

• If something is broken you want to be able to replace or repair it as easily and quickly as possible.
• You also want as little interference with the ability to fight as possible when/if something breaks.
• A mounted weapon is harder to replace than a held weapon since it often requires mechanics instead of just picking something up.
• weapons in use are more likely to break than others.
• close combat weapons are more likely to break than range weapons
• Having a mounted weapon also being a requirement for having held weapons makes it impossible to use held weapons if the mounted one is broken.
• all else being equal more ammunition is better than less.

The arm-punch is a mounted close combat weapon that is also used as hands and has limited ammunition, thus it has a high risk of breaking and if it breaks it also interferes a lot with the ability to fight.

As a comparison a knife has a high risk of breaking but if so it doesn't interfere as much with the ability to fight since the knife takes the damage instead of the hand that holds it and unless it's some kind of chainsaw or laser blade it has close to infinite ammo. In exchange the knife must as you mention have a sheathe mounted on the robot but that is a lower price to pay compared to the arm-punch and finding a mounting point for that isn't that hard, e.g. the legs or chest can usually hold one.

Keep in mind in the VOTOMS universe that the 2 millitary forces usually don't give a crap about the soldier's safety. Soldiers are viewed as expendable so simply putting a weapon in the arm and just moving to the next AT in the production line makes more sense to them. i.e. the Arm-punch is a high-damage but high-risk weapon, but to people like the Gilgamesh brass there really isn't a "risk" because they are cowards that have no concern for their men.

the disadvantages to a knife would be

• striking a metal knife on a metal robot isn't likely to cause penetration, or at the very least, causing damage would have to take more effort would cause more strain of the servos of the robot, and more effort on part of the pilot, inm comparison to the high crushing force of the simple arm-punch.
• It's another weapon to have to switch through, when just dropping a currently held weapon when out of ammo and just using an arm-weapon would be easier.

Incorrect, a knife requires less power to penetrate than a fist, try it yourself by punching through a book and then try stabbing it with a knife, which one succeeds? And because it requires less power it puts less stress on the arm.

And just because you don't care about the safety of your men doesn't mean that you send them into battle with faulty equipment if you want to achieve your objectives, because even if they they die they must succeed. *It also doesn't mean that you won't reuse those that do live. It should be that you give the the weapons with the most use/price and then repair those that survive so that they can be used again, and replacing a held weapon is cheaper than mounted one or an arm.

ETA: Can comment more on how it's used later, should have the series in an hour.

edited 30th Aug '11 6:43:33 AM by mahel042

I can't believe how you could come to that conclusion, how in the world is a metal knife going to acheive penetration on metal armor? without some kind of psychics-breaking force, or making the knife out of some type of Applied Phlebotinum or coating it in some magic energy or super science. You don't see people coming at tanks with knives, even if you had knives on the same scale as an Abrams, you're not getting through.

Where with a hydraulic weapon in the forearm, you could create enough of a shockwave to cause serious injury to the pilot of the other machies, or cause some sort of an internal problem (Ususally in VOTOMS, it means igniting the highly flammable fuel.)

edited 30th Aug '11 6:53:44 AM by Clawshrimpy

Incorrect, penetration requires pressure, Force/Area, let's say your robot fist has an area of 0,5m^2 and punches with a force of 1kN the the pressure is 1000/0,5 = 2000Pa. If you instead have a knife with a point with an area of 0,0625m^2(huge knife) the pressure is 1000/0,0625 = 16000Pa.

People don't attack tanks with knives but neither do they attack them with fist or other melee weapons. But if you where to ram tanks together and one was equipped with a spike it would penetrate where others wouldn't.

The physics behind penetration relies on the pressure exerted by the object penetrating. It's been proven that in concentrating the pressure in a smaller area will have a greater affect, as the pressure formula is Pressure = force divided by area. It would have to a be knife with an edged blade, but not a sharpened blade. The edge gives the pressure to a small focal point, but the sharp edge would be too brittle to actually cut, and assuming both are made from the same type of metal, they have the same hardness which would prevent cutting. However you can still penetrate similar material even without being able to cut it, thought they both rely on pressure, as in the middle ages, lances were able to penetrate though solid armour. That's one reason why they'd stick lances in the ground to stop Calvary charges.

Furthermore, your tank analogy is dissimilar because a human does not have the strength to exert the adequate amount of force to penetrate the layer of steel that a tank has. And a knife is made from different quality metal than a tank. But two similar mechs would at least theoretically have similar metal and if the knife was made for them it's design would take in mind that strength of the steel used by the opponents armour. So it would have a much better chance of penetrating.

Edit: Ninja'd.

edited 30th Aug '11 7:18:16 AM by Thenamelesssamurai

I'm saying a knife made out of the same material as the robots you are fighting cannot generate the same force that hydraulics can. Meaning it oder for the knife to cut, the robot would have to have arm strength exceeding the mass of the armor. and have you looked at any A Ts? they don't have the muscle power of other, larger, mecha.

edited 30th Aug '11 7:19:50 AM by Clawshrimpy

it won't need to, because every time you halve the area you can halve the force and keep the same amount of pressure.

I' going out to run so I'll be back later.

edited 30th Aug '11 7:21:28 AM by mahel042

But that means you have to strike at the same area many many times which means other enemies could shoot at you while you're deperatly trying to acheive penetration to do any kind of signifigant damage.

Hydraulics have none of these problems.

edited 30th Aug '11 7:40:19 AM by Clawshrimpy

Why do you think that you need to punch many times? all calculations are with one hit. Force/Area=Pressure per hit, increase force and/or decrease area to increase pressure.

ETA: my fist vs a pen

Fist area = 0,0048 m^2 pen area = 0,0000785 m^2 thus I need to punch with 61,14649681528662 times the force to have the same pressure as stabbing with the pen. so unless hydraulics gives more that an unpowered spike is better than a powered fist.

Of course you might use an hydraulic spike but then you still have the other problems to deal with plus the fact that it's probably way overkill thus making it not worth it if a normal spike does it for less.

edited 30th Aug '11 8:06:39 AM by mahel042

some of the more "fancy" A Ts have a hydarulic claw or a pile bunker spike, but most have to use the hydraulic fist.

Just watched the first episode, it's so 80's it hurts. After flatlining Chiricho mows down a lot of dudes to escape from a base via jetplane. It might not be realistic but it seems like it will be a fun ride.

You clearly know nothing of material science. You also seem to be assuming that they're the exact same material.

Which kinda backs up my theory that the knife would have to be stronger than the armor, which backs up my theory that in order for a knife to be effective, it'd need to be made up of some type of Applied Phlebotinum or be coated in some contrived super-science, which doesn't fit the theme of a show with a low tech level.

Personally, I think both a metal knife and a piston punch are equally stupid. A piston punch could work if you didn't have a human hand in the way, but how much damage could it do? A knife could work, but only if it had a gimmick to it, like the chainswords and maser-swords in Code Geass, and I think it's odd to have a weapon that small on a mecha, even if it isn't made of metal. I would prefer a beam saber any day.

edited 30th Aug '11 11:26:29 AM by shiro_okami

Well, the way you have to think about the arm-punch is it works like how the big piston weapon works in The Big O. i.e. they try to make it appear that the shockwave and the force of the piston avoids the hand completely and hits and transfers the mass to only the enemy robot. It's a bit of animation and tech dishonesty, but still more acceptable than the more blatant space magic used in other shows.

edited 30th Aug '11 12:01:06 PM by Clawshrimpy

No, it just has to be a stronger material. It doesn't need to be Applied Phlebotinum to outperform other Applied Phlebotinum, unless you're being silly about it. The way it's applied counts a great deal as well. You don't have to worry nearly as much about strength to weight ratios with a knife as you do with armor because of the low volume the knife has to cover.

For instance, you can make a knife out of tungsten carbide and the armor would be at a significant disadvantage because it would either be too heavy to move, or too thin to matter. Either way, any portrayal of mechas as heavily armored is going to be inherently wrong due to comparison to tanks.