Unique Mechs.

[Mafty]

Following on a previous discussion, what does everyone think are mech designs that are unique? If that's too vague I mean mech designs that really seem radically different from other shows on the market(eg FG Mobile Suits starting the "Real Robot" trend).

Some examples

- Macross I realize Reideen turned into a plane first, and Gundam had the Core Fighter, However Macross still manages to change things up with the planes more seamlessly transforming into fighters and Vice Versa.

Dunbine: Has insect like mechs that are more sleek than other mechs at the time and predates Escaflowne with Biomechs in a fantasy setting.

Evangelion: (SPOILERS)Okay technically not mechs, but still the design itself is so alien, in that it has odd proportions that deliberately fall into the uncanny valley(ie thin lower body, heavy upper body, teeth,etc). All of which tie into to the true , supernatural nature of the unit.

Blue Gender. The Armor Shrikes are sort of a hybrid between a larger real robot(their design actually looks kinda like the Tactical Surface Fighters later seen in the Muv Luv Universe) and something you'd see in Ghost in the Shell , Appleseed or Bubblegum Crisis. Adding to this is a deeply unsafe open cockpit and its a design you don't really see within other Powered Armor/Mini Mech shows.

Sokou no Strain. The show doesn't have a lot of mech designs, but the main units are kinda interesting. They basically look like a Qubeley crossed with a beetle, and they are powered by brain tissue taken from the assigned pilots pre birth.

Geneshaft. The mech is really bizarre; its a monochrome grey unit made out of tubes and panels that is so large it has to be stored outside the ship and assembled before launching.

[Seto Kaiba]

Hmm...

Starship Troopers (1988) had an unconventional take on powered armor that stands out nearly as much now as when it was made. Instead of just being a bulked-up human silhouette, the design followed Heinlein's description in the novel of a hunched, gorilla-like mecha that moved mainly by hopping or jumping rather than walking and that it demanded tremendous physical strength and stamina from its operator.

Terrestrial Defense Enterprise Dai-Guard also had a rather unique take on its titular giant robot. The design is pretty typical super robot-esque fare, but its practicality is presented as realistically awful. At the beginning of the series, Dai-Guard is nearly useless. It's so heavy it can barely stand under its own weight, has to be taken apart and transported by truck to get around because it can't manage soft soil or steep inclines, and it's not structurally sound enough for actual combat and its limbs crush under the force of its own punches or break off at the joints. It needs astonishing amounts of maintenance after even the most trivial activities. It needs a crew of three to operate, one flight engineer who is exclusively responsible for managing the engine and (manual!) transmission, one navigator, and one guy responsible for moving the actual limbs because sufficiently powerful computers don't exist. It's frequently a much bigger danger to its surroundings than the monsters it fights are, and the only people willing to pilot it are a trio of low level PR flacks who were put in charge of it precisely because it was a useless bit of overweight signage sold to their company by the JGSDF when they realized what a stupid idea it all was. It ends up taking the entire series, a huge capital investment, and the efforts of at least one actual genius to make it into something that won't just fall apart the minute it's turned on.

[Kuruni]

Bokurano - Pick any of the dimension robots. Even if some of them are actually simple in function, rge design is always alien and weird.

[Quiddity]

Many of the Bokurano mechs I feel are similar to the type of enemy monster you'd get in older giant robot shows, I think of something like Zambot 3 with the Mecha Boosts in particular which often were animal or insect themed in some way, which is the case for a number of the enemy mechs in Bokurano from what I remember. That said, Bokurno has some really oddball ones beyond that. I think of the one that was like a giant rolling pin, or the one that was like a giant chainsaw. Or the one where they went to the enemy planet, where its inhabitants dug a giant pit, and the enemy mech essentially pees on them with acid.

Unique/interesting to me are the mechs that come off more like giant suits of armor. I think of the mechs in Escaflowne in particular, but you've also got the Kugai in Gasaraki, which are also really effective because they come off as so scary.

[Seto Kaiba]

Five Star Stories probably deserves a mention too for similar reasons to Dai-Guard. The mecha designs aren't necessarily all that unconventional, but their presentation is extremely odd in a way that no other title truly emulates. Mortar Headds are kind of the polar opposite of Dai-Guard in that the setting's technical level is at the point where truly practical giant robots could be made and weapons of apocalyptic power could easily be made for them... but because the conventions and laws of war have changed to outlaw things like mass destruction, they are instead made as impractical as possible so that the ruling classes can make war to their heart's content without ruining everyone else's good time. Each Mortar Headd is an object of national pride, being richly decorated to be a walking showcase of its homeland's wealth and artistry. They're deliberately set up so that only the descendants of ancient super-soldiers can operate them, requiring assistance from a bio-engineered living computer, and for most purposes they eschew ranged weaponry in favor of fighting with lances and laser swords. Everything about them is designed to be as inefficient and showy as possible.

[Arsarcana]

Would the Exaxxion count, I wonder? The design itself isn't unique but the way it's treated as being nearly as dangerous to the world as the aliens it's supposed to be fighting against (to the point that Lina Inverse would probably complain about the collateral damage it causes) is pretty unique.

Everything about them is designed to be as inefficient and showy as possible.

Well, until Amaterasu decided to mount an overpowered railgun to his (extremely showy) personal Mortar Headd. And then there's the Jagd Mirage for when it absolutely positively has to be reduced to a rapidly expanding cloud of dust, even if 'it' is a planet.

Then again, breaking the cycle of the ruling classes waging war was kind of what Amaterasu was going for to begin with...

[Seto Kaiba]

Masaki Kajishima manages something of a hat trick of unusual robot designs between his iconic Tenchi Muyou! franchise and one of its lesser-known shared universe titles Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure.

Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure features an alien mecha called Zinv that has the unusual distinction of being responsible for a different sci-fi franchise's setting being populated mainly by Human Aliens.

Zinv was already an ancient construct, having belonged to a group of alien colonists whose ship crashed on Earth in prehistory. After the events of Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure and the collapse of the two timelines into the third with the defeat of the Rara Army, Zinv is used by the show's protagonist Kazuki to take him and his friends out into space to explore.

Where this gets screwy is that the Tenchi Muyou! GXP light novels and OVA 5 materials establish that "Earth" from Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure, and particularly the space exploration begun by Kazuki and Zinv, was what became the Great Prehistoric Civilization that ruled and terraformed much of the galaxy over a billion years before the events of Tenchi Muyou!. The ancient civilization that Washu, Kagato, and many others were so obsessed with studying. The reason most of the "alien" races in Tenchi Muyou! look human, act human, and exhibit cultural values similar to humans is because, with varying degrees of genetic modification, they're human themselves and these commonalities are legacies of their shared heritage. Long after that civilization collapsed, Zinv was rediscovered and worshipped by a tribe of Wau on a remote planet only for them to accidentally end up reactivating it when they forced Seina Yamada into it in the hopes that he was a prophesied savior who'd protect them from the space pirates who'd occupied their world. (Subsequent reveals included that it was powered by a 1st Generation Jurai royal tree seed, and that it also preserved the soul of its original owner/pilot D for a billion years, facilitating her eventual reincarnation in recent Tenchi materials.)


There's a quasi-related example in the Tenchi franchise's alternate universe story Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari as well... though it's more mundane. The giant robots called Seikijin ("Holy Machine Men") that exist on Geminar in the alternate world Tenchi's younger brother Kenshi is sent to by the Chousin goddesses of Tenchi's main series are the only example I know of of a mecha with an external, passive power source. Instead of having an onboard power supply in the form of a reactor, generator, battery, etc., they absorb their motive power from an ambient magic field that permeates the atmosphere of Geminar up to a certain altitude. Their operating time limit is purely based on the pilot's ability to tolerate exposure to that concentrated magic energy field, which has unpleasant side effects like nausea, loss of consciousness, or loss of bowel control.

Well, until Amaterasu decided to mount an overpowered railgun to his (extremely showy) personal Mortar Headd. And then there's the Jagd Mirage for when it absolutely positively has to be reduced to a rapidly expanding cloud of dust, even if 'it' is a planet.

Then again, breaking the cycle of the ruling classes waging war was kind of what Amaterasu was going for to begin with...

Not a railgun, something much worse... one of those superweapons it's not actually legal to use anymore.

[Mafty]

Heavy Object: These mechs are definitely different. They're sort of like Spaceship Earth from the Epcot center being put on top of a massive wheeled tank platform and covered in plasma guns. They basically turn warfare into a duel between competing factions ranging from National, to Religious, to Corporate (like in Five Star Stories, though they don't even try to use chivalry) and unlike many other mech have nothing resembling humanoid design.

It doesn't take over the whole series design but GunXSword has Dragon themed mechs the S-Drive Dragon and later the Drakul. They each only appear rather briefly in the series, and the rest of the mechs follow a more standard humanoid design, except for some car themed mechs (but that was a joke episode).

The fairly obscure Knight's & Magic has some kinda neat Medieval style mecha. The Ikuruga is equipped with multiple arms. The Tzendolg is basically a Centaur themed mech, and later we the Vyver a giant Dragon themed airship.

Aldnoah Zero. Some of the Vers Empire Kataphrakt's are quite unique and each has their own special power. The Nilokeras is enormous and has the power to atomize anything its massive frame touches. The Elysium's only power is the ability to radically lower the temperature of the entire surrounding area, and the Hellas is a hulking suit that looks like a cross between the Xamel from Stardust memory and the α-Azieru from CCA, equipped with six arms that can be blasted at opponents.

[Kuruni]

Dug up, because I think Godannar deserve a mention as pioneer of giving jiggle physics to female mech. And they actually justify it somewhat, female mech get inside their male partner when combined, so parts of female mech, especially the chest, are made from gel-like material.

[Mafty]

Re:Creators - The show focus on fictional characters from Japanese pop culture invading real world Tokyo, and that includes 2 cases of Mechs. Vogelchevalier is a giant mech that looks like a cross between a Martian Kataphrakt, a Guymelef, and something out of Gothicmaid. It's also piloted by someone who looks and acts like first season Asuna from SAO. Monomagia: The Infinite Over Machine looks strikingly similar to the Kabakali from Reconguista in G(which is kinda neat, since its a cool mech from a season that's somewhat obscure), and is piloted by someone who looks like a cross between Shinji and Kamille. The mechs don't get a lot of screen time within the show; which is a shame really because they're so cool and detailed, and the show itself has a higher animation budget than some actual mech shows.

Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions has a set of OVA shorts wherein two of the female leads duke it out in awesome looking mechs in a post apocalyptic world. Like everything else in the show its imaginary, but still looks awesome. The mechs themselves look kinda like the mechs from Armored Core and they even glow like the Windemere Drakens from Delta.

[MythSearcher]

Dug up, because I think Godannar deserve a mention as pioneer of giving jiggle physics to female mech.

Aren's Vaosione of SRW before that?
Come to think of it, the Aphrodite A, Diana A and Venus A breast missiles are kinda what this is?

[Kuruni]

Nah, Valsione's chest is unbouncy armor.

[SonicSP]

The mechs don't get a lot of screen time within the show; which is a shame really because they're so cool and detailed

It is possible that the reason they were so detailed was because they were not planned to have many appearences. Re:Creators is an original anime so they can plan the whole design around that.

On an unrelated note, I love that show.