As there's already an Anime thread on Massassi, i felt i should open another one on an entirely different tangent: The flaws of Animes. My personal fav at the moment comes from the Anime "Mobile Suit: Gundam Seed" (and its sequal).

The concept is simple: Phase-Shift armour. The idea is to creat an armour that changes its coulour and density to make it virtually immune to all physical attacks (if it changes colour, its almost invincible). The major problem with this is the increase in weight. In space, the ammount of weight added by the phase-shift would give the mobile suit the mass of a small asteroid (and its own subsequent gravity field).

In a planets atmosphere, it would either crush whatever surface it stood on, not be able to fly or (much more likely) be crushed under its own weight.

Post your thoughts on the subject and your own favourite Anime flaws.

Read or Die.

What the hell kind of paper can stop bullets? and where can i get some?

In one episode of Escaflowne Vans shirt gets ripped off into a billion pieces and he goes to grab Hitomi with his left arm, and then in the next shot he does it with his right, OMG! Then one scene later he has a shirt on....Weird.

The flaw with giant fighting robots or mechs is that you only have to destroy one of its legs for it to become nonfunctional. Think about it.

Trying to make sense of anime == bad idea

While we're poking fun at non-realistic anime stuff, have you ever noticed the size of Cloud Strife's (FF 7) sword? It's massive! On the cover the game, it's more than half the size of him, and when you win a match, his little victory dance is spinning it around a bunch of times. I think that it would be just a wee-bit too heavy for that...

No, if you know what you're doing, you can swing a greatsword like that. For an example, play as Nightmare in Sould Calibur 2. All of those are plausible moves, just kind of slow.

Or Gatsu's sword in Berserk, the largest sword known to mankind.

That's not a greatsword, that's a zweihander, germanic sword.

Yeah, that's really, really unplausible. But still, who cares? Fun to look at :p

and thus, Battletech has Neurohelmets with smart computers that help against that, doesn't always work though...

Not all anime involves robots.

Personally, I think that garbage with giant robot suits like in the Power Rangers is pretty ****ing stupid (that includes MechAssault and the Xbox). Otherwise, I love anime.

word

I agree MechAssault was kinda lame. I prefer MechWarrior for the PC.

And if you read the books, everything in it makes a lot more sense, and is actually...well...feasible.

Very true. I'd say the Battletech Universe is the most realistic out of any featuring giant robots.

Mechwarrior 3 was great with that, just shoot off one leg and you win!

My big question with the whole gundam thing is this... If you are going to build something for space, WHY GIVE IT LEGS AND ARMS! Think about it. How hard is it to armor a humanoid shape, how much armor plating will it take when compared to, oh say, a sphere, or a BRICK... plus with a humanoid you have to spend a whole lot of weight and space on the structure and articulation. This even applies on dry land, humanoid machines just are not functional, too much is spend on the structure and articulation of the legs when a simple tread or wheel structure would suffice. Or if that wont do, you can use a VTOL base such as a helicopter. Hell, human beings were not even designed for combat, we are tree swinging primates adapted for fine manipulation...

Then again, NO-ONE, ever, has gotten space combat right, so I guess it does not matter. Things Like Independence War have gotten close but go play orbiter and you will soon figure out that space combat is completely different from anything and everything we know about so far. In REAL orbital combat, if you target is in front of you orbitally, and you thrust towards him, you will find yourself moving into a higher orbit relative to him. In fact, if you are more than about 5 clicks away from something that does not want to be near you, then you are NEVER going to catch it... Space combat is a HUGE thing to get your head around.

[/rant]

P.S. The Orbiter site seems to be down right now...

Most battles aren't done in orbit, they're done in space. As in not around a planet.

Of course, most of your issues have been addressed in the BattleTech universe, you'd find. The Mechs take on humanoid (or even non-humanoid, but more animalistic) shape because it's more of a comfortable and somewhat more versatile form of combat.

...

...

If you are not orbiting a planet then... guess what... your orbiting it's sun... the same mechanics work there too... Hyperdrive is good for getting around in space, but it actually leaves a huge whole in the whole orbital velocity thing, meaning that once you are out of hyperdrive, you still have to be completely aware of your orbital velocity relative to major celestial bodies. So when you are handling any sort of non-hyperdirve combat this is not so far out of any solar system as to actually count as deep space, then you are pretty much working with orbital stuff.

The good news on working with sun based orbits is that they are a lot easier to calculate, the bad thing is that they require a hellava lot more reaction mass, and have orbital periods that you don’t want to deal with... So if two orbits are even slightly off (IE those of a pursuer and a perused), then it takes a tremendous amount of fuel and or time on the behalf of the pursuer, such that if the perused desires, he will never be caught.

Ill admit that I am not great at interplanetary orbits, so working with them may be easer than I think. But my current experience with earth-moon and earth-mars stuff still leads me to believe it is incredibly hard.

I guess if we all developed SUPER MEGA Efficient engines that can produce impulses of astronomical amounts, then the cost of interplanetary combat drops down to more reasonable levels, but unless propulsion becomes essentially free it will always favor the perused other the pursuer, making space combat nearly impossible (don’t even start on what it takes to make an a intercept or rendezvous)...

Finally, as for the mech’s, Despite the more animal look to them, they still are at a disadvantage to more conventional combat methods. One of my personal favorite mech’s is the Behemoth/Stone Rhino, a 110 ton (according to some source books) mech designed for long range suppression and artillery support, yet the Stone Rhino cannot do it’s job nearly as well as a Long Tom Artillery piece with and aerial transport, which probably cost less both in monetary terms and in tonnage than the Stone Rhino does.

Well the thing about BattleTech is while the universe is supremely advanced, they decided that battles themselves should be pursued in a more...antiquated manner. In the clans they believe in the honor of dueling, bidding, tactics, instead of just doing whatever it takes to blow the hell out of their opponnents.

'Mechs are also more humanoid because of the Neurohelmet thing, it stays balenced because of peoples own sense of balence, and why not put them in something that is roughly humanoid so they can be balenced better because of the famillarity.

Forsakhan: Since when does the phase shift activation alter the mass of the Gundam?

West Wind: The solution is simple when it comes to Gundam: Minovsky particles.

Battlemechs were designed to fight on-planet, where a humanoid design -- coupled with the neurohelmet interface -- is extremely versatile. Space combat was more of an afterthough with 'Mechs.

Also, it is fairly rare in the Battletech universe for ships (at least in the Inner Sphere) to actually do battle -- and even when they do, it's primarily computer controlled.

my biggest problem with anime is the way all the characters are made from ink, theres no way they could survive being made from ink, its so implausable it makes me laugh.

The neurohelmet is good point, though it leaves the question of how the pilot maintains balance in chicken-walkers (mechs with inverted knees, timberwolf for example), as the muscle control would be opposite that of normal human balance. As for the versatility of the humanoid design, the humanoid design is actually not the most versatile overland body type. Nature has shown that the most versatile, stable, and maneuverable forms are always four legged designs, which also offer increased speed over bipedal (think predators such as the tiger, lion, wolf, and cheetah, or animals such as the mountain goat capable of crossing incredibly difficult terrain). The only advantage of the humanoid form is that it frees the arms up for fine manipulation, which in a mech is nearly useless. The only other thing arms are really useful for are physical assaults on other mechs. These things do happen in the battletech universe, but are neither common nor terribly effective. Also, Battletech does have four legged mechs (called quads), but I dont seem to remember any wide spread usage of them. (I used them allot in the battletech game, but they were all custom mechs).

please correct me if i'm wrong but are these walkers the ones from the "Heavy Gear" series?

iirc they had hands that held guns, whilst Mechwarrior Mechs had guns for limbs, which kinda makes arms useless for anything you could use an arm for... unless you can solve every problem with a gun.

Actually, many 'Mechs have hands which are often used for the manipulation of objects (read any of the books by William H. Keith for examples).

Also, the neurohelmets do not allow for the brain to control the 'Mech, rather they transmit impulses to the inner ears of the pilot so that he may natually compensate for percieved imbalances -- thus both plantigrade and digitigrade legs are possible, because it is simply giving the pilot a feel for his 'Mech's balance.

And the humanoid design is highly adaptable, and makes a suprising amount of sense. Arm mounted weapons allow for independent targeting, and the thinness inherent to a two legged design (on most of them, anyway) allows for increasee maneuvouring ability in urban situations, whilst retaining the size required to contain the bulky components.

Why are their eyes so damn big

It would have to. The type of phase shift needed to make a material nearly impervious to physical damage is an extreme change in denstiy. I the series, they never adress the fact (the only thing that seems to weigh any of the Gundams down is the Armour Shround worn by Duel during the second quarter of the seires.

And also (to all the mechwarrior posts), since when is Mechwarrior considdered anime? (i know i've opened up a can of worms with this one, but still.)

Knock knock. Who's there?

Stereotype.

Well, stereotype who?

Actually, I don't know of any Mechs that do space combat, though I do know of mechs with air capability (extremely rare, and almost never mentioned). And what are you talking about? Space combat with ships is quite common...just never elaborated upon. Dropships and whatnot are rather common. For instance, after just reading Wolves on the Border, the first part completely details a space-to-on planet battle with fighters tailing a dropship.

Man I love the BattleTech universe.

I haven't gotten that far...

The battle of Trafalgar during Task Force Serpent, and those fought during operation Bull Dog are all good examples of Battletech ship combat, and while fire control and some other functions are computer controlled, the overall control is done by the crew.

they did a TV Show... it was terrible if you know the Battletech Universe...but it was still a cartoon and that falls under Animation, which is what Anime is under too, just two different styles of it
/me puts lid back on can