2 replies to this topic

[newtypezaku]

Thanks to everyone who came to Super Robot Spirits, Real Robot Revolution, and Mecha Since Eva on Thursday!  This thread is for any feedback you'd like to give to help me improve on future iterations of these panels.

A few of my own thoughts to start:
* Super Robot Spirits filled the time with the omission of the Yasuhiro Imagawa segment, which unfortunately meant we didn't get to look at Giant Robot, G Gundam, and Shin Mazinger.  I also completely ignored many of the "cookie-cutter" super robot shows of the 80s when putting the panel together.
* I also got through pretty much everything I wanted to in the Real Robot Revolution panel.  The only section that was dropped here was a short bit on modern stuff, most of which were covered in the Mecha Since Eva panel anyway.  But I didn't get to talk about Sakura Wars, which makes me sad.

Mecha Since Eva needs work.
* Needed to be an hour and a half.  There were too many robots to cover and I ended up going 15 minutes over, which only worked because I was the last panel of the day.
* The presentation was very flat because I was tired and rushing through to try and fit into my slot.  I apologize for that.
* I didn't do a very good job of tying some of these series back to the themes I discussed at the beginning when I did my "Why Eva was the turning point" spiel.  Another option to make time would be to omit some of the shows which don't fit into the panel's "thesis", as it were, and spin those off into their own thing.  Or something.

That's what comes immediately to mind for me; anything you guys noticed that I should also take into consideration?

[evanASF27]

I was one of the guys that managed to hit all three of these panels and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  There's a few points I'd like to bring up in no particular order.

- I was very sad to see the omission  of Giant Robo, G Gundam, and Shin Mazinger as the Giant Robo OVA is one of THE pillars of the giant robot fandom in my opinion, and G Gundam is the special exception in the Gundam series that exploded in America and flopped in Japan because it was more "Super Robot".

- The sheer number of shows and the amount of research put into these panels made it worth it purely because it helps fill the gaps between the blockbuster shows everyone remembers. Not every show is Evangelion or Gundam Wing, and I didn't know any of the early shows at all. It's because of this panel I now have a better understanding of the genre I love the most in Anime.

- The panel times killed the attendance. All on Thursday at 1:30pm, 3pm, and then 12:30AM holy crap. The Mecha Since Eva panel is the one that suffered most but they really needed to be scheduled with a break between each and all within a 5 hour span. Had this been on Friday and not at 12:30 in the fricken morning, almost certain there would be more attendees.

- Touching on "Mecha Since Eva"... while I figured that it would be centered on how Evangelion was the turning point and how shows afterward had to be compete with/be different/or completely disregard its impact, the previous two panels made me realize it was going to just continue the history of the giant robot genre rather than be an analytic point/counterpoint about Eva's influences. I think with the other two panels I'm glad it was history and not a "under the microscope" panel, but if you wanted it to be more Eva centric it should have been executed very differently.

- Possible area for a new panel... comparing and contrasting significant Mecha designs throughout history. Mecha as a concept in Gundam are different from Gigantor's construction, are different from Big O's lumbering titan megadeuses, are different from the mannequin-esque Cybodies of Star Driver, are different from the combining robots of Voltron. They reflect the expectations of mecha within shows during the years they were made, and discussion can even go towards which robots make the "best" mascot of their type-class (Super, Real, and Combining)... that'd be a fun flamewar.

- If these panels were given more time, I would have loved touching upon major departures/milestones in robot design changes. Getting from Gigantor/Mazinger era's round/blocky robots to Gundam's modular design, to Evangelion's sleak more humanoid design. When you didn't compare side-by-side what the previous norm was to the new norm I got a bit lost at just how far giant mecha had come. This crosses over the point directly above, just cos I'm fascinated by mecha design.



Finally... and this needs to be said... we need a Mecha Fight Club type panel or segment. Anime Fight Club is so brilliant, and I think the biggest debate when Big O season 2 came out was "Eva vs Big O, who would win?". Drafting up some pairings and seeing who'd win in a fight (excluding plot-devices/deus ex machina like "Coop's the hero and he always wins") would be incredible.

Loved these panels and I hope you continue this look at the history of the Giant Robot genre series at future Tekkos

[newtypezaku]

Great feedback; thanks for the time you put into this.

evanASF27, on 28 March 2012 - 03:04 AM, said:

- Touching on "Mecha Since Eva"... while I figured that it would be centered on how Evangelion was the turning point and how shows afterward had to be compete with/be different/or completely disregard its impact ... if you wanted it to be more Eva centric it should have been executed very differently.

Absolutely.  As I mentioned in my own critique, when I realized I had timed the amount of content for an hour very poorly, I started dropping any comparisons I had planned.

evanASF27, on 28 March 2012 - 03:04 AM, said:

- Possible area for a new panel... comparing and contrasting significant Mecha designs throughout history. Mecha as a concept in Gundam are different from Gigantor's construction, are different from Big O's lumbering titan megadeuses, are different from the mannequin-esque Cybodies of Star Driver, are different from the combining robots of Voltron.
- If these panels were given more time, I would have loved touching upon major departures/milestones in robot design changes. Getting from Gigantor/Mazinger era's round/blocky robots to Gundam's modular design, to Evangelion's sleak more humanoid design.

Another one of the talking points that I lost in Mecha Since Eva was that, superficially speaking, mecha designs made a noticeable shift to sleeker, more agile machines after Eva, points driven home by series like Eureka Seven, Gundam 00, and the aforementioned Star Driver. Of course, limiting it to that one panel means I lose all the context of the 70s and 80s.  And because the focus is just on the design aspects of the machines, it should be tractable to cover 50 years in an hour-long panel.

(I was actually taking an approach like this in my Sunday morning Super Sentai panel, where the plan was to go through each of the milestones in robot design, the evolution of the different character types, etc.  Though that devolved into Q&A pretty quickly since attendance was light and one guy was driving everything with questions.  Not that it was a bad thing!)

evanASF27, on 28 March 2012 - 03:04 AM, said:

Finally... and this needs to be said... we need a Mecha Fight Club type panel or segment. Anime Fight Club is so brilliant, and I think the biggest debate when Big O season 2 came out was "Eva vs Big O, who would win?".

I'm not nearly as entertaining as the AFC guys, who have been doing that for years at Tekko, other cons, and on teh intarwebs.  But I know if I wasn't running a mecha fight panel, I would certainly be watching it.