My favourite mecha designs in Fiction

09 Dec 2024

The last time that I did a blogpost was this time last year. I’ve tried a few times to write posts this year, but I’ve really struggled with finishing them. I would get halfway through and just wonder to myself: What right do I have to share opinions about these things? Who even cares what I think?

If only I had the confidence of a straight white man when it comes to speaking my mind.

So, I am going to try writing a much sillier, low stakes post to shake the cobwebs off.

I just love mecha, dude

Something you need to understand to me is that I love military hardware; Machines that are designed to outcompete other machines… the pinnacle of mobile engineering. I lay the blame for this at the feet of Star Wars Episode 4, which beamed images of X-Wings directly into my impressionable child brain.

The only issue with military hardware is what it is used for. Proposal: dismantle the armed forces, but let r+d keep making blueprints that we can put into video games.

Mecha (or mechs) are just the coolest of all the war machines for one simple reason: limbs allow a machine to emote. Like, planes are sick. The SU-27 owns my heart for being a beautiful plane, but that’s all it is: a plane. It can actuate its flaps, it can lower its landing gear, but that’s about it.

A SU-27 flies through the air, painted in a dark grey Sicario livery. — Look at her! She's my little meow meow!

Meanwhile, a mech can do this:

A gundam model draws a beam sabre from a mount on the underside of its shield. — So dynamic! So expressive! So....unpainted. I should finish this model.

There are so many cool mech designs out there and I want to ~~simp~~ talk about my favourites. I’m picking designs that have been in published media for the sake of actually being able to find them, but I’m going to be real, there are some really badass designs just sitting around on deviantart.

Gundam Woundwort

Gundam is the mecha king, so it would be unusual for a list to not contain at least one. My favourite design just so happens to be a weirdo from a manga series that’s never been animated. I sure love having all the gunpla kits of my faveourite be P-Pandai. Yep.

No, but look at this beautiful thing. The typical gundam looks kinda like “a guy in armour”, but the Woundwort squashes and stretches different parts to make something that is just so much more mechanical. The most striking part are certainly the oversized thighs, which I believe are part of the mech’s mobility suite. It’s easy to joke about the Woundwort being “thicc”, but consider the following: the ability to perform evasive maneuveurs in space is way sexier than simply having big legs. No other Gundam feels as agile to me as the Woundwort.

Turnaround sketch of the Gundam Woundwort. — This dude has straight up chibi proportions and I think that is wonderful.

Something that is cool about the Woundwort in particular is that the whole mobile suit is built around a central rotation joint. This detail really appeals to me because it serves as a visual indicator of how the machine was probably designed (in and out of universe). I love it when structural elements are proudly on display - see also: Rollercoasters, Iron truss bridges, Formula cars.

The woundwort is built from modular components around a centra drum joint. — Breakdown sketches are just so pretty!

Another benefit of the central joint is that it allows the mech to fold up into a flight form! It’s quite evocative of many squat SHMUP designs, doing that thing I love where the hull is dominated by a set of oversized boosters. I would have liked this design if it were just a normal spaceship, but the fact it’s just a side mode for a really cool mecha blows me away.

In flight mode, the body is folded up under a curved canopy. The legs have folded up into a pair of large boosters that sit either side of the vehicle's hull. — It's just a little guy! A tiny little (Around 15m long) guy!

Juggernaut

The thing about the Juggernaut from “86” is that it’s less of a mech and more of the minimum-viable mobile platform for the giant fuck-off cannon carried on its back. These things have absolutely no considerations made for the survivability of the pilots (which is, indeed, a plot point), save for overwhelming mobility and incredible firepower. Any pilot who manages to survive a single sortie in one of these machines must by necessity be absolutely cracked at armoured warfare.

This is not a mech that you would ever want to pilot.

And yet, seeing the Juggernauts absolutely tear things up in the anime lit a fire in me. Half scuttling bug, half graceful dancer, the Juggernaut pilots walk a knife’s edge where a single moment of hesitancy, a lapse in awareness, or plain bad luck spells the end of your career. That anyone has to climb into a Juggernaut at all is an atrocity, but in their dying gasps do the pilots weave a beautiful tapestry of violence.

A Juggernaut drifts into scene, it's single red eye glowing with malicious intent. — Heard you talking shit

Northstar

Titanfall 2 is my favourite FPS of all time and when I played it, I mained Northstar. This is partially because of its simple kit: Your one job is to land charged shots on enemy weakpoints, and every ability is just a utility to make you better at that. Some of the other titans needed more careful juggling of their abilities, which I sucked at, but Northstar only really needed you to position well and hit your target.

I don’t just love Northstar for its gameplay though. It shares the Jugernaut’s philosophy of “remove anything extraneous to increase speed”. The mech superleggera. The central body is just big enough to squeeze a human inside, then everything else is so stripped down that you’re basically looking at an unclad skeleton. Again, very brutalist, honest. I love it.

Northstar Prime looks like northstar, but all the curves have been sanded down to hard edges. — Northstar Prime is also a peak design.

Given that Titans only have a tiny nub for heads, the folk over at Respawn managed to inject so much personality into them. Obviously BT in the campaign is the standout in this respect, but even the multiplayer titans are beautifully animated.

Northstar executes another titan by sweeping out its legs and firing a point-blank railgun shot through the cockpit. — God I wish that were me.

Vic Viper

The Vic Viper from Gradius is one of the most iconic SHMUP ships of all time. I love it. But sadly, Vic Viper the spaceship is dead to me. Because that name belongs exclusively to the mecha from the Zone of the Enders by virtue of it being the sickest shit ever created by mankind.

Look at it. Look at it! If you looked up the definition of “cool” in the dictionary, it would say:

Of or at a relatively low temperature; moderately cold, esp. agreeably or refreshingly so (in contrast with heat or cold).

…and then it would have a picture of the fucking Vic Viper because the Vic Viper is badass as shit.

It’s another machine designed for speed. There is no way that the Vic Viper doesn’t cruise at like mach ten: its all angles and wings and spikes for cutting -cutting- through the air like it’s trying to do manual nuclear fission on Nitrogen molecules.

The Vic Viper mech can fold up into a vehicle mode that resembles its original namesake. The legs become forward facing prongs, whilst the arms are used as wings or control surfaces. — And it even has a flight mode that looks like the original Vic Viper!

It’s an absolute travesty that you pilot Jehuty in ZoE 2. It should have been the Vic Viper! It’s just better. It’s got knives for arms, which looks dangerous. It’s got a flight form that has a more involved transformation than just getting an erection (what the fuck Jehuty). It’s a LEV, so it’s more down-to-earth than the fancy Orbital Frames; a real working class hero.

I love it! I fucking love it!

Maddog (Vulture)

Screenshot of Mechwarrior 2's tutorial mode, where the trainer is in a Maddog battlemech. The Maddog has reverse jointed legs and an aerodynamic angled hull. — Screenshot taken from Odroid Magazine: Linux Gaming Mechwarrior 2

In every other section of this post, I have lead with a picture of the mech using official art or a marketing picture of a model kit, but for the Maddog, I have instead chosen a screenshot of Mechwarrior 2 where the mech in question is partially obscured by the UI. The reason for this is simple: I specifically like the Maddog as it is represented in this game.

In the super low poly art style, the Maddog looks super aerodynamic - at least in the way that classic supercars did back when they were designed with a ruler and set-square. I also like its chunky lower legs, as it is quite obviously wearing legwarmers. Neat!

The Maddog is actually the earliest mecha that I recall having a real fondness for. My childhood scribbles are replete with my own interpretations of what I saw when squinting at the little CRT television that my PSone was hooked up to. My love for the Maddog continues to this day… as long as I don’t look at any official art of it.

Picture of a painted model of the Maddog. It's nicely painted in olive camo. — Picture taken from Prometheus Rising Studios: Armorcast Battletech Mad Dog (Vulture). I'm about to complain about the design, but that has nothing to do with Prometheus, they just happened to have a good quality picture of a Maddog! Check out all the other cool models on their site.

What the hell is this thing? You’re trying to tell me that instead of the Maddog having an internal cockpit served by cameras on the hull, it’s actually got a dumb canopy perched precariously on the very top of the robot? What sort of terrible point of view is that supposed to be? What if you want to look at the ground around your mech’s feet? Should we start moving bus drivers to the top floor?

Rubbish!

And look at how all the beautiful angles have turned into lumps and bumps. It’s actually a travesty, a destruction of the mental model I had built up in my head for years. I hate official art Maddog.

And so, I did the only thing that made sense. I decided the offical art didn’t exist. Maddog is a mech that has under 100 vertices, it’s aggressive and mean looking, not a lump in sight. It’s a shame that nobody ever made a higher resolution model of it, but hey we can’t have everything.

An Unkindness

Screenshot of a custom mech in Armored Core 6. It is lightly armored, carrying a large rifle and armed with two heavy grenade launchers on its back. It boosts across an arena, kicking sparks up from where it touches the floor. — You know, An Unkindness! The hero mech from hit game Armored Core 6! You don't remember it? Psh, I think that's a you problem.

Ok, I realise that it’s definitely cheating to show off a mech that I put together in a mech customisation game, but I needed something to represent Armored Core and none of the named characters are quite as good as my various custom ACs. Armored Core is host to some of my favourite mecha designs in all of fiction. They have a great balance between being humanoid (even with quad legs or treads) and moving like machines. I like my giant robots to feel like giant robots, and a great way to achieve this is to limit their flexibility. An AC cannot be made to engage in a swordfight, but you can stick an energy blade on its arm and propel it towards its target using rockets.

There is no game that feels more like piloting a mech than Armored Core. They are games about inertia, raw power, overwhelming force. Piloting an AC is an act of agression, against both the humans who get in your way and the laws of physics trying to drag you back to earth.

Screenshot of a custom mech in Armored Core 6. Close up of its head, which has three eyes on each side of its head.

Conclusions

Looking at my favourite mechs, it’s very clear to see that I am firmly a “real-robot” fan. The only example here from an arguably “super robo” series would be the Vic Viper, and even that is a LEV - i.e. the less fanciful normal mechs of that universe. I do like a good bit of super robo - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann is my favourite anime after all - but usually I find myself coming to those series for the humans, not the machines.

You’ll also notice that I like my mechs to be as mobile as possible. All of these designs are lightweight in their respective universes (except the Maddog, which is a medium weight battlemech). It seems like I see mechs not as hard targets, but as platforms onto which you can glue as many thrusters as humanly possible.

This leads to a paradox of intent: A mech needs to be heavy and brutal, but it needs to go fucking fast.

…I’ve just recreated the philosophy behind fighter jets, haven’t I?