Mecha: Is it really that big of a genre?

[Ridley-X4]

Whenever you ask someone about anime, they either do not know about it and only know Pokemon, etc., or you find total weaboo Naruto fans.

Nobody in my school's anime club liked mecha, save for some dude with enough chains on his pants to make him a FF character who likes NGE. And NGE is not mecha for the most part. It's 1/2 messing with your mind, and 1/2 about the star pilot with the best mech in the world slitting his wrists. It IS a good show, but it is most not the best of mecha. Anyhow, they weren't even interested in Gunbuster or GaoGaiGar. All they wanted to do is watch flash-made Naruto AMVs. They made me crack a smile, but I don't know squat about "the Akatsuki family" or whatever it is.

However, I've seen photos of the /m/ panel at Otakon, and it seemed to be very organized and had a lot of people. And of course, there's you guys.

I just need to know: Is mecha a very small, niche market? Do I just need to get in with the "in" crowd? I don't want to FORCE it on them or anything.

[Leader Desslock]

Is mecha a very small, niche market?
Go to Akihabara. Enter an anime/manga shop. Compare the amount of retail display space given to Gundam to the amount given to ... everything else combined.

At that point, you should have a very difficult time believing that mecha is a very small, niche market.

I don't like Gundam at all, and I'm not really a big mecha fan. But it is what it is. If you don't know many mecha fans, then you just don't know many mecha fans. Watch your mecha, let your friends watch ninjas, and call it pax. There's no reason they should share your tastes any more than you share theirs.

If it's any consolation, I really don't want to watch Naruto AMV's, either.

[lav2k4]

All they wanted to do is watch flash-made Naruto AMVs.

Ya...you're with the wrong group of people. Anime fans who claim Naruto is the greatest series to walk the planet, are the wrong people to be around. Most of them are way too ignorant, and most of them probably haven't seen anything outside of whats on TV.

Mecha is big, not as big as it was in the 80's. Gundam is pretty much a cultural icon in Japan. All the recent Mecha shows that aired in Japan recently are big hits, and are pretty high quality when it comes to story telling/characters. You just need to find some people who like the same things you like.

[Caster13]

mecha? niche? those Narutards have warped you mind Ridley.

look at all of the series that came out of the 80s and see how many of them concerned giant robots.

mecha is still big, dont let the orange jumpsuit enthusiasts and the moe crazed convince you otherwise.

[Vaikyuko]

In America, mecha is basically nothing compared to anime as a whole, which we already know is niche. Everyone will have heard of Evangelion and Gundam (whether or not they've seen it), but that's probably it.

Japan, on the other hand, mecha is a huge portion of anime, I'd wager at least a good 30% or so if we include stuff like Eva as mecha. As has also been mentioned, stuff like Gundam is a cultural (national?) icon. So, y'know. Kind of a big difference.

[Dr. Nick]

I for one try to enjoy a diverse diet of titles from different genres, and this is not limited to just anime. Hell, I watched Naruto before the fillers and enjoyed it quite a bit. The uni department where I study is very small and there are only a handful of anime fans here. Most of them are not big mech-heads, but they tolerate the genre just fine. In fact, the more university-aged anime fans I've met in real life, the less I feel like making generalizations about any particular fandoms.

As for Ridley's comments about genre definition, I don't see how angst and mind-messing could make something "less" mecha: For example, Gunbuster is monstrously angsty, and Shin Getter Armageddon is plain weird, especially the ending, but I've never seen anyone claim those shows are partially "not mecha". If we're talking about representative samples, then that's a whole another thing (although that's by no means not a simple concept either).

[Mr March]

Yep, Treize X Magamin nailed it right on the head. There's no way mecha is niche (within the context of anime itself), especially not with the enduring success of mecha franchises like Gundam, Macross, Patlabor, Evangelion, Ghost In the Shell, et cetera that are still releasing shows and films one, two or more decades later. Then there are all the other smaller franchises and mecha shows (Appleseed, Bubblegum Crisis, Votoms, The Five Star Stories, Escaflowne et cetera) from the past four decades along with all the super robot shows (Dai-Guard, The Big O, Ideon, Getter Robo, Mazinger, Dangaioh, Gunbuster, Voltron, ad nauseam). And finally all the NEW mecha shows they just keep cranking out year after year. Aquarion, Eureka Seven, Full Metal Panic, Zegapain, Armored Core, SRW, Godannar, RahXephon, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Code Geass, Vandread, Xenosaga, blah, blah, blah.

Mecha anime internationally, now that's a bit different.

[Westlo]

In the west mecha is niche with the only titles making a big splash being Robotech (Macross) and maybe Evangelion (though more with the hardcore base).

In japan as people have explained mecha is very popular though I would say aside from the Gundam SEED series (which are the top 2 selling tv series on dvd in japan for this decade with avg sales per volume of 56k and 65k for the two series) it has been in a slump this decade. Now recently things have started to pick up with Code Geass being a smash hit (44k avg per dvd volume making it the 3rd best selling dvd series this decade), Gurren Lagann doing very respectable business (19k avg) and we currently have Gundam 00 airing currently which will probably surpass Code Geass in sales. Next year we have a lot of heavy hitters in Code Geass 2 and Macross Frontier airing in the Spring Season and than Gundam 00 returns in the Fall.

[Grand Zamboa]

Well, there's been a large (and growing) number of moe and slice-of-life shows over the past few years, which lowers the number of mecha shows. Since it's been going on for a good few years, a large majority of fans over here have seen very little mecha.