{"id":1745,"date":"2008-02-20T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/2008\/02\/20\/ask-john-why-do-anime-robots-have-such-ornate-designs\/"},"modified":"2008-02-20T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T14:00:00","slug":"ask-john-why-do-anime-robots-have-such-ornate-designs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/ask-john-why-do-anime-robots-have-such-ornate-designs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ask John: Why Do Anime Robots Have Such Ornate Designs?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong><br \/>\nAfter watching some older 80&#8217;s anime with a friend, we found ourselves in a discussion about &#8220;Why do early Japanese mechs have so much needless adornment&#8221;. Large head decorations and needless add-ons seem to serve no real purpose. I personally think that it&#8217;s a cultural thing. The largest and best mechs have more decoration to make them look more like samurai armour, which also had a good amount of decoration around the head and arms. What do you think?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>Answer:<\/strong><br \/>\nDuring the 1970s and early 1980s, robot anime was primarily designed to sell toys and model kits. Extravagant looking, colorful robots are eye-catching and appealing to children. But it was mecha designers and creators including Yoshiyuki Tomino, Ryosuke Takahashi, Shouji Kawamori, and Shinji Aramaki that started a small revolution of creating &#8220;real robots,&#8221; or robots and mecha modeled after practical, real world mechanical technology and practical efficiency. While early 70s and 80s robots like Baratack, Gaiking, and Zambot 3 weren&#8217;t especially practical looking, robots that followed, such as the Macross valkyries, Scopedogs of Votoms, and the mecha in series including Gundam, Dougram, Vifam, and Xabungle emphasized practicality, simple coloring, and a focus on believable working technology over flashy but impractical appearances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: After watching some older 80&#8217;s anime with a friend, we found ourselves in a discussion about &#8220;Why do early Japanese mechs have so much needless adornment&#8221;. Large head decorations and needless add-ons seem to serve no real purpose. I personally think that it&#8217;s a cultural thing. The largest and best mechs have more decoration [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ask-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.animenation.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}