Mecha holds a really special place in my heart. From watching Filipino localizations of Voltes V, to watching Gundam and building Gunpla as a kid, to experienci

Mecha holds a really special place in my heart. From watching Filipino localizations of Voltes V, to watching Gundam and building Gunpla as a kid, to experiencing Evangelion for the first time as a teenager, I owe a lot of my interests and identity to mecha. It wouldn't be an understatement to say that my current pursuit of a PhD in robotics stems from my love of the genre. While I don't think mecha will ever be on its way out, it is concerning that many of the recent works keeping the genre afloat are from established properties like Gundam and Evangelion. I can't think of any original series after TTGL (and, by extension, Pacific Rim) that really piqued my interest. It's a shame considering how dominant it used to be; Astro Boy was a prototype not just for the mecha genre, but for anime as a medium.