But then OP is correct: mecha/mech refers to humanoid bipeds. The Japanese word is not mecha but メカ (meka in romaji). EDIT: I'm being pedantic. When used in En

But then OP is correct: mecha/mech refers to humanoid bipeds. The Japanese word is not mecha but メカ (meka in romaji). EDIT: I'm being pedantic. When used in English, "mecha" or "mech" is an English word and the semantics associated with similar words in other languages don't really matter. Where it gets confusing is that it's used in the context of discussing Japanese media (and its foreign derivatives) in English. The reason I'm being pedantic is that my native language is German and not only have German loanwords in English often mutated in ways that trip up German native speakers (e.g. wanderlust is better translated as Fernweh, whereas Wanderlust is more about hiking and being in nature) but the same is true in the inverse, i.e. a lot of English loan words in German have different or narrower meanings than in English (e.g. a Burger is not a type of Sandwich as that specifically refers to a sandwich using white bread and a Hot Dog always includes the bread and topping/sauces whereas the hot dog is just a Wurst and ground beef is never referred to as sausage or burger).