Before Mecha
The Advent of Mazinger
Mecha on the Battlefield
Western Invasion
Assimilation
The Present
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Machine Evolution
The robot is by no means an old idea, yet it is not a new idea either. Since medieval times,
German folklore has told of the golem, a humanlike creature made of inanimate
materials. In the late 1800s, there were the clockwork automata and industrial machinery,
machines that gave our ancestors the first inklings of automation, the use of machines
to supplant human labor. It was also the first step to what would later be called 'robots',
humanlike machine servants that were to replace human beings. Negative speculation created the specter of
robots as threats to the human way of life, creations that would ultimately
subvert their creators. Developments in the real world have yet to realize
these dire predictions.The mecha (the piloted robot), on the other hand, is a relatively new concept. That the machine, in this case, is controlled by a human is perhaps of some significance. Arguably, the underlying symbolism in the dystopic robot story is that technology will ultimately backfire on human beings, sometimes as a sort of punishment for meddling in creation. In the case of mecha, it can be interpreted both as a symbol that human beings can continue to control technology, or in a more negative outlook, that behind all tools of evil is a human mind.
The evolution of the concept and the genre can, for the most part, be credited to Japanese manga and anime, but its origins can be traced to Western science fiction.
[Source: GURPS Mecha by David Pulver]
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