Mecha design- it's all been done?

[HellCat]

Being a designer in training, I look at mecha designs very closely. To be honest, I can't help feeling we're in a rut. Alot of mecha designs look very similar, distant cousins of Gundams and such.

Is mecha design going round in circles or is there still new ground to tread?

[Scirel]

Well, most often mecha are humanoid, and there realy isn`t that much variety you can put into a humanoid shape besides what's been done, and adding new and different weapons. There are probably thousands of humanoid mecha out there by now.

Animal mecha have been tried, but it's very hard to make them "serious", and fight with things other than distanced attacks.

[GWOtaku]

I can't agree, recent shows like Code Geass and Gurren Lagann have been fairly original. The only Geass mech that's even close to a Gundam design is the Lancelot, and that's it.

Of course, mine is a layman's perspective. But I've not seen a recent mecha show and had an "oh, this is ripped straight from show X" reaction. "Recent" meaning anything made after GS Destiny & 2005.

[Juu-kuchi]

There's still ground to tread in some degree. I mean look at some Tomino's more recent non-Gundam works like Brain Powerd and Metal Overman King Gainer.

And Scirel brings up an interesting point. You can only go so far as the design of humanoid bodies can take you.

Animal mecha have been tried, but it's very hard to make them "serious", and fight with things other than distanced attacks. The BuCues and LaGowe I believe are a good exception, although it took about Episode 21 of SEED to make them look like a serious threat.

Sad they didn't push themselves further with such designs in Destiny except for the Gaia.

[Chris Wood]

It's true that a lot of ground has been covered already, but if you hunt for more obscure series you can find some off the wall designs, like in Dunbine.

[Zeonic Freak]

Well as they say, "If it aint broke, why fix it?"

If the design for bipedal mecha has been working for this long, why change it. I mean, cars have been cars for over 100 years, and there still good.

I understand that im sure theres more ground to dig up and find in the designing of mecha, and its not an impossible feat to reach. So i understand the rut that its in now.

The human mind can come up with some crazy crap...

[Duo Himura]

Yeah, to be honest this is sort of feeling like the mecha version of "there are only two plots in existence." Not to that extreme, but you know...

Admittedly a lot of mecha borrow from each other, but there's definitely still originality out there. I mean, even most of what's come from Gundam has some fairly significant differences between it, Destiny's direct stealing of UC designs aside. But then, I'm never a fan of judging in such broad terms, I much prefer to operate on a case-by-case basis, so I tend to find it hard to agree with statements like "*insert industry/genre/etc. here* is going downhill lately."

As they say, even Shakespeare stole most of his ideas, he just did them very, very well.

[HellCat]

I draw alot of humanoid mecha, so I'm obviously going to be more critical then those who aren't involved with design. I understand you can only do so much with the form but that doesn't excuse an overall unwillingness on the part of the industry to truely branch out and experiment.