See mecha culture from Pacific Rim
Last night to see the legendary "Pacific Rim", surrounded by people, especially a group of post-90s otaku can not hide the excitement on their faces. One of them also muttered, "America's 'Ultraman vs Monsters'" and "American Version Gundam."
If I were Xie Er, I would be very pleased that they were more accurate and went up to correct one or two, especially the phrase "American version of Gundam", but I am not Xie Er, so I just frowned.
After watching the movie, I saw the otaku again, full of disappointment. This made me look at them differently: because I knew that they were not just mecha fans, but more fans.
Yes, if you're a pure mecha enthusiast, Pacific Rim is simply the epitome of decades of mecha culture, especially Japanese mecha culture — as you can see from the homage list at the back of the film. And if you look at it from the perspective of a movie fan, it is actually not exactly a good movie.
film
For example, at the beginning of the film, in less than a minute, "where the monsters come from" and "monsters invade the world" are finished. This must have taken tens of minutes to describe in previous disaster movies or Hollywood blockbusters — slowly laying the groundwork, the calm being broken, the monster invading, the world panic and finally the savior appearing, and the one-minute approach of Pacific Rim even makes the late audience not know why the monster appeared from the bottom of the sea.
After the end of the film, I understood the director's reason for doing this - "Pacific Rim" deleted the "literary drama" that had been laid out in the front in order to add more "martial arts drama" of mecha vs monsters in the back. In other words, the film may be just a gift to Japanese mecha fans in the director's mind - which also lays the groundwork for the film's low box office in the United States.
Because the mecha culture of the United States and Japan is very different.
In 1958 in Japan, manga master Mitsuki Yokoyama created the first mecha-themed manga, "Iron Man 28", which set a precedent for the mecha culture that will be popular in Japan and the world for more than half a century.
The comic tells the story of a teenager who controls a huge mech with a wireless remote control in his hand to guard world peace. Now it seems that this setting has made an iron definition of Japanese mecha culture: mecha has no soul.
soul
This is also the biggest difference between Japanese mecha culture and American mecha culture (if American organic armor culture), and it is also a major reason for the failure of Pacific Rim at the US box office. Mexican-American director Del Toro tried to replicate transformers' box office success by doing the same without hiring big-name stars. But he forgets that Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and Megatron are the biggest stars in their own right, and that the Japanese mechs in Pacific Rim have no soul, their souls are still the pilots.
It wasn't until 1972 that Nagai's "Iron Armor Almighty Man" let the pilot sit on the head of the mechs for the first time, which ushered in a new era for Japanese mecha culture. Because this design realized the concentricity of the mecha and the pilot, it influenced a series of works including Evangelion, Gundam, and even Pacific Rim.
The United States, on the other hand, has long pursued a different path, and that is the soul of robots. Whether it's Terminator, Transformers or even The Matrix, Americans always seem to be interested in what would happen if robots had souls.
Of course, in recent years, we have seen the "invasion" of the United States by Japanese mecha culture, allowing the United States to quietly change their view of mecha, giving birth to films such as "Iron Fist and Steel Fist" and "Avatar". At the same time, in Red Alert 3, most of Japan's classes are mechs. This was blackened by the director's little belly in Pacific Rim - the Japanese girl Mako was raised by the Americans - meaning that the mecha culture may have originated in your Japan, but it is Hollywood, or "Pacific Rim"...
behind
I remember someone saying that Japan is a country without culture or deformed culture, and it is still a Japanese person who says this. Therefore, there seem to be more scholars who have discussed Japanese culture than chinese culture for a long time — for the simple reason that for the profound Chinese culture, it is enough to learn about it, while Japanese culture? Do more research into where they come from.
For example, in Japanese mecha culture, why would the Japanese fantasize that humans are manipulating such a huge humanoid machine to fight monsters?
First, the first mecha manga, Iron Man 28, was born in 1958, more than a decade after the end of World War II, and Iron Man 28 was set as a weapon that Japan had prepared to use in the Pacific War but did not have time to use it.
At this point, we clearly see the pride of the Japanese in their ability to build large machinery, especially ships. During World War II, because of the implementation of the gun doctrine of the ship, whether it was aircraft carriers or various cruisers, Japan, as a maritime country, did have superior capabilities in this regard. It is also because of this that the fantasy of creating a large mech, which was still very distant, was not so far away from the Japanese.
The soulful design of robots in the American "mecha culture" is also based on the fact that Americans are highly confident in their ability to develop computer code, so confident that they think they will one day develop artificial intelligence beyond the human mind - Americans should indeed be proud, for a country that invented computers.
Secondly, it was the Japanese people's long-standing sense of crisis that led to the birth of the humanoid mech, which can be divided into two levels: the state and the individual.
From a national point of view, this country, which has earthquakes and volcanic eruptions from time to time, is surrounded by the sea, and they are most afraid of something huge that will emerge from the deep, dark sea to destroy Japan. That's why Japanese mechs spend most of their time fighting monsters from the sea.
From a personal point of view, after the defeat of World War II, the Japanese have a serious sense of crisis about their own limits, and the nuclear confrontation between the two major groups in the Cold War has made them see their own smallness, so with the help of huge humanoid mechs, they can make small people have the power of "giants" from the philosophical level.
Based on the above two points, it can be said that the Japanese mecha culture originated from this - a kind of mechanical manufacturing ability that it is proud of, so that a "small" nation can achieve small and broad.
romantic
Today, when the Cold War has long ended and the world pattern has long been turned upside down, we calmly review the mecha culture and find that the Japanese mecha in our perspective has more romance.
Monsters are everywhere, but mechs and their pilots never just the icy feeling of saviors in American superhero movies.
Yes, I miss Ling Boli and Asuka, and I miss the splendor under the steel body.
I also miss the handsome Aslan and the nerve-stirring real birds who brought me the most joy of my childhood.
I even miss 1985's Ikusha I, because there is Watanabe's "Wakare", an interlude from Jingo Iron Horse that I heard again in "Joke About Qianlong".
Maybe that's why we love Japanese mechs, because while the giants of steel shake the earth, the pilots in the mechs are living people. We love mechs because when they use machines as an extension of their bodies, their souls still retain the best things about humanity.
We love mechs because the limits of human beings are ultimately broken by ourselves, and no matter how powerful the mechs are, their appearance is also human.
We still love mechs because we have a romantic heart that never grows old.