On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 17:09:45 -0400, Jim Charter wrote:

> I had always though they originated in the Star Wars movies. No?

Nope, the term at least originated with Japanese anime/manga; according to
the wikipedia article, the mecha genre started in 1956 or 1958 (two
articles have different dates) with a manga called Tetsujin 28-go that was
made into an anime in 1963 that outside of Japan was called "Gigantor".

In recalling my childhood memories of mecha, they were always bipedal, and
had a single pilot, which the Star Wars AT-AT and AT-ST didn't have.
Robotech and Macross pre-date the AT-ATs seen in Empire Strikes Back by a
couple of years as well, as does the fairly popular Gundam series.  I
can't think of anything in the original Star Wars film that came close to
being a Mech; TIE and X-Wing fighers are more closely aligned with
aeronautics than robotics, and R2D2 and C-3PO are both autonomous robots;
while in the strictest sense of the Japanese word "meka", autonomous
robots (and even electrical appliances) would fit the definition, but the
definition of the genre is a bit more constrained than the general word
usage.

Jim

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