Robots I grew up with

My current collection of Lego Optimus Prime (red robot, centre left), the five Lego Voltron Lions and 23 year-old Patlabor plastic model (white robot, centre right). Photo by Dean Koh.

My childhood in the early to late 1990s consisted of a lot of Japanese manga/anime related experiences — Dragonball, Transformers, Patlabor, Voltron, Gundam and Evangelion, to name a few. A lot of these manga/anime franchises had to do with giant robots, the specific genre being ‘mecha’ (short form for mechanical). According to Wikipedia, the term was first used in Japanese after shortening the English loanword ‘mechanism’ (メカニズム, mekanizumu) or ‘mechanical’ (メカニカル, mekanikaru), but the meaning in Japanese is more inclusive, and ‘robot’ (ロボット, robotto) or ‘giant robot’ is the narrower term.

In this post, I will do a deep dive of the five mecha franchises that were a memorable part of my childhood.

1.Patlabor the Mobile Police

In a nutshell, the story takes place in a futuristic Tokyo which becomes increasingly reliant on big robots called ‘labors’ for heavy industries such as construction etc. As a result, such rampant use of labors resulted in industrial accidents/mishaps and worse, people using labors to commit crimes and disturbing public peace.