When I was a young’n, I was completely and utterly scarred by the terrifying visage of Johnny Sokko’s giant robot (known in Japan by the slightly unimpressive nomenclature Giant Robo”), a severe face the likes of which I wouldn’t encounter again until the first time my child repeated one of my jokes to my mother-in-law. It was, understandably, several years before I recovered from that trauma sufficiently to really appreciate the subtle poetry of men in rubbery suits crashing through cardboard cityscapes, but eventually (with the help of an enormous Gaiking action figure) I had my giant robot epiphany, which is also the name of my new Mumford and Sons cover band Still, these days the robotic leviathans are all over the place, to the point where it is said that chick dig the giant robot cars, which begs today’s query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced as always, “misquoted”) still loves that the Power Rangers got the concept of the Megazord from Spider-Man, asking: Who’s the awesomest giant robot of them all?
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Escaflone – it can turn into a robot(?) Dragon.
There is nothing cooler than turning into a dragon.
Big O
When I think of giant robots, and believe me I do, this one key phrase comes to mind. Chicks. Dig. Giant. Robots. Megas XLR is and always will be the best giant robot not because it was controlled by video game controllers, or that it had my dream car on top. But because its pilot was just a guy. In fact he was just a nerdy guy. And when my prepubescent brain saw this for the first time and saw Coupe stomping on aliens I couldn’t help but think ‘that could be me’.
I’m torn between GoZyuJin (Gokai Silver’s mecha, which has alt modes), DekaBase Robo (the base of the Dekarangers itself transformed to a mecha) and Gouryuujin (also known in the US as Dragonzord Battle Mode).
Then again, they could all probably be squished by Daijinryuu (also known in the US as Serpentera).
any gundam
I’ll always have a fondness for Raydeen/Raideen because of the Shogun Warriors version of him I had as a kid.
Robotech’s SDF-1. Big !#$ battle space shit.
As much as I love Transformers, Mighty Orbots gets the nod.
I was going to jokingly suggest Leader-1 or Cy-Kill, but it’s inappropriate to even jest about GoBots being awesome in any way.
Giant Bender from “Terror at 500ft” story from the first “Anthology Of Interest”; his only dream was to kill al humans.
And he killed Hanson, that was a plus.
It was said above. Chicks dig giant robots. Close second though would be the Drivemax Megazord from Power Rangers Operation Overdrive. Thing was modular as hell and could adapt to a bunch of different situations. Now I know other power rangers megazords have been like this, but the Drivemax is the coolest looking one IMHO.
The only episodes I’ve seen of PROO were the “Once a Ranger” crossover episodes. But I’ve seen most of Boukenger and I’ll agree that mecha is pretty awesome.
I can’t believe I’m the first person to say Voltron!
The capital ships from the Macross series, starting with the aforementioned Super Dimensional Fortress in the original Macross and culminating in the utterly massive Frontier and Galaxy colonization ships in attack mode.
Mechagodzilla, with a close second from Jet Jaguar.
Johnny Sokko’s Flying Robot!
Unicron, it was the size of a planet. Think about it, it could have eaten the Death Star.
Big O was clunky, stiff, and had one of the coolest designs I’ve ever seen. Fitting somewhere between the sensibilities of the blocky robots of yesteryear and the more sleek, articulated robots of today, it gave the impression of a vintage car. Gorgeous and functional, but little else. What else do you need? Also, it was basically piloted by anime Bruce Wayne, so there’s that.