There are a lot of stereotypes about Japanese animation. First, there are the big eyes and small mouths. More negatively, people immediately think of schoolgirls being raped by giant tentacle monsters. But if there are two stereotypes about Japanese animation and comics that are almost unique to the respective mediums, it’s magical girls and giant robots. And here is your weekly dose of said robots.

If one were to speculate as to why robots became popular in Japanese animation, I’d argue that it was because of market successes from shows like Tetsuwan Atom and Tetsujin 28-gou (each known respectively as Astro Boy and Gigantor in North America) in the 1960s. One could probably argue that hokey science fiction films, especially those of the 1950s that were exported to Japan, could have also nurtured a few ideas to spin themselves into an entire sub-genre of science fiction animation, which would further break itself down into sub-sub-genres over the next four decades.

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