Megas XLR: The American Take on the Giant Mech Genre

By Eric
12th Jul 04

At first I was merely going to write a review on this show, which is actually rather enjoyable if you're willing to keep an open mind and not get angry at how this show makes fun of your beloved giant mech animes. However, this show is filled to the brim with cultural references not only to Japanese fads, but to the American obsession with said Japanese fads. Although it borrows the visual style of anime to a minimum degree, the actual fun comes from borrowing everything ELSE that the other shows neglected to while still keeping a twist on the genre.

For example, the pilot, Coop, is not a combat expert. He's fat, out of shape, and none-too-bright most of the time. However, he is really good at video games (like most of us nerds) and an adept mechanic, which makes him the perfect pilot for the giant robot, Megas. Unfortunately, he doesn't take the responsibility of his position too seriously, and uses his robot for the most menial of tasks such as ordering from the drive-thru. He acts the way we all probably would in his position. Also, one look at Megas shows how easily sucked in to trends Coop is. While the robot briefly looked like your average mech before it ended up in Coop's hands through a tongue-in-cheek time traveling plot device, he quickly customized it with the American style. He replaced the head with a flashy car, gave Megas a typical "flames and 8-balls" paint job, and even put sexy mudflaps on the back of his feet. Hardcore mech fans would squirm at such a sight, but I dare any of you to say that you wouldn't want to give YOUR giant robot a cool paint job.

Usually, giant robot shows like Evangelion and the Gundam series have realistic control schemes for their fictional vehicles. Ask any hardcore mech fan, and he could probably tell you what switches to flick and which way to tilt the joysticks or what buttons to press to do just about every little thing. However, you will never figure out how to pilot Megas. Coop drives it with a steering wheel in the car-head, and appears to have taped a playstation-like game controller to the wheel which he uses for combat. If you look closely, you'll see all sorts of familiar controllers from old systems attatched, and even a game boy. Somehow, he's figured out how to accurately pilot the robot using so many confusing devices at once. Not only that, but there are a ridiculous amount of buttons in the cockpit. They're labeled, yet still bizarre. They range from "Pounding" and "More Pounding" to "Destroy Moth-like bug". The show obviously doesn't take itself seriously, but that's exactly what makes it so funny if you're not a purist about these things.

There are references to more than just the mech genre. Coop cleverly installed a Dance Dance Revolution pad into Megas which lets him manually control the robot's movements. Then again, the only reason he installed it in the first place was because girls laughed at his jiggling fat when he played it at the arcade. There's a particularly humorous episode which involves Coop fighting against a Voltron-esque team of superheroes. He even takes their robots and puts them onto his own like pants. The typical anime fan's contempt for MTV even manifests itself, as Megas usually ends up accidentally smashing their broadcasting antennas or sattelites. They changed the name to PoP tv, but it's rather obvious that it's a shot at MTV.

If you have a keen eye and a sense of the anime fan lifestyle, there is a cornucopia of hidden humor to discover in the show. Whoever wrote it was obviously a Japan-loving geek as a kid, just like the rest of us. And he certainly knew how to inject his beloved hobby into his work. Naturally, there are some who will see it as blasphemy against Gundam and such. But it's not meant to replace those shows, merely lampoon them. You might be wary at first, but go ahead and give Coop a chance. He's bound to amuse you as he plays DDR, argues with other geeks about old video games, obsesses over cars like plenty of red-blooded Americans, and...oh yeah, constantly breaks things with Megas like a complete jackass.

-- Eric 12th Jul 04