自然光の合成 / Synthesizing natural light
05.01.2026 04:12
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自然光の合成 / Synthesizing natural light
the title page and first page of the comic. it's titled "Lichtenstein's Monster", signed "by Chase Burns", and the first page is an illustration of Roy Lichtenstein's famous Drowning Girl painting, but with the text in the thought balloon replaced with "These pop-art paintings are really great! But I just had an idea..."
the second spread of the comic. the panels are more Lichtenstein paintings. the first panel has a woman looking at a man saying "What if we were to take two images like these and juxtapose them...", and the second panel says "...against one another? It's almost like it's telling a story!" set alongside a woman turned away.
spread 3. the first panel has a woman saying "And it's not like there's a limit to how many images you could juxtapose!" second panel has a woman looking happy third panel has a man peering through a hole into darkness, saying "In fact... despite these images being so shallow and consumerist... I bet you could tell a really moving story with them! A story that matters!" fourth panel has a soldier being shot at. fifth panel features a closeup of a man's face saying "Jeez! Not to have such a contentious opinion! But you could really elevate these piddly things into real art!" Sixth panel has a woman gazing at a picture frame, thinking "It's my duty as an artist..." Seventh panel reads "to find out these neat techniques" Eighth panel features a woman thinking of a man Ninth panel features a woman saying "And use them somewhere else where they matter!"
Spread 4. Panel one is a woman holding a phone, saying "I can be the one to save all these vapid blondes from their low-art prison!" Panel two is a finger on the trigger of a gun. Panel 3 is a man in a vehicle thinking "What else is there to save?" Panel 4 is a fighter jet firing an exploding missile, captioned "I guess there's bombastic violence... not much else, probably!" Overlaid on top of the explosion is a caption box reading as follows: Artists in order of appearance 1. Tony Abruzzo 2. Ted Galindo 3. Tony Abruzzo (again) 4. Ted Galindo (again) 5. Hy Eisman 6. William Overgard 7. Jerry Grandenetti 8. Bruno Premiani 9. Jim Pike 10. Martin Branner 11. Tony Abruzzo (again again) 12. Ted Galindo (again again) 13. Tony Abruzzo (again again again) 14. Gil Kane 15. George Tuska 16. Irv Novick and Jerry Grandenetti (again) ...I think that's all! with thanks to David Barsalou
Lichtenstein's Monster
I had to dust off the ol' Image Duplicator for this one.
Closest thing I've got is the end of the Nadesico movie
Akito's Black Sarena literally sheds its identity and is revealed to be his old pink Aestivalis. While it's not exactly "super" (it's no Gekiganger) it does shed a tear of oil, which calls back to the romance/fantasy of super robots like Zambot
Not exactly. They screened an untranslated VHS copy of Xabungle in a sci-fi hobby shop in Chicago. You can read the full screening list here.
It's surprising what they were able to get their hands on, though! It's shocking that some Americans were watching Gundam before Robotech even released.
Addendum: I forgot to mention the Mech-Monster from Shogun Warriors #4 (May '79) as another early use of "mech", though it's not used in a standalone way. Still worth mentioning!
I also misspelled the C/FO illustrator's name--it's Wendell Washer, not Wendall.
My bluesky handle is fine, because it's really just my website which is really just my name. You could use whichever of those you think fits best with your citations' format.
If you think any details of this are wrong, please let me know. I haven't seen or experienced most of these things I'm referencing, and I'm mostly going off of light research. I really just want to understand where things came from, because fandom history is something I really care about.
As an aside, when I was looking into Mechagodzilla, I found another pre-Mazinger piloted robot in "Mechani-Kong" from The King Kong Show (1966). Because the cartoon was co-produced by Toei Animation, you could consider Mechani-Kong to be the earliest piloted robot in anime (as far as I know now).
And the elephant in the room (or rather the kaiju in the room) is Mechagodzilla, who first appeared in America in 1977. While "mecha" is part of Mechagodzilla's name, it never seems to have been separated from "Godzilla", and it looks like it has little impact on the lexicon of the time.
So, depending on if you care about spelling, MEKTON may have beat BattleTech to the punch. "MEK" also predates Robotech's use of "mecha", despite the fact that MEKTON would go on to use the term "mecha" in its second edition the next year.
But 1984 had another tabletop robot game, called MEKTON. In 1985 it adopted the use of the term "mecha" (and also became a roleplaying game instead of just a wargame), but before then, it seems the '84 edition of the game calls the robots different things, like "MEK", "MEKTON", and "battle suit".
On "mech", you can pretty solidly attribute it to 1985's BattleTech and its BattleMechs, usually just called 'Mechs. BattleTech first appeared a year earlier as "Battledroids", calling the robots droids, but this changed because "droid" was trademarked by Lucasfilm, for use in Star Wars.
the title card for the M&M Productions dub of Gaiking, reading "Hachiro and Dino Mach"
Earlier I'd seen the M&M Productions (single episode) dub of Gaiking, in which they use "Dino Mach". I wonder if they saw "mech" and assumed it was a typo?
Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if the English version of the Gaiking OP by Isao Sasaki says "mach" or "mech".
a portion of a scan of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization's 1979 publication Fanta's Zine #2. in a list of anime titles, there's "Dino Mech Gaiking"
Related to "mecha" is also "mech", which I was surprised to see as early as 1979, in C/FO's Fanta's Zine #2, in the form of the title "Dino Mech Gaiking". This is a title Toei gave the series, but I have no idea how they came up with it. Somehow, they predicted a term that would appear years later
a scan of a page of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization's Shop Talk #43, published in December 1984. it's a section of a letter, and the paragraph in focus reads "Another question. What part of animations are you interested in? pictures, story, character or mechanizm? I want to know it."
So that's the mystery solved! But I still saw some other fun things which I'm gonna share
Predating any mention of "mecha" in English is a letter published in C/FO Shop Talk 43 (Dec '84) from a Japanese guy, Takuji Ishida, who asks if "mechanizm" is a part of anime that Americans are interested in.
After that, "mecha" is used plentifully in the C/FO, like in the 1986 August and September Shop Talk issues. It's not particularly well defined, so I can really only assume it shifted to specifically mean "piloted humanoid robots" because those are the mecha most heavily featured in anime.
"...the latest thing in sport mecha, the Fanliner," from Robotech episode 9, Miss Macross. it's a non-transforming aircraft
In the gap, Robotech is released. Robotech uses the term "mecha" to refer to its piloted machines, anthropomorphized or not. In fact, the first time it's used is to refer to the Fanliner in ep 9, a civilian aircraft.
Thanks to @sundownmcmoon.bsky.social for telling me how and when they use the term!
a scan of a page from the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization's May 1982 bulletin. It's a list of anime they're screening, and the focus is on "'Xabunga' (new robot series)", referring to Xabungle. to the side is a small illustration of Jiron Amos, a character from Xabungle
a scan of a portion of the cover to the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization's May 1983 bulletin. it features the C/FO mascot Fanta piloting a giant robot, labelled as "Fanta's Giant Robot Jugganauto Skiruteru", lifting up a video monitor stand (labelled as "our new heavy duty video monitor stand!! oboy!!"). fanta is saying "Good cartoons are neat! I like them!" The illustration is signed WWASHER '83
Here are some examples, not that they're necessary. The May '82 C/FO Bulletin lists "Xabunga" as a "new robot series", referring to Combat Mecha Xabungle.
The May '83 Bulletin has a nice cover illustration by Wendall Washer of the C/FO mascot, Fanta, piloting a giant robot, labelled as such.
The publications of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization were how I was tracking the use of terms. Not everything is archived, and there's a gap from '84-86, but that fits around the release of Robotech. Which, in retrospect, is pretty obvious, but still.
Before '86, the term used was always "robot".
I went and trawled through the Internet Archive for any answers, and I found some neat stuff.
The short answer: It was Robotech that popularized the use of the term "mecha" in English, though it did not necessarily have the specification of referring only to piloted robots.
a digital illustration of the rx-78-2 gundam, with the darker look it had in the gundam ii: soldiers of sorrow poster, in which it's fighting the doms
I was going to just say "GUNDAM as it appeared on that one GUNDAM II poster" but then I found out this look is sometimes called the "Real Type"
#gundam #rx-78-2
That's in line with the Japanese use, though I think the majority English-speaking people might balk at the idea of calling something without legs "mecha". Though it is an ill-defined term, so different people have different ideas.
Every so often I forget that Gundam is Gundam and I'll end up thinking something like "the people will love this Daiapolon piece I'm working on"
I was almost betting on Xabungle model kits being the origin for "mecha" in English, but it looks like they never wrote the title "Combat Mecha Xabungle" on the boxes.
...that from my understanding, included things like supercars and other non-anthropomorphized vehicles.
Seems like its modern Japanese use mostly refers to humanoid robots, probably because supercars and etc. aren't so popular now (all my examples of "mecha" used like that were '70s Tatsunoko anime)
How well tracked is the origin of the term "mecha" for robot anime? Was it the term that was used in earlier English animanga culture magazines, and did it (or rather its use in English) originate there?
It's no secret it's derived from the Japanese メカ (meka), but that encompasses a wider net...
突然の定期的布教なんですけど、ジョージ秋山先生の「ザ・ムーン」に出てくる糞虫っていう忍者がめちゃくちゃかっこいいのでよろしくお願いします…主人以外に対して一切の人語を喋らず、土下座の体制から弾丸を避ける男です… #ファンアート #二次創作 #ザ・ムーン #ジョージ秋山
a digital illustration of george akiyama's derorinman in a contorted pose. high on a building in the background is orokamen, calling derorinman a fool (he's saying "orokamonome")
I wish I could read Derorinman so badly
#derorinman #georgeakiyama #デロリンマン #ジョージ秋山
I'm only just finding out about it now, but Sunday Press Books does collections of newspaper comics at full size. It looks like a lot of the largest size books are out of print, but "Sundays with Walt and Skeezix" seems like it's more easily available and it's the same big 16x21" size.
A mockup page in the style of "Mobile Suit Gundam: THE ORIGIN" showing Combattler V fighting the Slave Beast "Zenda" from episode 3. The piece is done in a traditional watercolour style.
A "normal" page using the airbrush colouring style, showing a conversation between Garuda and his mother, Oleana. Oleana is given a minor redesign to appear more outwardly mechanical.
What if Yoshikazu Yasuhiko adapted "COMBATTLER V" into a manga?
#mecha #manga #art