Will we see a Renaissance of the "Mecha+Fantasy" genre?

Considering that the upcoming instance of this is Knights And Magic, I really don't have my hopes up.

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>>15286123
I can honestly say it's not the worst Light Novel I've ever read or seen adapted.

>>15286123
Really, is it that bad? Like how kind of bad? Cringe-worthy?

I don't read LN very much.

>>15287463
Literally /m/ goes to fantasy land and fucks around with robots

>>15286105
We don't need a bad isekai show with mecha elements. There is already enough bad ones without them

>>15287474
Agree. Something simple and back-to-basic like Legend of Lodoss War would be fresh breeze.

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>>15287487

we still get pure fantasy from time to time. Seisen Cerberus is an example from last year that Id recommend. It's far from being on par with Lodoss War but it's got this sincere retardation to it that reminds me of a lot of my table top games

>>15286220

Considering the other /m/ fantasy works, it doesn't exactly have very stiff competition.

>>15287474

You mean all of them?

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>>15287551
>You mean all of them?

>This nigga hasn't watched El Hazard

>>15287555

I have. My point still stands. Nice 5s, by the way.

>>15287463
Not that guy, but it's pretty much just a self-insert power fantasy where the MC is super uber genius great at everything. Might be a nice time waster if you like action series.

>>15287570
That's not any worse than most all /m/ series, to be fair.

>>15287581

the problem is that it's always these kids who go back in time and think they're gonna be fucking Merlin because they know the equivalent of a high school junior when in all honestly, the local poopsmith probably know more than a highschooler

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>>15287584
>think they're gonna be fucking Merlin

>>15287608
SAO is the typical example of the modern day alternate worlds LN genre. It's less like SAO and more because all these writers are uncreative as fuck in churning out this crap.

>>15287613

you say that like SAO wasn't uncreative garbage

>>15287613
>mod justice
Well whatever you were talking about, SAO has become a strange archetype in fantasy, regardless of its unoriginality. It had a cool premise, but it really didn't hold up after that. Anyway, SAO had this futuristic fantasy aesthetic, with holographic displays and glowing neon sword techniques, and that's really become a common aesthetic to go with, irrespective of whether it originated in SAO. I think the reason we don't get much good mecha+fantasy is because we've got too much of a future boner by looking at kickstarter scam technologies, so we get more coherent future robot anime. It's kind of an asspull in the first place to put robots in a fantasy world without first thinking about what technologies these robots are made of and what other machinery the civilisations could do with this. Break Blade is a pretty good example of these considerations, even though it technically is a far-future technological regression universe as opposed to a proper fantasy universe. It's either that or more GATE military fanwank.

Now I haven't seen enough fantasy mecha to have a wide enough viewpoint on this, but it always seems to get entrenched into one of three routes. People have fundamentally different technologies/environments to IRL and so building robots is practical, people discover dank technology that's first application will be for the military making robots practical, or Future X Fantasy fuck yeah laser swords decapitating orcs! And those first two points can fit the present-day real-robot genre too. But I don't think any of this is valid in super-robot.

Any fantasy mech recommendations?

>>15287648
>Any fantasy mech recommendations?

Scrapped Princess

that's kind of a spoiler though but eh fuck it.

>>15287648
I don't really care about explanation - As long as it is fun, then it's all right.

Also, how does anyone here think of that Cybuster anime?

>>15287555
>my waifu is an ancient clockwork doomsday weapon : The series

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>>15287648
Wataru is the go-to choice, but pic-related works too.

>>15287648
>echnically is a far-future technological regression universe as opposed to a proper fantasy universe
I dunno why, but I honestly prefer this to outright fantasy. Especially when it involves technology disguised as magic.

>>15289031
Galient has this, as well as Monster Rancher to an extent.

>>15289031
True, it does give much more room for original flavour and unearthed ancient artefacts. When in true fantasy, it's just "progenitor race this" or "ancient majicc that", but in technological regression, or tec-reg as I shall now christen it, you have all sorts of room for ancient technological war and all this post-apocalyptic flavour. Even IBO has some of this, not that this means IBO is particularly brilliant.

>>15287463
>/m/an goes to college and gets a job in programing
>/m/an is extremely competent at programming spends all his money on gunpla and other plamo
>/m/an skips happy hour gets hit by car
>/m/an gets reincarnated in magicaland with magic robot knights
oh yeah he looks like a trap feel like i should include that here.
>magic is basically just computer scripts written in C++/Python/insert code monkey language here
>Dad works for magic Knight school
Skip a bit
>/m/an living the dream of making and piloting robots
That's pretty much how it went after having read two volumes. So far no sign of a harem.

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>>15286105
>Will we see a Renaissance of the "Mecha+Fantasy" genre?
Not very likely, unfortunately. If you want new fantasy /m/ shit, you're best off making it yourself honestly. It's what I ended up doing- making a couple of fantasy /m/ settings that I try to use in RPs and write a few short stories.

>>15287463
It's isekai bullshit, with the protag basically being /m/ incarnate. It's not terrible as far as isekai stuff goes, but it's still not particularly good. It's a fun guilty pleasure, though.

>>15289228
I feel that's a bit reductory, innit? You can level the same issues to SF, honestly- the two genres are so heavily intertwined with each other that it honestly just comes down to you liking elf shit or space shit more.

>>15287648
Fantasy mecha is an inherently niche concept. The average mechafag is turned off by the focus on medieval societies and magic and all that, while the average fantasyfag is turned off by the presence of mecha and related, usually sci-fi tropes. I've never really understood that divide, truth be told- fantasy and SF are heavily intertwined genres historically, and usually have a lot of crossover with each other.

Still, I think what makes fantasy mecha so hard to pull off is that you have to have a strong sense of worldbuilding.The existence of giant robots is going to radically alter the development of that society, no matter what angle you approach it from. If they're pure magic, that brings up the question on how magic plays into your setting and why the robots are even a thing. If you approach it with Clarke's Third Law in effect, and have robots as relics from a bygone age, you need to figure out the resulting arms race that'd happen, as well as how and why these things have survived the eons.

It's all a hassle for most people, but honestly it fleshes out the setting immensely.

>>15289346
I love fantasy robots; I've even come up with several settings based around them for use in RPGs and such.

>>15289346
I think the divide doesn't exist in literature because there science fiction wasn't full tech porn and fantasy wasn't full honourable LoTR stuff. When you bring that to the silver screen, science fiction quickly becomes this beast of grinding gears and pulsating hydraulics, and adapts the tech-porn aesthetic, while fantasy adapts the sword-and-shield, massive, personal, bloody battles aesthetic. Mecha hardly exists in literature because it ponders to this tech-porn aesthetic, which favours the development of incredibly overpowered war machines that break the scale of battle loved in modern fantasies and brings forth a gundam syndrome of single-unit powerhouses. At least that's what I think, based off similarities between science fiction and fantasy literature.

>>15290047
In addition, even without the single-unit powerhouse machines, there's a disconnection between a mecha/sci-fi pilot and the battle because they're watching through a screen and not using their real hands, so you don't get the bloody personal part that fantasy enjoys. For whatever reason, I haven't seen many of either science-fiction or fantasy anime having exploration being a central theme. This romantic, "new frontier" aesthetic is what I find often brings sci-fi and fantasy together.

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>>15287584
Don't know man I was autistic enough in high school to know the recipe for high grade steel. Could be useful to skip 500 years of metallurgy.

>>15290209
Are you retarded? Just knowing the recipe won't solve anything. You have to be able to create the tools necessary to produce it. That's 500 years of technological advances to get the point where they could even produce the stuff. The recipe is small time compared to the actual means.

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Tangentially related but we'll never see an anime show as good as Dune. It meshes fantasy, religion/philosophy and technology beautifully.

>>15289346
>If you want new fantasy /m/ shit, you're best off making it yourself honestly. It's what I ended up doing- making a couple of fantasy /m/ settings that I try to use in RPs and write a few short stories.
Cool, that's what I'm doing now as well. Is your stuff posted anywhere?

>>15290226
It cuts out all the trial and error. I know it's every science student's wet dream, but it still holds some water. Things like inventing a compass, gunpowder, and stirling engine could be very impactful, but don't expect to be able to charge your cellphone in a few years. I'd also tell them that conventional current is full of shit. Alternatively, that the charge on an electron is positive and that the charge on a proton is negative. The names would change to suit, of course.

>>15290260
>It cuts out all the trial and error.
Sure, but it wouldn't change much in the grand scheme of things. At most, you'd alter things by a decade or two.
>things like inventing a compass, gunpowder, and stirling engine
Still requires the means to do so. Most of these inventions, including steel, had ancient equivalents which weren't a practical due to limited material technology and production means. For example, they made steam engines in ancient times but they were not practical for production because they didn't have the materials to create a high pressure industrial version.
Honestly, you just have a very shallow understanding of technological progress.

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>>15290260
>. Things like inventing a compass, gunpowder, and stirling engine

The only one of those things a high school kid could make is the compass. The average neet shut in ain't gonna be able to machine shit.

The Connecticut Yankee was able to make changes to the world because he was a engineer and grown ass adult who actually knew how to make shit.

>>15290260
>>15290280
>inventing a compass
I doubt anon even know what a lodestone is or how to even begin mining one. Btw, the compass was invented in the BC. I really hate when people have this idea that because they're from modern times and marginally know about the technology we use today that they could just go back in time and BAM just start creating modern technology. It's really ignorant and shows that they haven't the first clue as to how technology actually progressed over time. Do some research.

>>15290278
>>15290280
>>15290295
Ok stirling engine is a stretch, but gunpowder and the compass are perfectly good ideas. Even the Damascus steel technique. Give them a voltaic pile, see what happens. But I think what matters more than giving them inventions is giving them a culture for experimentation and engineering. But we're talking about a fantasy world, which might have an entirely different approach towards science and philosophy, and who knows who's invented what and when. They might not have a compass, but they might have chemistry.

I don't think a student could have much more impact than a decade or two unless the civilisation was on the brink of a scientific golden age, but a decade is a far more arbitrary measurement of progress a thousand years ago than it is now. At best, an ace scientist could probably pull a civilisation forward by a century or two, provided he could gain the influence to do so.

I like how Mostly Harmless did it.

>stranded on a primitive earth-like planet
>teach the locals how to fashion the greatest of all of Earth's inventions and generally the pinnacle of human civilization the sandwich

Y'all are wound up rather tight about this whole thing.

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>>15290259
The most I've posted is a few pastebins containing unfinished setting drafts or half-finished first drafts of stories on /tg/ every now and then. I'll dig around to see if I can find anything to show.

In short, though, I have two settings for fantasy /m/. One's pure fantasy and something I've worked on and off on since I was like 14, where music is magic and nobles have dick-measuring contests with their magically powered giant, knightly robots.

Mechs in this setting were originally designed to fight cosmic horrors bleeding into reality, but that issue is long-fixed. They typically require at least two pilots- a mage, who's song powers the machine, and a knight who pilots the thing. Mechs work because they're emulating a shape found in nature- essentially, the universe is one, complex song. Literally- the universe was sung into existence. Magic in the setting works by, essentially, tapping into the composition of the song and changing the pitch just a bit- but you can't change it too much, otherwise you get fuck-all. The way mechs work is because it's replicating a form found in nature.

The thing is, mechs can't be mass produced for two major reasons. One, they're hideously expensive to maintain (much less build). That limits them to the noble class, and keeps them from seeing terribly much use in war (usually they're only used in castle sieges, duels between houses, or to slay dragons). The other is that mages are incredibly rare- whenever they're found, they're lapped up by nobles to be trained as mages.

It ended up being a setting that's arguably more driven by nobles bickering, and how characters interact with each other. Robots are a big deal, but they're not the main focus and are more of an element of the setting. Very much inspired by FSS and Escaflowne, honestly- more of a romantic fairy tale than a giant robot war story. I'll follow this up with a post on my other fantasy /m/ setting.

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>>15290259
>>15290544
My other is a lot simpler and admittedly nowhere nearly as developed, since I was working on it for a Mekton campaign that ended up not happening.

It takes place far, far in the future. A distant, backwater planet once colonized by mankind's star-spanning empire. That empire has long since crumbled, with this planet regressing to a medieval society.

It was giving all these sci-fi backgrounds to a generic fantasy setting. Elves were descended from the first generation of colonists, who genetically altered themselves to better handle the lower gravity of their ships. Dwarves are descended from asteroid miners. Most of the monsters on the planet was its natural wildlife. That sorta thing.

The in-universe mythology was actually a space opera. Stories of divine wars were Gundam-esc space operas, creation myths were histories of mankind's fallen empire, gods were historical figures, etc. Basically just having fun coming up with how a science fiction universe would look to someone from medieval Europe.

Then this medieval society starts unearthing the mechs of the setting- which kicks off an arms race, especially with an empire starting to conquer more and more land with ancient technology.

The mechs in the setting were a lot more along the lines of Gaia Gear and Knights of Sidonia than giant knights. Very sleek, high tech looking. They were made of self-repairing alloy, hence why they survived through the ages, and made a big deal out of how dangerous beam weaponry and ranged weapons like turrets were. A lot of that stuff was rare, since this was a world that didn't really have access to gunpowder, much less technology needed to have lasers.

In general, the mechs were going to be substantially more common and heavier of a focus, with combat being focused more on recovering enemy mechs than destroying them.

Basically if my first setting is Escaflowne and FSS, this is Galient and Break Blade.

>>15290476
Didn't they also give said locals Scrabble tiles?

mechs which couldn't be explained is no longer mech

>>15286105

Man I just remembered how Nobunaga The Fool ended up being so shitty they even cancelled the Figma.

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>>15290967
NobunaGUN did so poorly it won't ever get a figma

no justice

>>15290260
>Things like inventing a compass, gunpowder, and stirling engine could be very impactful

Reminder that internet-capable cell phones with all the specs of smartphones were probably more than a decade old before Apple made them popular outside of Japan. A technology to exist and to have applications alone really isn't enough to warrant wide-spread adaption.

>>15290967

No big loss there, a good majority of Kawamori designs are rather shitty outside of Macross and Armored Core.

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>>15289346
>Fantasy mecha is an inherently niche concept. The average mechafag is turned off by the focus on medieval societies and magic and all that, while the average fantasyfag is turned off by the presence of mecha and related, usually sci-fi tropes. I've never really understood that divide, truth be told- fantasy and SF are heavily intertwined genres historically, and usually have a lot of crossover with each other.
If anything a big problem with fantasy mecha is the fact it limits the crreativity of the mechs in question.
You get melee weapons and bows/crossbows, which is largely present in sci-fi versions as well, on top of rockets, lasers, energy fields, AI bots, guns,...
Maybe you could make a case for catapults and other siege machinery but that limits you to a not-exactly-nimble design, something akin to Monster in Macross.

>>15290944
Hoo boy.
>pic related

>>15290557
You. I like you.

>>15291016
He also did stuff for Omega Boost though, that was cool. Also, Studio Nue handled the designs in Tech Romancer, but he most likely just did the Wiseduck.

>>15290557
>this is Galient and Break Blade
It's also Vanguard Bandits, when you think about it.

>>15287468
>Literally /m/ goes to fantasy land and fucks around with robots

I see absolutely nothing wrong with it.

>>15290871
I thought that was a couple of books beforehand, when he was stuck on neolithic Earth.

>>15291147
>You get melee weapons and bows/crossbows, which is largely present in sci-fi versions as well, on top of rockets, lasers, energy fields, AI bots, guns,...

When you realize that it takes -magic- which is the main element in fantasy that you would call upon to make mechs exist in them... the limits of creativity is entirely up to how high-powered you want magic to be (and how in interacts/is developed) in the setting.

In that sense, you will just replace the tech level in a sci-fi with appropriate levels of magic. Saying that known medieval arms is the end of sci-fantasy mechs is like claiming sci-fi mecha can't go beyond current modern concepts of weaponry.

Why end at bows and crossbows when you could have projectiles/slave funnels flown by minor elemental spirit familiars ? (or magical cats)

Your mages can cast stone bullets ? further refine that with spiraling motions, increased speed, more precise/effective bullet shapes and perhaps carrying explosive charges by fusing with a different spell.

>>15292649
I think perhaps the primitive Earth-like planet he mentioned was in fact primitive Earth.

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>>15286105
>Renaissance
>Anime
pick one

>>15292723
Magic is far more arbitrary. There isn't a "real" aspect of magiccal fantasy like there is with robots and sci-fi. In Harry Potter there are these arbitrary rules about not magiccing food or money into existence, but these rules are neither flavourful nor have any reasoning behind them except "gotta nerf OP wizards". Any real-robot or realistic sci-fi always defines a realm of possibility and a realm of impossibility, both quite seperate. Newtype magicc isn't real-robot. The endless flexibility and lack of fundamental rules you are describing around magicc is the reason why magical fantasy worlds can't have the tech-porn aspect that sci-fi does. Regardless of whether the sci-fi tech is realistic or not, a person can see something within the rules of that fictional universe and think "that's insane" the same way one of us does when we see some guy with liquid cooling and silver heatsinks for his 32GB RAM.

Of course there are definitely some fantasy series that lean further towards having a defined ruleset than others, like FMA for example, but they're equivalently leaning away from that magiccal flexibility.

>>15287570
Is there a harem? I won't care about it if there isn't a harem.

And I mean a REAL harem, with multiple love interests and not just the MC pining for one girl while the others try to steal his dick against his will.

>>15293193

You talk about how shit limits creativity and then excuse it with your arbitrary judgement of how magic is arbitrary ?

I mean it's fine if you wanna say 'that's how it is typically' but, things being typical isn't an excuse keep it that way or to force your creativity down. If you gotta say all this to excuse saying how mecha in fantasy limits creativity, then your arbitrary thoughts of what magic in fiction should or could be is what's limiting creativity.

I don't know Harry Potter well, but if you're bringing up that it has arbitrary rules about not magick-ing food or money into existence, try thinking up your own reasons why infinite food/money isn't viable in a magical setting and then try thinking up a reason infinite food/money isn't viable in sufficiently advanced sci-fi either.

How arbitrary, limited or flexible the thing called 'magic' is entirely up to person making the setting. What's important is whether it achieves the effects it should have on the setting.

When you're mixing fantasy -and- mecha, you might as well be picking a few more things from mecha.

>>15293182
My god that looks amazing.

Such a great show and game series.

>>15293360
I agree, it is just how it is typically. If done right, a magiccal fantasy can have less arbitrary constraints imposed by the world itself, but this isn't terribly common. It seems to me like the standard fantasy setting is just aimed at lowest-common-denominator RPG audience.

>>15293455
Yeah, the concept is lacking a big game-changing title.

What >>15289346 said about the average mechafag and the average fantasyfag seems to be a thing too. I remember talking about something that has me bringing up one of the random setting ideas I have that involved magic spells being stored in USB drives and someone couldn't really take the idea well.

Despite that it's widely accepted that magic spells could be stored into scrolls, books and even enchanted into other objects, somehow using a modern device that's also meant to store information 'kills' the idea. I get if they feel it's less 'magic', but it's a stubbornly ingrained thing like saying 'mecha' can't be 'real' at all because it's not practical.

>>15293540
Wasn't that the unusual magic at high school or whatever? It wasn't completely awful and it did have a somewhat innovative magic system, but its characters and pacing were pretty garbage. It's the tech-magicc aesthetic that's hard to pull off. Usually you end up with magic circles and that kind of stuff because they glow and float in the air like all the cool techy holograms these days. That's a little stale by now, as are ordinary wands. We really do need something fresh and innovative, preferably not set in a modern Japanese high school.

>>15293571

The CAD ? Those were more like wands in function iirc, casting implements and stuff that can also be tricked/tweaked out. Much like Nanoha devices(which is probably partly guilty for the popularity of hologram magic circles. I just can't hate that though.). I do really like the idea and approach, though the setting itself not so much.

My ideas were derived more from the artificial gates in Gatekeepers 21 and the Magic Gun in DQ: Dai no Daibouken. (which uses a reusable version of the caster shells from Outlaw Star)

I think one of my favorite fantasy magitech settings is Gust's Ar tonelico/Concerto series.

>>15286105
Who knows?

As long as the setting, story, characters and mecha designs are good...