Kuokkanen
Posts: 3545
Joined: 4/2/2004 Status: offline
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Armored Trooper VOTOMS This is a big one. Anime franchise that began in 1983 with latest release in 2011, Armored Trooper VOTOMS counts near hundred episodes total from around 20 minutes up to full hour per episode. The first series alone is a 52 episode marathon, which is followed by a number of shorter series and independent episodes. Common themes to all of them are scifi, mecha, and war. What stands out most is mecha known as Armored Trooper. Armored Troopers are about size of Kuratas. Ugly but practical, Armored Trooper can carry and use a variety of weapon pods in its arms. Most of the weapons are oversized infantry firearms. Armored Trooper moves either by moving its legs, or with powered roller wheels at bottom of its feet (faster). In addition feet can have retractable picks for braking or heel-face turns. Other equipment can include: Harpoon at end of a cable Rocket engines for flight in low gravity SCUBA gear There are a number of different Armored Troopers. Anime don't go into detail of their differences, but some of them seem to be specialized for underwater environment, though others can be equipped for it. Overall Armored Troopers look like something that could realistically be made in very near future if governments (or Elon Musk) were willing to invest on it. (We can debate about their practicality against tanks and ATGMs) First anime series is outdated. Armored Troopers seemingly blow up and disappear with great balls of fire immediately after getting hit, and significant characters survive with a plot armor. Later anime are more reasonable with broken Armored Troopers left laying around in pieces and full of holes. Otherwise war is Hell, and protagonists angst with stress and PTSD. Though more gritty and realistic take on mecha genre with serious effort, it still isn't equivalent of Apocalypse Now nor Hammer's Slammers. Nevertheless I'm very pleased with this franchise and I highly recommend it to wargamers. Most of the anime franchise is on HIDIVE. It is only missing Armor Hunter Mellowlink, which to my understanding has lost its master files, and is only available on VHS and in the high seas. https://www.hidive.com/tv/armored-trooper-votoms
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You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it. MekWars
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