Says you?
Still fascinating to see this towering thing in motion. I was never into Gundam, but Macross Plus had me hooked, and this brings back memories such as this scene:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SMMRs5ZIqd0/
Those YF-19 and YF-21 are still the best { variable fighters U mecha } designs to my eyes: simple, elegant, believable, futuristic yet practical.
https://opuszine.us/_assets/stills/macross-plus.jpg
In hindsight there are so many anticipatory things in Macross Plus, it’s really good SF trying to reason from first principles: AR virtual canopies, neural link operated plane, deep AI generated musical arrangement from simple human composition, Kessler syndrome, drone vs human presence on the battlefield, overall human relevance in the face of emergent AGI...
EDIT: I didn't expect this comment to be controversial/downvoted, and it is interesting that it is evoking some level of passive aggressive sarcasm.
It might work for trivial matters, but when the stakes are high and the chips are down human nature is always going to lead to force to get what is important.
"Ok so our robot beat your robot on some contrived fight. We're going to invade your country with a population of millions, take all of your money and possessions and force you all to work in the salt mines as slaves until you die an untimely and avoidable death. Please form an orderly line at the salt-death-mines tomorrow morning. This is totally fine since the robot your country sent to fight ours lost so you've just got to accept it without any resistance. Kthx Bai - signed your new overlords"
It’s more like proxy battles, and in real life we do this with expendable humans rather than robots. When a side decides to surrender it’s not necessarily when the last person is wiped out... usually done when the military is near or close to defeat.
OP is suggesting that one day robots could outclass flesh and bone humans so much that real humans will be like the women and children of past society that will not have to fight in real battles.
The kind of political dilemma that would be solved by a mecha duel would probably not be the same one that requires invasion and enslavement in death mines.
For cyprus, the greeks and turks could just speed up the music until some team loses the beat. Spratly islands could be sorted with synchronised swimming?
Bonus clips:
>no loss of people's lives
Sure...
And even with robots, once you destroyed the enemy robots, what happens then if they don't surrender? Now your robots have to kill humans (or if you refuse you didn't achieve anything of consequence).
I think you'll find you mean 'precedent' :-)
In any case, I really hope this project didn't receive ridiculous amount of funding. Japan used to be the absolute no 1 when it comes to robotics about 20 years ago, and have then been losing ground since. I hope the policy maker and people holding the money realize that it is far more valuable to take that lead back than create a big moving totem pole of the past that people can dance around.
My wife would really enjoy seeing that.
They seem content with cute ideas which has little relevance to major global problems and tech advancement. They still have a top notch scientific and research system, and produce great results every year.
But they seem completely lost the drive for building the actual things that can affect people.
Put this in perspective, aside from a fan service, and commercial benefits, what’s the point of a actual size gundam model that can move?
Can you name 1 Japanese person who had similar ambition and commitment to large-scale projects?
