On the Shoulders of Giants: A Mech Podcast

A giant robot power hour discussing mechs across media, their stories, and why we love them. From anime to books to tabletop roleplaying games, join us as we ask and answer one of life’s most crucial questions: how cool are the mechs? Join our Discord! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts!

[raverzwhoshower]

My three girlfriends. Yes, they smoke weed.

[newholecity]

uuuughhhgh i feel awful i need to [remembers suicide jokes harm your mental health] [remembers that wasnt like an assertion with any data backing it up just something people said on here] [remembers i need this joke format anyway for the bit to land] [remembers my audience wont think this is funny] [remembers i post for like 8 specific people and the rest of you mean nothing to me] put on the best beam saber home game this towns ever seen

[osg-pod]

our guest on the newest cars don't fly ep (subscribe) pointed out that Tokyo Drift is a persona game

[osg-pod]

you can currently get the tokyo drift episode of Cars Don't Fly for free on our main feed

limited time! sample our wares!

LIMITED BONUS! Cars Don't Fly Episode 3 - The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) ft. Stephen Hero | On the Shoulders of Giants

A giant robot power hour discussing mechs across media, their stories, and why we love them. Join cohosts Alice, Brian, and Niko as we talk

[osg-pod]

Just wanted to mention that your Discord link appears to be expired; I went to see what else people might be talking about for the Locked In jam, but it's not having it. :)

thank you for letting us know, alice our webmistress has fixed this!!!

[uququ]

after a couple hours chopping dried sea urchins into tiny pieces with a razor blade you start referring to the razor blade as yourself in your thoughts. a little while afterwards you'll inevitably think something along the lines of "i'm getting a bit dull, i'm going to have to throw myself out & get myself a new self" at which point your internal monologue has pretty much returned to baseline

[life-of-jauxro]

[thaliarchus]

[osg-pod]

the birds have never been so back

[pseudotsugas]

go ahead get in the concrete hamburger seatbelt. since your ass wanna speak axiomatically

[osg-pod]

planning a major character death in the production office for tokyo drift (2006)

a very somber affair

[reneelovesrobots]

Fun fact this would absolutely work on me

[reneelovesrobots]

many such cases

[osg-pod]

icymi we are doing weekly 2026 ghost in the shell coverage 🙂‍↕️

[giucomix]

Shinji Ikari in RGU: Very conflicted. Pretty likely to treat Anthy like Rei and wanting to protect her just like Utena does, but by projecting his mom on her, so closer to Miki. However since he's a boy, Akio wouldn't manipulate him as he does Utena, but as he does Touga and Saionji. His self-esteem issues would make him the perfect target, as the affirmation of the patriarchy also offers a path to accepting "It's ok for me to be here". Unlikely to break the cycle and save Anthy, most likely to end up as just another abusive Duelist (and not a particularly good one).

Utena in NGE: Although she has no connection to the EVA's soul she can still pilot it intuitively thanks to her basketball skills

[parsleysagerosemarytimemachine]

Meat Mech Merge

Today I wrestled some inspiration to the ground, and created something for the LOCKED IN game jam for @osg-pod, a one page rpg about being trapped in the cockpit of a giant robot.

Meat Mech Merge

I'd love to do some more editing and decoration eventually, but finished is at least obtainable today. :)

[ephemeral-ephemera]

I recently read Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao - and I was absolutely blown-away by it. Fantastic story that pushed pretty much all of my buttons.

I really had no idea what I was getting into here. I saw a couple episodes dedicated to this book on @osg-pod and knew I had to check it out. Zhao's got a hilarious summary up on their website though...

Under siege by monsters beyond the Great Wall like that shitty Matt Damon movie, except the monsters are Cybertronian-like sentient machines, a society that has the fashion, social customs, and beliefs of Ancient China but futuristic tech fights back by pulling a Neon Genesis Evangelion and rebuilding their very invaders into giant mecha. A boy-girl pair in their teens, because of course they have to be teens, pilot the mecha Darling in the Franxx style, except in a much more sensible position (he hugs her from behind). Under command of human pilots, these mecha take on forms inspired by East Asian myth creatures and transform like Transformers through Digimon-esque evolution lines that get more humanoid as you go on. The pilots physically embody them, so it’s more Attack on Titan rules than Gundam. Oh, and they blast qi attacks, so the battles honestly read like a bunch of furries engaged in a Dragon Ball Z fight, and that’s no one’s fault but mine.

I saw that this book was originally marketed as "YA", which surprised me. That's not typically a genre I'm reading so maybe I'm just out of touch... But it doesn't feel like "YA". It feels a lot more harsh/mature than I'd expect from something like that. But, again, maybe my expectations are just wrong.

So we've got a world that's basically shaped like ancient China. Lots of Chinese myth and imagery. Apparently loosely based on some actual historical figures. Only it's got a sci-fi slant to it with biomechanical aliens and huge, human-piloted mecha.

Zetian is our protagonist here. She's been dealing with this world's misogyny far too long and she's had enough. She hatches a plot to get revenge for her sister's death... Which goes far better than I could have imagined... And she winds up kicking all the ass.

I really enjoyed Zetian. It was wonderfully refreshing to see her absolutely unbound. To see her striking back at the injustices of her world and actually scoring some wins.

I was delighted to see a real love triangle, too. Not that cowardly two-legged thing we typically see, but an actual love triangle.

The only real complaint I've got is that the book reads way too fast. The pacing is downright break-neck at some points. There's several places that really could've benefited from some room to breathe. A few more paragraphs or pages devoted to various scenes or events. It kind of feels like they had a hard limit and Zhao had to cut content.

And on that note - this book ends on one hell of a cliffhanger. So I'm absolutely going to have to read Heavenly Tyrant.

[yokolate]

The Ghost in the Shell (2026)

[drak0nis]

a good post from another app

[twopunch]

Some nice pics from the Mirada site for the development of the intro sequence. Mostly posting because I recognize the Hallgrímskirkja and I see they’ve replaced Leif with a kaiju….

[hajikelist]

#this is what pushed the movie from Fun to Really Really Good for me #most other movies of this type are just like #“now - but with aliens!” #but here we actually see how society at large has reacted to kaiju becoming a part of everyday life #it’s a nice bit of realism to balance out the “giant rock ‘em sock ‘em robots” concept

(via hinoneko)