USA Challenges Japan In Mecha Fight To The Death (Video)

I've watched a lot of cartoons in my day, and I can remember a ton of animations with robots fighting. Transformers, Go-Bots, and even piloted robots like Voltron, Gundam, and Neon Genesis Evangelion, just to name a few of the more popular ones. All the way up to Pacific Rim in 2013 where the piloted robots fought oversized monsters to save the earth. Now we may have a battle similar to some of these popular cartoons, Megabot, a company founded in the USA, has created a piloted robot and challenged Suidobashi Industries, a company based in Japan, and they responded with a staggering YES!!!!!

There will be a few stipulations of course, Japan asks that the robots “duke it out” with melee combat to determine the winner saying that making something big and putting guns on it is just so American, they say to make it cooler and make them scrap it out. The fight is supposed to take place next year in 2016 undetermined date, time, and place.

Megabot started a Kickstarter campaign for the 1.8 million needed for the creation of their robot in 2014 with only a

prototype turret developed, and they claimed the wanted to create 2 more robots that would battle in an arena of their design. They wanted to form a sporting league for the mecha battles. They however did not reach their goal, over the period of their Kickstarter campaign they only accumulated $65,000, not nearly what was needed, the Megabot staff wrote that they believed they failed by trying to obtain the money before they had a working prototype. But they have one now, The Mk II. Designed by Gui Cavalcanti and Matt Oehrlein in San Francisco, California, this powerful bot Debuted in 2015 at the Bay Area Maker Faire. Standing in at 15' weighing 6 tons(12,000 lbs.), the Mk II has a dual pilot system with a 35 HP Honda gas engine spinning a hydraulic gear pump, two tracks from a CAT 289c skidsteer, which is one of the largest made. Legs are 1/2” and 3/4” A36 Plate Steel, Laser-cut and welded at the seams. 13 Degrees of freedom across 20 hydraulic actuator. Armed with arm cannons, the right arm can fire 3lb 6” paint cannonballs at 130mph while the left arm has a 20x shot missile launcher firing 2.5” circumference paint missiles at 150mph.

Now mecha is commonplace in manga and Japanese animation, and has been a part of their culture and history for quite some time. Suidobashi Industries made it a reality first with Kogoro Kuratas' creation the Kuratas. The Kuratas stands in at 13.1' 9,900 lbs and is run by a single pilot. Debuting in 2012, you could order one retail for $1,353,500. It has four wheels each mounted to individual legs with 30 hydraulic actuators. Run by a powerful diesel engine, and armed with a BB mini-gun shooting 6000 rounds per minute and water bottle missile projectiles. Kogoro Kuratas even said that it was a part of their history they had to win this battle, who knows if its personal or not?

We can only hope they make a date soon so the whole world can watch this battle of mechas that we could all only drool after. I for one can't wait to see this fight happen and I hope you can't wait either, this could be the start of a worldwide trend of mecha battles, only time will tell.