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IDK, maybe Gundam, Appleseed, Mecha connection. They are reminiscent of these.









Tau are slightly less rounded, a bit more chunky to fit in the 40k universe but the aesthetic is similar. You got to admit Tau are quite Weeabo. I know people will now argue semantics but to a layman these all look very similar.

FoxPhoenix135 wrote:but in either case this thread has been beat to death and needs to end.

Which it very oblingingly did two years ago, until someone forgot to check the fething date of the last post.

AegisGrimm wrote:There is no way that a Battlesuit is more visually anime than a Wraithlord/Guard.

Really? I honestly don't see it. How many anime are there with lumbering behemoths hosted by dead spirits and how many are there with man-operated fast jumping mechs?
Almost every anime main hero mech is operated personally by someone inside it.
Besides, just look at Ogard post. You must be insane if you want to convince anyone that wraithlord looks more similar than tau suits.
We are not talking about one particular brand, but rather about general look perceived by bigger group of people with different anime-knowledge.

Even if it would be (to me Ogard links show something entirely different) it doesn't matter.
Yes, a rare occurrence in Eldar army may be more similar to anime mech. A great deal of every Tau army looks very similar to anime mech look.
Grey Knights do not have Ad mech look because sometimes sometimes there is a Techpriest in the army.

Living for hundred of years and then dying on the battlefield when the wind is too strong is not anime-like. Piloting mech to the battle in very young age definitely is.

Guess because they have a gundamwing feel ..... thats the big one, been repeated alot

Really? I honestly don't see it. How many anime are there with lumbering behemoths hosted by dead spirits and how many are there with man-operated fast jumping mechs?
Almost every anime main hero mech is operated personally by someone inside it.

The fluff has nothing to do with visual style. The graceful organic curves of a Wraithlord reminds me more of an anime mech than the slightly gawky Tau battlesuits with their tiny feet and ankles. Heck, the current Eldar Wraithlord even has a ten-foot sword as a wargear option! I think they look like giant robot samurai (complete with hanging banners), which makes me think of anime.



Plus, now they can hold their ranged weapons like they are just giant guns, rather than just having gun-arms, which makes me think Gundam and Heavy Gear.

You must be insane if you want to convince anyone that wraithlord looks more similar than tau suits.

No more personal attacks, please. People can have other opinions.

I certainly see the mech kinda style in Tau battlesuits, though the Wraithlords feel much more anime style to me. I mean it's a giant, sleek robot that likes to whip out a sword and kill things with it instead of shooting with its cannons. If that doesn't say anime, Idk what does.

I can concede that the Tau suits remind me of Macross, and that only adds them points in my book.

Why would them being considered anime be a bad thing anyways?

(Warning: Bias of Anime Fan)

Why would them being considered anime be a bad thing anyways?

Nothing in my book, but evidently there are some huge Tau fans that will bite your head off if you don't agree fully that they are considered anime.

I think mostly the anime angle started as an accusation/conspiracy theory, way back when the Tau first came out, that GW was pandering to the anime side of Japanese fans to sell more of their new army, because if I remember right, it "just happened to" coincide with GW making a a big push into the Japanese markets.

Frankly, the only thing vaguely anime about them are their battlesuits, which comprise all of two types of (non-Forgeworld) models in the range. The rest of the army just looks like a sleek near-future army to me.

Grey Templar wrote:Considering that a massive amount of Sci-fi is also Anime leads to the understandable confusion.

Eh? You'll find that science fiction was quite well defined as a literary genre long, long before "anime" (in the sense in which the term is being here used) became even vaguely well-known outside Japan.

Because they look like anime charectors. How is that difficult?

Hey look, it's a Tau Devilfish...no, wait, it's a Zentraedi ship design from Macross:



To be fair, though, the Space Marines do blatantly steal from Mospeada with their motorcycles and perhaps even the backpacked power armor. Needless to say, 40k borrows from a lot of sources.

Joey wrote:Because they look like anime charectors. How is that difficult?

So do the spaceelfs.

"Tau not looking like the Mecha in animes..."

if you say so....
Please note not every "mecha" in "anime" looks like Gundam or Gurren Lagann.


Not to mention, design wise, Tau is the first warhammer army with design that is made for flat panel pen lining

I never particularly got it. Don't watch anime and I just think of poor quality animation with big eyed characters and mouths that flap open/closed when they talk, so I never thought of battlesuits looking cartoony

Tau have anime elements. That doesn't make them an anime army. I personally think that anyone who is ignoring those elements either hasn't watched much anime, or is lying to themselves, but I also think the same thing for those who seem to be treating the fact they have one or two facets of anime as the fact that everything about them is anime.

It's obvious that the Tau are based heavily off of Macross and Gundam, at least visually.

Obvious to the point that arguing about it is somewhat ridiculous.

The other armies in 40k do have some Anime elements but it is much more subdued then the Tau Anime elements, which form a large portion of their basic astetic.

Fluff-wise, the Tau are a pretty generic advanced alien race with a mish mash of a Caste system and socialist elements. Not specifically Anime in this area.

They are based a little bit off of the Anime genre, that's a fact. Some of the interviews with the designers in the studio at the time even mention it. Iirc they talked about trying to get interest in the Tau by making them resemble the Anime cartoons somewhat, which were highly popular when the Tau were first made.

For some reason, the tau strikes me as chinese...the tau empire being the People's Republic of China

Viersche wrote:For some reason, the tau strikes me as chinese...the tau empire being the People's Republic of China

The fluff / Caste system Yes

The join us or die Yes ( Tibet / Taiwan )

Aesthetic = Mecha though

I still wonder why mecha implies anime. Don't robots simply evoke sci-fi in the most general terms? Unless Crisis Suits are blatant rip offs off a particular anime/manga's style I don't see why Tau mecha have to specifically be related to anime. Why not say any anthropomorphic robot is anime inspired? Why only Tau machinery?

Sure some anime mecha share traits with Crisis Suits but I don't think any one design shares enough with the Crisis Suits to label it "anime-inspired" over "generic sci-fic robot". I mean why don't people make comparisons to Mech Warrior, Chrome Hounds, Supreme Commander, or any of the other robot-flavored-fiction out there? It's always anime for some reason...

asimo77 wrote:I still wonder why mecha implies anime.

Because most popular TV series that feature mecha are anime.

Robotech, Voltron, Gundam Wing, Gigantor (sort of )... I could probably continue if you'd like.

I feel like those can all be considered regular robots and general sci-fi as well as anime. The shows you listed share some traits with the Tau but only minmially IMO. I think what holds all that stuff and the Tau together is the general concept of science fiction rather than anime. In other words, sci-fi as a genre is a stronger thread tying the Tau to those shows than anime is. Otherwise I think you could take almost any fictional robot and say it's anime inspired.

asimo77 wrote:I feel like those can all be considered regular robots and general sci-fi as well as anime.

But...

They're all actually anime. You see where I'm going with this?

Here's a list of mechs from popular media. I know, I know... wiki, but still there's a trend that you may notice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_mecha

asimo77 wrote: Otherwise I think you could take almost any fictional robot and say it's anime inspired.

To someone who isn't really going to ponder it too deeply, mechs with bazooka hands are going to be considered to have some sort of anime influence due largely in part to the fact that nearly every show that I can think of featuring mechs has been anime.

I always said the same thing. the only thing that look anime in the Tau are the battlesuits. Everything else isn't anime. I play Tau and i don't like anime. I chose Tau cause i like the look of their infantry and tanks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Cadorius wrote:Hey look, it's a Tau Devilfish...no, wait, it's a Zentraedi ship design from Macross:



To be fair, though, the Space Marines do blatantly steal from Mospeada with their motorcycles and perhaps even the backpacked power armor. Needless to say, 40k borrows from a lot of sources.

I thought this was an eldar from Battlefleet gothic...

I think GW was just being thorough. If someone else has a good idea, why not take it? 40k has always been a mash up of the entire SF/Fantasy genre. It's the logical continuation of a strategy that's worked pretty well in the past.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

asimo77 wrote:I still wonder why mecha implies anime. Don't robots simply evoke sci-fi in the most general terms? Unless Crisis Suits are blatant rip offs off a particular anime/manga's style I don't see why Tau mecha have to specifically be related to anime. Why not say any anthropomorphic robot is anime inspired? Why only Tau machinery?

Well yeah, now any science fiction story can have a flying robot in it so I guess the original japanese flavor may have been lost. But the whole flying robot genre definitely got started with imported japanese cartoons, so that's why the association is there. I'm not saying that no one in America had ever done a flying robot story, but science fiction was always first and foremost something that you had to read to participate in, and since most Americans don't read they didn't have any exposure to it. You can watch japanese cartoons on the idiot box, however, so it reached a broader audience.

Anyway the association is valid if you go back a decade or two. Alot of the posters who don't see the connection may be too young to remember how completely different anime was when it was originally introduced. Now it's just part of the culture.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

asimo77 wrote:Otherwise I think you could take almost any fictional robot and say it's anime inspired.

Eh. There's a real difference between the american-style robot stories of Isaac Asimov, say, and the mecha genre. The former were more intellectual, trying to think about some of the consequences of new technologies. Mecha stories are usually just action flicks, although they do occasionally aspire to something more lofty.

Why?

For the same reason why American teenagers who are into anime think that Japanese High school must be this fun and wonderful place - never knowing the grimdark reality of it all.

A style and set of images are associated in a person's head with a Cultural Sphere.

its true that there is no one particular characteristic of the Tau that screams "ANIME," anymore than say the Eldar but its rather a combination of characteristics that reinforce on one another. the Robot Design + caste System + Social Philosophy + something as small as Location in the Cosmos.

I mean this is the reason why we have folks screaming their heads off saying that the Tau are Communists. Aside from just being a funny joke, its because they've taken those string of associations in their head and made one more, namely the Tau = People's republic of China.

Nevermind the fact that the culture is more strongly geared toward Japan (and that isn't a castigation of caucasians for not knowing better. Ask someone from Asia what the definitive differences between an American and a Canadian is, and they are going to confuse a few things.) - the parallelism just fits well in their minds.

asimo77 wrote:I still wonder why mecha implies anime.

Because the first shows and movies that kids these days saw that had giant robots was anime shows. Gundam wing is a prime example.

Now just because this is their reference point, they stick to it. Standard ignorance, everyone does it to some degree.

If anything else was the primary reference point, the implication would be different. People forget that giant robots originated in european fiction and migrated from there.

Just about everyone owns a game of some kind with giant robots in it. Halo had giant robots after all, and the halo covenant is more like the tau than ANYTHING else. Some might say bungie copied 40k.

But everyone tends to copy everyone else these days.

Point of interest-

I just checked on this thread while I wasn't logged in. There were three ads selected at the top of the forum page for it.

Two were regarding robots and robotics.

One was regarding rape.

Looks like the case for similarities between Tau and anime is being made by the ad robot!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ^^this!!^^

Google appears to have answered the question. Spock would be most pleased.