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Elon Musk wants to build an anime-inspired giant robot

Vaughn Highfield October 15, 2018

Elon Musk is no stranger to voicing his opinion. It’s got him into heaps of trouble on numerous occasions (read: unjustified paedophile claims, Tesla going private tweet), but now it looks like it could lead to every mecha anime fan’s biggest dream: real-life Gundam robots.

Elon Musk wants to build an anime-inspired giant robot

Yes, Musk has said that he wants to build a giant robot and it all stems from his love of anime.

You may think it odd to see such a notable businessman be interested in anime but, as it’s one of the faster-growing cultural exports from Japan, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. His desire to build a giant robot started from a simple tweet outlining his love for Makoto Shinkai’s universally acclaimed Your Name.

In a set of replies, he also revealed his fondness of Studio Ghibli films Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. He also prefers to be called Elon-chan, rather than “weeblon musk”.

It then became clear that his love extended to the mind-melting complexity of mecha anime, and all-time cult classic, Neon Genesis Evangelion – which sees huge robots fighting angels as they try to save humanity from the cataclysmic Third Impact. It’s fine if you don’t quite follow, most big Evangelion fans find it hard to understand sometimes.

However, Musk’s love of mecha anime, which generally sees giant robots fighting each other in space or on land, resulted in him tweeting that “it is time to create a mecha”.

If this were anyone else, it could simply be laughed off as something that’s little more than a throwaway comment. When it comes to Musk, however, it’s tough to say just what he’s really thinking.

There are already vertical tank-like robots out there at the moment, with companies like MegaBots working on battle tanks for competitions. These contraptions don’t walk, in quite the same way mecha do, so perhaps Musk plans for something along the lines of a mecha from one of Japan’s longest-running anime series, Gundam.

There’s plenty of reference material out there for Musk to call upon and, bringing in line the energy advancements Tesla are making, along with the expertise in sending things into space that SpaceX has, perhaps it’s not the most unbelievable thing in the world.