![]() ![]() The speed at which the Scopedog moved also made it stand out among its competitors of the era and was something that would also end up in another of Takahashi’s works, as the mecha in Panzer World Galient also utilized a similar roller dash. So the roller dash wasn't a cost saving idea but to make the mecha move a lot faster. ![]() This is because Dougram was a successful series, so VOTOMS had enough funds to have the artists draw those frames of animation to have the mecha walk step by step if we wanted to. However, that's not the real reason for the roller dash. One other thing, it's assumed that the roller dash was used to reduce the number of frames of animation as it would mean the mecha wouldn't need to walk as much. To solve that I decided to have a good sound effect, so something realistic and almost violent sounding might fix the problem. So maybe adding wheels would make it feel like one of those toys. In my childhood, the tin toys I had always had wheels underneath. The roller dash was to make the mecha faster but what I was really concerned about was that adding wheels under the feet would make the mecha look like a childish toy. So we both agreed at that time that 4 meters was the right size for a realistic mecha. At the same time, Okawara was thinking along the same lines and he too thought 4 meters was the smallest size where a mecha could still have a pilot and be a mecha. People wouldn't really notice the difference in terms of the animation. However, if it was 5 meters when drawn in the anime it won't be that different between the 10 meter tall Dougram. Though, for me at that size, that wasn't a mecha it was a powered suit, so 2 meters was too small. Also powered suits and powered armor were getting popular around that time too. If it was 2 meters, maybe some small Japanese person could pilot it but it's closer to a powered suit than a full on mecha. ![]() From that point I thought about what would be a realistic size, so maybe 2 to around 5 meters. I really wanted to do something about both the size of the mecha and its speed for the second series I did. So battles were just running around on the ground and that lacked speed. Compared with Gundam, which features fights mostly set in space and looks fast, Dougram was entirely ground based. The other major problem was the mecha's speed at this size. So that wasn't great in terms of the mecha's sense of scale. The Dougram was around 10 meters tall, which in animation can be depicted as being both small and large. The problem with Dougram was the mecha's size. When I started on the second mecha series, VOTOMS, I started to think about what needed to be fixed after Dougram. When I interviewed him last year, he had this to say about the process behind VOTOMS. The fact that Dougram and VOTOMS have been so very influential with mecha games is no accident really, as the mecha in the series operated around rules laid out by their writer and director, Ryosuke Takahashi. Put simply, without mecha like the Scopedog, games like Heavy Gear and Hawken would not exist. Much like Fang of the Sun Dougram before it, which was used as the basis for BattleTech and MechWarrior, VOTOMS was the second major intersection between Japanese mecha anime and Western video games. Following that, the roller dash setup in the Scopedog’s feet, as well as the overall configuration of the mecha, had a direct impact on games such as Heavy Gear. ![]()
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