People who know me already know that I’m a huge anime dork. From the narrative driven Full Metal Alchemist to the ridiculous allegory that is Neon Genesis Evangelion, there are few series I haven’t at least seen a few episodes of. Let’s just say I keep a regular subscription to Crunchyroll. Overall, animation quality is a huge factor to me when it comes to me really liking a series or not.
Recently, I’ve been blown away by One Punch Man, which had over the top action that was just a visual spectacle, as well as having cool commentary on super hero stories. This is where Mecha-Ude comes in, due to it reminding me in its themes and style of One Punch Man and it looks pretty damn cool.
Mecha-Ude is actually being led by a young animator named Sae Okamoto, who is an ambitious animation student who has worked with several animation studios, but never had the chance to lead her own animation. Now, she’s leading the charge after hitting up Kickstarter, building a team, and putting her ideas out there. As of now, the campaign has succeeded, with some time left before it ends.
Mecha-Ude stars a young hero who becomes attached to a strange mechanical arm that is sentient. Living in the boy’s hood, the two slowly meet more humans who have bonds with these strange mechanical beings, even battling a rival who sees these “Mecha-Ude” as mere tools and not as separate beings. As the show goes on, a large threat will appear to test the heroes, all while uncovering the mystery of these strange machines.
Mecha-Ude still has a lot of things in the works, as it is a product pitch more than anything, but the artwork and trailer that has been shared looks awesome. Once again the animation is extremely fluid and the characters look interesting. The show reminds me of a mixture of FLCL and One Punch Man, which is something I’d never thought I’d say, but there it is. Mecha-Ude is definitely an anime to keep a watch on, cause it just may be the next amazing series.
Judging by how long anime takes to create, Mecha-Ude may still be two or three years out. Until then, be sure to check out the Kickstarter page, which has a ton of cool art and details that go beyond a simple article. That, and the creator Okamoto self produced an anime short that went fairly viral for a student work. Known as 11:08, this short piece provided a ton of criticism for the creator, which helped build her determination and inspired Mecha-Ude. Enjoy that short below.
