In an effort to help guide Mechabay towards adding more titles to its databases, as well as giving the mechabay community a guidline to work from, this thread will be a series of posts from myself chronicling the long history of mecha.  Because there is so much to cover, I will not be able to spend a lot of time on any specific title or cover each and every title in existence.  For reference, I already have a complete chronological list of every mecha anime title ever made, organized by year of release, which you can find here: https://mechaanime.fandom.com/wiki/The_Megalist  

Lastly, I can't promise how often I will be able to add posts to this thread, but hopefully I will get it finished sooner rather than later.

The 1960s_________________________________

  To discuss the origins of mecha, we first must discuss the origins of anime. All of this goes back to one artist: Osamu Tezuka.  Tezuka was known as "the god of manga", one of the most prolific manga artists of his time.  In the early days of Japanese animation, Japan primarily distributed existing animation from other countries.  This lead Tezuka to become a big fan of another legendary artist, this time from the west: Walt Disney.  When the powers that be in Japanese entertainment decided they wanted to start producing their own animation, it was Osamu Tezuka they turned to.  Even before he started working on anime, his influences were made clear in a manga he wrote in the 1940s called Metropolis.  The manga features a species of giant rats that Tezuka calls, "Mikimaus waltdisneus" which bear a striking resemblance to a certain famous cartoon mouse.

  Tezuka's love of Disney's work inspired him to start the common trait of large eyes associated with anime.  In 1963, Tezuka's first anime series,THE first anime series, Tetsuwan Atom, (known as Astro Boy in the west), begain airing on Japanese television.  This would also be the very first anime series to be brought to the west. In terms of mecha, that began with Astro Boy as well.  While Astro Boy was primarily about sentient robots and not so much the big piloted kind, there was one particular story of significance:  The Snow Leopard.  In this story Astro combines with a large group of other robots to form a giant robot to battle the story's antagonist.  Tezuka created this story in the original manga, and adapted it into the anime series in the 1960s.

  The one other noteworthy anime from the 1960s was Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Tetsujin #28, known in the west as Gigantor.  This series also made its way to the west.  While Tezuka first pioneered these basic concepts, Tetsujin #28 would mark the first full fledged giant robot mecha series.  However, the title robot Tetsujin was not piloted from within like most of the mecha that would come after it.  Instead, the hero operated Tetsujin via remote control. 

There's not many titles to talk about since mecha, and the anime art form were in their infancy.  However, things would start to pickup in the 1970s....

1960s Reference Material:

(Note: official youtube channel of the American distributor for 1960s Astro Boy)

Mitsuteru Yokoyama

1934 - 2004

Osamu Tezuka

1928 - 1981

https://animemojo.com/mecha/fafner-the-beyond-anime-screening-three-episodes-early-new-trailers-a6424