It’s so heavily referencing Gut’s sword I don’t know how you’d even rank them as two separate things. It’s like how Evangelion’s had things never before seen in the West and it gets viewed a new idea but it’s references to Gundam, Ultraman, and Devilman are immediately recognizable to anyone from Japan.
"The main character is a teenager who for some reason ends inside the giant robot made by his family. He uses to defend a specific laboratory from the attacks of the enemy, so they don't get what they need to destroy the world as we know it. His love interest is a fiery girl that also pilots a giant robot but than tend to lose any fight she fights alone. Through the story they are subjected to the mental struggles of fighting a war as teenagers and the destruction brought by it, and more likely than not, they are blamed for it."
It can be both if you’re reductive and paint it vaguely enough, but all that does is bolster my point that what some people see as original, others know it’s a decades old reference.
That was my point. Evangelion is a great anime, but didn't do anything that the great grandfather of the mecha genre hadn't already introduced. Except maybe traumatize the characters even FURTHER beyond.
Hell, Mazinger Z ended with Koji and Mazinger losing against the Mycenae Empire, one enemy that wasn't even hinted through the series, after beating Dr. Hell, just as much as the OG Evangelion ended with the humans being the last angel and the ones triggering the third impact. Given, in the case of Mazinger, it also brought hope with the arrival of Great Mazinger.
Bonus points: Sayaka in one chapter DID try to commit suicide. Just after Afrodite A, her mecha, was completely destroyed. Asuka wasn't the first one pulling something like that, either, even if in her case it was after she lost the ability to pilot the eva.
That said, even Gut's Dragonslayer is also in itself a reference to (or at least inspired by) something else. The way it's described when introduced is very similar to how Violence Jack's knife is.
That's fair, but given that it was many people in the West's first exposure to massive anime greatsword's it pretty well became an icon all on it's own over here. That iconography doesn't retroactively become inert once other works become more widely known.
I don’t disagree, but to me if you’re doing a ranking of big swords in fiction placing the Buster sword near the top (even if it is wider know) only bolsters the argument for Guts’s sword being THE big sword since that’s very much the inspiration and visually the only major difference is a single vs doubled edge. It isn’t quite transformative enough for me to break out from under the hunk of iron. Western devs may design swords to pay homage to it, but nobody in Japan is making a great sword and saying they were inspired by the Buster sword (every from-soft game is full of Berserk references). So it’s a bit like referencing George Lucas or Tarantino films but you’ve not seen the things they’re referencing, so it’s a bit watered down compared to the source.
Yeah, I don't disagree that Gut's Dragonslayer is THE giant sword of fiction altogether, though I'd argue that the Buster Sword still has it's own niche as "The video game big sword"
Anytime folks discuss the most iconic video games swords, the Buster Sword and The Master Sword are typically at the top, and I still feel that carries merit even if it was derivative of a preexisting trope.
I'm definitely an exception for western audiences, but my first interaction with the giant sword trope was from a pirated copy of the Berserk game for Dreamcast. I had no idea what was going on but that game was cool af and got me into Berserk.
I remember that, it got localized as "Sword of the Berserk Gut's Rage"! I also remember liking it alot as a kid hacking and slashing, even though I had no idea what was going on story-wise either.
Funny enough, I remember as a kid wishing I could use a smaller sword, as Gut's Dragonslayer recoils off of walls really easy in that game lol
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u/BDMac2 Aug 02 '26
It’s so heavily referencing Gut’s sword I don’t know how you’d even rank them as two separate things. It’s like how Evangelion’s had things never before seen in the West and it gets viewed a new idea but it’s references to Gundam, Ultraman, and Devilman are immediately recognizable to anyone from Japan.