therobotmonster:

virovac:

Can we stop romanticizing swords over guns? They both kill. Both were used to oppress the masses throughout history.

Looking at you Drift and Transformers Animated

(Now, Drift becoming a targetmaster because of a psychological inability to pull a trigger, that I can see.)

Edit: Also many firearms in Transfrormers franchise are designed to be nonlethal like , the glueguns or various blinding ones. So, yeah.

I’m not sure what aspect of romanticization you’re referring to, exactly, as Drift’s sword-thing is clearly there to prop up his whole ronin Samurai schtick and Transformers Animated Autobots were all using non-firearms because the staff was clinging super tight to the Decepticon = Military Hardware, Autobot = Consumer goods aspect. (They were similarly sticklers for Autobots not flying without being altered and about factionalized eye-color.)

But the main reason you see a lot of swords and other melee weapons is because they’re just more visually interesting. Stage fighting, even when it is in animation, is essentially a dance. It gets your characters in close to one another where they can banter, where they can clash, block, dodge, parry, thrust, repeat.

 It takes way more effort to make firing guns at distance or from cover to be as interesting. Getting hit multiple times and fighting through it is something people are used to from movies and tv when it comes to melee weapons while guns are presumed to be one-hit-incapacitates-if-not-outright-kills. (This is why heroes bringing knives to a gunfight is an easy way of baking-in their underdog status)

And then there’s the fact that the weapons themselves are more interesting looking in many cases. Guns tend to blend together, but swords come in all kinds of lengths and curvatures, and then there are staffs, maces, flails, balls-and-chains, scythes, hammers, pikes, spears, etc. Sure, your guns can get a lot of personalized detail, but when you think about the Power Rangers’ weapons, you think of their melee/non-firearm weapons, not so much the pistols that are slightly themed but otherwise identical. 

One need only watch any given episode of Energon to see just how deeply boring (or unintentionally hilarious) a bunch of energy bolts firing is.

Then you come to the trope-aspect around skill. Melee weapons take training.and expertise to use, or raw brute force. Guns in the real world require skill, but in fiction the general audience assumption is “point and click”, and a character has to either be a trick-shot champ or a sniper for their skill with firearms to be considered an exceptional ability. Typically, your audience will assume that with a melee weapon the character is doing the work, and with a firearm the weapon is doing the work. Heroes, who are skilled and honorable, often get melee weapons while faceless legions are going to carry guns. 

A character who kills with a sword has to be close enough to look the enemy in the eye, while a character who kills with a gun can do so at range, miles away in the case of a sniper.

A melee weapon requires commitment. For your heroes, that means that the ones with melee weapons have to be the most certain of their use of force. For villains, it means the ones that carry melee weapons are probably the most monstrous and sadistic, as they’ll see their handiwork up close.

There are scads of tropes and behind the scenes reasons why melee weapons would be favored. I think you may be assuming motivations that aren’t necessarily those of the creators.

This was very informative! Thank you. 

I actually do enjoy melee weapons for Transformers, I’m just kind of sick of swords all the time and loved how Animated tried to add more variety with nunchuck and Bulkhead’s flail. 

I honestly have toyed with the idea of swords actually being an “advanced technology” on Cybertron and guns were invented first.