Mecha

Landmate | Fuchikoma | Bonaparte | Bonaparte MT-9

Landmate (ESWAT power armor from Appleseed)

Rather than sitting in a cockpit the pilot "wears" the landmate, with the pilot's feet being in the knees of the landmate and their arms inside "master" powered arms. This configuration removes the need for interior space for controls and allows for the manipulation of fine objects, such as human scale guns, not possible with the larger "slave" arms.
The model described is a fairly "generic" landmate, similar to the basic Guges model, but many different types are featured in Appleseed, including some top secret models which incorporate the Hermes anti-gravity material, reducing their effective weight and even allowing some models to fly.
Landmates are equipped with a wide variety of weaponry, including cannons, rockets, recoilless rifles and flame throwers, but the most commonly carried weapon is machine gun.
The pilot's movements are picked up by a skin-tight datasuit and amplified to move the arms and legs. At one point when the sensor "head" of her landmate is destroyed Deunan rips off part of the front armor so she can see!
This is a top of the military landmate line. Commercial landmates aren't armed and armored; are slower, heavier and less expensive.

Masamune Shirow on landmates


Replying about how he came up with the idea for the landmate: "It was quite a while ago, but I do remember seeing a black and white photo of an exoskeleton made by General Electronic in a TIME/LIFE book once. That was probably the source of my idea for the landmate. I wasn't aware that it was also being researched at MIT... I wonder what they're going to use it for? The master/slave system is even older. I believe the prototype for the landmate came about when I saw the "magic hands" being used in the medical sector. I'm sure the powered suits in Heinlein's Starship Troopers were another inspiration."

The following passages are taken from Intron Depot 1 ©1991 Shirow/Seishinsha

"Landmates work through synchronization: they "model" the movements of the operator. The key issues are how clearly and precisely you can feed back synchronization data without putting excessive stress on the unit and the operator herself. Moreover, since you can't cover all functions with optical fibres alone, electron flows must remain the main nervous system transmitter. Consequently the unifying design principle is always "smaller and lighter." The larger the landmate and the longer the physical nervous system becomes, the greater the likelihood of damage, jamming, lost data, and ultimately, the lower the performance. Naturally, the "neurons" must be thin, light and strong, durable in the face of bending and friction, and with minimal transmission loss."

"(...) the switches on the Guges saddle are for the operator to identify herself and open the hatch for boarding, no other controls are mounted externally. That's because you don't want your hatch opening, or your slave coupling ratios changing, or your riding modes shifting, just because someone bumped into you in fight. Even these few remaining external switches can only be activated by code once the operator is inside. Those codes are rescue codes, to be used to get the operator out when she is unable to activate the switches herself."

Fuchikoma (Section 9 Special Forces mecha from Ghost in the Shell)

Fuchikoma has four legs and is vaguely spider like in appearance and it is even able to run along walls and climb trees. They are controlled by direct neural interface (in vehicle mode the driver is strapped in, like in a landmate) but they have artificial intelligence too which is actually a learning computer. During a the course of the day, an individual Fuchikoma will have its own individual experiences, but at the end of the day all Fuchikoma's under the same ownership will assimilate their data into a mainframe, and then extract the information downloaded by their fellow Fuchikoma. Ghost in the Shell's AIs seem to be fully sentient and sometimes they want to do things their own way but they always obey orders.
Their thermal-optical camouflage effectively renders the vehicle invisible (performance is degraded in rain, dust, etc).
A Fuchikoma mounts machine guns in the arms and a grenade launcher on the front. It can also mount an addition weapon on either side at the rear, but this is seen only once in the manga (perhaps some kind of cannons) and appear to be only rarely used.

Bonaparte (Police Mini-Tank from Dominion)

Bonaparte is really fast and maneuverable. The main gun is a cannon and it fires a range of munitions, including stun, gas, high explosive, glue shells and even armor piercing discarding sabot rounds. A vulcan cannon is in a ball mount on the rear of the vehicle and has the full 180 degree fire arc. Later on in the manga Bonaparte is equipped with a taser mounted coaxially to the main gun.
Bonaparte is tough - it takes the full brunt of a 30 mm vulcan attack with damage to only it's external auxiliary systems.
Bonaparte's sensors are very good - it can track vehicles by their acoustic signatures and can scan the inside of a car's trunk! (presumably using sonar or millimeter wave radar)
The crew compartment is very cramped - the driver lies down with the commander sitting above them up into the turret with their feet either side of the driver (or, as often in the case of Leona, on Al's head).
All track vehicles damage roads to some extent but Bonaparte seems to do an especially good job of it (even more so in the anime). In the short story Phantom of the Audience Bonaparte in equipped with wheels to prevent this.
It has a pollution protection system which consists of filters on the air intakes to protect the engine from the bacterial cloud and a special coating on the exterior surfaces to protect them from acid rain.
Bonaparte is capable of popping out his treads to brace them against opposite walls to climb up lift shafts, clefts between twin towers, etc.
Depending on whether you believe the manga or the anime Bonaparte is either limited production or scratch built. The 'new' Bonaparte MT-9 in Dominion Conflict 1 are massed produced.

Bonaparte MT-9 (Police Mini-Tank from Dominion Conflict 1)

Dominion Conflict 1: No More Noise is not the same as Dominion, being somewhat more serious in tone and having a different continuity, and Bonaparte is different to his previous incarnation. Instead of being one-of-kind, Bonapartes are mass produced and are used by most tank police units. They are also bigger, about 2.5 m tall compared to the old Bonaparte at 2 m, have a pair of manipulator arms that fold up behind the turret and, in one of the biggest departures, do not destroy the road! The main gun and rear vulcan gun are the same but new are the mini-turrets on either side, which I am guessing are smoke grenade launchers (they are not used or mentioned in the dialogue). HEAT and armor piercing rounds for the main gun are only available with special permission from an Inspector or above rank, usually restricting it to a variety of (relatively) non-lethal rounds. The rear vulcan has at least two different round chains of ammunition (one normal, one rubber).
The bacterial cloud and excessive pollution are gone, removing the need for special filters and coatings and the auxiliary systems are now better integrated and armored.

	Pictures Copyrights From the Top: 1) Intron Depot ©1991 Shirow/Seishinsha. 2-3) GitS PlayStation game © Shirow(?)/(?)respective companies. 4) Dominion OAV © Shirow(?)/(?)respective companies. 5) Dominion Conflict 1 ©1995 Shirow/Seishinsha. Left: Orion ©1991 Shirow/Seishinsha.
	characters crossovers

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