Commander Cello

I imagine this wasn't the intended way to read this (if it was, the pronoun would've been dropped), but this is a great post to read in a Rod Serling voice.

I went and trawled through the Internet Archive for any answers, and I found some neat stuff.
The short answer: It was Robotech that popularized the use of the term "mecha" in English, though it did not necessarily have the specification of referring only to piloted robots.

a scan of a page from the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization's May 1982 bulletin. It's a list of anime they're screening, and the focus is on "'Xabunga' (new robot series)", referring to Xabungle. to the side is a small illustration of Jiron Amos, a character from Xabungle

a scan of a portion of the cover to the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization's May 1983 bulletin. it features the C/FO mascot Fanta piloting a giant robot, labelled as "Fanta's Giant Robot Jugganauto Skiruteru", lifting up a video monitor stand (labelled as "our new heavy duty video monitor stand!! oboy!!"). fanta is saying "Good cartoons are neat! I like them!" The illustration is signed WWASHER '83

Here are some examples, not that they're necessary. The May '82 C/FO Bulletin lists "Xabunga" as a "new robot series", referring to Combat Mecha Xabungle.
The May '83 Bulletin has a nice cover illustration by Wendall Washer of the C/FO mascot, Fanta, piloting a giant robot, labelled as such.

THE ZEIT ZEIGER (2026-02-20)

THE ZEIT ZEIGER (2026-02-15)

people getting into the "two dumb friends in Toronto" genre should check out Sublo and Tangy Mustard, a long-running indie cartoon about two dumb friends in Toronto

Nirvanna the Band the Show
"The ボトムズ"

an image of the inkvein.com main page

an image of the inkvein.com comics page, showing the website's scrolling cornerbox and color on hover gimmicks

an image of the inkvein.com comics page popup, showing ink vein presents #2 (coming soon)

an image of two inkvein.com pages rendered on a mobile device, labelled "and you can bet it's responsive to mobile devices, too!"

I designed and put together @inkvein.com's new site, and I had a lot of fun doing it! Web design is the bomb dot com slash careers!

Check it out at inkvein.com !

This Is some art I’ve made for Decomposer, a graphic novel written by Mason McDonald. The book is well on it’s way to being finished but we’ve set up a Kickstarter to help us complete it. I’d really appreciate if you’d have a look at the page (link below) and consider helping us out. Thanks!

It might be confusing to English speakers that it's called a *watch,* though. I imagine this could be chalked up to the fact that there's one main word in Japanese that's used for timekeeping devices, from wristwatches to wall clocks (it's 時計/tokei, for anyone wondering).

An image of the original Japanese packaging for the first series of Tamagotchi, with the title being an all-caps rendering of "Tamagotch."

Just stumbled on an interesting fact I've never heard mentioned before: the original Japanese packaging for Tamagotchi was labeled with English text saying "Tamagotch." This makes it slightly more clear that it's a portmanteau between "tamago" (Japanese for "egg") and "watch."

I drew the three stooges for my friend

3d render of a monster with 6 limbs and 3 eyes. the flavor text reads: "It is relentless when something catches its attention. Believed to be the most human-like of all known monsters, countries and agency plan to exploit it as a weapon."

CGkaiju #6 GAGARIAH

gagariah spread

3D CG illustration featuring three monsters, a pink shark with arms and legs, a white whale with golden tusks and a dinosaur with a cactus growing on its back

CGkaiju "MEGALOFAUNA"
#怪獣

a digital illustration of Doraemon, Felix the Cat, Krazy Kat, and Stimpy as catgirls(?)

Catgirls(?)

holy fuck

a digital illustration of a stinkfly redesign

a digital illustration of a four arms redesign

a digital illustration of a diamondhead redesign

a digital illustration of a ripjaws redesign

The new Ben 10 redesigns have got me thinking how I'd redesign the aliens. I was a huge fan when I was a kid, so it's hard for me to change any part of them. I think they'd be great if they maintained some of their abstractness and didn't look so "real", sort of like some of the aliens from Ultraman

Wow, this play sounds incredibly fascinating—do you know if there's any way to watch (a recording of) it nowadays, particularly Stateside? If not, at least it seems that the behind-the-scenes booklet has been shared online.

i just had to call out a locksmith after being locked out. this cost an uncomfortable amount of money! so, if you wanna help a guy out...

[Trailer] Ink is Thicker than the Blood You Spill YouTube video by yoyoworld2004

My friend made a trailer and I can't stop watching it youtu.be/LvrZSCkS2xc

In Japanese, you address elder men as OG-chan and i think that's beautiful

KNUCKLE SANDWICH! YouTube video by ATS

KNUCKLE SANDWICH OUT NOW!!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wNK...
#pixelart

a digital black and white illustration of The Moon, the robot from the manga by george akiyama, crying

the same illustration but with colors applied

Testing out a new tone with The Moon
#themoon #georgeakiyama #ザ・ムーン #ジョージ秋山

a digital illustration of space demon daikengo and spal

DAIKENGO and SPAL (who isn't that important, but looks very cool, so I just had to draw him)
#daikengo #ダイケンゴー

KNUCKLE SANDWICH!
out this Valentine's Day!
#pixelart

seems like it's post-credits that say "The LA Gangs will return."

saw iron lung. great movie

Even just this one article for the first chapter took a lot of time and effort (more than I thought), so I hope I'll be able to get to more of it soon—but it'll likely be a *long* time until I (ideally) finish the series.

In the meantime, I hope you will be looking forward to Rebuild of Genshiken!

I've also written a preface (also available on my Neocities page), for anyone curious about some of the ground rules of the project so far (though it's not required reading for my analysis of chapter 1, for those who just want to jump right into it).

In Rebuild of Genshiken 001: Starting with Kanji, you will hear about...

・Kanji (the guy)
・Kanji (the writing system)
・The secret behind "Kinkuri 4"
・A concrete reason why One Piece fans are Freaks

You can read it here: commandercello.neocities.org/posts/2026-0...