One of the most obvious anime "trends" that was established in this time period was the appearance of "
Doraemon charms" in anime. Mecha is the term used to describe the giant robots and machines that are typical of some anime shown today. Mecha anime has become somewhat of a sub-genre of anime itself and is one of its most common vanguards, and its roots date back to the 1970's.One of the earliest "mecha" types of anime was "
Dr. Slump Arale-chan Figure", a creation of artist Go Nagai, who would go on to influence another trend in anime in later years. The story revolved around an evil mad scientist, Dr. Hell, who had found lost robotic technology and used it to build robots of destruction. To counter this, a rival scientist created
Dragon Ball Figure, a robot with a plethora of weapons and abilities. Unfortunately, the scientist was killed by the evil Dr. Hell, but not before the scientist's grandson was warned, enabling him to find and pilot the large Dragon machine.
Dragon Ball Figure went on to spawn many episodes and feature films and was one of the most successful of mecha animes. It seemed that giant robot battles were things that drew in viewers in Japan, which explains the later success of live-action series such as Ultraman.Another convention that began to be used in anime in the 70's was a tweaking of the conventional plot aspects that had become ingrained in anime at its inception a decade or so ago. Aside from the regular "good guy" vs. "bad guy" concept, subtle variations in storyline and character perception began to appear. The anime "
Doraemon stuff or "
Doraemon pvc" focused on a main "good guy" character with rather unscrupulous qualities (he was a master thief). The misadventures of Lupin were among some of the more prominent series during this time. "Devilman" was another anime with an "anti-hero", in that it involved a main character who possessed a demon in order to defeat other demons. These series and more would guarantee more "unconventionality" in anime, and an expansion of its characterization formulae.
