MegaMaster Musings

Humans or Robots?
July 9, 2004

This isn’t really related directly to Mega Man, but I was talking with a friend one day about a different series that involves robots. We were discussing how the robots in that series ate, slept, cried, bled, and died just like human beings. Naturally this finally led me to ask, “Why in the world didn’t the author just write about humans and leave it at that?”

My friend answered, “Humans are boring.” I know he was only joking, but it got me going. What’s boring about humans? Sure, in real life they can’t jump tall buildings or take a missile rocket to the chest without dying, but this is science fiction we’re talking about. All I have to do is point to one perfect example: Metroid’s star Samus Aran. In case you weren’t aware, that’s a human inside that suit, and it’s a female to boot. She can do everything Mega Man can do, except for the Weapon Copy, and she’s human. She can even compress herself into a tiny little ball and roll around on the floor dropping bombs. Mega Man can’t even do that.

But let’s get back to robots. So people write about robots because writing about humans is boring. Except that writing about robots is dull if they don’t have emotions and things, so the authors basically have to turn the robots into virtual human beings in order to make the work interesting.

Hmm, I think I just made my point. Okay, case closed.

- The MegaMaster