Review: Metal Society

Finding material in other media that can inspire or illuminate the creative space that Mobile Frame Zero occupies can be difficult sometimes.  In general it's limited to a handful of mecha anime, some comics, and maybe a book or two.  Sometimes you have to bend a little and look at things that aren't directly related but can be "spiritually" linked to Mobile Frame Zero.  That's what today's review is going to be.

Published by Image Comics and currently on its fourth issue -- of five -- Metal Society is a comic set on a post-apocalyptic(?) Earth, where humanity is no longer the dominant sapient species.  Robots now rule the world.  Humanity was wiped out and has been recreated through experiments by the current robotic overlords as a tool for manual labor.  There are tensions between humans and robots as humans see themselves as able to more than what they are limited to and robots see humans as second class citizens.  The first couple issues are spent building up the main characters and the tensions between the two societies.  This tension comes to a head and an attempt to resolve that conflict through personal combat between robot and human champions is proposed.

Like all good science fiction it holds the world up to an allegorical lens, looks at the current culture and class conflicts going on, and projects those images onto the page.  Of course, this also could have come into existence because someone thought the idea of "Robots Versus Wrestlers" could be awesome if played straight rather than for laughs.

Basically -- steering things back on topic -- this book might be able to shed light on alien motivations in MFZ.  While truly alien interactions might be difficult to represent, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs should still be relatable to alien society in some form.  Alternatively, this could be another way of understanding the conflict between the Solar Union and the Free Colonies.  The robots could be considered the Solar Union and the humans could be considered the Free Colonies.