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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rackhir" data-source="post: 3439835" data-attributes="member: 149">Hiragana and Katakana aren't that difficult to learn since they are phonetic alphabets. But it helps a lot to have a "reason" or a use for them. Picking up a japanese language game (you'd need a mod chip or utility to be able to use it on an american PS2), wouldn't be a bad way to give you an incentive. A lot of times they are used to spell out english translated words. For example "Cannon" winds up being "Kannon" in Katakana, so half the fight is just figuring out how the word got mangled. A lot of character names are rendered in Katakana as well, since they are nominally "Foriegn" names.RE: Giant Robots - I suspect it comes down to the fact that they just aren't part of the cultural DNA the way they are in Japan. People just don't grow up on them in the US the way they do in japan. While Anime does tend to go in cycles. There's ALWAYS some kind of mecha/Sentai shows on TV in Japan.It probably doesn't help that let's face it. The idea of giant anthropomorphic robots as weapons of war, is really an essentially silly one. You can dress it up in what ever justifications you like, or extrapolate what ever breakthroughs you want, but the fact is that to accomplish the things you'd use a giant robot for, they are pretty much one of the worst ways you can do it.</blockquote>