Films: Pacific Rim (2013)

Alias: Various, notably Gipsy Danger (The Steel Titan), Striker Eureka (The Scrapping Soldier), Crimson Typhoon (The Triple Threat), Cherno Alpha (The Hammer Slammer), and Coyote Tango (The Towering Tyrant)

Type: Man-Made

Location: Civilized Area/Ocean/Eldritch Location

Height/Weight: Ranges from 76 meters and 1,850 metric tons (Striker Eureka) to 85 meters and 2,412 metric tons (Cherno Alpha)

Affiliation: Good

Summary: Imagine for a moment if the entire world put aside its differences in the face of total destruction. Imagine if instead of focusing on weapons like nukes and such, they decided that they would take a few pages from the legacy of the giant robot-genre often prosperous in the East, and just go to town on what inevitably came next. Ladies and gents, the Jaeger Program.

History: In 2013, an alien race known as the Precursors began to raid the Earth by sending monstrous Kaiju through a rift in the Pacific. After barely managing to kill some of them, the leaders of the world realized that they couldn’t keep nuking all of their problems, so they decided that to defeat monsters, they needed to make monsters. Thus, the Jaeger Program was conceived. The premise was a simple one; build giant robots that needed two pilots each, sic them on the Kaiju, and win the fight. For a while, it worked, and the Jaeger pilots became heroes and celebrities. But then the Kaiju evolved, got stronger, and trashed most of the Jaegers, destroying mankind's faith in the project, and it was soundly defunded. Now, only four Jaegers remain in a resistance base known as the Shatterdome. Everyone there must now put their heads together to find a way to end the Kaiju menace once and for all.

Notable Kills: See Finale Fate for the Anteverse Kaiju for some.

Final Fate: Crimson Typhoon gets its head crushed by Otachi's claw-tail, Cherno Alpha is ripped to pieces by both her and Leatherback, and Striker Eureka blows itself up to take out Scunner and heavily weaken Slattern. Ultimately, Gipsy Danger is the one to kill Slattern, use his body to get through the Breach, and then blow itself up to take out the Precursors for good. Gipsy's pilots, Raleigh Beckett and Mako Mori, manage to escape just in time. And there was no sequel. Nope. There was no sequel in 2018. There was no sequel with the Jaegers being used as a glorified recruitment-ad, the pilots weren't all irritating teenagers, Raleigh didn’t succumb to Kaiju Blue, AND MAKO MORI DIDN'T DIE IN THE BACKSEAT OF A GODDAMN HELICOPTER JUST FOR THE SAKE OF CHEAP SHOCK AND/OR GETTING REPLACED BY A CHARACTER SOLELY MEANT TO PANDER TO CHINA!!!!! But like we said, never happened.

Powers/Abilities: All Jaegers are powered by the Drift, which is basically the two minds of the pilots becoming one. The greater the bond between pilots, the more efficient the Jaeger's movements are. However, Gipsy Danger and Cherno Alpha run on nuclear power due to being some of the earlier builds. Gipsy comes with not only a nuclear reactor for a chest (known as the Vortex Turbine), but also plasmacasters, coolant it can fire from its sides, and a retractable sword in each arm. Striker Eureka is the fastest of them all. It runs on pure electricity, smacks foes with temperature-resistant brass knuckles, has the Assault Mount 3.25 Sting-Blades, and can fire several Anti-Kaiju Missiles from its chest. Crimson Typhoon can rotate its torso 360 degrees, and uses the Thundercloud Formation, which basically amounts to it waving around the buzzsaws it has for hands in a violent flurry of attacks. Cherno Alpha is the most armored, and has the Tesla Fists to give its punches an extra oomph. Coyote Tango has huge mortar cannons for firing from a distance.

Weakness: The earlier Jaegers run the risk of giving their pilots radiation-related illnesses due to their nuclear reactors. Also, if the Drift isn't perfect, the Jaeger will most likely go out of control. But more importantly, many Jaegers are a bit on the slow side, giving much more agile and reactionary foes a window to counter.

Scariness Factor: 3-A giant robot more than capable of causing some catastrophic collateral damage isn’t meant to be taken lightly. But we made these things, and we are fully in control of them. In a way, the concept of Drifting to operate a Jaeger is brilliant, as it brings out the true bonds between us. Indeed, Jaegers embody the fighting spirit of humanity, and as far as we're concerned, time and effort well spent.

Trivia: -Although this film is one big homage to mech-anime and kaiju films alike, director Guillermo del Toro made it law that no one actually watch that stuff during production, as he wanted their ideas to be their own. He was also specific about the film not playing out like it wanted to get people to join the military. Needless to say, it worked...and then Steven DeKnight got his grubby hands on the seq...no, that didn't happen.

-Okay, fine, one of the major reasons we cannot fathom the fact that Mako...did the opposite of living in a non-existent sequel, is that not only was she one of the best characters in this film, but she was so beloved by audiences (and del Toro most of all) that she inspired a new version of the Bechdel Test, which basically entails that a) at least one female character is in the movie; b) she gets her own story arc; and c) said arc is not solely about supporting a man's arc. To say the sequel, which is not real, made her fail her own test would be a tremendous understatement. But then of course, that is not a thing that happened. Got it?