One thing I've noticed online is that people from United States seems to be the one who thinks the least of their own army. Despite the fact that the US army is possibly as strong as the rest of the world put together in terms of conventional warfare, you always have guys who claim that if Obama declared himself as Emperor of America, a few guys with their buddies will fight back with their guns against the US Army even though you've as good a chance as a teenager piloting a mech to stop the army.
In fact, there seems to be an extension of this being 'guns are the most powerful modern weapon known to man' that I tend to see in Japanese anything that forms the basis of such arguments and it even extends to fiction. If you see a guy dodge bullets clearly that means the army can't deal with such a guy. The funny thing is that even though an Agent in the Matrix can certainly dodge bullets, he can't dodge a cannon from a helicopter. Of course that's hardly surprising since a gun is a very weak weapon in the arsenal of the modern army, even in terms of conventional warfare. If you look at the US superheroes most of them are at DBZ or even more powerful levels, and in Hong Kong it's command to see people stomp the ground and crack the earth in half, so sure those guys probably don't fear the US army. But Japanese stuff? I bet you can take out Naruto with a machine gun if you shoot him first, which is probably why Naruto avoids any mention of modern technology. I wonder if it's the samurai culture, e.g. we got swords and we don't need guns, but that's more of a Chinese thing and in the Chinese stuff they specifically state at the beginning that these guys are all pretty much imprevious to military grade weapons thanks to their martial arts training.
I don't necessarily require realism, but sometimes it makes me wonder if these guys are using nerf bullets or whatever exotic material that somehow does minimal damage to human level opponents in their so called army. Most of the time there wouldn't even be the generic 'magic sauce' arguemnt. For example, you need AT Field to hit an Angel in Evangelion. That's why even though these giant robots would probably get destroyed by a helicopter in 10 seconds, they were still humanity's last hope because they're the only thing with an AT Field. Actually, the only fictional universe I can think of where the 'magic sauce' is convincing is Star Wars. There is no doubt the ability to destroy planets is insignificant compared to the power of the Force there.
In fact, there seems to be an extension of this being 'guns are the most powerful modern weapon known to man' that I tend to see in Japanese anything that forms the basis of such arguments and it even extends to fiction. If you see a guy dodge bullets clearly that means the army can't deal with such a guy. The funny thing is that even though an Agent in the Matrix can certainly dodge bullets, he can't dodge a cannon from a helicopter. Of course that's hardly surprising since a gun is a very weak weapon in the arsenal of the modern army, even in terms of conventional warfare. If you look at the US superheroes most of them are at DBZ or even more powerful levels, and in Hong Kong it's command to see people stomp the ground and crack the earth in half, so sure those guys probably don't fear the US army. But Japanese stuff? I bet you can take out Naruto with a machine gun if you shoot him first, which is probably why Naruto avoids any mention of modern technology. I wonder if it's the samurai culture, e.g. we got swords and we don't need guns, but that's more of a Chinese thing and in the Chinese stuff they specifically state at the beginning that these guys are all pretty much imprevious to military grade weapons thanks to their martial arts training.
I don't necessarily require realism, but sometimes it makes me wonder if these guys are using nerf bullets or whatever exotic material that somehow does minimal damage to human level opponents in their so called army. Most of the time there wouldn't even be the generic 'magic sauce' arguemnt. For example, you need AT Field to hit an Angel in Evangelion. That's why even though these giant robots would probably get destroyed by a helicopter in 10 seconds, they were still humanity's last hope because they're the only thing with an AT Field. Actually, the only fictional universe I can think of where the 'magic sauce' is convincing is Star Wars. There is no doubt the ability to destroy planets is insignificant compared to the power of the Force there.