Maybe my growing up watching friendly giant robots, like Astro Boy, and American shows with Robbie the Robot, explains my lack of fear? I’ve always loved and been fascinated by them. That they’ve been around since the 17th century is enlightening. That it was Japan that first made them is not a surprise.

I remember thinking about this topic when I recently re-discovered an old movie I loved from the 90s, called Roujin Z, from Katsuhiro Otomo, about a rogue nurse robot, that nearly destroys an entire city, because it’s just trying to carry its elderly passenger to see the ocean. I remember comparing the movie to some of the recent American franchises where the robots are malevolent, like Bladerunner, The Terminator, and Alien.

Its interesting because while we were wary of them, we weren’t always scared of them. We had friendly robots in pop media in the fifties and sixties, for example, like Robbie, and Rosie, from The Jetsons. At some point we began making movies only about robots wanting to destroy humanity, and I wonder what prompted the change.