Lets all be honest here. Exactly zero people should be surprised by the fact that a company in Japan, home of Gundam, Macross, Evangelion and countless other giant robot anime series, has made a mech suit that you can now purchase for a mere $1.3 million dollars. It’s easy to get very excited about this upon first impression. Finally! a 13 foot tall, 4.4 ton mech suit that I can ride around in punting off all the people who drive slow in the passing lane! Biped legs would make for a more graceful punting form, but I’m sure they’re working on that for Kuratas 2. Oh look, here’s a very cheery promotional video to go with the Kuratas. I’m not completely sure, but I think there’s an F-Bomb in the lyrics of the song, so it gets a precautionary **NSFW WARNING**

So yeah, the soundtrack to that video had some questionable lyrics but we can overlook that since Japanese pop culture is generally pretty strange and because YOU CAN GET THE KURATAS IN CUSTOM COLORS! Super duper. Since this is a dream come true, we might as well check out the How To Ride the Kuratas video. I’m sure it won’t be chock full of crazy things that send up tons of red flags.

Oh… ok then. So let me get this straight. The Kuratas has an external Xbox Kinect that automatically tracks human heads for the Gatling gun’s targeting systems? Furthermore, there’s another Kinect in the cockpit that fires the weapon when the pilot smiles as demonstrated by the sexy demo model falling into a fit of maniacal laughter? Wow, those are some really convenient and not-sadistic-behavior-inducing-whatsoever features. Another worrisome aspect of the Kuratas is that it’s control system seems to just be a glorified Iphone app. My problem with this is not necessarily in the functionality but more so in the network capability of the controls. Lets say these Kuratas robots are mass produced for “peace keeping” forces. Over time, all the pilots go insane after their brains start associating smiling with mass death. Naturally all these crazy pilots then go on a rampage. Oh no! What do we do now? The most efficient solution to this would be to turn over control of all these Kuratas robots to some Skynetesque AI hive mind. Aaaaaaaand that’s how the robot apocalypse starts, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve always theorized the Xbox Kinect would be the key piece of technology for initiating the robot apocalypse (it easily communicates with computers and is disturbingly good at tracking human heads), but this is pretty twisted.

Sources: Suidobashi Heavy Industries via IO9