So you want to ride that Humongous Mecha and save the city from the alien invaders? Well, too bad — only one person can pilot it!
A common trope in the Super Robot Genre, though at times it shows up even in the Real Robot Genre: only special individuals can pilot a mecha. This is commonly due to some special compatibility that the pilot has to the robot, or due to some Applied Phlebotinum restricting the kind of person capable of piloting it. Either way, don't expect your average person to pilot this thing any time soon.
This can lead to Falling into the Cockpit, if a person with no prior training is required to operate the machine due to being the only available compatible pilot.
Sister Trope of Only the Chosen May Wield and Only the Chosen May Ride. Compare Only I Can Make It Go. For those unable to pilot, see Rejected by the Empathic Weapon.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- The Big O: The Megadeus' judge the worthiness of potential pilots, it's not pretty if one fails though.
- Downplayed in Cross Ange: the mech Villkiss can be piloted by everyone... but only a Norma of Royal Blood (such as Ange or Jill) and in possession of a royal signet ring can activate its hidden Super Mode.
- DARLING in the FRANXX has a post-apocalyptic future where teenager artificial humans are trained to pilot the giant mecha known as Franxx in pairs of a boy and a girl in a stamen-pistil system to connect between each other and then pilot the Franxx.
- Gundam:
- In the original Mobile Suit Gundam and its sequels set in the Universal Century, certain mechs are specifically built for psychic Newtypes like Amuro and Char, with regular, non-psychic humans restricted to their most basic functions.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn in particular, the Unicorn Gundam is specifically keyed to Banagher's biometrics, making him the only person allowed to pilot it and access the La+ Program guiding the protagonists to the mysterious Laplace's Box that everyone's chasing after.
- Mobile Suit Gundam Wing has the five young pilots managing the advanced mobile suits called Gundams. Every one of them are Child Soldiers trained all their life to become Human Weapons and the only capable to pilot these giant robots.
- In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, the Aerial appears to be pilotable by anyone, even the ability to user higher permet scores without the usual effects. Episode 16 reveals that both of these aspects are at the discretion of Ericht, whose mind dwells within the machine. When Elan tries to steal it he can't even turn it on, before it spontaneously raises his permet score to life-threatening levels, making Ericht visible to him and letting her order him out.
- The Evangelions from Neon Genesis Evangelion are only compatible with certain people, all of whom are 14 years old. Only people born after the cataclysmic Second Impact can pilot the title mechs, and the 14-year-olds are simply the oldest and, therefore, most suitable for piloting among them.
Comic Books
- Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1977): A giant robot (later named Red Ronin) is constructed for S.H.I.E.L.D. that ends up only being compatible with the designer's twelve-year old grandson, Robert Takiguchi, who snuck into the mech without permission, and it permanently synchronized with his specific brainwave pattern. Although when Red Ronin reappeared in other Marvel storylines after the Godzilla comic line was finished, Rob was Put on a Bus and it no longer had this limitation.
- One arc of Iron Man revolves around a Humongous Mecha called the Godkiller that can only be piloted by someone with the right genetic markers. Due to the meddling of a sentient robot who is attempting to restart the thing so he can use it to protect the Earth, Iron Man was genetically engineered before birth to have those markers, so he can pilot it, and the robot attempts to force him to do so. Unfortunately, the baby who was genetically engineered is Tony's secret brother Arno Stark, and Tony was actually adopted, so he can't pilot the machine.
- The Robos in Mech Cadet Yu are living mecha who imprint on the first human child that they meet, and thus will only consent being piloted by that one human (though they may sometimes accept a new pilot if the original dies.) The military thus trains children as pilots before meeting a Robo, but were forced to accept the lowly janitor Stanford Yu when he accidentally met a Robo first and thus formed an unbreakable connection.
- Averted in Shogun Warriors, which is only notable because the three pilots are emphatically the chosen ones, selected and summoned by benevolent aliens who need them to defend the Earth. Throwing them into battle against their first Kaiju with barely twenty minutes training seems a lot harsher when you later discover that the robots can be piloted by anyone (and have been sitting in storage for a century, with plenty of time to fully train some pilots in case of emergency).
- Wonder Woman: The original Robot Plane and the Lansinarian Disk versions of the invisible plane can reject pilots and only allow those they chose to pilot them. Despite its AI the Robot Plane doesn't start doing this until some aliens try to take it apart for parts, which makes it so selective it at one point abducts Steve Trevor so that it can have a pilot it approves of while Diana is busy.
Fan Works
- In the Abraxas (Hrodvitnon) Recursive Fanfiction Abraxas: The Clash of Silver
, Kiryu doesn't let anyone except for Aleksandra remotely pilot him after he becomes sentient. She ends up piloting Kiryu in his fight against the Apex-made Mechagodzilla to save the world.
Films — Live-Action
- The Jaegers of Pacific Rim can only be operated by a pair of pilots who not only have to be compatible with the machine, but drift compatible with each other.
Literature
- Full Metal Panic!: Justified for the Arbalest, who had to be piloted by Sousuke in its first deployment, and since its onboard AI configured itself for him, no one else can do so (and it can't be reset because its creator died).
- His Dark Materials: In The Amber Spyglass, intention crafts seem to be pilotable only by beings holding daemons.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech: To pilot a BattleMech, pilots use their own sense of balance through a Neurohelmet. While most people can handle this, anyone with an inner ear problem, vertigo, easily prone to motion sickness, or any other form of balance issue cannot pilot a BattleMech. And some people who are otherwuse fine just are incompatible with the interface.
- Warhammer 40,000: One Imperial raid on a Tau base saw a Guardsman commandeer a battlesuit to use it against the aliens. The battlesuit did not recognize his DNA and electrocuted him.
Video Games
- The titular Sentinels of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim can only be piloted by people injected by nanomachines called Innerlocitors, and only people who are "Compatibles" can be injected Innerlocitors in the first place, of which only fifteen characters, all teenagers, are. More specifically, it's because the "Compatibles" are the only actual flesh-and-blood people in the setting.
- In Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, when Rex encounters the Battle Armored Dragon Assault Strike System, it recognises him as a worthy master due to him wielding the Kill-Star, and permits him to ride it into battle during his assault on Sloan's fortress.
- Galaxy Angel: The Emblem Frames are equipped with a HALO system, an interface that feeds on the pilots' mental condition to boost the ships' performance. Each one is set so only the respective Angels can make them work, and their performance goes down if they're having a Heroic BSoD.
- In The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, the Divine Knights are powerful and ancient mechs that can only be piloted by their respective chosen Awakener, in contrast with more "mundane" mechs like the Panzer Soldats that can be piloted by anyone with the right training.
- This is implied to be the case with the Divine Beasts in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. They're four gigantic animal-shaped mechas that were built in ancient times as a defense against Ganon, with representatives of each major race — Zora, Goron, Rito, and Gerudo — known as "Champions" chosen to pilot them. When the Divine Beasts are unearthed again, it's remarked that certain members of those races felt an inexplicable pull toward them: for example, Mipha, the Zora Princess and a mild-mannered White Mage, became vibrantly animated and even fiery as soon as she saw Vah Ruta, the Divine Beast of her people. It's downplayed in that the chosen Champions needed to be taught to use the Beasts, but their general connection to them leans toward this trope.
- Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love: The STAR armours are built to synchronize with specific pilots, who fuel the mecha with their personal spiritual energy. This becomes a major plot point in chapter 6, when Sunnyside explains that Gemini was never able to pilot her STAR due to the existence of her Split Personality, which causes the armour to identify her as a completely different individual.
- Some games in the Super Robot Wars series allow the player to switch pilots to other mechas; however, only certain Real Robot mechas allow you to do that (typically from the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise or certain original mechas), because the Super Robot-type mechas wouldn't make sense (or even work) with different pilots.
- In Titanfall, the Titans have a neural link to their pilots, and only the linked pilot can pilot a particular Titan. Interestingly, dialogue at the end of Titanfall 2 implies that a pilot can only have a link to one Titan at a time.
Web Animation
- gen:LOCK: In order to pilot one of the military Humongous Mechas known as Holons, a human's mind must be temporarily digitized and transferred into a cyberbrain, a process known as gen:LOCK. Unfortunately, as the technology is new and still being refined, only very specific people with compatible nervous systems can use it. In the second episode, we get a demonstration of why: one of the recruits for the program turns out to have been replaced with an enemy spy who is intending to steal a Holon, and who forces the scientist in charge of the program to upload him. As the spy isn't gen:LOCK compatible, it promptly fries his brain.
Western Animation
- Mech Cadets: The Robos are more than just giant mechs. They are sentient Mechanical Life Forms that choose their own pilots and won't allow anyone else in their cockpits.
- Voltron: Legendary Defender: The Lions of Voltron choose their pilots, only allowing those they deem worthy to pilot them.
