Superheroes Vs. Super Robots

I came to a realization the other day.

I was thinking about the spectrum of fantastic entities that I rambled about a bit in this two-and-a-half-year-old post. I was also recently considering the subject of Grant Morrison's Supergods, which I had seen at Borders while taking advantage of its going-out-of-business clearance. (Didn't buy it.)

Grant Morrison, of course, poses the idea that superheroes are modern-day counterparts to the pantheonic deities of Greek, Viking, and so on mythology.

Super robots are explicitly and openly described in Japanese culture as being gods or godlike, even in the first super robot series, Mazinger Z. (There is considerably less of a taboo on that sort of thing in Eastern culture.)

What is the fundamental cultural difference that causes these two different traditions of godlikeness to be as different as they are (though note that they are also quite similar in numerous ways)?

In Western culture, a small-g god was a powerful human being who was given adulation, and who pretty much did what s/he wanted.

In Eastern culture, a small-g god was/is a powerful not-always-human entity that has its own territory or rules that it protects or follows, and can be asked for protection and aid. (Not that you couldn't ask a Western small-g god for that sort of thing, but it was much more up to their whimsy whether they listened to you.)

Superheroes do what they do because they choose to (most of the time). Super robots do what they're asked to do (most of the time!).

...

There's not much more to it than that. (Note that a similar difference, sort of, exists between Lovecraftian monster gods and daikaiju.)

-Signing off.