When watching Pacific Rim in German it didn't strike me much to hear those giant robots being called "Jäger" (hunters), only to be surprised by the fact that they are called "Jaegers" in the original, too (and the beginning of the movie, when the word's definition is given alongside "Kaiju", says that this indeed derives from the German word for "hunter").
But while the name "Kaiju" is an obvious hommage to the Japanese origin of this whole movie genre with giant monsters, the choice of the word "Jaeger" for those robots seems rather arbitrary while still pretty unusual. Is there any explanation why the term "Jaeger" was chosen to name those giant robots or any connection of that word to the mecha genre those things were meant as an hommage to?
analysis
tag to be justified. Feel free to remove it if you don't think so.