Thursday, January 1, 2009

Cartoon Profiles: Robotix

Robotix is another rather unique show. (Wikipedia describes it as "not good enough to continue [without its toyline]." I say shut it up, Wikipedia. Aren't you supposed to avoid opinions?)

Like Inhumanoids, it started in a block of very short segments (in fact, the same block; it was about six minutes per episode not counting the introduction and credits). And also like Inhumanoids, it exists in its entirety on YouTube.

Robotix takes a couple of premises that were successful elsewhere and synthesizes them. Here's the first episode, led off by the introduction:





In a nutshell, Robotix is Star Wars meets Transformers. It features massive intelligent transforming vehicle/robot entities, and takes place in outer space, featuring a cast of characters straight out of Star Wars and Star Trek blended together. (Among the good guys are a guy who is almost exactly a law-abiding version of Han Solo, and a guy who is a white-haired, bearded Spock.) The opening scene of the first episode is so much like Star Wars' opening, I nearly started chanting "Rip off! Rip off!" when I first saw it. (In a good natured way, of course.)

The differences start to come into play with the Robotix themselves.

See, like the Gobots, they started out as organic. But unlike the Gobots, they started out as ugly little alien things (the Gobots apparently were virtually human).

Don't look like they're getting along well, do they?

Yet they still manage to cooperate long enough to build a lot of stuff, including the above cryogenic chambers (which is part of what allows them to later become the Robotix, which started "life" as very complex construction/combat vehicles), and they also, as independent races (Protectons and Terrakors), have two great feats of engineering:

The Terrastar...

...and the thing whose name I don't recall at the moment.

The cartoon holds a special place in my heart because it has wonderful set and technology design. I had originally intended to flood my picture capacity on this blog with pictures, but I'll settle with what I've done so far. (For now. I've got the pictures anyway, so I'll probably slowly filter them into the blog for the next couple of weeks.)

Also, as Inhumanoids did, Robotix has a stunning conclusion. (Stunning for its presence; as I've discussed, lots of cartoons like this lack them.)

-Signing off.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The floating city is called Xanadon.