Robotboy
| Robotboy | |
|---|---|
| Starring | Laurence Bouvard Rupert Degas Togo Igawa Eiji Kusuhara Lewis MacLeod Lorraine Pilkington |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom, United States, France |
| Production | |
| Running time | N/A |
| Original release | |
| Network | Cartoon Network |
| Release | November 1, 2005 (UK), December 28, 2005 (USA) |
Robotboy is a French animated television series which was produced by Cartoon Network & French production company ALPHANIM with TV Channels France 3 and Cartoon Network as well as Luxanimation. It was created and designed by Jan Van Rijsselberge and was directed in Alphanim's studio in Paris by Charlie Bean, who worked on other Cartoon Network programs such as Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls. It was first aired in France on October 12 2005 at MIPCOM, Paris and later premiered on TV in the UK on November 1 2005 on Cartoon Network. The pilot episode premiered in the US on December 28 2005 as part of a "sneak peek" preview week for the network's new Saturday morning cartoon lineup scheduled to debut on January 14 2006.
Plot
Template:Spoiler Robotboy is an old creation of the world renowned scientist Professor Moshimo. Due to fears that Robotboy would be stolen by his arch-rival Dr. Kamikazi and his main henchman Constantine to be used to take over the world, Professor Moshimo entrusts Robotboy to 10 year old Tommy Turnbull, his biggest fan. While being protected by Tommy and his two friends Lola and Gus, or "G-man" as he calls himself, Robotboy learns how to behave and act as if he were a real boy.
Characters
Major characters
Robotboy
Robotboy is a battle robot with three modes of operation: Deactivated, Activated, and Superactivated. Deactivation mode is Robotboy's standby stage, where he becomes compact enough to fit into a backpack. Activation mode is the standard stage of Robotboy's active modes, where he is able to use most of his non-battle technology. Superactivation mode is when Robotboy transforms into his battle stage of operation, where he has access to an amazing arsenal of weaponry to deal with any and all enemies.
Robotboy is mainly a fun loving robot, with the ability to have human-like emotions and actions despite being mostly machinery.
Tommy Turnbull
Tommy is a blonde, square-headed, 10 year old boy, and Robotboy's new owner. He is smart, responsible and likeable and acts as a father figure to Robotboy, Robotboy having no parents himself. Tommy also has an older brother, a bully by the name of Donnie.
Lola Mbola
Smart, sweet and intelligent, Lola is very well-educated and a nice kid. She is in love with Tommy but is sort of secretive about it. Lola has a jealousy problem though and sometimes gets annoyed when Tommy falls for Bambi instead of her.
Augustus "Gus" "The G-man" Bachman Turner
Gus is overweight, red-headed and selfish. He is an attention seeker and tries to show off most of the time by pulling practical jokes on anyone close to him. However, most of these tricks backfire and often get him in trouble.
Gus's parents are of Amish origin.
Dr. Kamikazi
Dr. Kamikazi is a small and old man with thick glasses and a suit/bathrobe combo who is a self-proclaimed evil genius. He hopes that with his army of genetically mutated anthropomorphic animals, and an army consisting of robots to which he hopes to add Robotboy to, he will soon be able to achieve his dastardly goal of world domination. Most of his henchmen have a large letter K on their uniforms, to show that they are of Dr. Kamikazi.
He is voiced by one of the announcers from the popular television show Banzai who, in irony, is noted to be Chinese rather than Japanese.
Constantine
Constantine is a fat hunchbacked henchman of Dr. Kamikazi who also is a master of sumo wrestling (though it is unknown if he has ever been a yokozuna, or "grand champion"). He is a sensitive and none too threatening sidekick to Dr. Kamikazi who mainly acts as his muscle power as well as his assistant. It was seen in one episode that Constantine used to be an orphan before working for Kamikazi.
Despite looking like a Japanese version of a henchman, Constantine is actually Spanish, suggesting that his outfit is simply a uniform assigned to him by Dr. Kamikazi.
Donnie Turnbull
Donnie is Tommy's Older Brother, who is a constant bully to everyone in the neighborhood, including Tommy himself. He frequently calls people names, threatens them etc, and yet despite this, Tommy still treats him as family.
Dwight Turnbull
He is Tommy and Donnie's father. Tommy's father works as a salesman of a shop that sells fitness equipment. He is an assertive person, always trying to get Tommy to play sports, so as not to be a "girly" boy. He once even got as far as quitting his job to become Tommy's full time coach, when he noticed Tommy's "talent" in tetherball. (which is actually due to Robotboy helping him behind the scenes.)
Debs Turnbull
Debs is Tommy's mother. She is a housewife. In general, she is very kind, and not as assertive towards Tommy as Dwight. However, she is still willing to punish Tommy if he is seen to have done something terribly wrong; For example failing to tidy his room, or stole the toy, although Tommy was framed in the latter case.
Professor Moshimo
Professor Moshimo is the creator of Robotboy. He received a letter from Tommy Turnbull about him looking forward to his latest invention. As a result, Professor Moshimo sent him Robotboy to take care of. The Professor has a Japanese fiancee named Miumiu, who also acts as his assistant.
Minor characters
Bambi
Tommy falls for this girl the minute she is in view. Bambi is lovely-looking, but extremely unapproving of Tommy and dislikes him.
Protoboy
Protoboy was created by Dr. Mishimo in his earlier years. He was designed for battle rather than with emotions and human speech. This made him much more powerful than Robotboy. In the episode "Brother", he knocked Robotboy unconscious and started destroying the city. When Robotboy used Super-Activation, so did Protoboy. Robotboy was nearly defeated until he used the new weapon Dr. Mishimo gave him, which is essentially a limpet mine. As a result, Protoboy exploded and was never seen again. His name is a reference to Protoman of the Mega Man fame. He can talk though it is much more robotic and simple.
Robotman
Robotboy's successor. Created by Moshimo, he is, as the name implies, an adult version of Robotboy. His technology, AI, and almost everything else is superior to Robotboy, making Robotboy seemingly obsolete. Despite this, Robotman has all of the qualities annoying adults possess, which makes Robotboy superior to him after all. He was destroyed while Superactivated and may never appear again.
Byorn Bjornson
Byorn Bjornson is a Norwegian child who attended Dr. Moshimo's classes at the "School For the Wealthy and Smart", and is a jealous rival of Moshimo's work, including Robotboy. He has also designed a robot equal in power to that of Robotboy called "Byornbot". It can be seen in the episode "Runaway Robot" that he dislikes herrings.
Bjornbot
Bjornbot is a robotic lookalike of his creator Bjorn Bjornson. He has weapon capabilities and strength equal to that of Robotboy, and can Superactivate too. At the same time, there can be several Bjornbots fighting at once. It seems that Bjorn himself has created multiple numbers of such bots. Bjornbot can superactivate in a similar fashion to robotboy
Robotgirl
Created as a companion for Robotboy while Tommy and his family were away. Problem is she doesn't know a lot like Robotboy does...she is the same shape as Robotboy except she is pink with a bow and skirt.
Robotboy Technology and Weaponry
Most of the time, Robotboy has blue drums protruding diagonally on either side of the head. While Superactivated, they become horns. Deactivated and Activated forms look very much the same, except the deactivated form's head drums are withdrawn into the head, and his limbs are also withdrawn into his body. While activated, Robotboy has mechanical tentacles concealed in his palms and thrusters on the soles of the feet, enabling him to fly. While Superactivated Robotboy's fists and feet and head are much larger and now have all kinds of lasers, homing missiles and machine guns. Briefly seen is an ink spray that can identify invisible targets and, of course, dramatically increased physical strength. Robotboy's most common Superactivated weapon is the machine gun arm. Many random weapons appear, and many are rarely seen twice, even in the same episode.
The Activation controls for Robotboy are built into a special, orange watch that Tommy wears. The watch is in the shape of Activated Robotboy's head. In the episode "Robot Rebels", Robotboy smashes the watch after being tricked by Kamikazi. It is unknown how Tommy gets another watch, but it is safe to presume that Professor Moshimo had a spare one.
Episodes (Robotboy)
Currently, there are 52 episodes each lasting 13 minutes (equivalent to 26 half-hour programs) in season 1, with hopes of a second season in 2006. In the list of 52 episodes, 1 is a Halloween special and another is a Christmas special.
Trivia
- Dr. Kamikazi likes tapas.
- Dr. Moshimo used a speeder in the episode with Proto Boy, The speeder is a flying blue version of a StarWars landspeeder.
- Tommy Turnbull resembles Mac from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.
External links
 | This animation-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | This television-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |