I reviewed the comic last week in anticipation of the cartoon posting to Tubi on Saturday. I hadn’t expected the entire six episode miniseries at once. Not being familiar with Tubi’s release schedule for their original shows I don’t know if that’s the norm or a bad sign. Still, I watched the show over a few days rather than the binge marathon so I could enjoy it. I only watched two episodes back to back because the cliffhanger had me. That’s a good sign, right?

Let me get this out of the way because I already brought this up in previous discussions: the whole shared universe idea is odd to me, and it was a distraction to see a Sectaur woman among the baddies when I know that Symbion being without technology is a huge part of the Sectaur history, Moo Mesa style cow people walking around a futuristic city when they’re supposed to be from the Old West (the “COW” in Wild West C.O.W.boys Of Moo Mesa stands for “Code Of the West”), and while I don’t know what Garloo’s backstory was in the 1960s or if he had one, I’m betting “motivational speaker” isn’t part of it. The Biker Mice cameo is just there to set up the universe, amounts to nothing, and is distracting. Without spoilers, the Power Lords connection they set up could work in theory and I’m not against the Biker Mice showing up. I still don’t know how they’re going to work Barnyard Commandos in there, but if Nacelle has the rights to Skysurfer Strike Force I’m surprised they didn’t try to bring them in. Maybe we could finally learn who Cybron is. (Do not make it the father. Please.) It still gives me the same reaction as trying to shove MASK into the G.I. Joe and Transformers universe. When even the studio who make shared universes cool is no longer able to do it right (thanks, Marvel), maybe opt for separate stories.

With that out of my system, let’s focus on the cartoon. I’ll have spoiler-free and spoiler heavy parts of the review, but I’ll say for the most part I rather enjoyed it. It wasn’t as silly as the early promotion made it sound, though the show is still lighter in tone than the comic. They do explain Hun-Dredd (spoiler side), and I did enjoy the characters and events. I have notes beyond the shared universe but it’s nice to have something fun to watch that’s new.

I’ll mark off the spoiler section, but this is the plot. Something has hacked the 101A robots, designed by Utopia Aegis, but possibly swiping the technology along with the thunder of Soraya Aviram’s new defender bots, codenamed Robo Force. (Fun fact: found out there is a robotics company in the real world called RoboForce. What part the 80s or 2013 toylines had on it I couldn’t say.) Now reduced to grunt labor, the would-be leader Maxx 89 is drawn back to service when the hacked UA101s start causing trouble, even tearing apart and killing fellow Robo Force member Tiltor. Now he needs to bring the rest of the team back together, but soon he’ll have to learn to tell friend from enemy when there is more than one enemy to fight.

Tiltor’s death is in the first episode, so it isn’t much of a spoiler, though it’s not the motivator I would have liked it to be. Imagine the revelation of what happened to him being part of the redemption later. It isn’t, and Maxx and company–Hun-Dred, Wrecker, Sentinel, Copter, and Blazer–are soon motivated to save the world. Well, Hun-Dred’s villainy in the original continuities is addressed, but that’s spoiler stuff. Each member of the robot side of the cast gets a moment of reflection and character growth (except for Tiltor because…he’s dead), though the humans really don’t. Soraya isn’t some perfect girlboss scientist despite all the accolades she gets early on. She’s mostly there to not give up on Robo Force, do science stuff, and deal with UA stooge Nima Tannhauser…what white parent names their white kid “Nima”? Yeah, let’s address that.

In the original TV pilot, which has been on Saturday Night Showcase, the creators of Robo Force were the Fury family, trying to keep evil not dead enough scientist Nazgar from having his brain shoved into a robot so he could terrorize the world again. Hun-Dred was his servant. In the mini-comics, I don’t think they got into their creation, but I don’t know about all the other stories. I don’t remember one mentioned in Toyfinity’s webcomic. I’m not sure they’re aware of what Robo Force’s old backstory was any more than the rest of the Nacelleverse characters. It could be written off as “woman of color in STEM because politics” stuff, and that’s up to you. Soraya is an enjoyable character and they probably don’t care about previous backstory all that much, little as there was for Robo Force as far as being definitive, so I have no problem with her. I just live in 2025, where that’s such a topic and studios love to show off how much diverse representation there is. In a normal world I probably wouldn’t have noticed she was…I wasn’t sure so I try to do search. According to Google AI she’s part of the alien Ciel race, though I don’t know where it got its information from. Does that mean Nima isn’t human either? Would explain the name. She does look like an Earth minority and Nima looks like a white dude, and again, I’m only noticing because I’m trapped in 2025 because otherwise both are interesting enough as characters and in their roles that I wouldn’t care if I lived in less stupid times. This would also mean that in a show set in future Detroit no humans are in the cast.

The other Robo Force members get great character arcs, mostly Maxx 89. (Max Steel ruined Maxx Steele from keeping his name and Maxx Zero, the Toyfinity name, wouldn’t fit the naming scheme.) This is primarily Maxx’s story as he learns to become not just the hero he was programmed to be but the team leader and it’s great to watch his character arc. The others are also working in dead end jobs but learn to become the heroes they were meant to be. Well, most of them as I’ll get to in the spoilers. I think we should go there, so if the budget animation didn’t put you off and you liked what you hear or are at least curious, watch the six episodes (a half hour per episode) up on Tubi. Here’s the link if it still works. Watch and come back as I go over all the spoilery stuff. I did overall enjoy the show and it’s worth checking out, if you need a final thought.

That IS a lot of strength for a skinny bot. Anyway…

The rest of this article contains spoilers for Robo Force’s later episodes. You have been warned!

So while the show leads us to believe that Silas Duke and his Utopia Aegis company are the villains, and they are certainly up to villainy as they force Hun-Dredd to kill their enemies, it turns out it’s S.O.T.A. 89 behind the hacking. Yeah, the name thing. Apparently the original style Robo Force, the cylinders with suction cups from the original Ideal toyline, are 64s and the new ideas that started with Toyfinity are 89s. This is odd. It’s not a nod to the old toys. Ideal’s Robo Force toys came out in 1984 and Toyfinity’s in 2013. I’m guessing the Nacelle versions started coming out or were at least acquired from Toyfinity in 2021. That means the cylinders should be the 84s and the ones with legs either 2013s or 2021s in honor of that. I don’t know where the numbers come from, and the only “89” style of the Robo Force we see is the earlier version of S.O.T.A., who talks her “daughter” down a little too easy before getting blasted by Hun-Dredd. It made for a good villain but the original character was always a good bot and Hun-Dredd always evil, running a cult to bring an evil scientist back from the dead by plugging his brain into a robot body. It’s a good story but an odd adaptation choice.

Instead, Hun-Dredd gets a sympathetic villain origin. Originally one of the good guys in this continuity, Hun-Dredd went to UA for work and they turned him into an assassination robot, getting around their version of Isaac Asimov’s “three laws of robotics”. This is his motivation to join S.O.T.A. 89, and when it looks like she’ll be talked out of wiping out humanity, Hun-Dredd takes over in the final episode. And yet he’s willing to do to the UA101s what was done to him: reprogram them under the false idea of “liberating” them (or at least that’s what S.O.T.A. called it, upset at her treatment when they were prematurely called obsolete), both blaming all of humanity for the actions of a few. Those villains annoy me because they’re never called out, and that’s kind of what happens here. Original Hun-Dredd was a robot cult leader and that was okay. For the story, not the heroes.

The Biker Mice cameos are just them riding up, Throttle makes some comment, go to next scene. That happens twice, once in each of the last two episodes, and it’s just there to set-up the fact that they’re here. The appearance by the villains from Power Lords, and I already had to look up Throttle–and learned that the first show is owned by Disney while the second show goes to whomever 4Kids sold it to, while the IP should be Rich Ugar’s property–is a better set-up, as they find the remains of S.O.T.A 89 but the leader wants Hun-Dredd on his team.

How much of this will play into later Nacelleverse shows has yet to be seen. I’m not even sure if Biker Mice From Mars ver. 3 or Power Lords, who had a short-lived DC Comics series and not much else, are the next show up. That hasn’t been announced as of this writing. For all I know it will explain how the Sectaurs are in Detroit. I admit I’m curious to see what happens next. I still question the shared universe and the animation is totally on the cheap, but the writing was fairly good. It also remembered to be a kids show instead of a “kidish show for adults”. When Hun-Dredd kills the dude it’s off camera. There’s no swearing. There are bright colors and heroes being heroic even if two of them fall. I don’t know if Utopia Aegis is going to play a part again or if we’ll see just how evil Silas Duke is, or if the Robo Force will return. However, they’re got a good one out the opening gate, and I’m willing to give Nacelle’s first foray into kids TV (or streaming show in this case) a chance to impress me. Again, if you read the spoilers before watching the show, give it a watch anyway.