Challenge Of The Gobots Series Review · 11:09pm Nov 25th, 2017

I have never reviewed a series overall, but I figured why not try and do a complete series review. So, we're going to get right into a guilty pleasure of mine; Gobots

For those who don't know, Challenge of the Gobots was a toyline from Japan, under the name of Machine Robo until Tonka got ahold of them and started distributing them in America, under the name of Gobots, which were another series of transforming robots. Sound familiar? Yeah, yeah, I know. But back in that time, there were a lot of companies cashing in on Transformers popularity, but for the different knock-offs of Transformers we've got, this is the closest to a good knock-off, if that even made sense.

There have been many debates over which is better, but in my personal opinion, yeah, Transformers got better execution. But to be fair, Gobots beat them in terms of releasing them on the open market, and plus they were cheaper, so... yeah.

And while I agree Transformers is still better, I still like Gobots. Yeah, they're not great, but they're not the worst thing made. And before anyone asks, no. I am not going to make references to Transformers.

I am going to try and review this as its own thing, on its own merits.

Lets get into the Challenge of the Gobots series!

So, Challenge of the Gobots basically centers around, well, kind of the same action cartoon style. The heroic Guardians of Gobotron are in a struggle against the maniacal Renegades who as you can assume, want to take control of Gobotron due to their political issues, and they take their war across several planets across the galaxy and on Earth.

Overall plot's out of the way, who are our main characters? Well to be fair, they condensed them down into three main leads for each side.

On the hero's side, we've got Leader-1, who leads their group. Turbo, the muscle guy who loves action, and Scooter, technician who's cowardly and who has the most annoying voice on the show. Seriously, when I see this guy I want to smack him. But moving on. Our villains are the evil Cy-Kill, not gonna lie, that's an awesome name. Crasher, a psychotic madwoman who takes pride in being a pyscho so much she laughs a lot. And Coptor, another bumbling doofus who's one of Cy-Kill's lackey's.

Now technically if you want to talk about main leads, there are actually two other Bots on both sides who are sort of part of the main leads. Fitor, who's one of the Renegades and is Cy-Kill's second-in-command. He's got as much loyalty as Soundwave which makes him one of the better villains in the show. And on the hero's side, the other closest main lead is... *sighs* Smallfoot.

She is the only girl bot in this group that's the closest to a main lead, and I'm sorry, she should replace Scooter. In terms of characters, she's a better character. She's not annoying, she's adorable at times, and even though she's a kind of a young kid in the good guys, she's able to take care of herself even when she gets over her head. Seriously, why didn't she just have Scooter's place? Good balance in the main leads, got females on both...

Dear heavens, I'm rambling, lets get to the main points.

So as far as our main cast goes, they're alright. Not too shabby, but pretty decent. Still wish Scooter was replaced, but what can you do?

And then our human main cast comes in. They're okay, at best, but they're not that great, and they aren't that interesting.

One thing I will have to give credit to is the voices. Both sides have their voices pretty good with their effects. The good guys have this friendly echo-ish effect, while the Renegades have this cynical modulation that makes them stand out really well. Its actually a really good way to tell these guys apart if you don't have logos or brands on either one of them.

And I'm not gonna lie, I love the Guardian's echo-filtered voices. I don't know why, something about those voices stand out for me in a cool way. Kind of reminds me of... another character I won't say since this isn't Transformers.

The animation, ehh...

AKOM animation is terrible, period. Everyone knows these guys can't animate. There are voices that come out of the wrong people, several layering issues, coloring problems, characters that appear in places that shouldn't be, kind of the same issues as Transformers.

Some like; Why isn't Revolt's mouth moving when he talks?

Why isn't Tank's eyes yellow?

Yeah, AKOM isn't the finest of animation companies. Which sucks. And I don't know who works on their departments, but you know sometimes it feels like they don't even try with their animation. And I don't care if its for kids, you need to put effort into it!!!

*sighs* But lets move on.

What about the stories in the episodes made? Are they of any good? Well, that's a little hard to explain.

Gobots feels like... Season 2 of that other show that's similar to this. The first couple of episodes do a decent job of introducing our characters and getting to know them. But when we get to the rest, you're just dropped into a barrage of these bizarre, weird, and strange plots that are just.... just what!?

Like how about the story where the Renegades had a carnival as a hideout? Or what about the plot line of this kid apparently smart enough to make a device that can affect the Guardian’s brain waves and then the Renegades use it against them and control Leader-1 and some of his teammates? Or how about the ridiculous plot of… *sighs* There is a big amount of ridiculousness in this show that’s kind of hard to wrap your head around.

You can imagine their plots aren’t the greatest, but some of these episodes just feel like there was no effort put into them and so it makes it unenjoyable to watch. Especially when they make the characters so stupid and completely unlike them.

But… even with that in mind, there are actually some good episodes.

Some of the better episodes I think are ones that have more than just our six main leads. And I mean that of our Gobot characters.

Sometimes we’ll get episodes that have a lot of characters in them, and honestly those feel like the better written material of the show. Because there’s a lot more characters that you can grow to like, and they have a lot more interesting qualities than those of our main leads.

One of the best episodes is the Gobotron Saga. That one not only explored more into Gobotron’s past history of how it became what it is, but it also gave us a bunch of new characters that made the story more interesting, and we learn a bit more of how these cyborgs work. Yes. Cyborgs. The Gobots aren’t full on machines, they are part organic.

Not gonna lie, I love that.

And some of their episodes were a bit odd, but they actually managed to be good. One of the episodes involved the Renegade Steamer who wanted to defect to the Guardians, but he has to try and figure out how to prove his honesty. Sadly, that was Steamer’s only appearance and we never saw a follow up. Come on guys, that could be a story on its own! And that’s another thing I’ll admit kind of pisses me off. There’s potential for a follow-up episode, but they never go into it.

A good example of an episode needing follow-up is the episode with Zero. A Renegade sick and tired of losing every fight decides to take his own band of Renegades to rule on his own, and he escapes Cy-Kill’s impending wrath. The ending begs for a follow up but it never happened.

And that makes me sad.

But you know, even though we didn’t get follow-ups, we still got some really good episodes. All of which led up to Mission Gobotron, the final episode of the series.

Not only did we get a new slew of new bots who got to do stuff in the episode that contributed to the plot, but we also got a lot of characters, actually really good action scenes, and even Cy-Kill leaving with the Renegades at the end declaring that he would return. Its not a bad way to end the series.

Then the movie happened. Yeah. Not even touching that. I’m not gonna touch that.

But with all said and done, is this a good series, or is it as bad as everyone says it is?

Well to be fair, this show is basically a mixed bag. There's good and bad.

The voices stand out really good, there are really good characters to enjoy, and there are some really good storylines that develop in the show that you can get behind, and these guys have good history written. But there's also a handful of bad parts. Our three main leads aren't that great, the animation sucks, there's a bunch of things that don't add up or make sense, and there's some episodes that just make the show hard to watch.

At the time this show was amazing, but now it is a little dated.

But you know what, even with that said, I still recommend this. I don't think its the best show, but it is certainly not terrible by any stretch. There are shows that have tried less than this, and you can see this show has actually put effort to make something great. It may not have executed the way it wanted, but you can see they tried their hardest.

And if there any out there who would want to get their hands on the toys that this show made to advertise, I suggest finding some of those that are in good condition. Maybe one day Hasbro will make reissues of those since they own the rights to those figures now. In fact I highly suggest they do because their RID toys are looking TERRIBLE. Seriously, their Combiner Force toys are awful.

I give this series, a 6 out of 10.

Now with that said, thank you all for reading, and I hope you all have a great evening you guys. Sorry this review was a bit poor, I'm feeling a bit bleh this evening. But maybe I... oooh! Awesome Smallfoot art!