Blog:Monster-Robot: Animated Adventures

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Monster-Robot: Animated Adventures, better known as Monster-Robot is a web-animated series that is a spin-off to the video game spin-off series of the same name, as well as a spin-off of Cartoonia which first premiered on April 1, 2030.

Setting
The show is set in a fictional artificially-made island called Absurdia, located a few miles off the coast of Cartoonia, where everything is completely absurd and illogical. Absurdia has areas that include a city made out of giant oversized toys and other building blocks, a snowy mountain region filled with giant popsicles, ice creams and various frozen desserts, a desert filled with giant desserts, and a beach filled with oversized bath toys. The land transportation of Absurdia consists only of rail transport, and many of the locomotives and rolling stock are modelled after well-known trains from around the world. Toilet paper is used as Absurdia's currency. The residents of Absurdia primarily consists of robots, animals with human-like qualities and behaviors (the former two of which are drawn in different art styles) and Japanese cartoon-styled humans, all of which have completely polished their bodies and wear only bathing clothes.

Synopsis
The show centers around Monster Krumholtz and Robot Default, a pair of hyperactive, odd, energetic, and slow-witted, and incompetent best friends enthusiastically obsessed with swimsuits, superhero comics and all sorts of stuff, and often annoy their friends.

Why It Intentionally Doesn't Deserve a Crispy Bacon Cup
 NOTE : The show was made as a joke, so it is meant to be bad on purpose.
 * 1) Addressing the elephant out of the room: The whole show is a big rip-off of Fanboy & Chum Chum (though intentionally), as the title characters, Monster Krumholtz and Robot Default, are annoying, obnoxious, hypocritical, selfish, immature, impulsive and perverted dimwits who both act like they are superheroes, but they often fail all the time because of their incompetence. There is even a recurring irony where some of the characters (mostly the ones they annoy) act the same way to them and they get annoyed by it.
 * 2) The main characters, as well as everyone in the show, wear nothing but swimsuits while having their whole bodies polished, which is extremely idiotic and dumb. It even makes the characters from Almost Naked Animals look decent.
 * 3) * Plus, even the organic characters (i.e. the human characters) have their bodies "polished". If anything, they look more like they got wet or have oily skin, the latter of which is not a good sign for your health. Also, wouldn't the polishing on their bodies have worn off if they have touched or jumped in the water?
 * 4) * On top of all of this, the whole concept of everyone dressed only in swimwear comes off as unappealing as it makes it look more like it would fit for an adult cartoon.
 * 5) * Most, if not all of the female characters have visible lady parts (i.e. Aki Hinata, whom has oversized breasts), which makes for extremely uncomfortable scenes, especially for a children's cartoon.
 * 6) The whole show makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
 * 7) The animation is too rigid, lazy and ugly, even for Cartoonia ' s standards.
 * 8) Some episodes are rehashes of episodes of various TV shows (mostly Fanboy and Chum Chum), just the roles of the characters are swapped characters (for example, Monster, Robot and Klug take the places of Fanboy, Chum Chum and Kyle respectively) and parts of the plot and dialogue being changed.
 * 9) Most of the recurring and main characters from the previous seasons of Cartoonia such as Tobroki Tokuma, Colin Con Carne and Bulgi BunnyFunny, became pushed to minor recurring characters and rarely appear in the show.
 * 10) Poor character designs (even though some of the character designs haven't changed much and are almost accurate to their respective original source materials).
 * 11) While it still follows the usage of mixed art styles and isn't that bad, it seems to put more emphasis on the utilization of mixed-geometric shapes (similar to Bob Boyle's shows such as Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and Yin Yang Yo!).
 * 12) * Even the anime characters get this treatment, which is highly uncanny for such an art style of an anime.
 * 13) Overuse of stereotypes.
 * 14) Nonstop filler.
 * 15) Completely insufferable pacing.
 * 16) Several characters from various source materials also get horribly flanderized. For example:
 * 17) * Jenny Wakeman from My Life as a Teenage Robot, while still retains most of her personality, has changed to a boisterous yandere who has a wild, deviant affection for Robot that usually annoys him and sometimes makes Monster jealous, making her a Yo rip-off.
 * 18) * Klug from Puyo Puyo turned into a rip-off of Kyle the Wizard who has a cliché of being treated like dirt, turning him into a Butt-Monkey who gets hurt by everyone in the show for little to no (if not any) apparent reason at all.
 * 19) * Benson Dunwoody from Regular Show turned into an accident-prone manager who often gets a stress-twitch whenever he sees Monster and Robot, making him a rip-off of Lenny.
 * 20) * Lemres from Puyo Puyo, while he is still nice, turned into an Oz rip-off.
 * 21) * Gart Default from Robot and Monster turned into a big bully not just to his younger brother Robot, but also to Monster and almost everyone as well, making him a rip-off of Boog.
 * 22) * Natsumi Hinata from Sgt. Frog, despite regaining her nice and outgoing personality, became more of a bossy, surly spoiled brat and a jerk who always seeks attention.
 * 23) * Fuyuki Hinata from Sgt. Frog, despite being likable and still having a friendly personality, often gets treated like a pimp.
 * 24) * Squid Girl from her self-titled series went from an invader who wants to overthrow humanity for polluting the ocean into a superheroine. While the idea of her being a superheroine isn't that bad and she is rather likable, she comes off as a rip-off of Man-Arctica.
 * 25) * Eiko Aizawa from Squid Girl became more a rude and crude jerk than she was in her original source material.
 * 26) * Chizuru Aizawa from Squid Girl, while she is still nice, became an annoying jokester who has an annoying obsession with cheese and often practically teases others for messing up, more notably Eiko, much to her dismay.
 * 27) * Sanae Nagatsuki from Squid Girl turned into a hyperactive scatterbrain who creepily obsesses and stalks anyone or anything that excites her, more notably Monster and Robot and Fuyuki Hinata.
 * 28) * Cindy Campbell from Squid Girl went from an MIT graduate and alien-researcher who claims that Squid Girl is an alien into a Sandy Cheeks rip-off that speaks with a Southern-American accent.
 * 29) * 556 and Lavie from Sgt. Frog became reduced to filler characters with barely any character development whatsoever.
 * 30) ** The former became more obnoxious and dumber than he was in his original source material. Not to mention, he also wears Cindy's jacket.
 * 31) ** The latter, despite being a little more likable than the two due to the fact that she hasn't been flanderized, gets treated very poorly, as whenever she tries to tell others Kogoro's true feelings deep inside him, others refuse to believe her.
 * 32) * Out of all of the Robot and Monster characters that appear, it leaves the following characters from said show behind:
 * 33) ** J.D. and Spitfire (which is extremely disappointing and upsetting and that there was literally no reason for those two to be replaced)
 * 34) ** Master Grabmirist
 * 35) The creators of the show have openly stated that they used permission from the companies and creators that own their respective IPs they used.
 * 36) Most of the anime characters speak with various accents and dialects from Europe, North America, Africa and other places outside of Japan, which not only makes no sense considering the fact that almost all of them have Japanese names, but it also comes off as stereotyping.
 * 37) The train tracks look like Chuggington.
 * 38) Everything looks like Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! and Yin Yang Yo! (mostly the former).
 * 39) Everyone uses "Pekoponian" and "Pekopon" to refer to as the human characters and Earth, respectively, including the human characters themselves.
 * 40) The colors are way too bright.
 * 41) Overuse of Maurice LaMarche and Grey Griffin.
 * 42) The show has a lot of bad episodes, such as:
 * 43) * "Welcome to Absurdia with Monster and Robot" (which started the series on a sour note)
 * 44) * "Wizbot"
 * 45) * "I'm Squid Gal!" (arguably the worst episode of the era)
 * 46) * "Come On, Cheer Up!" (literally a rehash of the Robot and Monster episode "Come On, Get Happy", except 556 and Lavie rewrite Perry in said episode)
 * 47) * "KerorO's"
 * 48) * "J.J.'s New Swimsuit"
 * 49) * "In-Sanae-ty"
 * 50) * "Monster vs. Wild"
 * 51) * "Keep On Troublesome Truckin'"
 * 52) * "Cindy Loves Fuyuki"
 * 53) This spin-off pretty much started the downfall of Cartoonia.
 * 1) This spin-off pretty much started the downfall of Cartoonia.

Bacon-tastic Qualities

 * 1) The voice acting (for the most part) is actually kind of decent, since most of the characters still retain their voice providers from the shows they have originated from (even though the show states that the voice acting is terrible).
 * 2) The creators of the show can handle criticism.
 * 3) Klug, Benson Dunwoody, Gart Default, Squid Girl, Lev Krumholtz, Bacon8r, Marf, Fuyuki Hinata, Natsumi Hinata, Gorō Arashiyama, Lavie, Mayor Wheelie and Dan Mandel are decent and likable characters in the show.
 * 4) * Chizuru Aizawa, Aki Hinata, Cindy Campbell, Keiko Furukawa, Keroro and Giroro can also be likable depending on your point of view.
 * 5) Some of the character designs are still passable.
 * 6) * Depending on your point of view, the idea of mixing the art style of anime with mixed geometric shapes is kind of interesting.
 * 7) Some songs are actually kind of catchy.
 * 8) A few funny jokes every once in a while, especially with Chizuru.
 * 9) A crossover featuring characters from Sgt. Frog and Squid Girl is kind of interesting but executed very poorly.
 * 10) As previously mentioned before, the concept of the titular protagonist of Squid Girl being a superheroine is kind of interesting although poorly executed.
 * 11) At least we get to see Cindy (from Squid Girl) in her striped bikini without her red jacket more often than the Squid Girl anime, which only got executed twice in just two episodes.
 * 12) The animation does get a little better in later episodes (even though the disclaimer states that it's really cheesy).
 * 13) It improved a little bit in the later seasons, but this isn't saying much.
 * 14) It does have a fair share of episodes that are actually pretty good and decent. For example:
 * 15) * "A Robotter Solution"
 * 16) * "Bacon Seizure"
 * 17) * "Oh, Sister!" (despite being a little mean-spirited)
 * 18) * "The Winners"
 * 19) The Khmer and Japanese versions are a lot better, especially with the openings and endings, which pay an homage to the original Sgt. Frog anime.

Reception
Upon its first release, the season has been universally panned by fans and critics. The show has a 3.1/10 on IMDb. However, reception became a bit more positive later on in the show.

Surprisingly enough, the show became popular in Japan, likely due to the characters from Sgt. Frog and Squid Girl being featured, which lead to the respective creators, Mine Yoshizaki and Masahiro Anbe, teaming up on creating an actual Sgt. Frog x Squid Girl crossover, with some of the episodes being rehashed with better plots, etc.

Trivia

 * It was originally intended as an April Fools' day joke, but the creators took it far too seriously and decided to turn it into an actual series.
 * This is the reason why the previous season of Cartoonia had only thirteen episodes.
 * Despite being a spin-off of Cartoonia, it is listed as the ninth season onward.
 * The creators of the show confirmed that, save for Ika Musume (referred to as Squid Gal in the series) and Keroro, who are still voiced by Christine Marie Cabanos and Todd Haberkorn respectively, all Sgt. Frog and Squid Girl characters will have different voice providers, likely due to budget issues.