Animated Reflections: Robo Story (1985)

I really don't know what to say for this one? For years I sought this one out, but not for the reasons you might think. See, the thing is, my memories of this show was that I seemed somehow disturbed by it. Thing is, after finding and watching a  bunch of episodes online, I really don't know what to think. So let's take a look at Robo Story and see if I can figure out what it was that disturbed me (I've only seen the English one so I'll be using the names in that, but the original French version had different names for a number of characters).

Robo Story

Robo Story is the tale of why you should never let kids and their pets run free in a space program. All jokes aside, the story is of a small girl named Blueberry and her dog Fluffy who by accident, end up being shot off into space and crash land on another planet. This world is strange, full of bizarre plant and wildlife. However, the planet is also home to two robot forces. The first are the Robos, who are essentially the good guys. They are a variety of different designed and coloured robots, each with their own personality and style, which only gets simplified by some of their names (such as Robot Scientist, who was a scientist.....you get the idea).

The villains are themselves very much inspired by Star Wars. Known as the Wrigglers (I beginning to feel the English version is very kid friendly compared to the French one when it comes to naming), they serve the powerful force known as the Revered Reverence, who is defined mostly due to his powerful voice and constant berating of White Wriggler. Speaking of which, the colour pattern for the Wrigglers is somewhat different compared to Star Wars, with the basic troops being black and their leader being white. The Black Wrigglers have basic intelligence and are the cannon fodder for the show, their dome like heads lifting up to reveal the weapon in their can like body when shooting. White Wriggler is a simpleton who really just wants to have fun and be liked, but is constantly abused by Revered Reverence, often being called 'the lowest of the low' and threatened to be turned into a Black Wriggler. You really do feel for White Wriggler because of it, which may be one of the reasons I felt so disturbed by this show when I was younger.

The introduction sequence gives a brief story of the spacecraft incident without narration and then goes into the theme song with images trying to make it look like a space opera I think? I don't know, it just doesn't feel right to me, but then again I feel the White Wriggler in it comes off more menacing then he is in the show. The stories are a continuation type, but tend to be sometimes simple in it's presentation (which isn't a bad thing for shows like this) with jokes thrown in here and there. The animation itself is a bit mixed, feeling cheaper compared to the Mysterious Cities of Gold I reviewed last time, but then the animation of the 80's was a variety of styles, so I won't count it as a negative. The characters feel a little basic as they don't have shades to them to make them stand out more, but their colour does tend to keep them from blending into the backgrounds. Heck, some backgrounds tend to look more detailed then the characters, but that's probably due to them not needing to be animated. Despite this, the animation does have that cartoon over-exaggerated feel to it, so that even the robots all stand out quite well in many scenes.

The soundtrack has been described as being 'industrial' and I do agree with that. The music tends to suite the scenes well and the voice acting is rather nice. This is obviously before many shows decided to 'enhance' voices with effects to make them sound more robotic and frankly, I do like this shows style more. I do admit that they do sound odd and off at times, but then this was also an 80's dubbed cartoon, so I tend to give some leniency for such things.

Overall

I honestly didn't know what to expect from this. From all my childhood memories of this, I had felt feelings off being unsettled, sad and disturbed. Looking at it now, that seem mostly ridiculous. Certainly the imagery of the Wrigglers and the booming voice of Revered Reverence could put off a young child, but having watched most of the episodes I could find (seriously, it's difficult to locate every episode), I found the show to be quite amusing and somewhat enjoyable, though I can't tell if the final episode left me feeling sad or confused. That's just my opinion, for I am the lowest of the low.