Those who know me know that I'm a big fan of giant robots. The towering mechanized giants duking it out with giant monsters or evil robots gets me hyped no matter what. So it makes it all the more soul crush when I watched Super Giant Robot Brothers and it left me steaming from ear to ear at how bad it is. From the the atrocious writing to the choppy animation, this show's quality makes Robotboy look like The Iron Giant.
Created by Victor Maldonado and Alfredo Torres (with Pixar veteran Mark Andrews serving as director of each episode), this show follows 2 giant robots fighting kaiju in the distant future and protecting innocent people. While that pitch sounds exciting and could make for a more than entertaining show, the execution drops the ball like a meteor! The writing in this show is nothing short of abysmal with a constant barrage of exposition dumps, poorly conveyed science mumbo jumbo, and very predictable plot lines. If you've grown tired of the "fish out of water" plot, or the "envy turns you evil" plot, or the "virus in machines" plot like I am, this show does nothing to make them remotely interesting. I'm also really sick and tired of animated shows dumping exposition onto the audience when it'd be so much better if you SHOW it! Then there are the jokes and oh crooked cucumbers! Do they SUCK! Every joke is either an annoying running gag, a stupid pun, cringy dancing, and lousy gross out. This juvenile humor is made worse when you realize this show is rated TVPG, as in meant for older kids and not 4 year olds. I don't know why this show felt like it needed to explain everything to the audience and have childish humor when it would've worked just fine if it focused on the robots fighting giant monsters (not that they're much better).
The characters in this show seem to have taking How To Be Annoying lessons from Molly McGee. Starting with one half of our titular duo, Shiney is without a doubt the stupidest and most annoying robot I have ever seen in a cartoon! He doesn't think before he acts, he always butts in on important stuff, he tries and fails to be funny, and his ego is so big it would make Ego the Living Planet cringe. Worst of all, is he never, ever, ever, EVER shuts the flop up! I'm as serious as a heart attack! Most of the episodes runtime is just dedicated to Shiney opening his big mouth and not closing it ONCE! His brother, Thunder, is not as annoying but he's not good either. He's just the typical straight man with one emotion: serious. Together, they just make an incompetent duo with Thunder having to do most of the heavy lifting and Shiney not being able to shut his half-wit pie hole if his life depended on it. The other characters aren't much better, in case you're wondering. Alex is the young genius who acts more like a walking clipboard full of science mumbo jumbo than an actual person. Colonel Creed is a loud mouth commanding officer that talks about sports and uses sports analogies constantly. Sarge is the hot tempered, spiteful villain of the week. And there's this alien shapeshifter who's disguises are so unconvincing, everyone in the base is an uneducated moron for not seeing through it. Then there are the kaiju themselves, which obviously aren't gonna have much going for them. But my problem with them is we don't get into the why they're attacking innocent people. Are they just wild animals protecting their terf? Is there a big bad sending them out one by one to destroy the world? Are they lost and scared and are only attacking to protect themselves? All of these questions and more are NOT even asked nevermind answered because this show does a terrible job at world building.
The voice acting is just very grating and none of the actors sound right in their roles. Eric Lopez sounded very nasally and wasn't remotely funny as Shiney. Chris Diantamopoulos sounded bored voicing Thunder and was honestly under utilized considering he's one of the current voices of Mickey Mouse. Marisa Davila didn't sound very convincing as a science genius who's also a child as she just sounded like a typical teenager reading the science stuff off a page and not actually believing it. Delbert Hunt was way too over the top as Creed and made him sound less like a commanding officer and more like your sports fanatic uncle on Super Bowl Sunday. I'm aware the actors are trying their best, but the material and direction they were given isn't doing them any favors.
Visually this show has a good idea for stylized animation but like everything else in this stupid show, they botched in in execution. Netflix collabed with Reel FX and Assemblage Animation Studios to bring the show to life and it looks really choppy. I get what they were trying to do, though, as they wanted to give it a stylized 3D animated look. The characters have smooth textures, their bodies are designed to match their personalities and there's some very good use of effects. Unfortunately, once the characters are in motion, that's when it becomes an issue. Unlike Kid Cosmic and Into the Spider-Verse where limiting the frame rate makes them look like a comic book come to life, here it looks like 3D animatics before it would be shipped to the in-between department to make it more polished. The character movements are so ridged and they lack of mass for these giant robots is painfully obvious. It get much worse in the action scenes where it cuts away from the action and when it cuts back you barely see what's going on. The backgrounds are also very empty with flat surfaces and the citizens being evacuated at the speed of sound. Again, I'm all for stylized animation, but this is a prime example of what NOT to do with it.
This broken machine isn't even good enough to be sold for parts! Super Giant Robot Brothers is yet another abominable case of style over substance. The writing is abysmal, the characters are annoying, the voice acting is grating, and the animation is very choppy. There isn't a single redeeming quality in this disasterous cartoon. As such, it deserves the worst fate to bestow on a piece of entertainment: to be ignored and forgotten! Do NOT watch Super Giant Robot Brothers! Don't even bother looking at the preview. Just stick to Transformers if you want your giant robot fix. Even Transformers on its worst day is better than Super Giant Robot Brothers on its best -.-
