Exosquad

To call Exosquad a "cartoon" is unfair. This saga is absolutely brilliant with its parrallels to the reality of war, racism, prejudice, ethnic cleansing, and the brutalities of totalitarianism.

In Exosquad, a race of artificialy created humanoids -bred for slavery - revolt against natural humans in order to exterminate them and take their own place as the rightful rulers of the Sol system.

In the outer reaches of the solar system, are the Space Pirates who were prisoners forced to mine the outer planet's moons for raw materials for building spacecraft. A group of violent, angry people bent on revenge against the people of earth.

In the middle are humans, who make up the populous of Earth, Venus and the space Navy, The Exosquad. Besides commanding a large force of battleships, they are trained for heavy weapons - including E-Frames - powered armor battle suits that increase the destructive power of individual soldiers.

While the plot sounds like the run of the mill anime, the show is given a distinctive American feeling by a cast of western actors, as well as a distinctive sense of realism and authenticity by graphic violence and actual death of characters as well as other brutalities of war such as forced labor, starvation, summary executions and stories of resistance, betrayal and honor.

This show goes well beyond the average cartoon and despite its watercolor animations, the high quality artwork and voice acting ranks Exosquad right up there with other space sagas such as Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica.

This show was highly enjoyable and I rate it a perfect 10.

My only disappointment is that the show was unfinished. The episode "Beyond Chaos" begins an incomplete story arc that would have been better left concluded in the episode "Fall of the Neosapien empire". In many ways, this left me disappointed - like the final episode of Space: Above & Beyond but, if you can overlook "Beyond Chaos", the rest of the series is unfortgettable and brilliant.

I'll admit that in general, I'm fond of cartoons, but I despise one trick ponies. ExoSquad is far from being a one trick show. The storylines were diverse and interesting, yet connected nicely for an ongoing plot. The characters developed better than most television shows.

Essentially, the premise boiled down to the genetically altered NeoSapiens revolting from their slave positions and taking over Earth, Mars and Venus. The ExoSquad must attempt to liberate their home planets, but at the same time, by both necessity and inclination, realize that the NeoSapiens are not as evil as one might think, and neither are the pirates that have always been their enemies.

The beautiful thing about the show was that it was intelligent. Attitudes changed as characters grew. The viewer was not treated to random violence every time they turned on the show. This show deserved better than to be unceremoniously cancelled at episode 52.

ExoSquad is the second best American animated series I've seen. The first being Robotech(though American produced, had heavy japanese anime origins). ExoSquad had great character and plot depth. Each laser shot during the battles counts(meaning people could get hit and could possibly die). I use the battle casualty factor as a way of measuring as to whether an animated series is mature or for children. ExoSquad's plot was inconsistent at times which gave me the impression that they didn't write the entire saga before producing the episodes. An example of this inconsistency were the seemingly invincible mutant creatures that were impervious to laser fire in one episode and in later episodes could be killed easily with one laser shot. Unfortunately America doesn't seem ready for mature cartoons. Each mature American cartoon produced seems to get abruptly cancelled(there were quite a few, some cancelled at less than 10 episodes). Just for the record the Marvel superhero cartoons shouldn't be considered mature as they pale in comparison to their comic book counterparts maturity wise(nobody dies). If you can find a channel with reruns of ExoSquad, check it out.

This show was the best cartoon/show ever created by anyone. The character were deep, well drawn. The story line was solid. You could feel the hatred of the Humans that the Neo-sapiens had. It was the best war/drama cartoon; because people died. You could sympathize with the plight of Human as they fought for the freedom from the Neo (for the people who watched the show religiously) tyranny. The set-up for the third or fourth season was great, but the stopped and that so totally sucked. I have also heard the rumor of the movie and i pray feverently that Universal get up off their butts and decides to make a movie from the absolutely great series. the people who watched this show as much as i did, will agree.

This is an absolutely incredible series. I watched every episode throughout my Freshman year in High School (I even woke up early on Saturdays to watch it 6 days a week). The story is very drawing and compelling. Any sci-fi fan, fan of animation, or fan of drama or action will be engrossed in this.