ReBoot! (The CGI Animated Series)

[Yukaphile]

I was never a fan of Tron, I always preferred ReBoot, which I knew the creators themselves were inspired by - but then the same was also true for Stargate, Star Wars, Star Trek, Power Rangers, X Files, Jurassic Park, James Bond, and much more. As for Boxleitner, I didn't become aware of Babylon 5 till 2012 and didn't begin checking out the material till 2018, but that's my favorite role for him. It is kind of weird nobody has requested ReBoot, however, given the requests for Beast Wars (also made by Mainframe Entertainment) and that more than a few people here are aware of it. I mean, it's kinda like the original Star Wars was, mashing together completely unrelated [pop culture] elements into a new fusion. And yeah, Season 1 was awful. But Season 2 onwards was amazing. And I think the concept ensures it holds up way better than Beast Wars, since it is set in the contemporary "real world," and as such the graphics don't hold up nearly that well, but for a world within the network of computers, you don't expert slavish adherence to our perceptions of "reality," do you? I wonder what Chuck thinks of ReBoot... I think it's better than Beast Wars. Way better.

[MyUserName]

I was never a fan of Tron, I always preferred ReBoot, which I knew the creators themselves were inspired by - but then the same was also true for Stargate, Star Wars, Star Trek, Power Rangers, X Files, Jurassic Park, James Bond, and much more. As for Boxleitner, I didn't become aware of Babylon 5 till 2012 and didn't begin checking out the material till 2018, but that's my favorite role for him. It is kind of weird nobody has requested ReBoot, however, given the requests for Beast Wars (also made by Mainframe Entertainment) and that more than a few people here are aware of it. I mean, it's kinda like the original Star Wars was, mashing together completely unrelated [pop culture] elements into a new fusion. And yeah, Season 1 was awful. But Season 2 onwards was amazing. And I think the concept ensures it holds up way better than Beast Wars, since it is set in the contemporary "real world," and as such the graphics don't hold up nearly that well, but for a world within the network of computers, you don't expert slavish adherence to our perceptions of "reality," do you? I wonder what Chuck thinks of ReBoot... I think it's better than Beast Wars. Way better.

Are you familiar with the history of reboot? I find it curious most modern kids could latch on to its first and 2nd season which was modeled around pop culture at the time. The first season includes some jabs at BS&P which it was subjugated to on its initial network of ABC, the 2nd season finale was filmed after word of cancellation came down, and has the line "The ABC's! They turned on us!"

The third and fourth seasons were funded by canadian network YTV, which allowed to to tell a much more mature and darker story. Its a shame season 4 was never concluded.

[Yukaphile]

Mostly. It's a sadly forgotten gem of artistic CGI innovation, and without that, we wouldn't have stuff like Clone Wars, Rebels, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Jimmy Neutron, and many more. They had such a bright, promising future, and... poof. No one remembers or cares, and technically if not for corporate IP, the series could still be alive with the right animation techniques by fans.

Yeah, Season 3 is the best. I know why Season 4 did so poorly, but the end result is that it's still not as good. Season 3 also had numerous talent on display, DC writers like Len Wein, Dan DiDio, and Marv Wolfman, plus D.C. Fontana (RIP). My first experience in ReBoot was 1998, from a friend. I think one of the first sequences I ever saw was the cardboard cut-out gag where they trick the virals into retreating that way.

Man, my favorite among Season 3 is the last eight episodes. The Web arc and the return to Mainframe. My God, they REFUSED to do something as cliched as have Bob, the big hero, take down the villain, and given his upgrade with Glitch, that was for the best. No, let's give it to Matrix, the coming of age badass Mad Max type character, show off his growth, his journey to main character status, and with the main villain now finding himself on the wrong side of the changing of the guard... Matrix is awesome. And my favorite ReBoot girl is easily Dot Matrix. Once you go green, you never go back, baby! XD

[MyUserName]

Mostly. It's a sadly forgotten gem of artistic CGI innovation, and without that, we wouldn't have stuff like Clone Wars, Rebels, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Jimmy Neutron, and many more. They had such a bright, promising future, and... poof. No one remembers or cares, and technically if not for corporate IP, the series could still be alive with the right animation techniques by fans.

Yeah, Season 3 is the best. I know why Season 4 did so poorly, but the end result is that it's still not as good. Season 3 also had numerous talent on display, DC writers like Len Wein, Dan DiDio, and Marv Wolfman, plus D.C. Fontana (RIP). My first experience in ReBoot was 1998, from a friend. I think one of the first sequences I ever saw was the cardboard cut-out gag where they trick the virals into retreating that way.

Man, my favorite among Season 3 is the last eight episodes. The Web arc and the return to Mainframe. My God, they REFUSED to do something as cliched as have Bob, the big hero, take down the villain, and given his upgrade with Glitch, that was for the best. No, let's give it to Matrix, the coming of age badass Mad Max type character, show off his growth, his journey to main character status, and with the main villain now finding himself on the wrong side of the changing of the guard... Matrix is awesome. And my favorite ReBoot girl is easily Dot Matrix. Once you go green, you never go back, baby! XD

Reboot was the very first TV series to be entirely CGI. As dated as it is, it does have its charm.

I took to the first season because I recognized the games they were parodying. Wizards, Warriors, and a word from our Sponsor was an early fave due to it aping gauntlet, and Mic the TV was always amusing.

But the episode where I knew this was something totally different was Enzo's birthday party. I wasn't old enough to get the BS&P song, but the finale where Megabyte shows up Alice Cooper in concert style, hack and slash get on the drums, the bang out an epic rock solo, and even upstaged Bob in a Guitar Hero battle. THEN Megabyte hands the Guitar to Enzo wishing him a happy birthday and peaces out like a boss.

well it all did something I didn't recall any animated shows doing before.

It let the villain be cool. Sure, we'd seen competent, scary, and silly villains before. Even sympathetic ones here and there. But a villain actually have a moment where kids would actually like him? That was definitely different and said the show had some ambition behind it long before it capitalized on it.

And season 3 definitely took advantage of the less strict broadcasting policies and swung for the fences. Evil Dead? James Bond? Mortal Kombat? in just the first four episodes? We even had Seven Samurai, Mars Attacks, and The prisoner nods. That was definitely batting a full age group or two above the prior seasons. I'd finished high school by that point and it had been two years between season 2 & 3 but it was fantastic to see it return and with such gusto. YTV was stationed in Ontario, Canada and Toronto had bus posters with Bob holding up Mainframe hitchhiking signs, which was a fantastic way to advertise his return on a canadian network, and nod to what had happened prior.

Reboot is one of those shows that is half a victory story, half a tragedy. We got a triumph of a third season that really shows what childrens programming can do when PC culture is shoved to the side. The tragedy is that the need to shove PC culture to the side and allow for storytelling to happen is something this generation has forgotten. I even respect the 2/3rd of a fourth season we got. Its great to get some vision and quality, even if it is sad to never see it fulfilled.

There's a Playstation One Reboot game which is average in gameplay, but has multiple endings, FMV made by mainframe, and the entire voice cast returning. You can look it up on youtube and think of it as a lost episode of Season 2.


I think Beast Wars is the only series Mainframe ever saw to completion, and even that is a partial loss since they had further plans for the series, but Hasbro sold the follow up series to be shown on network television, which meant that it would get a stronger viewership but it was under BS&P and thus couldn't show character deaths or guns and had other mandates, which is partially why it felt so much more shallow than Beast Wars. I honestly forget the network it was sold too but Everyone I knew that liked beast was never fully sold on beast machines for many reasons. Despite it reaching a wider audience, many noped out near the end of Season 1 and Season 2 bounced around in its time slot.

The third series Mainframe produced, Shadow Raiders, lasted two seasons before the studio stopped production altogether. It was even more ambitious than reboots prior seasons, but unfortunately struggled to find an audience and ended on a cliff hanger that did manage to provide a small bit of closure.

Its always interesting seeing the younger generation discover series I grew up with and see that storytelling is indeed universal. I agree that having Enzo fight Megabyte was the way to go, that Megabyte was like a monster to him all his life and to see him stand toe to toe was a milestone moment for him in his life. Bob got to save the day in other ways, but that was his fight.

[Yukaphile]

I am aware of that. Or why else would I list all the other series that have ReBoot to thank for their existence? And as I had said, I think ReBoot holds up better being a world within the internet of computer programming than Beast Wars simply because more realistic live-action CGI has been done. You shouldn't expect such an alien world to conform to our reality, after all.

I would contend Megabyte showing up to jam out is actually... still part of Season 1 early installment weirdness. It's inconsistent to later lore even in the context of Season 1, and I know some think it has its hokey enjoyment, but for me... meh. Season 2 hit the ground running, with Megabyte trying to delete the system, infiltrating the Principal Office, and he nearly takes out the whole system with him when it looks like he's gonna be deleted. The stakes got higher, the stories got better, and so on. I'd say the Power Rangers parody is the one that has the hokey enjoyment factor, even if you have to wonder why they never used the Reboot Megazord again.

Season 3 is just pure win. It's definitely more of action-hero adventure story than anything else. The Web was a fascinating plane of reality, and the discussions surrounding how it fits into real computers always makes me appreciate it more. And then returning to Mainframe to find what a viral outbreak does to your computer.

Oh yeah, very true. They weren't trying to satisfy ANYONE with Season 3. We got tons of great action girls with great female empowerment, yet they were allowed to be vulnerable too, realistically so, and yet above all, they persevere in the face of evil. Matrix is a wild-rider shoot-first-ask-questions-later renegade anti-hero, yet there's an ineffable softness to him too. You just don't see stories like this... EVER. Makes me wonder if there had been more corporate oversight, if much of what made it great would have been toned down. Like big out of touch studios ALWAYS do in insulting our intelligence.

I would love if it ReBoot had ever gotten the KOTOR treatment, but alas...

Who's your favorite ReBoot girl? Like, as I'd said, the one I really wanna, um... go where no Sprite and User has ever gone before with, haha, would be Dot. How about you? Mouse or AndrAIa? Unless you're female, in which case, what male? Or if you're gay, in which case, which one among them?

[AllanO]

I am definitely a way bigger fan of Reboot than Tron, but did see the 1984 Tron before I saw Reboot and would definitely tend to think of Reboot as being "what if someone expanded on some of the ideas/setting/metaphors in Tron". Possibly I liked Tron Legacy as much as I did because I liked Reboot, who can say.

I liked all three seasons and the movies (season 4) of Reboot for different reasons. The first and to a lesser extent second season were more standard kids TV, but I found them fun even if they were not particularly deep or consistent with each other. The third season really engaged me and I remember watching the finale as I was finishing up some big project for my last year of high school, I really had to watch it. I liked the arc plot and heavy characterization and stakes of the later season and movies also.

I am not sure I could point to too much direct influence of Reboot on other shows (except for the several other Mainframe shows and Reboot was my favourite Mainframe show), but I would have said that writing on much kids TV from my observation continued with the arc plots, more nuanced characterization and more stakes seen in Reboot (like say Gargoyles or Batman the Animated Series and related shows), I would put it as part of a trend. I would say the writing could be simplistic (resolutions would be cleaner then you would expect in life etc.) and goofy, lines from the pop culture being referenced could be shoe horned in an a way that was unnatural, so it was hardly flawless. In terms of developing CGI techniques Mainframe were clearly early adopters (they also did early CGI for the music video of the Dire Straits Money for Nothing) and innovators and so set some of the trends in development, but clearly CGI animation was going to be a thing, so their influence was not absolute, eventually it was coming and I am pretty sure there were distinct lineages in terms of technology used and so on.

Technically there was a reboot of Reboot in 2018. Reboot: the Guardian Code which went with a combination of live action and CGI and is on Netflix (also aired on cable in Canada). Based on the one episode I saw it seemed like probably not that good (it reminded me of Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad including the somewhat hockey characterization but with more of an arc plot) I don't think it was picked up, but it did have versions of Hexadecimal and Megatron running around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReBoot:_The_Guardian_Code

I also liked Tron Uprising another show canceled/not renewed on a cliffhanger. Also another show with Boxleitner in it arc plots and heavy characterization.

Reboot would definitely fit into the kind of thing Chuck would review and have some interesting tie ins to things like his Beast Wars review, but so likewise Tron and related would make a lot of sense for him to discuss. For better or worse I sense he has a pretty full set of commitments, so who knows what will come up.

Note that the difference in executive control between ABC and YTV is a mix of arbitrary elements and so on. It is not so much about freedom as different constraints. So freedom from the taboos you are used to can seem like freedom but it is a bit more complicated than that. There was the pottential for plenty of strange directives coming down from YTV. For example Beast Wars was broadcast as Beasties in Canada because of earlier backlash (I want to say against Power Rangers) for violence in kids programming, the logic being if you don't put "War" in the title people won't notice the violence (likewise another Mainframe show War Planets was known as Shadow Raiders in Canada).

[MyUserName]

I am aware of that. Or why else would I list all the other series that have ReBoot to thank for their existence? And as I had said, I think ReBoot holds up better being a world within the internet of computer programming than Beast Wars simply because more realistic live-action CGI has been done. You shouldn't expect such an alien world to conform to our reality, after all.

I would contend Megabyte showing up to jam out is actually... still part of Season 1 early installment weirdness. It's inconsistent to later lore even in the context of Season 1, and I know some think it has its hokey enjoyment, but for me... meh. Season 2 hit the ground running, with Megabyte trying to delete the system, infiltrating the Principal Office, and he nearly takes out the whole system with him when it looks like he's gonna be deleted. The stakes got higher, the stories got better, and so on. I'd say the Power Rangers parody is the one that has the hokey enjoyment factor, even if you have to wonder why they never used the Reboot Megazord again.

Season 3 is just pure win. It's definitely more of action-hero adventure story than anything else. The Web was a fascinating plane of reality, and the discussions surrounding how it fits into real computers always makes me appreciate it more. And then returning to Mainframe to find what a viral outbreak does to your computer.

Oh yeah, very true. They weren't trying to satisfy ANYONE with Season 3. We got tons of great action girls with great female empowerment, yet they were allowed to be vulnerable too, realistically so, and yet above all, they persevere in the face of evil. Matrix is a wild-rider shoot-first-ask-questions-later renegade anti-hero, yet there's an ineffable softness to him too. You just don't see stories like this... EVER. Makes me wonder if there had been more corporate oversight, if much of what made it great would have been toned down. Like big out of touch studios ALWAYS do in insulting our intelligence.

I would love if it ReBoot had ever gotten the KOTOR treatment, but alas...

Who's your favorite ReBoot girl? Like, as I'd said, the one I really wanna, um... go where no Sprite and User has ever gone before with, haha, would be Dot. How about you? Mouse or AndrAIa? Unless you're female, in which case, what male? Or if you're gay, in which case, which one among them?

My pick from the Reboot harem would be adult AndrAla. I like a rough and tumble type thats ready to hit the road for adventure.

[Yukaphile]

Fair. Though I dunno, I guess for me, it is both Dot's strength, as well as her fragility. Also the fact that she's SUPER SMART. Like, her skin color is GREEN. The color of intelligence. And with those glasses... and I dunno, she's just got kind of a sophisticated sexiness to her, especially in Season 3. That war jumpsuit, man... va-va-va-va-voom!

[MyUserName]

Technically there was a reboot of Reboot in 2018. Reboot: the Guardian Code which went with a combination of live action and CGI and is on Netflix (also aired on cable in Canada). Based on the one episode I saw it seemed like probably not that good (it reminded me of Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad including the somewhat hockey characterization but with more of an arc plot) I don't think it was picked up, but it did have versions of Hexadecimal and Megatron running around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReBoot:_The_Guardian_Code

I also liked Tron Uprising another show canceled/not renewed on a cliffhanger. Also another show with Boxleitner in it arc plots and heavy characterization.

Reboot the guardian code was written as a fantasy wish fulfillment of the shows front runner for his son, This was confirmed in an interview prior to the shows release. It did have bob, Megabyte, and Hexadecimal show up. But they were WAY out of character. As was Dot and Little Enzo. Not only that but one episode features a really insulting portrayal of a thirty something overweight, basement dwelling, old school reboot fan being thrilled to find that the mainframe server is back on the net. I saw a few clips and reviews on youtube and that was all I needed to see.

As for Super Human Samurai Cyber Squad, interesting you should bring that up. There was a sequel series released to the original japanese show that cyber squad took its footage from, Denkou Choujin Gridman, in 2018 called SSSS Gridman. It started out acting as if it was a reboot, but the final episode has the final, most powerful form of the new Gridman, be an unleashing of the classic gridman suit complete with CGI'd recreation of the old school transformation and a use of "Yume no Hero" which was the original gridman vocal track. If you're a fan of the Cyber Squad its very worth checking out due to all the nods you'll be able to spot. And Yume no Hero is a kickass superhero track.

Tron Uprising was absolutely loss of a great show that everyone was giving their all to make. Its cancellation was very blatant as, while it was successful, Disney had decided not to go forward with the brand so they gave the show the worst timeslot possible and let it run out its first season.

[Steve]

Split from prior topic.

And for everyone's viewing pleasure, the commencement of the best ass-kicking in the series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTpOT3QQk2o