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Sky Corps Academy
Mech Cadets
In General
- Child Prodigy: Pilots have to pass the screening test at a very young age and excel at the exams, because the Robos only bond with very young candidates. According to General Park, no Robo has ever chosen a trainee over the age of sixteen.
- Color-Coded Characters: The pilots are associated with the main colors of their Robos. When in the Nexus link, their exo-suits gain a halo-like light that reflects their Robos color. Stanford is blue, Frank is green, Maya is red, Tanaka is yellow and Olivia and the other HF pilots are black and grey.
- Hive Mind: Downplayed. The Nexus link can be entered by every pilot at the same time and they and their Robos basically become one being while linked. But they can't read each others' thoughts or feeling like in usual examples.
- Only the Chosen May Wield: The Robos choose for themselves who their pilots will be. Once the bond is formed, the Robos will not accept anyone else in their cockpit (as Adam Williams finds out the hard way).
- Weapon-Based Characterization: Once a Robo chooses their human, engineers outfit them to match.
- Stanford was a late addition with no significant combat training, and so he gets a standard Power Fist. He's also very creative with Buddy's inbuilt abilities, showing their strong bond.
- Olivia's HF 1 is outfitted primarily with missiles and grenade launchers, showing that it's not a living being fighting but more like a walking tank.
- Maya has a Telescoping Staff that can split into two smaller batons, fitting her preference for martial arts and smashing things.
- Frank has dual tonfas that resemble his crutches, reflecting a more unique fighting style. He also likes launching bombs and blades, being more strategic and cooler-headed than Maya.
Stanford
Stanford Yu
Voiced by: Brandon Soo Hoo
The main protagonist who longs to be a pilot like his late father. Through a series of coincidences, he gets his wish when he's chosen by the Robomech Buddy.
- Ace Pilot: Despite having no training aside from his hours in the simulator, Stanford proves to be a natural at flying being able to pull off complicated maneuvers on his first day training with an actual Robo.
- Almighty Janitor: Stanford was originally part of the cleaning crew, but manages through his courage and determination to impress a Robo so much they bond with him without seeing any other candidates.
- Demoted to Extra: A very minor case, as he's simply no longer part of the Adjective Noun Fred title with it being shortened from "Mech Cadet Yu" for the comic to "Mech Cadets" for the show. While he's still the main protagonist, the show puts a very hefty amount of focus on his fellow cadets as well.
- Disappeared Dad: His father was a Robo pilot who was killed in action alongside his partner. Living up to his legacy is a big part of why Stanford wants to become a pilot himself.
Olivia
Olivia Park
Voiced by: Victoria Grace
The daughter of General Park and the best pilot trainee in the academy. Due to her father expecting her to be the best at everything, she always pushes herself harder than everyone else and is distraught when none of the newly arrived Robos choose her as a partner.- Broken Ace: She's by far the most skilled of the trainees, with Maya even remarking that everyone expected her to be one of the Robos' chosen pilots. At the same time her drive to be the best at everything causes her to be anti-social and overly competitive which isolates her from her fellow cadets.
- Broken Pedestal: Her respect for her father starts to disappear when she finds out what he had done to Veritas for the Hero Force project.
- Daddy's Girl: She's shown to be very close with General Park, despite his less than ideal way of raising her.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Starts the show off as an arrogant, rules-obsessed Academic Alpha Bitch, but over time does warm up to her fellow mech cadets.
- Jerkass Has a Point:
- While she was unnecessarily harsh and violent about it, Olivia isn't wrong when she calls out Stanford for trying to sneak into the pilot ceremony, something her and the other trainees have worked and studied hard for to earn the right to participate in.
- You can also kind of see why she'd be less than pleased that the guy who tried to cheat his way into the ceremony just happened to stumble upon and get chosen by a Robo in the desert while she despite all her efforts was soundly rejected.
- Missing Mom: Her mother died of unspecified causes.
- Tragic Keepsake: The bird stud Olivia always wears originally belonged to her deceased mother.
- "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Olivia desperately wants her father to approve of her and be proud of her, which is another reaosn she takes her rejection by the Robos so hard.
Maya
Maya Sanchez
Voiced by: Anairis Quiñones
A hot-headed brawler who manages to get chosen by Big Red during the ceremony. She's desperate to prove herself as an Ace Pilot.- Big Sister Instinct: The reason she enlisted as a pilot trainee was so she could bring her younger brother into Sky Corps Acdemy as well so he'd be taken care of.
- Combat Pragmatist: As she demonstrates in her very first training battle, Maya isn't afraid to fight dirty. When it seems like her and Big Red can't beat Tanaka and Tombo, she manages a breakthrough by kicking Tombo in the crotch.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Her family used to live in Puerto Rico, but the Sharg invasion saw the whole island decimated with her parents lost in the crossfire. She struggled to keep herself and her brother alive until she came to Sky Corps, and is desperate to gain a spot for them both.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted and downplayed with her and Frank. Maya and Big Red are more focused on close combat with their staff and Maya's martial arts knowledge while Frank and Thunderwrecker, while also having a way to engage in close combat through their tonfas, rely mostly on launching bombs and blades to attack.
- Official Couple: Mid-season her and Frank start to grow closer and even go on a date together. By the season finale they're officially a couple.
Frank
Frank Olivetti
Voiced by: Josh Sundquist
The son of a famous Robo pilot who aims to honor his mother's legacy by becoming a pilot himself. He was chosen by Thunderwrecker.- Artificial Limbs: Subverted. He starts out with a prosthetic lower leg, but the series is more realistic about the downsides of prosthetics limbs than most and he actually prefers using forearm crutches, only taking the leg because it was necessary for the exosuit. When it gets destroyed, Ava just transfers the remainder onto his exosuit and he sticks to crutches for the rest of the series.
- Cane Fu: He's used forearm crutches most of his life, and gets to use them in battle when Shargs infiltrate the base. Even Thunderwrecker's tonfas resemble his crutches.
- Handicapped Badass: He's missing his left lower leg but is just as capable in combat in and out of a Robo as his teammates.
- Jerkass to One: He's not too sweet on Olivia at first, due to the latter using him as a Human Shield in the cadet test and her Academic Alpha Bitch tendencies in general. He does warm up to her as she starts to undergo Character Development.
- Nice Guy: By far the kindest in the team and the only one to take Stanford in with open arms after Buddy chooses him.
- Official Couple: With Maya. He asks her out on a date mid-season, the two of them regularly flirt afterward and in the last episode they share a kiss.
- Team Chef: It's subtle, but whenever the cadets are making meals he's the one cooking.
Military
General Park
General Aiden Park
Voiced by: Daniel Dae Kim
Humanity's military leader and the head of Sky Corps Academy. Is willing to do almost anything so Earth will win the war against the Sharg.- Easily Forgiven: After the initial horrified reactions to Park's sanctioned murder of Veritas, so their core could be used to power the new Hero Force Mechs everyone quickly seems to get over the fact that Park basically had a living person killed in cold blood, desecrated their corpse and sent their partner away to cover it up. In one of the final scenes of season one he even joins the Mech Cadets and Tanaka in one of the Hero Force units, the very thing Veritas had to die for, and none of the protagonists even comments on it.
- Fantastic Racism: Downplayed. He shows a certain level of respect for the Robos, but ultimately doesn't value their lives as much as he does the lives of their human pilots. His attempt to break Buddy's and Stanford's bond after expelling Stanford also shows a lack of respect for the Robos' autonomy on his part.
- Hidden Disdain Reveal: Downplayed. After Tanaka attacks him verbally and physically over both the Hero Force units and Olivia running away to space, Park implies that he always resented the Robo Mech pilots and Tanaka specifically for being seen as the real heroes of the war while people like him who had to make the hard decisions on the ground largely went unnoticed.
- I Did What I Had to Do: How he justifies the murder of Veritas and the desecration of their body for their core. He insists that the lives of the pilots are more important and that making artificial Robos would in the end allow them not to have to send children to battle anymore.
- Papa Wolf: Despite everything he is fiercely protective of Olivia. The only time his usual stone-faced composure slips is when Olivia is in trouble or danger. He looks about ready to break into tears after her Heroic Sacrifice.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He often reiterates that he's willing to make any sacrifice and go to any lengths so humanity will prevail against the Sharg. This sometimes make him come across as cold or downright antagonistic. He's even willing to murder a Robo who could have been repaired and retire their pilot partner so he can use the Robo's core to power his new Hero Force units.
Captain Tanaka
Captain Skip Tanaka
Voiced by: James Yaegashi
An older Robomech pilot who acts as the Mech Cadets' teacher. He's a childhood friend of General Park's and Olivia's uncle and second father figure. His Robo is Tombo.- Armor-Piercing Question: During his and General Park's argument about the Hero Force units, Tanaka asks if Park would have pulled the same stunt with Tombo if he'd gotten the opportunity.
- Hero of Another Story: He's a veteran of the first Great Sharg War.
- It's All My Fault: At the end of the first season he blames himself for Olivia having to make the Heroic Sacrifice of pushing the Sharg Queen into a black hole. He originally wanted to do it himself but Tombo proved too heavily damaged to pull it through.
- The Mentor: He's in charge of drilling the new Mech Cadets and getting them to work as a team.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Subverted. He tries to invoke this in the season one finale by volunteering to push the Sharg Queen into the black hole with Tombo. But Tombo turns out to be too heavily damaged to see it through and the Mech Cadets have to pull them back out. Olivia ends up pushing the Sharg Queen in instead.
- Old Soldier: Him and Tombo fought in the first Great Sharg War and he's still on active duty.
- Papa Wolf: Skip is just as protective of Olivia as her actual father Aiden is. When Olivia jets off to space to scout out the Sharg ship on her own, in part because the Awful Truth about Hero Force pushed her into it, Skip is furious and goes so far as to physically attack Aiden over it.
- What the Hell, Hero?: He's disgusted when he finds out what General Park did to Veritas and calls Park out on his dismissive attitude toward the Robomechs' lives.
Engineering Corps
Chief Max
Voiced by: Debra Wilson
The head of the engineering corps. A former Robo Mech partner herself, who has great respect for the Robos.- Androids Are People, Too: Due to her strong bond with Mariposa, who sacrificed their life to protect her, she is incredibly protective of the Robos and insists on treating them as people and not machines to be reprogrammed as others see fit. Learning about Veritas was a severe blow to her.
- Black Boss Lady: She's the chief of the engineering corps and not afraid to assert her authority to protect both the people working under her and the Robos.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: She breaks her leg in a Sharg fight, benching her for a bit and forcing the younger and more unsure Ava to step up.
- Hero of Another Story: She served as a Mech pilot in the first Great Sharg War, until her partner Mariposa was killed in action.
Ava
Ava Patel
Voiced by: Aparna Brielle
Stanford's childhood friend and a talented engineer.- Action Girl: At one point she severely injures a Sharg by using what's basically a futuristic hacksaw.
- Nice Girl: She's always kind, friendly and supportive toward Stanford, even risking her career to get him into the pilot ceremony.
- The Unfavorite: Her mother is always calling her to tell her about the achievements of this or that cousin, and criticize her for not doing as well.
- Wrench Wench: Has been fixing up machines ever since she was small and now puts that to use to perform maintenance on giant alien robots. Her talents are of great use when the Sharg manage to disable the GDR projector near the base.
