Kiwi Blitz is a Webcomic by Mary Cagle (known elsewhere on the net as one of a number of variations of "Cube Watermelon"), updated either bi-weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or weekly on just Tuesdays, depending on how busy the watermelon is.The main character is 14-year-old Steffi Frohlich, who under the guise of "Blitz" fights crime in a future New York City using her bird-shaped Humongous Mecha, Kiwibot. She's assisted in this by her best friend Benzene who acts as Mission Control and later the Robot Girl 42. Of course, that's just what she does during her free time, when she's not busy with her day job as a junior Robot League combatant.Along with the ill-equipped NYPD, Steffi/Blitz battles masked criminals, rogue military hardware, and most importantly, her own boredom.Current Tracks are,in order...
Weapon of Choice
Omen
Sneakman
Phony
The Warning
Trip Machine
Coward Mont Blanc
I My Me Mine
The Vulture
Take Me To The Hospital
This series provides examples of:
Allergic To Routine: Steffi, Gear, and even Raccoon seem to be motivated by boredom to some extent.
An Arm and a Leg: Steffi and Gear suffer this to some extent, since they have prosthetic limbs. Reed becomes a new addition after Gear cuts his right arm off.
Animal Mecha: Kiwibot is a kiwi bird mecha, hence the title.
Not to mention the majority of the other mechas we've seen also have animal designs.
Animesque: The artist commented on her style on her Twitter account: "Note that that isn't a complaint at all. I enjoy living on the edge of animeish/animesque/pseud-anime/kinda-anime/ like those pokemon people".
Artificial Limbs: Steffi has a robot leg. The strip doesn't make a big deal about it.
The villainous Gear has both her left arm and left leg replaced by prosthetics. Her right arm looks mechanical, but it's just a gauntlet.
Badass Adorable Steffi and the Raccoon. Even more so after the Raccoon's identity is revealed.
Cast of Snowflakes: The artist works this. Minor characters and even nameless bystanders get unique faces and designs.
Chekhov's Skill: Early in comic, it's mentioned that Steffi had taken taekwondo lessons. This becomes useful later on when she's forced to fight the Raccoon in hand to hand combat.
Clark Kenting: Averted. The media quickly begins to theorize that Steffi is Blitz, pointing out they physically resemble each other and that Kiwibot is similar to other Frolich mechs.
Dangerously Genre Savvy: During his second encounter with Gear, Reed correctly deduces that she would try to escape in the nearest manhole and intercepts her. He even points out that villains like her are painfully predictable.
Even Evil Has Standards: It remains to be seen if The Raccoon is really evil, but this thief refuses to use the chain claw while fighting Steffi because it's too deadly.
Eyepatch of Power: Gear. Pretty literally. As in, it's an eyepatch with an "on/off" symbol on it.
Five Rounds Rapid: Apparently SWAT teams don't exist in the KB universe, so the police are rather helpless against criminals like Gear, whose cyborg augmentations render her immune to their taser pistols.
For the Evulz: Pretty much perfectly describes Gear.
Genki Girl: Steffi, when faced with a new mech for her birthday, immediately decides to fight crime in it, and throughout the story seems to dive into situations with relish when she should really be thinking about them. She seems to get the trait from her father, who also exhibits some rather fun-loving tendencies.
I Call It Vera: Some military robots had a program called ARIS installed that gave them feedback via a female voice, since it was believed it would keep the calm in battle. However, it worked a bit too well, and many pilots grew dangerously attached to their robots.
Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The chapters are called "tracks", and every track is named after an electronica song.
Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: When Steffi interrupts The Raccoon from eating a sandwich and making "nomph nom" noises, he ends up saying one of them.
Serrated Blade of Pain: Gear has a retractable serrated shortsword built into her prosthetic arm. She likes to use it on people she finds "Offensively Boring".
Shout Out: To Pokémon, when Steffi comments how Kiwibot's Beak Shot was "not very effective..."
Translation Convention: Most of the German is left untranslated, but for extended passages it switches to English in angle brackets, just like in Megatokyo.
Uncanny Valley: In-Universe. 42's a rather cute Robot Girl, but it's a little unnerving to see her open her mouth and have a grown man's voice come out. She's even more so when's she turned off. Both Steffi and the author (see the cast page) lampshade this.
"Well Done, Son" Guy: Reed's greatest dream as a child was to be a policeman like his father. It's revealed later that Reed's father is the current police chief.
Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: The Raccoon has a TON of gadgets such as the claw hook, smoke bombs, a taser knuckle, knockout patches, and more. It's quite amazing considering that she's just a young girl. It's implied that all of the gear is supplied by a larger organization.
You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Aside from Steffi, Announcer Lady has green hair, and Employee Lady has light purple hair, and 42 has purple hair...let's just say a lot of the cast.
Gear's is a subversion since it's just a wig
Younger than They Look: Steffi mentions that Gear's face is too long for her to be seventeen like she claims.
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