"My father told me about the stories of the Great Sharg War. An alien creature invaded our planet. Our world was nearly destroyed. Until they arrived, falling from the skies like guardian angels. We call them the Robos. But we knew one day the Sharg would return"
—Stanford Yu's opening monologue
Mech Cadets is an animated series airing on Netflix directed by Tohru Patrick Awa, with animation done by Polygon Pictures and based on the comic series Mech Cadet Yu by Greg Pak. It released on August 10th, 2023.
Years into the future, mankind found itself beset by crab-like alien creatures called the Sharg. The invasion seems impossible to stop - until an unexpected ally quite literally fell from the sky. Humongous Mecha, dubbed "The Robos" by humanity started to land on Earth and formed bonds with humans, allowing human and Robo to fight the Sharg off as partners.
In the year 2075, Stanford Yu dreams of becoming a pilot like his late father. Too bad for him that he isn't in the pilot class. He's essentially a janitor, assisting his mother with keeping Sky Corps clean. After an unsuccessful attempt to sneak himself into the selection ceremony where newly arrived Robos choose their pilots from a class of trainees, Yu finds himself roaming the desert when another Robo hits Earth. While Yu helps the Robo fend off a suddenly attacking Sharg, the two of them unexpectedly form a bond. Now Yu and his newly christened Robo Buddy are part of the Mech Cadets, the future defenders of Earth and mankind.
Provides examples of
- 10-Minute Retirement: Stanford is expelled from Sky Corps Academy in episode 5 due to disobeying orders. But Buddy is still bonded to him and, despite the academy's best tries (and thanks to Ava's sabotage), utterly refuses to bond with his replacement trainee. Instead they just take the first opportunity to flee and locate Stanford who, just like the first time they found each other, jumps at the call to come back.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Very downplayed example with General Park. He's still a strict Well-Intentioned Extremist who puts a ton of pressure on his daughter and views the Robos as unimportant compared to the humans piloting them. But at the very least his care for his daughter is genuine and unlike his comic counterpart he doesn't torture Hero Force One in-between battles to make it more aggressive.
- Alien Blood: Sharg blood is bright blue, which makes otherwise gory scenes a bit more tolerable to the human eye.
- And the Adventure Continues: The first season ends with the Mech Cadets, together with Captain Tanaka and General Park, leaving for space to find Olivia.
- Arc Words: "For all humanity". Often said by someone before making an extremely difficult decision in battle. Olivia says it before she pushes the Sharg Queen into the black hole, performing a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Armchair Military: Tanaka criticizes General Park for ordering the pilots around with no regard for his own lack of experience in a Robo.
- Art Shift: Key flashbacks to the Cadets' backstories are rendered in a 2D monochrome art style, with the only thing in color being an object or clothing associated with the focus character which is rendered in their signature color.
- Bond Creature: The Robos bond with a human of their choosing, making that human the only one who can pilot them or understand them. The bond can't be broken once formed and is life-long.
- Child Prodigy: Most of the pilots have to be this, as there's a specific window of time when it comes to bonding with the Robos. General Park even remarks that no Robo has ever bonded with a human over the age of sixteen.
- Child Soldiers: Downplayed and justified, due to the aforementioned age limit on bonding with a Robo. It's made clear that the ideal scenario is for the child to keep training as a mech cadet and only enter combat as a an adult, but Robos are limited and if the kids are the only ones available then they have to go. It's also why General Park is so insistent on making Hero Force One a reality: he doesn't want to send more children to the front lines.
- Colorcoded For Your Convenience: The Robos all have a primary color to keep them apart more easily. Their pilots reflect said color whenever they're in the Nexus Link. Red for Big Red, green for Thunderwrecker, yellow for Tombo and blue for Buddy. In the case of Olivia, Hero Force One itself appears in the Nexus Link in a black and grey color.
- Falling into the Cockpit: A variant where the mecha the cockpit belongs to is fully sentient and was the one to open it in the first place. Yu "falls" into it when he defends Buddy from the Sharg attacking them, which makes Buddy bond with him afterward.
- Flawed Prototype: Hero Force One. It has a far lower energy cap than the natural Robos, its weapon systems jam constantly on its first training fight and it's much slower than the Robos as well. This is subverted once the Hero Force team works out the aforementioned kinks through Olivia's report.
- Genre Savvy:
- While he doesn't agree with Buddy's choice, General Park knows it's pointless to try and break their and Yu's bond and that it would be equally pointless to try and force them to choose Olivia instead. Subverted in "Ghosts" where he expels Stanford and tries to have the bond overriden artificially to make Buddy choose a new trainee.
- Both Captain Tanaka and General Park immediately order the Sharg eggs destroyed after they're determined as such. Despite Dr. Miller's protest that studying them might yield enormous advantages for humanity, Sharg potentially hatching in the middle of the base would be disastrous to put it mildly.
- Heroic Sacrifice:
- Chief Max' Robo Mariposa ejected Max when they were about to be killed by a Sharg, saving Max but losing their own life in the process. This sacrifice is what convinced Chief Max that Robos are far more than just machines and that artificially created Robos like Hero Force 1 will never match them.
- Captain Tanaka attempts this by pushing the Sharg Queen into the black hole. He ends up being unable to go through with it as Tombo is just too heavily damaged. Olivia pushes the Sharg Queen into the black hole in his stead and vanishes with her to an unkown location as the black hole closes behind both of them.
- Humongous Mecha: Every Robo coming to Earth is about at least as big as a house. Even Buddy, who is said to be rather small for one of their kind, still towers over the humans.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Since the Robos are Mechanical Lifeforms and not mindless machines, they're not referred to with 'it'. Instead everybody uses gender neutral they/them when referring to a Robo. The only exception to this is Hero Force One and only because it isn't sentient like the other Robos.
- Kaiju: The Sharg, crab-like aliens who continously attack Earth.
- Last-Name Basis: As is standard in a military ogranization, the cadets are always addressed by their last names rather than their given names.
- Mechanical Lifeforms: Robos are fully sentient beings who can move around just fine even with no pilot at the helm. At most the pilots seem to assume a guiding role when they're bonded.
- The Needs of the Many: A common point of conflict between the characters is having to come to terms with the fact that they're not just fighting for themselves and their close family but for the entirety of planet Earth and will potentially have to make sacrifices so humanity as a whole can survive. Stanford actively defies this mindset when he chooses saving his mother and General Park from three hatching Sharg over letting them die and making sure all the Sharg on the Sky Corps Academy premises are killed.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Hero Force units, like in the original comic, use the cores of Robos who were damaged in battle to power themselves.
- The Stinger: In the very last scene of season one, Olivia awakens in a black void. A sort of portal opens in front of her and a person steps out. Olivia gasps in shock at seeing who it is. Cut to credits.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Well-intentioned as it was of Stanford to lift the lockdown on Sky Corps Academy so he could save his mother and General Park, he was still acting against clear orders. General Park has him expelled as a result.
- Frank uses a state-of-the-art prosthetic leg, but unlike most stories with amputees, it's not simple Plug 'n' Play Prosthetics: he's tried prosthetics before, but he found that forearm crutches were much better for helping him function, while the prosthetic is clumsy, pinchy, and ill-fitting for a body that's adjusted to just one leg. The only reason he uses it is because it was required by the program and he makes clear he doesn't like it. When it's destroyed and he goes back to his forearm crutches, he's shown to be much more capable and confident using them.
- Too Dumb to Live: Dr. Miller, despite knowing how dangerous Sharg are, refuses to destroy the Sharg eggs when ordered to do so by both General Park and Captain Tanaka and instead keeps them so he can study them and profit off his research. Predictably, one of the eggs eventually hatches and the newly born Sharg kills Dr. Miller in its escape.
- The Unintelligible: The Robos can speak but only in their own alien language which to a non-pilot sounds like nonsensical mechanical garbling.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- General Park lambasts Stanford for deactivating lockdown protocols before all the intruding Sharg were killed to save him and Dolly, which lead to one of the Sharg escaping and potentially put the entire world in danger.
- Dolly calls Stanford out on letting his own bad mood over being expelled and losing Buddy keep him from sincerely gratulating Ava for her promotion even though she was always there for him and on more than one occasion risked her dream career so he could have his.
- Ava, Max and the Mech Cadets are furious with General Park after finding out that the Hero Force units are powered by the core of Veritas, a Robo that was injured in battle and who General Park had killed instead of repaired.
