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YMMV / ReBoot: The Guardian Code

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  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: At one point in one episode, the Sourceror picks up and eats a cockroach crawling along his desk. He's never shown doing anything similar at any other point in the series, and it doesn't offer any insight into his character, so one wonders why the show thought we needed to see that except to just be gross.
  • Bile Fascination: The paper-thin plots, weak characterization, and lack of respect for the source material has led to the show becoming well-known for all the wrong reasons.
  • Cliché Storm:
    • Four teenagers (whose dialogue is 90% Stock Phrases) are recruited because of their video game skills, to venture into cyberspace and stop a seedy hacker in a Hacker Cave (whose dialogue is 90% Stock Phrases and who has no (apparent) motivation) from causing chaos on both the internet and the real world. Probably intentional, since this format was the only way the producers could sell a ReBoot reboot to investors.
    • Trey deserves an entry all on his own. In a tech-heavy setting, the African-American character is a basketball Scholarship Student with an overbearing father who's constantly pushing him to better himself instead of slack off? And that, despite being shorter than Austin in the real world, his Guardian form is twice as large as the others and has noticeably gorilla-like proportions?
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Pretty much every fan has written off Guardian Code due to its heavy departure from the original show.
    • Any fans that remained were quick to reject Megabyte defeating Hexadecimal in a flat out fight, as the entire point of the characters conflict in the original series was Megabyte could not win a fight against his vastly more powerful (but less sane) sister and had to resort to convincing her to help or exploiting her when she was weakened by other occurrences.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The accusations that Guardian Code was actually an adaptation of Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad became this when that show got its own reboot, SSSS.GRIDMAN, (which takes equal parts influence from Syber Squad and the original Gridman). Furthermore, unlike Guardian Code, the response to SSSS.GRIDMAN has been very positive.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Due to his fairly faithful characterization and Timothy Brummund doing an admirable Tony Jay impression, some people watch the show primarily for Megabyte. Hexadecimal's presence also perked some people up.
  • Narm:
    • When Parker steps out of the bathroom in an early episode, he lingers in front of the door long enough for the viewer to reaaally take in the giant sign stating "GENDER NEUTRAL BATHROOM" in enormous letters hanging conspicuously over his shoulder. Regardless of one's opinion on the matter, it was very ham-handedly staged.
    • Whether intentional or not, the ReBoot fanboy from "Mainframe Mayhem" crying "After twenty years, Mainframe is back!" comes off as less of a tribute to old-school fans and more of a Take That, Audience! due to how much of a stereotypical basement dweller he is.
    • When Bob first appears in "Mainframe Mayhem", he almost immediately begins reciting his Opening Narration monologue from the original show's intro. It's incredibly awkward.
  • Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize: Yes, Guardian Code, we totally believe you hired perennial The X-Files creep Nicholas Lea just to play the love interest of the main character's mother.
  • The Scrappy:
    • While most of the human characters are rather divisive, people seem to generally hate the Sourcerer, primarily for being the main villain over Megabyte, but also because his reasons for being evil are vague to almost non-existent.
    • The User in "Mainframe Mania" received more than his own fair share of scorn as a result of being little more than a poorly disguised Take That, Audience! taken too far. The Mind Screw nature of his basement also featuring merchandise from the original series didn't exactly help quell matters all that much.
  • Sequelitis: Fans of the original series find that this one has a significant drop in quality.
  • Serial Numbers Filed Off: For all the comparisons to Code Lyoko and Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, the show that The Guardian Code bears the most resemblance to is MP4Force, a 2006 animated series about four teenagers that get recruited by an online game and get transported to a secret room where they upload themselves to cyberspace to prevent a virus and a human causing problems in the real world. Yes, it's literally the exact same premise. Worth mentioning that MP4orce was produced by Michael Hefferon, CEO of Rainmaker Entertainment, and creator of The Guardian Code.
  • So Okay, It's Average: At least to non-fans who know little if anything of the original series. The show is generally considered to be another by the numbers Power Rangers-esque teen action show that while not the worst show out there, ultimately does little to stand out. Indeed it is a common agreement that if it didn’t have “Reboot” to it’s name, the show would not have achieved the level of scorn it has received.
  • Spiritual Successor:
    • The updated plot and setting have made the series uncannily similar to Code Lyoko and its live-action sequel Code Lyoko: Evolution, minus the boarding school and instead using an active human antagonist.
    • To MP4Force, Michael Hefferson's previous passion project with a similar concept of a group of kids being transported to the web to fight viruses. The similarities between the two were so pronounced fans accused Hefferson of derailing Reboot to make a continuation to MP4Force with the Serial Numbers Filed Off.
    • The premise also feels like a continuation or homage to Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, VR Troopers, or Zixx.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
    • The idea that us Users have become aware of the beings living inside our computers has so much potential in itself— especially when we would learn that we've been inadvertently killing the residents simply by playing games for fun.
    • One episode has the Sourceror using an attack by Megabyte as a distraction so he can break into a tech corporation's office and steal a secret prototype computer system. Ample opportunity to provide backstory for the Sourceror (Did he used to work for this company, and the computer is his design they stole from him and now he wants revenge?), but ultimately the prototype only exists as a plot device to make the Sourcerer impossible to track in subsequent episodes and nothing else about the episode is ever revisited.
  • Took the Bad Film Seriously: Timothy E. Brummund's spot-on performance of Megabyte is commonly cited as one of the show's few saving graces.
  • Unexpected Character: Hexademical returns as a villain, despite turning good and then dying in the original show.

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