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// 2024-03-12, 12 min read, #review #television
I love ReBoot so much. So much so that this review ended up being MUCH longer than I anticipated.
To start off I wanna talk about the releases of this show. ReBoot aired on YTV, a Candian channel, starting in 1994. I personally caught it on Cartoon Network as part of its rebroadcasts. Back in maybe 2015 or so I purchased the release on Google Play. **Do not purchase the release on Google Play**. It has horrible video compression, and the audio compression is even even even worse. Season 4, which is presented in widescreen, is in 4:3 on Google. It's squished! It's horrible, and this is how I watched the show for years. For the longest time, this _was_ the best copy available, as I understand it, unless you managed to get some quality VHS rips when it aired.
My ex helped me track down (read: she tracked down and told me about) the 2021 blu-ray release. I had no idea this existed. The video, while 720p, is incredibly crisp. The audio for Seasons 1-3 is PERFECT. As for Season 4, the video gets a tiny bit weird in the opening sequences, and there are times where dialog lines feel, warbly? It's not like the underwater compression sounds of the Google Play release, but it is noticeable after the nearly perfect previous three seasons.
And despite all that, the Google Play release is still the same nasty versions it was back in 2015.
In short, find the blu-ray release.
You really need to be forgiving or riding on nostalgia to make it through this season. It's almost entirely episodic, save for one two-parter at the end that presents a potential failed alternate reality, which of course is entirely a dream state.
We're introduced to our main characters this season: Bob, the Guardian hero, with his special not-a-weapon,-do-anything Key Tool called Glitch that allows him to always save the day. Dot Matrix, his love interest (and vice versa), who runs the local diner and is in very much involved with the politics and government of Mainframe. Enzo Matrix, her little brother who primarily serves as comic relief this season (which is also Bob's role a lot, but hey, it's a kid's show). Frisket, their dog. Phong, the system's wise and old COMMAND.COM, the leader of Mainframe. Megabyte, a suave and cool virus that has been plaguing Mainframe for a long time. And Hexadecimal, a chaos virus who inhabits the twisted land of Lost Angles. Part of Bob's mission is to protect Mainframe from its resident viruses.
There are more side characters like Megabyte's henchmen Hack and Slash, Al, Mike the TV, and so on.
We're also introduced to the concepts of Games. When the user starts a game, a big purple cube comes down from the sky and a feminine voice announces "Incoming Game... Incoming Game." Everyone scrambles to leave the sector where the game is landing, except for Bob, and often Enzo. A lot of early conflict comes from Enzo wanting to join Bob in the games, but Dot saying he's too young to be playing in the games. Bob's other primary mission in Mainframe is to protect it from games, because if the user wins a game the sector is destroyed and every person in the game and sector are nullified. Nulls, goopy little worms, are the form that sprites and binomes (the two main types of people) take when corrupted by games. We'll later see, as the show starts to develop its mythos, that Hex has a special connection to the nulls.
Not much happens in this season beyond the usual good vs evil struggle with good always winning (except for the aforementioned alternate reality dream sequence). It's fun to watch for the computer puns, creative world, and sci-fi elements.
Let's talk about the graphics! This is the first computer graphics generated television show, debuting in 1994, which was groundbreaking at the time. But it's jaaaannkyyyyy! Movement is stilted, lighting is nonexistent, there's no depth of field. It's really fun to see how jank it is, but don't go in expecting this 30 year old show to be impressive in 2024. Watch it with the context of it debuting in 1994.
The graphics are still the same. Nothing changes on that front this season. But we do start to get some proper story and character development. Enzo grows increasingly frustrated at being treated as young (even though he is young), which eventually leads to the introduction of another main character, AndrAIa, a game sprite who hitched a ride on Enzo's icon to leave the game and stay with him in Mainframe. Her ability to do this becomes very handy later on.
Aside: AndrAIA is who I wished I could be as a little girl, but that's just trans kid things.
We start to see cohesive storylines, and this season culminates in the Web Wars, wherein Web creatures start attacking Mainframe and the viruses and the good guys have to team up to save the system. Megabyte, which we should have all seen coming, betrays everyone and shoots Bob into the web before closing the portal, leaving the system without its Guardian. Well, except that Bob did promote Enzo to Guardian just earlier in the episode leading into the war. Except he's still a kid.
This is such a good season. Already we see major graphical improvements in lighting, depth of field, animation, and polygon count. We open in Mainframe, the portal to the web is closed, Bob is lost in the web, everyone is confused and scared because the only Guardian is a young child. This season deals a lot with Enzo's inexperience and his desire to live up to Bob's accomplishments and expectations. Bob entrusted Enzo for a reason. The first part of the season is all about this happening inside Mainframe, with the virals launching propaganda campaigns to diminish trust in the young sprite. We see Mouse the hacker play a prominent role, being instrumental in setting up a firewall to contain the viruses (and perhaps the show's best spoof: a 007 James Bond style episode intro singing a song about ~A FIREWALL~!). Enzo and AndrAIa start gaining game experience, becoming a great team.
Until tragedy strikes, and they don't return from a Mortal Kombat style game. The whole city, but especially Dot, Mouse, and Phong, is left emotionally devastated. Megabyte laughs maniacally. What they don't see, that we as the viewer do see, is that because of some hackery that Mouse had performed earlier, just incase of such an event actually, a portion AndrAIa's game sprite code had been downloaded into Enzo's Guardian icon, allowing the two of them and Frisket (who entered the game at Dot's request to protect the two young sprites), to enter game sprite mode and _travel with the games_.
The next episode opens on a game spoofing Mars Attacks, which is a really great way to open because it keeps you guessing as to who we're actually seeing and what's going on. One of the aliens calls the other "Matrix," and clearly the third alien is Frisket. They decide to stay in the system wherever this game is, and when they win the game and enter the system, the camera pans up and we see adult versions of AndrAIa, Enzo (who now goes by Matrix), and a larger, older Frisket. They've grown up, big time. Matrix is hard-boiled and buff as hell, AndrAIa is sweet but takes no shit, and Frisket is Frisket. "WHAT!!!" we all collectively screamed as kids. I love love love these arcs, the adult versions of AndrAIa and Matrix are so so so good.
If child AndrAIa is who I wished I was, adult AndrAIa is who I wished I could have grown into.
We eventually discover that game time moves a lot faster than normal system time. This is driven home when Matrix runs into Turbo, another Guardian who Bob worked under, and Turbo remarks at how quickly he's grown. Turbo I believe is the one to explain how game time works. The backhalf of Season 3 is some of the best ReBoot that exists. We focus entirely on our three heroes trying to make it home. They hop from system to system looking for one with open ports to the net. Once in the net, they figure, they can blast open a portal to the web and find Mainframe again. They're also looking for Bob, and there are a few false hope moments there. Until he finds them, actually, when they're being attacked by Web Riders deep in the Web. The reunion is bittersweet. AndrAIa was earlier attacked by a web creature and not only had her energy drained, but also some of her code. Bob saves the day, as usual, by giving her some of his code and energy. These few episodes are some of my favorites. Matrix is hard, mean, and kind of a jerk. His arc is all about working through his trauma and letting down his defenses. He's overly jealous and protective of AndrAIa, and when she's dying, he's at his best. The reunion between Bob and Matrix is heartbreaking. Matrix _knows_ he's failed as a Guardian, both in protecting Mainframe, and in upholding the image of a Guardian, and he's failed Bob's hopes for him. He's a scoundrel, a renegade. He's hurt people, he's caused havoc, he's been a bad person. In a tender moment of weakness, he admits all this to Bob, and Bob forgives him, because Bob knows Matrix is a better person than all that and can be that better person. Two grown men, talking about their feelings, being vulnerable together, and coming out of stronger with more respect for each other? We love to see it. And these two, gosh they're such a great team.
Eventually we make it back to Mainframe via the Web to find that Megabyte, with an enslaved Hex, has taken over and wrecked the system, which he is now trying to escape so he can get to the super computer (a motive established in the very first episode). There's a tearful reunion between Dot and Matrix, and Dot and Bob struggle to figure out who they are to each other after all this time (which isn't as much time as the grown versions of AndrAIa and Matrix would imply). There's the big showdown between Matrix and Megabyte, and Bob's big gamble that losing one final game will crash the system and force the user to restore it from backup. The season ends with a silly musical number recapping Seasons 2 and 3.
It's all so perfect. But there's a dangling thread: Daemon, a supervirus that was only briefly mentioned when some Guardians came to hunt down Matrix believing him to be Bob because he was carrying Bob's Key Tool Glitch.
Season 4 is a weird spot for me. It's more ReBoot! But it came a few years after the end of Season 3. So why are we doing janky animation again (mostly facial animations and poor lip syncing)??? Matrix is off model slightly (they smushed his pecs). Most other characters' faces are off model. There's some pretty special effects at least. But then Mouse mispronounces 'katana,' her weapon of choice. The massive fucking cliffhanger with Megabyte's return. Theres' lots of new incidental music for better or worse. And the Daemon arc was short and unimpactful, and Hexadecimal's sacrifice, while heroic, was incredibly sad. There's also some further insight into the Guardians this season as well as Mainframe's history regarding its Twin City and Dot and Enzo Matrix's father, which was cool worldbuilding. Bringing Megabyte back was good, but that's where the cliffhanger is: He's gained the ability to shapeshift and he could be anywhere, or anyone, in all of Mainframe.
Megabyte returns by way of this shape shifting ability, actually. He enters the system with Ray Tracer, pretending to be... Bob. Except he looks and even sounds like the original Bob (Bob's original voice actor could not be secured for Season 3). This is actually lamp shaded when Dot, during the whole Which Bob Is The Real Bob arc says that he even _sounds right_.
That arc though, oh gosh, it was pretty grating actually. Our Bob, the real Bob, spent all this time with Matrix and AndrAIa, saved both their lives in the Web, saved Mainframe, and they end up doubting which Bob is the real Bob? This is even long after Glitch merged with the real Bob. I found the whole thing to be quite contrived honestly. It just didn't work, in my opinion.
When Megabyte finally revealed himself was when it got good, the threat he posed was bigger than ever, and everyone was on the right teams again. And then it ends. On a massive cliffhanger.
This is a fan comic requisitioned and issued by Rainmaker Entertainment, current property holders of ReBoot. Which was a weird thing to discover, since Mainframe is absolutely still around and doing computer graphics work.
Despite that, it's still not considered canon, so you could safely skip this if you wanted.
The Code Masters, and specifically Code Master Lens, are a major focus of this four part comic. Lens was a one-time antagonist from Season 2 Episode 2, and other than Old Man Pearson, no other Code Masters are ever seen or mentioned. What a weird choice.
The story, was okay. It wrapped up the Megabyte cliffhanger, introduces a new plot where the Code Masters betray the Guardians, Lens decides to help the Guardians, and then we discover that Megabyte was trying to use the Code Masters for his own gain of course. He's finally finally defeated, and all is well. There's this weird side character, a bug from the web trapped in some weird debris, who is entirely a Deus Ex Machina. She exists simply to give Bob some expanded powers and then be sent away. Pretty weak writing.
This comic did AndrAIa very dirty. She's constantly hanging off Matrix, has maybe three lines of dialog in the entire run, and doesn't actually _do_ anything. In Seasons 2 and 3, as both a kid and an adult, she's _instrumental_ to many critical storylines. Her and Matrix's love is deep and passionate and delicately explored for an audience of mostly children. Here, they barely have a relationship and AndrAIa barely exists as a person.
Actually in retrospect, Matrix but especially AndrAIa took a backseat starting in Season 4. They just didn't know what to do with her character after the web arc, and it's such a disappointment to waste a fantastic woman character that way.
I'll come back to this and might have more to say after another reading, but my initial taste of it was not great. I've watched Seasons 1, 2, and 3 a ton through my childhood and adult years. I've watched Season 4 a few times. I've only read the comic once. I might come around more to it all, but that's for the future.
ReBoot is a great series. If you love early CGI shows, kids shows that can get really deep, science fiction stories, computers.. it's worth checking it out. Just, again, don't expecting anything groundbreaking thirty years after it initially released.
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