Mech Cadets review: Netflix brings comics series to the small screen

Unless you live for seeing robot magic animated in shiny neon streaks, Mech Cadets, Netflix’s adaptation of the comics series Mech Cadet Yu, may not be for you. The show (out August 10) centers on a young janitor named Stanford Yu—yes, as in Stanford U., Stanford University. (They never directly spell that out, but other characters call him by his full name enough for us to know that the writers really want us to think it’s clever.) Stanford has always wanted to pilot a Robo Mech in space—“robo” for short—to fight against a giant crab-like alien species they call “shargs.”

Our guy finally gets his chance when, out in the wild, one such robo bonds with him instead of one of the properly trained cadets awaiting their robo assignment back at the Sky Corps facility. You see, robos have to bond with a human before they turn 17. There’s a limited window, and humanity wants them bonded with the best little kids they can get. Some janitor kid was not their plan, so Stanford will have to prove himself and earn the respect of the other cadets. Anyway, there are storylines about robos being forced to bond with people and being harvested for parts, and, generally, everyone has to fight the shargs who just keep laying eggs, getting big, and attacking. That’s the gist.

There are loads of clichés along the way, too—for example, in just about every line of dialogue. And every time someone becomes sentimental about a lost loved one, you bet your boots there’s a photo of that person nearby for them to mope at. Some things are downright corny, like the whole “Stanford U” thing, but most things are generic. Stanford calls the mech he ultimately bonds with “Buddy,” because that’s what his dad used to call him. The other names for robos aren’t much better (Thunderwrecker and Big Red). Also, they call these alien robots robos. It’s worth mentioning again, because it’s so hard to take anything seriously when everyone is talking about robos in serious tones or with reverence all the time.

The good things about Mech Cadets are sort of tough to identify. Some solid actors are in it (Daniel Dae Kim, MADtv’s Debra Wilson), but their voiceover work isn’t particularly compelling. (To be fair, that could very well be the fault of the dialogue and plot.) It is a stated goal to highlight diversity in this project, but the nods we get to this ring false and tokenistic, like the one Chinese immigrant character, Stanford’s mom, talking to herself in Cantonese from time to time, or the one Puerto Rican character, Maya, giving her eventual boyfriend Frank the nickname “Galleta” and telling him the tostones he makes for her taste like the ones her grandma used to make.

It’s nice that Frank, exercising bodily autonomy, comes to the realization that he would rather not wear a prosthetic leg to fit into the suit all mech cadets have to wear and opts to use his crutches instead, because that feels more natural to him. But other characters are so weird and/or dismissive about his disability when it comes up, even asking him if he wants “pity points” when he complains about pain one time (and, of course, he’s the only disabled character in this show) so that, too, feels forced. And it’s cool that they emphasize being kind to their alien robo friends, but they hold fast to the idea that their alien enemy shargs must be killed indiscriminately. Learning anything else about them, even to help their cause, is flatly discouraged. The only good thing to say about Mech Cadets is that it seems progressive for them to consistently use they/them pronouns for the robos, but how do you even gender a robot from outer space, by color? Have they corrected people concerning their concepts of gender (or lack thereof) in their bleeps and bloops that only their human best friends can understand? They/them makes sense.

But let’s break down all of the things that don’t make sense about robos. Why did they come to earth to save humans in The Great Sharg War, as the show explains? This is never addressed. Why do they have perfectly human-sized compartments for their cadets to step into and ride around in them, when they presumably hadn’t met humans before they came to earth? Maybe the robos are benefitting from this arrangement somehow, mind-controlling the humans in a way to get some fix or sapping their life force each time a human enters their little compartment.

The humans seem to have accepted these guys as inherently innocent and good, but why has no one wondered about this ever? They either joyride in the robos and kill shargs with them or, in the case of the show’s non-sharg villain-ish character General Park, salvage their parts to build new robos. (You’re not gonna like what they’re called either: Hero Force mechs.) Oh, and they each have their own special power. Buddy, mentioned earlier, can control gravity, to the extent that he can keep a black hole open to buy the heroes some time to get out while a sharg is getting sucked in. Why hasn’t he been yeeting shargs left and right the entire freaking show, then?! And here’s but a taste of what doesn’t make sense about shargs: One massive one flies through space at our heroes and shoots about a trillion eggs out of itself, but (!) it can also birth hoards of winged live young that immediately start attacking the humans? What rules actually apply in the world of this show?

So basically, the people behind this show tried to create a family-friendly animated television program by adapting a comic-book series, and made it so deeply sanitized for mass consumption that it’s hard to imagine it appealing to anyone. The diversity efforts are admirable, of course, but they can’t possibly make people from the backgrounds represented feel seen. The content is inoffensive enough for little kids, but probably too scary. It’s fine for bigger kids, but it’s genuinely humorless (and kind of a Transformers ripoff, to be honest). There is not much here for adults, either.