The Bottom Line
If you're already a Medabots fan, then this is certainly a nice gift set to have. If you haven't seen Medabots before, then imagine a mecha version of Pokemon and you'll have a pretty good idea. There's not a really deep plot here and the animation is kind of basic but the kiddos should really like this one. Its fun and plenty adventurous for the younger audience so if you've been trying to find some appropriate anime for your kids, this would be a great place to start.
Pros
- Rated G - Good family fun
- Good story line, interesting characters
- Quality dub
Cons
- 3 episodes from original Japanese version missing
- No Japanese audio track/subtitles
Description
- Rating: G
- Genre: Mecha, adventure, action
- Release date: January 22, 2008
Guide Review - Medabots - The Complete First Season DVD
Okay, let's start with the story line. Somewhere in the future, kids have pet robots, called Medabots. But these aren't just any "out-of-the-box" robot. No, no, no... these robots have artificial intelligence, courtesy of a "medal" which is the robot's equivalent of a soul.
Our main guy is Ikki (pronounced just like that - "icky"), your average school-age kid who is painfully aware that he's the only kid in school without a Medabot. Ikki begs his mom to buy him one but she basically tells him to save his money and buy it himself (way to go, mom!)
And that's just what Ikki does. When he finds a Medabot medal, the friendly Medabot retail store owner agrees to sell Ikki an older Medabot body. Ikki inserts the medal and viola! The birth of his Medabot, called "Metabee".
It soon becomes clear that there's some mystery attached to the medal Ikki found as the notorious Rubberobo gang seem to want it pretty badly. And, now that Ikki has a robot, he gets the attention of other Medafighters who are looking for some robot-fighting entertainment.
From a collector's perspective, there's a few disappointments. First, there's no Japanese audio track. Typically, anime DVDs feature the original Japanese audio track with English subtitles but that's missing from this set.
Also missing are three of the original Japanese episodes, so this is not actually the complete first season as it was originally aired in Japan. Having said that though, the DVD cover says "the complete first season as seen on Fox Kids" and in that case, this would be the whole shebang. Speaking from the collector's point of view again, this isn't such a bad thing since the oddities are often what makes an item collectible (remember the small-head Han Solo action figure from the original Star Wars series? Big bucks for him!)
Our main guy is Ikki (pronounced just like that - "icky"), your average school-age kid who is painfully aware that he's the only kid in school without a Medabot. Ikki begs his mom to buy him one but she basically tells him to save his money and buy it himself (way to go, mom!)
And that's just what Ikki does. When he finds a Medabot medal, the friendly Medabot retail store owner agrees to sell Ikki an older Medabot body. Ikki inserts the medal and viola! The birth of his Medabot, called "Metabee".
It soon becomes clear that there's some mystery attached to the medal Ikki found as the notorious Rubberobo gang seem to want it pretty badly. And, now that Ikki has a robot, he gets the attention of other Medafighters who are looking for some robot-fighting entertainment.
From a collector's perspective, there's a few disappointments. First, there's no Japanese audio track. Typically, anime DVDs feature the original Japanese audio track with English subtitles but that's missing from this set.
Also missing are three of the original Japanese episodes, so this is not actually the complete first season as it was originally aired in Japan. Having said that though, the DVD cover says "the complete first season as seen on Fox Kids" and in that case, this would be the whole shebang. Speaking from the collector's point of view again, this isn't such a bad thing since the oddities are often what makes an item collectible (remember the small-head Han Solo action figure from the original Star Wars series? Big bucks for him!)