Cartoon Robots in ROBOT Magazine!

I recently read the May/June 2016 issue of ROBOT Magazine, and to my surprise (and overwhelming joy!) an article about cartoon robots was featured in the issue. The article is written by Brett Weiss, a writer and expert in Pop Culture related to video games, TV and movies and other entertainment.

Here are some of my favorite cartoon robots that he mentions:

• WALL-E
• The Iron Giant
• Astroboy
• Baymax
• Optimus Prime
• Gigantor

I had coffee when I read the magazine. So I dunno if I became super hyper because of the coffee or because I read that article, or because I did both. But I was fired up!

It may have given me the jolt I needed to return to updating Cybernetic Dreams at a more regular schedule.

Right now, I don’t have a defined schedule for posting for Cybernetic Dreams. It is my personal robot blog, after all. I seem to post when I feel like it. And I know that I should have a more regular schedule if I hope to gain and keep more readers.

On Seeing Tim Burton's “9”

I’m not a big fan of Tim Burton, but as a robot enthusiast, I am happy that I got a chance to catch the movie 9.  I was babysitting my cat, who was recovering from a surgery.  She went to sleep on her bed and I wanted to stay nearby, so I turned on the TV with the remote to find something to keep me awake.  There was nothing good on and a little after 11:30pm I turned to the SyFy channel (it should have stayed Sci-Fi, but whatever).  The movie was on and I looked at the TV grid, and it started at 11:30.  I thought to myself, why not, I only missed the first few minutes.  I’ll go ahead and see if I like it.

               And like it I did.  I noticed that the main character 9 was blinking his eyes and they didn’t look like organic eyes.  They were blinking like pair of robot eyes, if a robot could blink.  I thought to myself, Oh, this is neat!  So these guys are actually little robots with bean-bag bodies and goggles for eyes.  I could have guessed 9 was a puppet of a sort, but do puppets move on their own?

The story is a dark tale about a group of robot puppets that eventually band together to put a stop to an evil machine.  Yes, I said evil machine.  Machines can be evil if they are programmed to learn and do things such as fight in wars or cause destruction.  It is actually the programmer who is evil or greedy, not the machine or computer that is programmed.  Of course, there is always that “glitch” in the programming that would be possible.

So it turned out that these little robot puppets had a human soul put inside them that gave them life. I don’t want to give away how that happens, but why else would they have human-like emotions like compassion, anger, fear, and joy?  Especially compassion.   My heart cries happy tears when I see a robot comfort another robot for their sadness or loss.

Astroboy, Android Kikaider, 9—any Japanese anime, otherwise animated and live action movies that contain robot characters with souls and emotions—they are just so fascinating.   A robot with a soul is such an interesting idea to play with in fiction.

Early Signs: Japanese anime ASTROBOY

When I was either eight or nine years old, my father introduced me and my sister to an old Japanese anime series called Astroboy, a robot boy with emotions who tries to promote co-existence between robots and humans while fighting the evil robots. My dad had VHS tapes of some of the episodes. He used to watch it when he was a kid.  He wanted to share it with us, and right away we loved it.  He knew we would enjoy it because it was from Osamu Tezuka, the same creator for Unico.  Unico was the very first taste of Japanese anime I had, maybe at age 5.  But I’m rambling now…

It was so fascinating that this Astroboy kid was a robot who displayed emotions, and back then I wasn’t so conscious to the idea that sometimes he had to fight against his own kind.  It would not be that the “evil” robot was evil; its creator had built it for sinister intentions, so it is not the robot’s fault that it is evil. Astroboy sometimes tried to fight the robot and defeat it without destroying it.

I need to find which episode is a good example of what I am talking about.  It's been a while since I've watched anything Astroboy.  Mabye YouTube has something?  I may even need to watch the first few episodes of Astroboy again to find the example.  And one of these days I'd like to sit my bottom down and watch the 2004 Astroboy series.  In my opinion it is has a very different atmosphere from the black and white 1960s version.  The music is very sci-fi too, and I believe the animation is beautiful and colorful.

For now, enjoy the intro to the U.S. 1960s Astroboy :)