Sunday, July 4, 2010

What's More American Than New Jersey?

A few years ago, for the fourth of July, Cartoon Network aired a marathon of the anime "Naruto". Suri and I were fully perplexed, because there is nothing American about "Naruto". We then, simultaniously, declared that Cartoon Network should have marathoned the series "Megas XLR" because, to quote us both...

"What's more American than New Jersey?"


So, to celebrate Independance Day this year,I'm going to write up a post about what is possibly one of the greatest Giant Robot cartoons of all time. Unfortunately, Megas XLR was canceled in April of 2005, just shy of 1 full year after it began airing.



As I briefly mentioned, Megas XLR took place in New Jersey, which automatically made it a hit with me since I'm from the Garden State myself. Now it was set in Jersey City, which is a good deal north of where I live (I'm down by Asbury Park.), but the New Jersey spirit is still the same. They mention a lot of real location in New Jersey (Such as Hoboken.) and the attitude of Coop, Jamie, and all of the other locals are just spot on.



Megas parodied every giant robot series and iconic 90's anime and sci-fi that it could get it's hands on. And they did it with class. The show was, undboutedly a comedy. But what made it funny was how every teenage boy (and me) watching was saying "Yeah that's how I'd handle it too." Because no teenager, if given a giant robot, would take things seriously. They'd just runa round and wreck things with it and maybe accidentally beat a couple of bad guys in the process -- Which is exactly how Coop did things.

I wish I'd had time to rewatch "Megas XLR" before writing this, but the 4th just snuck up on me and I didn't think to do this until the 3rd. But if you want a little good old American fun, check out Megas. It does not disappoint.

Happy 4th of July to all of our American stoppers-by!

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