You like giant robots? I sure as heck do. What if I told you, you can watch a giant robot show that is so obscene, comical, it is anime influenced while based around early 2000's urban New Jersey. Where everybody is bored, so they're looking for an excuse for absolute destruction. What if I also told you, that nuclear armageddon, genocide(long as its some alien race that is vying for enslaving other races), and reckless destruction was acceptable?

Meet the granddaddy of all mecha shows, before mecha shows like Gurren Lagann came along. Megas XLR was the penultimate mecha show made by Americans to, well, not talk about anything much important.

The show was used as a way of expressing the youth's disinterest in modern civilization, becoming lost causes to the establishments that they hate. Like the DMV, having social standards, getting well paid jobs, maintaining a healthy life, etc. The disapproval of modern youth is showcased by the giant mech, just demolishing everything without a care in the world.

Megas XLR is nothing really deep, but it's tons of fun to watch. The jokes and gags all revolve around the writers distaste for usual tropes, disenfranchised youth, and New Jersey being downright boring. So they took whatever made people snooze and reshaped them in the most comedic ways possible.

Two of the three main characters are slackers and don't do anything worthwhile, while the other is a femme fatale from the future who trains Coop, one of the slacker protagonists in using the Megas.

After the cancelation of MTV's Downtown, writer George Krstic kind of drifted and soon after playing video games with Jody Schaeffer, decided to do a show about giant mechs battling aliens and other forces. The show creators were heavily inspired by mecha animes and maybe a bit of western mech shows like Transformers and Go Bots.

Since Krstic got nominated for an Emmy, he took the chance to ask Cartoon Network to let him make a show. So, he finally created a pilot episode for CN's Cartoon Cartoon Weekend Summerfest. It managed to be one of the most popular viewed from all the other pilot demos. One of them was even named Codename: Kids Next Door.

Megas XLR premiered on Cartoon Network's Toonami block from May 1st, 2004, even though it was scheduled earlier by 2003 to be broadcasted. Only lasting for 2 seasons because production issues and the fact that people didn't really understand what the show was actually about. You could say, maybe it was a bit too ahead of its time.

The show wasn't helping make Cartoon Network money and was considered as a tax loss. After trying their best to retrieve the rights to the show back to CN, Krstic and Chris Prynoski of Titmouse finally got the rights back to Warner Bros around 2019. Though time will tell whether the show will make a return for continuation or will be a reboot.

Now, if you're going into this, expecting drama and good storytelling. Well, you're watching the wrong show. Everything you see here is another comedy setup, just the protagonist, Coop who mans the giant mecha, doing absolutely dumb stuff. Getting him and the gang into all kinds of trouble, with him fixing it up by, well going complete ham.

The show just exists mostly as a way to pay homage or make fun of tropes in the anime genre as well, but in the most irreverent way possible. They don't really care about putting actual substance as long as the comedy really holds up. Which it does. But it's well written enough to leave room for some clever jokes or inserted references about other shows.

There's a recurring gag of them smashing up PopTV properties like the giant TV in Jersey TV or the satellite in orbit, which obviously is eluding to the showrunner Krstic just throwing his disdain towards MTV for cancelling one of the shows he'd worked on.

While the animation quality seems pretty subpar, especially for a show from Cartoon Network has met or exceeded quality standards of the early 2000s cartoon block. But where it lacks in refinement, it makes up for a lot in style and amazing reels of action.

Coop is obviously a character that has crazy potential, yet squanders them for things like video games, smoothies, huge pile of junk foods, and well, whatever a guy in his generation did when he got bored. His friend Jamie is just there for the jokes(being the butt of it, most of al), while also being mostly useless around the show as a spectator for the nonsense and often times, exascerbating the problems.

Kiva, the female companion of the trio is the more straightfaced, grounded character that helps being the rationale for the audiences. While the other two, are complete slacker that have no ethics, and really don't seem to care about their status quo. Her VA performance seems lackluster at first, surprising since she voiced Faye Valentine in Cowboy Bebop, it eventually picks up as the show goes on.

There are episodes that became spoofs on Power Rangers and one episode even made direct fun of Transformers. Other episodes go out in a way you would think and then just throw a plot twist that would really pull the rug under you. You can't exactly complain about the story, because the stories aren't mainly important here, the gags here. Least though, as the show goes on, there's character progression to be found.

Oh yeah, ah New Jersey gets destroyed a lot. The civilians have writer plot, meaning that they can't die no matter what. No matter how absurd the reckless destruction that is shown on the screen. One time they accidentally destroyed the DMV, the people inside stood still and just complained about not getting their licenses back. Nobody cares about the endangerment they face, nor does the US government intervene. Like, nobody on Earth even cares much about living, let alone surviving against aliens invading.

This is a show that was made by a bunch of nerds who liked anime and knew how to make it fun. Right before Gurren Lagann came, as that obviously took some inspiration from the nonsensical, absolute bonkers comedy setups from Megas XLR.

While season 1 was kind of weak in certain areas, season 2 improved on majority of the problems like the animation and giving Kiva a new face, literally. Am waiting for any new updates on the show coming back, it has found a fandmon these days since mecha genre has been on the rise in recent years.