A little clarification here: the film released on video as "Robby the Rascal" in the U.S. and elsewhere actually began life in Japan as a TV series called "Cybot Robotchi." ("Robotchi" was Robby's original name.) "Cybot Robotchi" was produced by the Knack studio and originally aired in Japan in 1982-83 (if you have a copy of the U.S. video and look at the box, you'll see a production credit for "Knack Kikaku"). Knack was the same Japanese animation studio that produced the "Little Prince" anime broadcast on Nickelodeon in the early '80s, as well as the later volleyball-themed hit TV series "Attacker You!" (1984), which used some of the same staff including director Kazuyuki Okaseko and writer Hideki Sonoda. The original creators of the series were Ken Ishikawa (of "Getter Robo" fame) and Tomohiro Ando (known for his work on several classic series for Toei Animation, including 1969's "Himitsu no Akko-chan" and 1974's "Majokko Megu-chan"). With all that said, it seems to me that "Robby the Rascal" was actually a compilation of several TV episodes of "Cybot Robotchi," which would explain why the story seemed sort of disjointed to me when I watched the English-dubbed version I rented from my video store. I still have the theme song in my head all these years later... cheesy but catchy. The dubbing, as I recall, was done by Harmony Gold and was quite bad, as was typical in the early/mid-'80s. And keep in mind the show is over two decades old, so the animation hasn't aged well. Still, younger kids should get a kick out of it, and you might try picking up a copy for them if you can find one. It would seem the Taiwanese release referred to on this page was based on the U.S. edit, as I remember characters in the English dub named Upper Decker (Dr. Deco in the original) and Tiffany (who would seem to be the same character as "Tiffah" perhaps?).
2 Reviews
A forgotten cartoon of good old times
kerorogio13 April 2022
A nice vintage anime that in the southern europe of the last century, for many years was relegated to less important television networks with limited broadcasting capacity, and still rarely re-broadcast on just a couple of nostalgic themed channels. The typical product that for content, genre or public trends, did not convince its buyers to bet on it, one of those products, in short, taken because they are part of packages with more interesting stuff inside, rather than for a selective choice.
Cybot Robotchi bears clear similarities to the more well-known and older Dr. Slump, for example: a robotic protagonist with peculiar abilities, a demented comedy, a tousled-haired scientist pining for love, an evil scientist who meddles in, and a gang of brats etc...
Obviously there are differences to avoid complaints of plagiarism. For example: the main robot this time is male and with a decent intelligence as well as in love with someone. Haiguro, the rival mad scientist, is more handsome and present than Dr. Mashirito by Dr. Slump. The thugs of the village this time are not friends but opponents to be defeated, there are more robots and fewer recurring humans, two Robo-mounts (one flying and one aquatic), there is the almost absence of anthropomorphic creatures, the comedy is slightly less nosense and a pinch more mischievous and the main super power that solves the day is not based on mega strength / invulnerability like Toriyama's creature, but rather on a kind of oven that creates tangible holograms, like a kind of Aladdin's lamp.
To be more precise, in the first third of the TV series, the main enemy is a trio of gangster that wants to steal Dr. Deko's engineering projects. In this phase (and in the central one), despite the light-hearted tone, the scheme of the episodes is less wild and predictable and the use of illusions is reduced to very few occasions. It will then be with the arrival of the mad scientist and his two robotic henchmen (ep.21) that Cybot Robotchi will become more repetitive and incoherent, but perhaps even slightly more fun.
Although the same television fate has happened to much greater cult creations (Hokuto no ken, Saint Seya, Time Bokan series, etc.), Cybot Robotchi, despite being little remembered today, was one of those cartoons that ensured good ratings and for this reason, repeated quite often, at least until the first half of the 90s. Compared to Dr Slump and Arale, reviewing the episodes of Cybot Robotchi, one cannot fail to notice a lower care in the drawings, very fluctuating, the less justified narrative events, some forced (or reworked) dialogue, an excessive saturation of colors (not even optimally matched), as well as a lack of fluidity in the movement of the frames dedicated to the landscape and grouped characters, perhaps a sign of cheapness, but quite common in those times. There are also occasional defects, which underline the age of the material and its non-existent restoration in the recent transition to the 16:9 format.
Despite this, however, ignoring the absurd humanization of robots, which also eat human food, ignoring the non-repetition of the new secondary characters, such as the little robot Kaori and the robo-cameraman, and ignoring the extreme inconstancy of power and duration of holograms, Cybot Robotchi still remains a pleasant vision, with that lighthearted comedy that Japan itself has struggled to reproduce and re-propose in the new millennium.
Cybot Robotchi bears clear similarities to the more well-known and older Dr. Slump, for example: a robotic protagonist with peculiar abilities, a demented comedy, a tousled-haired scientist pining for love, an evil scientist who meddles in, and a gang of brats etc...
Obviously there are differences to avoid complaints of plagiarism. For example: the main robot this time is male and with a decent intelligence as well as in love with someone. Haiguro, the rival mad scientist, is more handsome and present than Dr. Mashirito by Dr. Slump. The thugs of the village this time are not friends but opponents to be defeated, there are more robots and fewer recurring humans, two Robo-mounts (one flying and one aquatic), there is the almost absence of anthropomorphic creatures, the comedy is slightly less nosense and a pinch more mischievous and the main super power that solves the day is not based on mega strength / invulnerability like Toriyama's creature, but rather on a kind of oven that creates tangible holograms, like a kind of Aladdin's lamp.
To be more precise, in the first third of the TV series, the main enemy is a trio of gangster that wants to steal Dr. Deko's engineering projects. In this phase (and in the central one), despite the light-hearted tone, the scheme of the episodes is less wild and predictable and the use of illusions is reduced to very few occasions. It will then be with the arrival of the mad scientist and his two robotic henchmen (ep.21) that Cybot Robotchi will become more repetitive and incoherent, but perhaps even slightly more fun.
Although the same television fate has happened to much greater cult creations (Hokuto no ken, Saint Seya, Time Bokan series, etc.), Cybot Robotchi, despite being little remembered today, was one of those cartoons that ensured good ratings and for this reason, repeated quite often, at least until the first half of the 90s. Compared to Dr Slump and Arale, reviewing the episodes of Cybot Robotchi, one cannot fail to notice a lower care in the drawings, very fluctuating, the less justified narrative events, some forced (or reworked) dialogue, an excessive saturation of colors (not even optimally matched), as well as a lack of fluidity in the movement of the frames dedicated to the landscape and grouped characters, perhaps a sign of cheapness, but quite common in those times. There are also occasional defects, which underline the age of the material and its non-existent restoration in the recent transition to the 16:9 format.
Despite this, however, ignoring the absurd humanization of robots, which also eat human food, ignoring the non-repetition of the new secondary characters, such as the little robot Kaori and the robo-cameraman, and ignoring the extreme inconstancy of power and duration of holograms, Cybot Robotchi still remains a pleasant vision, with that lighthearted comedy that Japan itself has struggled to reproduce and re-propose in the new millennium.
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