Rebooting Your Viewing Habit

Now here's an interesting cartoon, not only for the kids, but also for the young at heart. Reboot is one really fascinating series, as it combined a rather interesting concept with nice visuals. And with as good dose of humor too.

Reboot follows the the exploits of a fictional world that resides inside a computer system. The world is known as Mainframe, and the citizens must battle in the “Game Cubes” in order to save parts of the city from being destroyed. Most of the series focuses on the adventures of Bob and his groups of sprites. Later seasons shifted the story to the characters Enzo and AndrAIa (that's actually how they spell it).

Reboot is very interesting in that it was the very first cartoon to employ full 3D computer graphics for the entire show. Though not really astounding by current standards, the series' bold decision to use 3D instead of traditional 2D animation was a definite step in introducing CGI (computer generated imagery) to mainstream cartoons, which have become very popular nowadays. There was also a great improvement in graphics and design in later seasons, which resulted in better animation.

Aside from the visuals, another great thing about this series is its story. While the episodes of the first season were targeted more to younger kids, with flashy colors and action sequences and with single episode stories. Later seasons would become darker and more oriented to older ones and teenagers. The character designs were redone to match the new style. The later seasons also saw more character development, as it focused on the maturity of both Enzo and AndrAIa.

Humor is very much a staple in the series. True to the computer theme evident in the series (the title Reboot itself is a term for restarting a computer), the show abounds in computer related in jokes and gags. Almost all of the citizens of Mainframe are name after a computer term or something related to it.

The series also abounds in parodies of popular culture. The 'games' that are featured in the game cubes shown in each episode contains a host of other characters that are takes from various films, games and TV shows. It would be very amusing to find out the homages when watching the Reboot DVD.

Perhaps the most interesting sets of jokes on the show are those poking fun on the network censorship that plagued the series during its run. Most of the jokes are in the form witty dialogs and catch phrases. There are some instances that these are in the form of gags that show the apparent absurdity or otherwise nonsensical nature of many restrictions placed on them.

So if you are on an online DVD shop looking for something good to watch, the Reboot DVD is definitely a must to get. Even if it's a cartoon, you'll definitely like it.