First off, the plot quick and dirty:
2037, the aline Gloft attack and conquer Earth. the surviving humans, unable to counter Gloft mecha legions, steal a prototype super-mech called 'Avatar', rebuild it, and rename it Mecha Earth Guardian Attack System or 'Megas' for short. The builder, the hottie Kiva, sends it back in time in hopes of humans finding it in the past and suing it to defeat the Gloft when they first invade, but a glitch sends it to 1936 where it rots in a junkyard. Until teenaged slackers Coop and Jamie fidn it, and remodle it, and replace it's head with a suped up car. When Kiva finally tracks it down, she finds that only Coop, who redesigned the controls, knows how to pilot it, and teh Gloft are begining tehir invasion. So, reluctantly, she must train the beer-drinking, autoshow browsing, video gaming Coop and the ever sarcastic Jamie to be the saviors of mankind.
Any way, it then leads into one earthshaking battle after another. Giant Gloft robots--sent by the evil Gloft Warmaster--attacking and being trounced by the Megas under Coop's command, with Jamie as the backseat driver. It has various and funny references and nods to anime. The fire and smoke in space like in Starblazers, the Yamatto actually coming out the Megas and firing like a cannon, the Macross 'gagillion missile' attacks, the mecha, combining gestalts, and even that style of drawing where the people's hair is transparent when it covers they're eyes. And of course, Megas levels the entire city (i think they said New Jersey) while defeating the Gloft robots.
The dialogue is genuinely clever and funny, the total send up of Super Robot anime is pure genius, and the attempt of Kiva to explain her case to Coop is just priceless (needless to say, she explains that mankind will be nearly extict in the future, giant robots will detsroy Earth, and that aliens are about to invade...and he caught about two sentences).
Anyway, i just had to sing this show's praises. It's rare that an American show can nail anime design and genre and culture so well. And the 'Dance Dance Revolution' scene (Coop uses a DDR pad as a manual control, and moonwalks over the Gloft mechs) was simply priceless. I couldnt help but tell you gusy how much fun i had watching just those two episodes.
Watch it, tape it, go to Cartoon Network's website and play the online flash game! It's a brilliant show, and i hope it gets a fair shake and doesnt get axed after like two episodes.
Megas XLR--***** out of five, two huge mechanized thumbs way up!
