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This article is about the third Tobot series, for the Tobot in the original series, see Tobot V.

Tobot Galaxy Detectives, also known as Tobot V (또봇 V) is a 2018 South Korean Animated TV Series and reboot of the Tobot franchise. It first aired on KBS2 on July 12, 2018 at 5:15 KST. The show was dubbed into English as Galaxy Detectives (Tobot GD) in 2019. It is produced by Studio Button.

Tobot V introduces a brand new universe/continuity different from two seasons & the direct sequel to the original Tobot cartoon released in 2023.

Story[]

Season 1 (2018)[]

A long time ago, there were six Galaxy Weapons from the planet Unicorn that could rule the universe. The cosmic villain, Pulsar, is trying to rule the universe with the 6 Galaxy Weapons. One day, the space ship carrying the galaxy weapons is chased by his minion and found a place to escape. The space ship decided to drop the Galaxy Weapons on Earth, where Tyler, an ace junior detective, discovers Galaxy Weapon 1 and brings his toys to life as Tobots. With their help, they prevent the Pac-Man Gang from taking over Nav City using Galaxy Weapon 2. Eventually, they team up with Princess Zora to keep Star Ring from causing mass destruction.

Season 1.5 - The Secret of Swag (2019)[]

Tyler's Tobots encounter an alien[1] robot named Swag and his Tobots, intending to overthrow the original crew. They soon have to work together to defeat the Android Junkers, a group of robotic cryptids hunting the Tobots to siphon their V-energy and restore their ultimate weapon. [2]

Season 2 (2020)[]

The story shifts to a new cast in Smile City, and Victor discovers Galaxy Weapon 4 and creates new Tobots. These heroes now face off against the short-tempered and egomaniacal Bubble Cat, who is then overthrown by a superior order of villains. Things start heating up as Tyler, Master V, and Zora enters Smile City looking for Galaxy Weapon 6, allowing both groups to team up for a final showdown against Pulsar himself.

Season 3 (2021)[]

The third season once again instates a new cast in the identical-to-the-present future of a grown-up Victor and his family-run hamburger joint. The story follows a new generation of Tobots as an intergalactic rescue/law enforcement group and their fallout from an attack by the Space Pirates, whose V-Crystals are re-installed by Victor's son Mateo in the present day as they search for the missing members of their team while helping protect their adopted home city on planet Earth from the pirate kings. Unfortunately, the Tobot's old commander stirs up conflict in the ranks, and Mateo is forced to hunt for new teammates when his original team gets lost in space-time.

Development[]

BrandLogoGD

Does the "X" and "Y" mean anything anymore? Is detective work really the pivotal theme of the series? Why didn't they dub it as Tobot Victory???

The new series was animated by Studio Button, whose other works include Fire Robo and Jurassic Cops. Overall better-looking than Retrobot's animation, but very child-stylized.

Tobot V went global in Asia around October 2019, rebranded as Tobot Galaxy Detectives, along with some name changes for some of the Tobots.

The Season 2 dub aired in Indonesia in 2021, before the other main dubs were made widely accessible on Netflix in December. Unlike Season 1, the vast majority of Season 2's Tobots had their names altered, with only Maximus V and Ultra Commander retaining the same names in both the English and Korean dubs. After the airing of the third season, the show is cancelled for some reason. (Most likely due to losing against their rival Hello Carbot in toy sales). After the end of Tobot V, Young Toys collaborated with Retrobot once again to produce a direct sequel to the original Tobot

Tobot V is eventually released in China in 2022 under the name 托宝战士之银河侦探, with Lemao producing the toys. It also splits up the seasons into first & second halves except for Swag's Secret.

Characters[]

Tobots[]

Season 1[]

Season 1.5[]

Season 2[]

Season 3[]

Protagonists[]

Season 1[]

  • Galaxy Detectives (갤럭시 탐정단)
    • Tyler King (강태양)
    • Quinn (이지혜)
    • Jeff (박격포)
    • Jay (이지우)
  • Tyler's family
    • Keren (김연경)
    • Sophy (강소리)
    • Martin (강상도)
  • Mrs. James (장영순)
  • Brady (남희)
  • K-P (콩두/Kondu)
  • Ro-B (로비)
  • Princess Zora (로지 공주/Princess Rosie)
  • Viking Nine (바이킹 나인)
  • Swag (스웨그)

Season 2[]

  • Victor/Pilseung oh (오필승)
  • Bruce (바다)
  • Zara (보리)
  • Mom
  • Rocco (이루)
  • Morgan

Season 3[]

  • Mateo (오태풍)
  • Victor (오필승)
  • Skye (한송이)
  • Sebastian
  • Francesco
  • (김하늘)
  • (김설록)

Antagonists[]

Season 1[]

Season 2[]

  • Bubble Cat (버블캣)
  • Fluffy (플러피)
  • Octonus (옥토누스)
  • Robostein (로보슈타인)
  • Repulsotops (무시케라톱스)

Season 3[]

  • 테라킹
  • 켈베로킹
  • 싸이킹
  • 픈랜킹
  • 몽키킹
  • Oracle

List of Episodes[]

main article: List of Tobot V Episodes

Criticisms and Controversies[]

GALAXY LEVEL OOF

You look at this image and try to say with a straight face that the legacies of Tobot and Athlon are being respected.

It may not be obvious to anyone residing outside of Korea, but Tobot GD is a series mired in controversy, and the show itself is vociferously hated by many fans of the original Tobot series, as well as Biklonz and Athlon.

The root of the issue lies in the cancellation of the three shows listed above as a result of the contract between Young Toys and Retrobot ending in mid-2017, leaving three different cliffhangers for three different beloved shows that fans would've liked to see more of. Many fans directed their anger at this towards Young Toys, stating that the company had acted brashly as toy sales for Athlon 3 were not particularly bad, per say. The situation was not helped by the decision to upload episodes of Geo Mecha, a separate series that happened to release right as Biklonz was on its way out, to the TOBOTYOUNGTOYS channel, which up until that point only hosted shows made by Young Toys and Retrobot. Young Toys hinted that they were working on a new Tobot series, but red flags arose when it was revealed that Retrobot was unaware of much about this new project and that it was unlikely that it would be what Tobot fans wanted.

Tobot V was eventually unveiled in mid-June of 2018 to the excitement of many young children and to the disgust of many Retrobot fans. The promotional videos uploaded to Youtube experienced an actual nuclear fallout as angry fans protested in the comments; it probably didn't help that Young Toys was proudly proclaiming that "Tobot [was] back". Criticisms sprung up about essentially everything about the series, but in general, the problems boiled down to Tobot V looking pretty much nothing like Tobot or Athlon in any way, from the completely unfamiliar robot designs to the galactic space motif to the episodic format with a status quo. To clarify, not all Retrobot fans were upset over the rebooted series, and there were a few people who were just happy that the franchise was still going, but the opposing voices were very, very vocal.

Tobot V aired the next month, and the fans' fears had been realized; the special effects and textures might look better, but the rest of the contents of each episode was far from satisfactory, often filled with less than stellar gags, gimmicky episode themes, and a general lack of charm. The sole exception was episode 9, which even some of the show's detractors admitted was a good episode, but that amount of quality was seemingly never replicated again, and the episode's cliffhanger wasn't even mentioned, let alone resolved, for a whopping 32 episodes. Some netizens who were willing to give the show a chance were sorely disappointed, and the online rage continued to build. Frankly, it seemed like your chances of enjoying the show were inversely related to how much you knew or cared about Tobot or its sister shows.

The potential for some fanservice was mentioned at some point, but the only thing that could really be considered such was some of the old Tobot and Biklonz toys on a shelf - far from enough to compensate for the situation at hand. The situation changed, however, when images were leaked of repainted versions of Tobot R, Tobot Adventure Y, and Tobot Zero surfaced under the Tobot V branding. Some discussion was held over this, with online users wondering whether the return of the older Tobot characters in a new show would mitigate the backlash to an extent. All of that was thrown out the window, however, when it turned out that the new "Rescue R", "Rescue Y", and "Rescue Zero" only shared the designs of the originals and absolutely nothing else, only adding to the backlash. Some were upset about the repaints, some were upset about the perfectly fine screen-faces being replaced by less visually appealing faces, some were upset about the personalities being changed so that they didn't even remotely resemble the original characters, and some were upset about all of the above. On the bright side, Young Toys seemingly eventually got the memo, and the Rescue Team's names were changed to Flight, Flame, and Hero in the international release, with any markings on the models that pointed to the original characters being removed (either that or Ocean Productions realized that the Rescue Team as-is was simply PR suicide and fixed it themselves). History seemingly repeated itself when Athlon Alpha and Athlon Champion were repainted as "Alpha Plus" and "Grand Champion" a year later; Retrobot fans were far from impressed, though at that point many who were part of the active opposition to Tobot V had given up. (Side note: Storm Joe and Titan Saver/Agent Titan are also redecoes, being retooled versions of the Megaroid and Gigaroid from Monkart respectively. There seems to be very little criticism, if any, on these two, however, as they have significant differences from the originals, the Megaroid and Gigaroid are both just vehicles that the characters ride in Monkart instead of actual characters, and Monkart generally doesn't have a big/vocal fanbase.)

All of this, combined with Young Toys releasing Metalions in Korea in 2019 (thus guaranteeing that Tobot fans, Biklonz fans, and Athlon fans would all be angry at blatant rehashing), has resulted in any trust that many Retrobot fans had in Young Toys completely shattering, and several of them raise skepticism any time the company does anything related to the original series. A good example is the release of Tobot Quatran's Gold Edition, released to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Tobot franchise. Reception amongst Retrobot fan communities were mixed at best, with some believing that it was all just a scheme by Young Toys to trick Retrobot fans into giving them money that they would then pour into creating more Tobot V content.

With that all being said, there is another side to the story. Internet users who were more detached from the Tobot and Biklonz franchises but were still keeping an eye on Young Toys and/or the Korean animation market in general pointed out that Young Toys was first and foremost a business and was simply trying to survive and thrive in the ever-changing marketplace. Though frustration over Biklonz's cancellation was more understandable since Young Toys has made no attempts to revive the franchise and the idea was Retrobot's in the first place, people also pointed out that the job of the Tobot series was to sell toys, and stated that it should've focused more on doing that well and less on building up a massive plotline that had no guarantee of reaching its conclusion.

Criticism was also drawn towards the behavior of the more vocal Retrobot fanbase. The Youtube comments for each Tobot V upload were being hammered by angry comments, with a sizable number of them containing foul language on a channel that everyone knew would be viewed by very young children. Some Retrobot fans were also attacking Tobot V fans who just liked what they were watching and hadn't made any inflammatory remarks to anyone.

There was an even bigger problem at hand, though. Several Retrobot communities took to Twitter to express their frustration over the whole matter. To this day, looking up terms like "또봇V" (Tobot V), "영실업" (Young Toys), or "메탈리온" (Metalions) on Twitter certainly isn't going to get you happy parents talking about how excited their 3-year-old children are about their shiny new Tobot V toys. However, there was someone else who was also posting on Twitter about Tobot V: a freelance toy & mechanical designer (best known for some of his Tobot design works for V/GD like Big Trail, Paragon, and more) who works for Young Toys who goes by the online alias of "Jybed" (자연침대). Jybed had only joined the company after the whole Young Toys-Retrobot contract debacle had ended in mid-2017 (he himself has stated that the only Tobot-related product he worked on pre-Tobot V was Mini Athlon Metron) and didn't know how passionate some people were about the Tobot franchise, meaning he wasn't prepared to see a number of angry Retrobot fans in his Twitter notifications. He made attempts to douse the flames, but it didn't work out - he and his opposition were simply not on the same page. It probably didn't help his case that he mentioned that the current generation of kids simply didn't know anything about the original Tobots, and it really didn't help that there were people claiming Jybed should lose his job. Many of the tweets related to this incident have been deleted, but the damage had been done... Jybed had become bitter towards Retrobot fans and a lot of what they stood for; some remnants of the negative comments can still be found on his naver blog/twitter.

To reiterate what that means and why this is a massive problem for anyone who wants more of Tobot, Biklonz, or Athlon: There is now an employee of Young Toys, the company that sponsored the shows and holds all the rights to them, who has been actively harassed by vocal Retrobot fans (some of which directly stated that they didn't care about the toys and were just fans of the Tobot and Biklonz franchises for the shows) and subsequently does not have a particularly high opinion of the general fanbase, and it's unlikely that this information has not spread at least somewhat within the company. Thanks, Twitter.

Despite the controversy, Tobot V continued for two more seasons, each having a similar episodic format as the first season. Thankfully they didn’t bother with reskinning Retrobot characters this time. Sadly or gladly however, Tobot V Season 3 ends on a cliffhanger.

Out of the blue, Retrobot-era Tobot fans were relieved to hear that there will be a sequel of the Tobot series after a trailer for “Tobot: Daedo's Heroes” with the Retrobot continuity characters returning. Even going as far as Young Toys renewing their deal with Retrobot for the first time since Athlon. The Tobot series getting put back on track means that Tobot V/Galaxy Detectives and it’s characters will never see the light of day again (aka the possibility of V getting a sudden revival is unlikely). Never ever... In the other hand, the end of Metalions resulted in a direct sequel known as Super 10 featuring more original robots with a brand new mechanic, and it ran for two seasons (four seasons in Chinese releases). Somehow, to this day, Young Toys has recently been releasing clear versions of GD Tobot toyline in clear versions starting with Commander Universe and Tank Man, meaning that the company behind it has slightly cared for Galaxy Detectives even in the end...

Despite mostly negative fan reception aimed at Tobot V/GD by the korean fans. It is well-received internationally, particularly in China & Indonesia. The toyline for the show also received mostly good reviews even from grown-up toy collectors (except for the retooled products) due to being an improvement over the previous toys, to the point the toy sales are high & managing to compete with their long-time rival Hello Carbot & other brands in the market.


Trivia[]

Background[]

  • Tobot V/Galaxy Detectives is the one and only Tobot series entry to be produced by Studio Button, a studio best known for Fire Robo and Jurassic Cops. It's general theme has more science fantasy elements on it, due to the Tobots and some characters originating from space and/or not of man-made/earthly origins.
  • The Tobots from the original continuity & Biklonz mechs also appear in the show as an easter egg, as toys found in Tyler's bedroom. Fire Robo also counts due to it being Button's original brand, and both shows share the same studio.
  • This is the one and only Tobot show to feature villains who originate from space or of galactic origins.
  • The mechanical designer Jybed, best known for his toy design contributions on Tobot V owns a company known as God Brave Studio.
  • In 2022, the series was released in China, known as Tuo Bao Zhan Shi Ying He Zhen Tan (托宝战士之银河侦探), Lemao owns the rights of chinese version for the said toyline, albeit there are differences for the quality and mechanics.

Credits[]

Cast[]

TBA.

Crew[]

TBA.

Gallery[]

Posters[]

TBA.

Screenshots[]

TBA.

Links[]

References[]

  1. http://https--welcon--kocca--kr.proxy.hbcoal.com/biz2/buyer/contents/view.do?no=2873&page=9&cd=
  2. Amazon.com description: "After bringing peace from the threats of Doctor X and Star-Ring, Tyler and Tobot Galaxy Detectives spend peaceful days solving small incidents in the city. One day, an unidentified little boy named Swag appears and starts to cause incidents, and points out the Tobots as the villains. Eventually, Tyler and the Tobot GDs find out that Swag is the Galaxy Weapon Four and succeeds in stopping him, but a new enemy Robot Hunter emerges from space and begins to threaten Earth and the Tobots."

External Links[]

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