HEYBOT! - COORDINATED CHAOS

MAX R. - Writer, 4th Year, Japanese

"Perfect for rewatches."

SPOILERS FOR HEYBOT!

Heybot! Is truly an anomaly, as in, it’s difficult to comprehend how it even managed to come into fruition. It’s a 50-episode ‘children’s show’ that has, to my surprise, somehow managed to make its way onto popular platforms such as Crunchyroll, albeit remaining largely untouched and unheard of regardless. When you see surreal comedy, kids, body horror and gods tagged all in a row, you know something is up. “Who is this actually for?” is probably one of the first things that comes to mind upon booting up episode one, and even after finishing the show, I struggle to fully answer that. Within seconds, the viewer is immediately greeted with its unique brand of absurdity, and the fact that the first three-minutes end up being what would be the circumstances of the penultimate episode before playing it off as a joke is a testament to that; it only becomes funnier when the true penultimate episode makes light of the entire final battle that was supposed to be built up to. As a continual barrage of audio-visual and even emotional stimulus, Heybot! can be a challenging show to take in, but it works on multiple levels, with its structure intriguing enough to where I feel it to be worth a look.

Now, comprehensively overviewing or even accurately explaining what the series is even about is a monumental task, but simply put, joke battles. Yes, it may be difficult to believe, but Heybot! does indeed have jokes. A lot of them are downright awful and some may be difficult to comprehend without knowledge of the language, but I assure you that they're there. When it isn’t referencing everything under the sun, including material that the average Japanese viewer, let alone a child for that matter, couldn’t be expected to recognize, it constantly stoops to the most low-brow humor imaginable with fart jokes, sex jokes and uncanny facial expressions. It’s also extremely meta and breaks the fourth wall on the regular. This is the show that directly asks its viewers to write its episodes and has its discarded character designs endeavor to become full-fledged characters. Moving on though, these joke battles are conducted through the use of Voca Bots, miniature robots that spew slews of puns through the insertion of Voca Nejis, screws which are used to construct gags. Without any clear idea of what the series is doing, it may not be obvious what exactly is happening during these segments as they kind of blend into the apparent randomness that constitutes the rest of the show, but they do serve as a general throughline that connects the massive cast to one another and remain relevant in one way or another.

Heybot! feels like a grab-bag of ideas, perhaps stream of consciousness-esque is a better way to put it. Characters can leap from playing and parodying a slew of video games in one episode to journeying through literal hell in another. Large-scale, universe-defining events can just unfold on a whim without explanation, for example the solar system’s obliteration. This isn’t to say that this is an attribute exclusive to the series, as a multitude of episodic shows also feature characters in wildly different situations between episodes, but a key difference is Heybot!’s self-awareness of its own episodic nature and use of selective continuity. It acknowledges itself as a Sunday morning cartoon where any progress resets back to the status quo between episodes, which are framed as disconnected incidents, to which the characters believe so as well. Well, that is, until it eventually becomes more noticeable towards the end that it doesn’t, and one suddenly realizes that never actually had. Gradual change is inflicted upon the world by the screw-fetishist prince, Nejiru, and companion, Heybot, which compounds until it can no longer be ignored and reality begins to warp.

The arbitrary becomes important; that is to say, there lies plenty of purpose in the apparent randomness. The series excels in how it weaponizes its unpredictability, crafting an atmosphere where seemingly anything can happen, and then proceeding to utilize cutaway gags to great effect in disguising its story that’s unknowingly thrown directly in the viewer’s face. Within episodic adventures, relevant events could just as easily blend in with aforementioned ‘randomness,’ leaving viewers oblivious to their significance until it's too late and everything cleanly comes together in epiphany. Minor characters can have entire arcs in the background of cutaway gags, and it’s not even a stretch to say the fart jokes are actual plot points and a driving force of the narrative at large. It’s all too easy to forget that all the goofiness on the screen is indeed part of the show’s plot, but in retrospect the foreshadowing is all there.

Returning to the initial question of who the show is actually for, the most reasonable answer may ultimately be the staff themselves. Their care shines through and while it may be my personal interpretation, I would like to believe they were having fun in producing the show and mashing nonsensical ideas together, something that the majority of the industry can’t really attest to. While the show is obviously also a glorified toy commercial for the Voca Nejis, Voca Bots and potato snack, Imochin, they’re all advertised the ‘Heybot way,’ meaning in the most chaotic way possible. It sounds counterproductive, but at the same time, it’s exactly the type of thing that Heybot! would do. Despite being repeatedly shown as delicious, Imochin is somehow made out to be unappealing through exaggeration as Heybot continually goes ballistic over it, gorging himself to the point where it becomes disgusting to fathom purchasing. An entire episode is even focused on the sale of Heybot toys where a less intricate version seeks to murder and replace the original, having felt inferiority brought about by consumers picking up the newest and fanciest goods. This is the type of approach that the show is founded upon and continues to abide by. For comparison, in the final episode, Heybot! is censored on television and replaced by a safe, unambitious, watered-down version of itself, the stark contrast emphasizing the original show’s personality. It drives home just how different things could have been, and how Heybot! could have easily been a soulless pile of mediocrity amidst a sea of mind-numbing children’s media. Instead, we end up with nothing less than a small miracle in its creation, as one of the more unique experiences I’ve come across in anime.