Kiwi Blitz

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Kiwi Blitz is a Web Comic by Mary Cagle (known elsewhere on the net as one of a number of variations of "Cube Watermelon"), updated either bi-weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or weekly on just Tuesdays, depending on how busy the watermelon is.

The main character is 14-year-old Steffi Frohlich, who under the guise of "Blitz" fights crime in a future New York City using her bird-shaped Humongous Mecha, Kiwibot. She's assisted in this by her best friend Benzene who acts as Mission Control and later the Robot Girl 42. Of course, that's just what she does during her free time, when she's not busy with her day job as a junior Robot League combatant.

Along with the ill-equipped NYPD, Steffi/Blitz battles masked criminals, rogue military hardware, and most importantly, her own boredom.

Current Tracks are, in order...

• Weapon of Choice
• Omen
• Sneakman
• Phony
• The Warning
• Trip Machine
• Coward Mont Blanc
• I My Me Mine
• The Vulture
• Take Me To The Hospital
• Technologic

Tropes used in Kiwi Blitz include:

• Allergic to Routine: Steffi, Gear, and even Raccoon seem to be motivated by boredom to some extent.
• An Arm and A Leg: Steffi and Gear suffer this to some extent, since they have prosthetic limbs. Reed becomes a new addition after Gear cuts his right arm off.
• Animal Mecha: Kiwibot is a kiwi bird mecha, hence the title.
  • Not to mention the majority of the other mechas we've seen also have animal designs.
• Animesque: The artist commented on her style on her Twitter account: "Note that that isn't a complaint at all. I enjoy living on the edge of animesque/pseud-anime/kinda-anime/ like those Pokémon people".
• Arms Dealer: Steffi reveals that her family's company initially started off as a weapons developer and made huge profits during World War III. Steffi is clearly not very comfortable with this fact.
• Art Evolution: Just compare Track One to Track Eleven.
• Artificial Limbs: Steffi has a robot leg. The strip doesn't make a big deal about it.
  • The villainous Gear has both her left arm and left leg replaced by prosthetics. Her right arm looks mechanical, but it's just a gauntlet.
• Badass Adorable Steffi and the Raccoon. Even more so after the Raccoon's identity is revealed.

Steffi: Oh mien gott, aren't you precious!

• Badass Normal: It seems Ben IS serious. He has no powers,and no swiss-army limbs. All he has is taekwondo.
  • And that's not even the most shocking thing. He wasn't even at peak performance!
• Big Applesauce
• Cast of Snowflakes: The artist works this. Minor characters and even nameless bystanders get unique faces and designs.
• Chekhov's Skill: Early in comic, it's mentioned that Steffi had taken taekwondo lessons. This becomes useful later on when she's forced to fight the Raccoon in hand to hand combat.
  • Ditto for Ben and his encounter with Gear.
• Clark Kenting: Averted. The media quickly begins to theorize that Steffi is Blitz, pointing out they physically resemble each other and that Kiwibot is similar to other Frolich mechs.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: During his second encounter with Gear, Reed correctly deduces that she would try to escape in the nearest manhole and intercepts her. He even points out that villains like her are painfully predictable.
• Darker and Edgier: Cutesy story about teenagers in mechs suddenly turns... not so cutesy.
• Dating Catwoman: Jones accuses Reed of crushing on Blitz. He refutes it though, citing her age as "fifteen or something."
• Deadpan Snarker: Ben is squaring up to be one of these
• Death Glare
• Even Evil Has Standards: It remains to be seen if The Raccoon is really evil, but this thief refuses to use the chain claw while fighting Steffi because it's too deadly.
• Eyepatch of Power: Gear. Pretty literally. As in, it's an eyepatch with an "on/off" symbol on it.
• Fan Disservice: Heinrich Frolich in his German-flag-coloured boxers, as considered In-Universe by Steffi.
• Five Rounds Rapid: Apparently SWAT teams don't exist in the KB universe, so the police are rather helpless against criminals like Gear, whose cyborg augmentations render her immune to their taser pistols.
• Flat What: Delivered by Racoon at the end of Chapter 7.
• For the Evulz: Pretty much perfectly describes Gear.
• Genki Girl: Steffi, when faced with a new mech for her birthday, immediately decides to fight crime in it, and throughout the story seems to dive into situations with relish when she should really be thinking about them. She seems to get the trait from her father, who also exhibits some rather fun-loving tendencies.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck: Steffi curses in German ("S****ße!") but not English ("Mother effer!"). ...For the most part.
• Grappling Hook Pistol: The Raccoon uses an arm-mounted variation.
• Gratuitous German: Loads - Even the Kiwibot's OS. Justified as Steffi and her father Heinrich are from Germany (their last name is Frolich). After a relatively long exchange between him and Steffi, Benzene lampshades it: "Hooray, and Benzene's here too! Let's all speak English so he can understand what we're saying!"
• Head Pet: Winston.
• Heroic Bystander: Natalie the bankteller gives a valiant try but is overpowered.
• I Call It Vera: Some military robots had a program called ARIS installed that gave them feedback via a female voice, since it was believed it would keep the calm in battle. However, it worked a bit too well, and many pilots grew dangerously attached to their robots.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The chapters are called "tracks", and every track is named after an electronica song.
• Jack of All Stats: Per Word of God, the Kiwibot is "a Midweight mid-range unit. The Mario of mechs."
• Jumped At the Call: Steffi loves being a superhero.
• Knight of Cerebus: Things only seem to get dark when Gear shows up.
• Match Cut: A few times in Track 4.
• Mini-Mecha: Kiwibot.
• Mission Control: Benzene.
• Multicolored Hair: Ben's bangs are lighter than the rest of his hair.
• Noodle Incident: The characters constantly mention a war that had taken place some time ago that involved the use of military grade mechs.
• Not So Different: Used by Gear, its use and frequent use by The Rival are both Lampshaded by Steffi.
• Older Than They Look: Steffi is in her teens?
• Oh Crap: And so Ben learns what Steffi's up to. His reaction's appropriate.
• One of Us: Cube has been waiting for this entry to be made.
• Police Are Useless: Thoroughly played with. A flashback shows young Reed Bahia discussing this trope with his mom; mom explains that it's just used to "make things more interesting for the hero". Reed vows that he'll save everyone when he grows up to be a cop... In the present day, costumed villains like The Raccoon operate solely because the police budget is too low for good cops like Reed to do their job.
• Precision F-Strike: Benzene is NOT happy.
  • And neither is Reed.
• Punched Across the Room: Steffi to the Raccoon.
• Punch Clock Villain: The Raccoon is not really evil at all, and even teams up with Steffi to help her recover Kiwibot.
• Puppy Dog Eyes: The Raccoon to Steffi. Brown eyes, lip wibble and everything.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: After the first fight, police officers Reed and Cho cover for Steffi rather than arresting her.
• Robot Girl: 42
• Rose-Haired Girl: Steffi. Though, according to a flashback, she's actually a blonde.
• Samus Is a Girl: The Raccoon, revealed in Track 7.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Cho to Reed; sometimes Benzene to Steffi.
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: When Steffi interrupts The Raccoon from eating a sandwich and making "nomph nom" noises, he ends up saying one of them.
• Serrated Blade of Pain: Gear has a retractable serrated shortsword built into her prosthetic arm. She likes to use it on people she finds "Offensively Boring".
• Shout-Out: To Pokémon, when Steffi comments how Kiwibot's Beak Shot was "not very effective..."
• Sticky Fingers: Again, the Raccoon, who seems to have some kind of actual kleptomania going on. During the Kiwibot heist, she grabbed a guard's snack and some paperclips.
• Strange Bedfellows: Blitz teaming up with the Raccoon to steal her kiwibot back.
• Superhero: Steffi / Blitz.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Steffi certainly seems to think so.
• Swiss Army Weapon: Gear's entire left arm is one of these.
• Tone Shift: See the above entry for Darker and Edgier.
• Translation Convention: Most of the German is left untranslated, but for extended passages it switches to English in angle brackets, just like in Megatokyo.
• Uncanny Valley: In Universe. 42's a rather cute Robot Girl, but it's a little unnerving to see her open her mouth and have a grown man's voice come out. She's even more so when's she turned off. Both Steffi and the author (see the cast page) lampshade this.
  • 42's mannerisms, constant smile no matter what the subject, and tendency to show up right behind people gives people the willies. Despite having no combat capabilities and intentionally built to look like a cute Robot Girl, she manages to be vaguely creepy all the time without trying.
  • Goes further into it during the confrontation with 35- she backflips on her head and keeps the same facial expression throughout.
• Weapon of Choice: Kiwibot. Also the title of the first track.
• Wearing a Flag On Your Head: Heinrich Frohlich wears German-flag-coloured boxers. And Steffi treats it as Fan Disservice.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Reed's greatest dream as a child was to be a policeman like his father. It's revealed later that Reed's father is the current police chief.
• Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: The Raccoon has a TON of gadgets such as the claw hook, smoke bombs, a taser knuckle, knockout patches, and more. It's quite amazing considering that she's just a young girl. It's implied that all of the gear is supplied by a larger organization.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Aside from Steffi, Announcer Lady has green hair, and Employee Lady has light purple hair, and 42 has purple hair...let's just say a lot of the cast.
  • Gear's is a subversion since it's just a wig
  • Also, Steffi's hair is dyed. Flashbacks reveal that her natural hair color is blonde.
• Younger Than They Look: Steffi mentions that Gear's face is too long for her to be seventeen like she claims.