Redakai
Redakai: Conquer The Kairu is a Merchandise-Driven cartoon series and card game developed by Spin Master. The game centers around cards (Called "X-drives") that are made of plastic and have several transparent portions. There are three types of cards: Characters, who you start with three of, Monsters, which change the defenses and abilities of characters, and attacks, which damage opponents. First player to knock out all three of their opponents wins.
The Cartoon centers around a boy named Ky Stax and his friends Boomer and Maya who quest around the world trying to collect an energy called "Kairu", the life energy of the universe before the villain Lokar and his minions find it first. They do this by fighting other teams and transforming into monsters. The episodes are different every week without an overarcing plot.
Redakai came in with a lot of fanfare but fell by the wayside in the United States after just a few months due to overwhelmingly negative reception.
- All There in the Manual: The show relies a lot on its supplementary materials to tell the story, such as the website and promotional videos carrying key plot points that aren't visited in the show itself.
- And Knowing Is Half the Battle: About halfway through, these sorts of tips started coming up at the ends of each episodes, sometimes tips on how to play the card games and sometimes general advice. However, the card-game tips typically aren't applicable to the actual game.
- Anti-Hero: Team Stax was apparently meant to be this. However...
- Broken Aesop: A horribly botched Green Aesop in episode six. Maya leads the charge to protect a forest by hurling a huge tornado made of pure fire within said forest.
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Boomer:Wow, when it comes to nature, you don't mess around, Maya! |
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- Captain Obvious Aesop: The pilot had the Aesop "Slavery is bad." Really, there weren't enough plot points or other threads for the moral to be anything else. The "Taunting someone for a skin-blemish" potential moral is never closed. Nope. Slavery is bad.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Lokar and all of the E-Teens, even the Imperiaz who should otherwise be Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains.
- Cash Cow Franchise: Subverted. It was intended to be one if the huge amounts of promotions and merchandise are any indication. It was likely being groomed as the successor to Bakugan, but the lackluster TV show and high prices dashed it against the rocks.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: So, in a universe imbued with a sort of life-energy that can imbue the user with powers and move objects, as well as having a light side and a dark side, a team of super-powered kids consisting of Two Guys and a Girl get in fights by using special devices with large screens and cards in order to transform into monsters and fight.
- Eva Fins: Bruticon
- Follow the Leader: It lists one of its biggest selling points as being like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Bakugan.
- Golden Super Mode: "Gold" versions of monsters tend to be very powerful.
- Jerkass: Team Stax. They scowl, use trash talk, and execute a lot of questionable behavior, such as openly and unsympathetically taunting Boomer for getting a pimple.
- Kill It With Plasma: Metanoid's abilities are plasma-based: Plasma hands, plasma sword, etc.
- Many of Infinita's moves also use fire.
- Luke, I Am Your Grandfather: Lokar is Maya's Grandfather.
- Merchandise-Driven
- New Powers as the Plot Demands: Happens a lot with X-drive Ass Pulls, but Ky's "Inner Kairu" is a particularly bad offender.
- Heck, it's practically an Invoked Trope, as it is said that one's Inner Kairu develops when the time is right...
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Cataclysm that wound up throwing the Kairu energy all over the world in the first place was caused by Ky's Dad, Conner Stax.
- Parents in Distress: The Imperiaz only work for Lokar because he is keeping their parents as hostages.
- Product Promotion Parade: Happens near the end of each episode. Getting the Kairu Energy "unlocks new X-drives". It's like the characters just opened a booster pack as they list off what they all got.
- Series Continuity Error: In episode 1, Team Stax kicks rocks at/throws rocks at/levels the ground below several mooks of Villain of the Day who had no Kairu powers. Six episodes later, surrounded by tribespeople wielding weapons, Team Stax reminds the Imperiaz that it's against the "Kairu Code" to attack someone who isn't a Kairu Warrior. It's either this, or Team Stax is a bunch of Jerkass Protagonists.
- The Big Guy: Boomer
- The Brute: Bash
- The Chick: Maya
- The Dark Chick: Zair
- The Hero: Ky, Conner
- Two Guys and a Girl: Team Stax and Team Radikor.
- Two Girls to a Team: Team Imperiaz
- The Rival: Zane
- The Stoic: Techris
- Valley Girl: Princess Diara