Created for the Fox Kids Network and an adaptation of a comic of the same name by Frank Miller (that one) and Geof Darrow, Big Guy the robot hero we've always needed, the Friendly Giant meets Superman, America's greatest saviour when evil attacks. However the Big Guy has a secret, he's not really a robot but a soldier in a suit, the bold deception Quark Industries, America's leading robotics defence corporation has built its claim on. Finally we follow Rusty, a juvenile, childlike robot also developed by Quark Industries and their first successful true AI, and hopefully a final retirement for Big Guy. A fairly gritty premise set in a not too distant future for a kids show (Frank Miller is likely to thank for that), the cartoon that develops certainly is a kids show, and takes the comics origins to run with many monster of the week fights and shoot em ups. The show is more mature than many of those similarly airing at the time, being adapted by Richard Raynis, featuring quite large guns, explosions, and even the odd implication of death. Also with many surface level commentaries on capitalism and the military-industrial complex, I was kept interested simply to see if it had anywhere to go or much interesting to say. In the end, it didn't really, and with a two part finale of sorts that does begin to provide some cool origin stories but that's it, it was clear this was primarily a kids show meant to fill a time slot demographic consistently. Unfortunately the plots are fairly forgettable, and the vision isn't quite cohesive enough to stand out among everything before and after, unless you're a huge fan of this era of cartoons and have seen all the greats I can't particularly recommend. And it seems Fox themselves felt similarly, airing only the first 6 episodes upon its release, the fully finished remaining 20 eps would sit unaired for over a year, until there was room in a less desirable block in 2001. Cancelled after that single season, it's a show I probably wouldn't have normally flipped on, but it came up numerous times in different lists of 90s - early 00s cartoons to check out and after finding someone had uploaded it in its entirety on YouTube, well all content must be consumed at some point. Rusty is voiced by Pamela Adlon (Bobby Hill in King of the Hill), so hearing Bobby fly around and shoot lasers was certainly fun. The other voice cast in this is also quite astonishing, Fox Kids had developed a reputation for high quality young adult cartoons since 1992's Batman the Animated Series and all its successors, so many greats like R. Lee Earmey, Tim Curry, Ron Perlman, and Brian Doyle-Murray show up for parts. Again most of the episodes are quite generic, with few recurring enemies other than the Legion Ex Machina, it struggled to sell merch and keep kids attention, but it didn't struggle to keep mine over twenty years past its creation. I wouldn't say it was good but it certainly wasn't bad.
Review of Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot
