garage-bandroid

[garage-bandroid]

[garage-bandroid]

[garage-bandroid]

[garage-bandroid]

imho that episode was the only musical/visual sequence to rival the opening theme

Okay, so, I can’t find the video of this ANYWHERE, but I can’t be the only one who remembers this. In the animated series, there was this one episode that was like, a trippy 22 minute music video, where the characters were drawn in different styles. I only remember one lyric, “eye of the machine.” Did I dream this?!?

YES! Oh my god. If I remember right, that was the episode that Bandroid: Cartoon Motion introduced us to Eolus, and the confirmation that Drumbot was not the only android "stranded" on earth.

I really loved how they called back to other animation styles throughout the episode/music video. The homage to The Wall, and Yellow Submarine, not to mention some of the trippier Fantasia moments. It was so brilliant.

The only thing I'm sad about is that they cut down the song to just a two minute number when the soundrack came out. They even cut out the "eye of the machine" line, which could be why it's so hard to figure out if it was real. Not to mention they titled the song "On and Off" which, yes, there *is* the recurring chorus about turning the androids on and off and the consequences of that, but it really doesn't leave a lasting impression, you know?

Like, "On and Off" is not really evocative of "we did a full episode that was one extended music video that included androids sharing memories and homages to at least 7 prominant animated musical pieces *and* didn't have any actual dialogue, just extended verses and the chorus having different meanings depending on who was singing."

[garage-bandroid]

this post is now my bible and my religion

Bandroid for Dummies

Based on combing through the #bandroid tag, thanks to: @theleakypen, @zylaa, @iamwestiec, @scarlettohairdye, @paintchipblue, @lesbianjinzixuan, @shadaras and @garage-bandroid, @drumbotlovebot, @bandroidfandroid

Summary:

“Bandroid” is a live-action TV show featuring the adventures of a 5-man band, including their robot/android drummer Drumbot. There are currently 5 seasons. The special effects are very basic, reminiscent of Star Trek TOS. Though in Season 1 it started out with such plots as trying to get small time gigs and “The Battle of the Bands” arc, later seasons include more and more dramatic spy-thriller-like adventures, including an entire time-travel arc. The show went on a hiatus between Seasons 2 and 3, when during which, “Bandroid: The Animated Series” aired, filling in some of the time skips in Seasons 1 & 2.

Notable episodes include:

“Bet Your Bottom” – where producer Zhu Ming has to fix Drumbot when it’s glitching right before a performance

“Arnarson is Not the Arsonist” (Season 2) where Jon and Paul went into hiding and Jesse had to figure out how to clear Jon’s name, causing a rift between Jesse and Jon

The Time Travel Arc, where Paul and Drumbot go to 2000BCE with the help of Professor Hayashi

“May You Please” – a May Wen-centric episode with much keytar drama. Fans posit that there may have been two sets of hands on the keytar, fuelling a May/Jesse ship

“Drumbot Alone” – a two-part episode where Drumbot leaves the band behind temporarily to develop and grow as its own individual. Notable for the hilarious mini-golf scene and the lady who mistook Drumbot for her dog walker

The band consists of:

Jon Arnarson (he/him) – the gay lead singer, who writes soulful and inspiring lyrics

Paul Ahmed (he/him) – the guitarist, Jon’s platonic life partner, and the most popular person to ship with the main character, Drumbot

Bailey Kane (she/her) – the bisexual bass player, center of fan's "Get Bailey a girlfriend" campaign

Drumbot (it/it) – the drummer, an undercover android hiding from the government. It traveled the universe for 500 years before crash-landing on earth in the 1600s and has the sum total of human knowledge downloaded into its neural net – Drumbot is played by a 35 year old woman in a costume

Jesse Washington (they/them) – (seasons 1 & 2 and the animated series) the ace, nonbinary keytarist – played by a nonbinary actor who uses xie/xem/xir pronouns.

May Wen (she/her) – (seasons 3, 4 & 5) keytarist

Other characters include:

Zhu Ming (she/her) – the band’s producer who pointed Jon and Paul to the storage unit where Drumbot was in season 1 – played by an in-demand actor with many other commitments, so only appears intermittently.

Vivian Wen – (season 4) May’s sibling, a genderfluid antagonist character

Eolus – an android

Professor Hayashi – The person who helped with the time travel shenanigans in season (5?)

Babylonian Fig Seller – during the Babylonian time travel arc, the Fig Seller teaches Drumbot how to identify ripe, unspoiled produce – sings a duet with Drumbot before Drumbot returns to the present time. The duet later becomes the band’s song “Tower of Babel”

Jodie McKee – shows up in the Battle of the Bands Arc, member of a rival band who had chemistry with Bailey

The Spirit of Music – not a character per se, but a palpable presence throughout the show when the band is performing

Some Song Titles:

“Binary Heart” – the band’s most famous song, also the name of their first album, they played this song during the season 1 finale while the government agents were converging on the stage

“Tower of Babel” – a song developed during the Babylonian Time Travel Arc

“Vanilla Chinchilla” – inspired by Bailey’s chinchilla adventure in season 3

“Baby broke my circuits” – a song simultaneously heartbreaking & an awesome dance tune

“The hemoelectric slide” – a darkwave remix of the electric slide

“Reuse recycle” – a very sad song

“Beep You’re It”

“Motherboard Motherboard”

[garage-bandroid]

PLEASE drumfig is such a small ship! I need more people spreading the good word so thank you for your memeing 🙏 I just think every interaction they have is so sweet! Fig seller teaching Drumbot how to make sure the figs are ripe and not spoiled when he finds out it doesn't know the first thing about buying produce 😭😭😭

YES, exactly!! They're sweet but not in a cloying way, you know? I love the fig seller's "this might as well happen" attitude when this silvery being starts stomping through the marketplace. And like--from a Doylist angle, with a robot from the future approaching The Locals, I was afraid the writers would throw in the old "The Locals think our protagonists are gods!" But no! They started with fig seller teaching Drumbot!

The duet they sing after Drumbot knows it's going to have to go back breaks my heart every time. And I thought that would be the end of it, but nope! They brought that melody into Tower of Babel!

[garage-bandroid]

but also the way the show plays with dynamics so well that you can see different ones come out based on who is/isn’t present!  Like how Paul has opened up in some way or another to each of the band members, but only when it’s one on one, while May just draws ENERGY from the group being all together (if Paul spent a whole season in Babylon with ANY other character, we’d all be shipping THAT, Paul has a valid relationship with EVERYONE, we just see it the most with Drumbot, come dance around the Maypaul with me)

Bandroid otp?

I mean, ot6 friendship feels? the whole band as a unit? like, that's the heart of the show! how can there be anything more important than the way music brings them together and then they keep choosing to be there for each other despite all the unexpected challenges! none of them wanted to be dragged into a governmental conspiracy, or get yeeted back in time, or be on what's probably gonna be the front lines of first contact! but here they are, because none of them can walk away.

(I love that they all get arcs centered around "okay what if I did walk away?", though! it's really cool seeing what's important to them, and learning how they think about the band, and I don't care how predictable the "show up in the nick of time to save the day" [concert, game night, road trip, whatever] scenes are, they always hit me in the feels.)

...but uh really I guess I'd die on my drumming hill, because I am forever a rarepair shipper. I mean, Jesse/May is fantastic, and so is May/Bailey, and—

okay let's be real I mostly just ignore JonPaul and DrumPaul because they're the biggest ships in the fandom. and I mean, that's fine? there's chemistry! but you know me; I can be convinced of almost anything if you try, and I love hearing reasoning for ships I'd never considered before. :)

[garage-bandroid]

what do you mean it’s not real, it’s my favorite show

hi!! jw what is bandroid? and where can i watch/listen/read it?? i tried googling but it hasnt been helpful

Ashdkfl I am so sorry anon. Ok time to break character for a second:

Bandroid is the result of me waking up from a dream where I had written fanfic about a show about a band where there are four human band members and one "robot" (robot in quotes because it's a person in makeup like in Steam Powered Giraffe) and posting directly in the fanfic channel of my Slack, and then the group of brilliant weirdos in the slack taking it and running with it.

It's not a show that exists but suddenly I have too many feelings about it because this is how my brain works.

[garage-bandroid]

So we see Zhu Ming do spot repairs on Drumbot first in the show. And then Paul and Drumbot are effectively alone for multiple months (or years? Timing is unclear) in Babylon. So there is without a doubt a missing scene where Zhu Ming taught the band Drumbot maintenance, right?

[garage-bandroid]

[image description] the clasped hands meme template. Left arm is labeled "Bandroid fans;" right arm is labeled "Gritty fans;" the clasped hands are labeled "refusing to believe there's a human person inside the suit" [end image description]

[garage-bandroid]

YES

hey, can I ask you for your opinion? so i honestly headcanonned drumbot as aroace from the start, but now I am starting to suspect that I'm being an allistic shit, actually? should I try to unpack it or something

Oooof, a lot to unpack here.

So first of all, I think the term you mean is either allosexual or alloromantic. "Allistic" means not autistic.

Now for the main point:

OK SO, on the one hand - there's definitely something not great about the tendency to see nonhuman characters as aroace, because of the implication that romantic and/or sexual attraction is what makes us human, and that lacking those makes one somehow inhuman.

On the other hand, Bandroid has done a lot in terms of showing a lot of different kinds of affectionate relationships that may or may not be read as sexual or romantic.

Like, JonPaul are very clearly QPPs, even though that's not a term that's used in the show directly.

I think a reading of Drumbot as aro or ace or both is not necessarily unsupported by the text, so long as you can recognize that its relationships with the other characters are founded on real trust, love, and affection and just because that love isn't romantic/sexual doesn't mean it's not real

Also aroace rep is cool and robots are cool, soooooo... I honestly can't blame anyone for headcanonning it that way

So I guess, in conclusion, definitely make the effort to unpack any allocentric tendencies in your thinking, but it's not INHERENTLY bad to headcanon anyone as aroace.

Also, as @garage-bandroid says, Drumbot is simultaneously all sexualities and romanticisms at once. Schrodinger's shippable bot xD

[garage-bandroid]

Am I the only one that obsesses about the second keytar player in "May You Please"? All we see are a few shots of hands, but we *also* see May's hands on her own keytar and- it's Jesse, isn't it? May drops hints about asking "someone" for help, and- am I reading too much into this or were the writers hinting at May/Jesse while their actor was busy with xir other work?

👀👀👀 might be time for a rewatch because I definitely didn't catch any of that

Oblivious Puck is oblivious.

If there is a second keytar player, I can't imagine it being anyone but Jesse!

Also May/Jesse is a very good ship thought that I haven't had until this moment but I'm gonna be THINKING ABOUT IT now so thanks for that anon

[garage-bandroid]

So with the bandroid thing, did you guys just make up “problematic shipping” wank? Because I saw it and just scrolled past, completely accepting it, because whelp it’s tumblr after all. In fact, it was probably that which sold the existence of the fandom in the first place 😂😂

🤣🤣🤣 ok so full disclosure we definitely started out doing it but I've now received several anons whose sources I do not know, in addition to the ones I seeded myself and the ones I know came from friends.

So whoever's playing along out there, thank you for helping build the canon!

[garage-bandroid]

When you started talking about bandroid I thought for sure it was animated, are you telling me it's live action???

Jumping out of character again because you know what, I'm not sure? My initial dream (again, this is literal, a thing my brain came up with while I was sleeping) was definitely live action, but I could definitely see it being a cool animated show. I think @scarlettohairdye had a vision that there's a real band that performs shows and whose music gets used in an animated show where the actual plot happens, so both. My internal brain has settled on something like a kamen raider esque low budget mostly live action thing, I think? Idk I am not the arbiter of this despite being the originator

[garage-bandroid]

What are your thoughts on the Drumbot Alone two-part episode? Some of my fandom friends really hate it, but I thought letting Drumbot explore who it is outside the band and try new things was important for its growth! Also the mini golf scene is PRICELESS

I liked it!

It wasn't my favorite thing in the world because I'm mostly in fandom for group dynamics, but I like it for pretty much the same reasons you do. I think seeing Drumbot outside the context of band stuff gives us really important characterization. I think seeing it interact with humans without one of the other band members as a buffer was really great, because you could see it learning and improving in real time while still remaining its quintessential Drumbot self

Yes to the mini golf scene!

Also that lady who mistook Drumbot for her dog walker 😂 I loved that

[garage-bandroid]

Oh no. Are people going to start questioning whether the Bandroid animated series is canon?!? Just because it had Jesse return instead of May doesnt mean it's meant to be an "alternate universe". Seasons 1 and 2 had major time skips the writer use the animated show to fill in the gaps! (And I know Jesse's actor was glad to reprise xir role via voice acting when xie couldn't commit to the show's filming schedule.)

!!! Ok anon please don't hate me but I genuinely forgot that the animated show existed because I only watched the first few episodes of it during the extra long break between seasons 2 and 3 and then completely lost track of it

(y'all know I only really watch things when people sit me down and make me or if I have a regular watch scheduled with someone)

It's really cool to know that there's more Jesse content in it! I'm definitely gonna have to pick it up again and check out the rest!

[garage-bandroid]

I was just imaging drumbot as, like, the robot from Futurama until enough "person in a robot suit" references broke through to make me realize it was live action....

Valid! I'm just really into very good robot makeup and so is my subconscious apparently.

Anyway thanks to the previous anon, we now have both a live action and an animated series!