‘Mech Cadets’ Brings the SIUniverse to Netflix

Yesterday afternoon, Netflix announced a trio of animated projects featuring Asian American protagonists and creative teams. Among those series was one based on a comic book from an old friend, Mech Cadets based on the Boom! series by Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa.

Five years before Mech Cadet Yu was published, Pak and Miyazawa first debuted the story of Stanford Yu and his giant robot in the short story, “Los Robos” in the Secret Identities sequel, Shattered.

The creative duo even talked about it on Greg’s YouTube channel after Shattered was published. Also note that Greg was doing the Zoom interview years before Zoom was even a thing.

And now, a decade later, that short story will now be a major animated series on the biggest streaming service in the world!

Anyone familiar with the comic will recognize the premise of the show.

Fifty years in the future, after a terrifying alien species attacked our planet, teenager Stanford Yu works as a janitor at the Sky Corps Military Academy. But he’s only dreamed of one thing — to pilot a Robo Mech, giant robots from outer-space who came to our aid.

Netflix

The series will be executive produced by Boom! Studios, Japanese studio Polygon Pictures Inc., and Aaron Lam who will also serve as the showrunner.

In a heartfelt thread, Greg credited all the folks who made the comic what it is, and even gave the Secret Identities crew a shout out on twitter:

For more, go back to this episode of Hard NOC Life where Pak explains the book’s creation and its origins in the Shattered anthology.