Robo Story Story – Luke Oram

Throughout the last 35 years I’ve been haunted by a shard of memory from early childhood.
This memory was a series of images of a science fiction cartoon- strange robots, talking to trees, sap-sodden aircraft, and a crashed spaceship.
At various points I’d searched for this, not only recruiting various friends from the animation course I did at university, but also repeatedly drawing the images I could remember and placing them online with the doubtful hope someone would recognise whatever this was. I spent hundreds of hours pouring through websites listing 80s cartoons, and hundreds more hours scanning though the obscure soviet animation that was by now (mid 2000s) being uploaded to video sites.
This was all in vain, and eventually I resigned myself to the likely reality that thus memory was either false, or had become so distorted with time that I simply would not recognise this show even if I did somehow locate it.
During the winter of 2021 I found myself once again drawing the memories of these images, and fired them into the void. I did so with not only the same low expectations as before, but with the reprimands of my fellow animation graduates who have been subjected to this for 20 years at this point.
I was then shocked to have the answer “maybe robo story?” come floating back to me, like it was nothing.

Here are the images I uploaded, with the descriptions of the memories:

Flying vehicles that dodged sap falling from vast trees.

A Comms console that flashed symbols on its screen- I think it spoke to the trees somehow?

Robots/Soldiers/Astronauts, rounded and pointy headed varieties. I recall one changed sides

A child in a crashed spaceship or tank or satellite. Was in peril.

The second I’d searched what on earth “robo story” was, I knew this was it! I eagerly began watching some of the episodes that had been uploaded to YouTube, keen to see if any of the things I’d stored for so long might possibly actually be in this show…?
Here are comparisons of my 2021 recollections Vs a show I saw once in 1985:

The crashed ship is the airship- the child in peril is the protagonist!

Astounded at how close these were, and dealing with the same confounded alarm from my friends who’ve been dragged along for this, I watched on.I began to notice a lot of similarities with things I’ve done, most notably the comic PLANET LOSS that was published in at the start of 2021.
Here are some uncanny similarities:

WHY did I make my protag have orange clothes, blue hands and a brown animal sidekick..

Memory is indeed a strange, strange country.