For the longest time, Me & Roboco has been described by Jump fans as Shonen Jump‘s Family Guy. Often going viral for its volume covers lifting directly from other series like Jujutsu Kaisen or My Hero Academia, it’s common to perceive it as riding off the coattails of more successful manga. Its predecessor, Gintama, managed to avoid this stigma by knowing when exactly to be its own thing, culminating in its own cinematic finale about persistence in the face of struggle that just so happened to also open with a parody of Dragon Ball and One Piece. Sadly, if this is your only exposure to Roboco, Gintama will seem like yet another series it’s clinging to.

This is a shame, because I’m something of an apologist for the manga itself. Originally a mash-up of Doraemon and Mahoromatic, Roboco can actually be quite clever as a satire of the all-powerful housemaid genre. Unlike Nobita, Taira is not a friendless punching bag so pathetic that he needs help from the future. He very much took the messages of Shonen Jump to heart by being the type of kid you’d want to be friends with. Meanwhile, Roboco is so incompetent and narcissistic that they’re only really useful as a guard dog. His love interest, Madoka, has the taste of a hard-boiled man, and his bullies Kaneo and Gachi Gorilla are the most comically generous friends imaginable. It feels like a direct response to why anyone would hang out with Nobita, resulting in both a surprisingly cute slice-of-life and even a convincing romcom. Much of this was lost in translation, though, as the anime was a slapdash 3-minute episode series where the punchlines don’t even get a full second to breathe.

So when a movie was announced, and it wasn’t going to be a recap, I was curious. At the very least, it wouldn’t be paced like a YouTube Poop and actually get a chance to move. To a certain extent, I got both, but it set the bar pretty low right out of the gate. It starts pretty similarly to Gintama: The Final by parodying a bunch of other recent Jump Movies (Film Red, JJK 0, Mugen Train, Code White). While that movie used it as its recap of the story, here it’s more to signal that they’re a real movie now. It’s the type of self-deprecating meta humor that Roboco frequently dabbles in, but it’s never lasted a whole chapter before. Even once the parodies are done, it lingers on this lack of confidence for 10 minutes. After finally getting a budget and time, the feeling at this moment is that they’re not good enough.

Thankfully, once it introduces multiple Robocos, it starts to have fun for the next 10 minutes. SciFi Roboco looks like Kenshiro, Battle Roboco’s voiced by Luffy (Mayumi Tanaka), Showa Roboco is straight-up Doraemon, and Romcom Roboco is voiced by Sumire Uesaka (Agnes Tachyon). All of them commit to the bit that, in some ways, they’ve shifted the parameters of base Roboco to such extremes that they’ve become more iconic and successful. In fact, it turns out the only matching part of their canon is that Gachi Gorilla dies (even in the romcom). Seeing the main Roboco try to reclaim their main character status in the face of these giants is where a lot of the movie’s funniest moments come from. It even pays off in the stinger!

But once they cross a full episode of runtime, it’s like the producers told them they have to act like a movie now. A UFO appears, and the rest of the film is just them fighting off the aliens inside and revealing their evil overlord. For what it’s worth, the reveal of who the villains are does tie into Robocos’ sense of self-worth, and their backstory somehow being more pathetic did have me chuckle. There’s also a shameless attempt to have kids in the audience cheer on during the final battle that almost reminded me of Pop Team Epic.

Still, this was done so much better in Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga Paradise. That movie’s greatest joke with a premise like Zombies vs Aliens was to legit make a proper Independence Day sequel. The saying “THEY DID NOT HAVE TO GO THIS HARD!” is the secret ingredient to having the audience go from mocking you to cheering with you. Here, it’s so clear from the get-go that they’re just doing this because it’s the kind of big spectacle situation a blockbuster demands of them, making it just as much of a chore to watch as it is for them.

By far the biggest visual upgrade is just replicating the different Robocos in their specific style. It takes into account how goofier designs like Showa and Romcom Roboco warrant sillier movement, while SciFi and Battle Roboco can compensate for stiffer animation with one solid hit (at least until the sakuga runs out). The parody scenes in the opening also did a decent job replicating the lighting and compositing of One Piece: Film Red and Jujutsu Kaisen 0, though the same couldn’t be said of the Demon Slayer: Mugen Train section. It did make me chuckle that they also licensed the actual songs for each of them, and the soundtrack within the movie itself also tries to match the different visual styles it juggles (even if it’s not memorable).

I do not envy the Roboco series’ position. Between a memed manga and a botched adaptation, this movie felt like the closest chance it had for someone new to get it. But this feels like you’re watching a shonen filler movie trying to figure out what a shonen filler movie is supposed to even be. I somewhat appreciate the shameless cribbing of more successful works, but Roboco the manga is more than just riding off the coattails of Gintama.