Greetings! I was looking forward to improving fan-made Astral Chain-related Greetings! I was looking forward to improving fan made Astral Chain related things like the wiki, I have traced in-game assets for other games, but I am having trouble with WTP and WTA files. I have read the docs on your GitHub and read that support is planned for AC Extractor. Seeing that it was last updated three years ago, I wanted to ask if you have any plans to support that format. Thank you for your awesome work!
WTP/WTA/WTB files are texture container files. You'll find WTA + WTP files in pairs (WTA is the texture headers, WTP is texture data), while WTB is a combination of both. You can extract them with:
My fork of NieR2Blender2NieR (requires a version of Blender 3, does not work with newer versions. Mainly a model modding tool, but has texture extraction capabilities.)
Platinum Extractor (this one was supposed to replace Astral Extractor, but it's still sort of jank and unfinished - some texture files may not work. But it's all in your browser!)
Switch Toolbox can also extract WTA/WTP files if both files are in the same directory. Probably the most stable, and was what I used when starting out.
My collection of Astral Chain modding tools is honestly sort of a mess of legacy code and hacky workarounds, but I've been too busy with other things to update them :P hope they're helpful anyways!
You may also be interested in @astralchainfunfacts, if you haven't already seen it.
What's the deal with gender in Metal Cardbot? Let's correct all the misinformation:
This has been a hot topic ever since Cielo and Sky Gallop made their debut in season 2, and the discussion made a comeback in season 3 with the introduction of Tachy (Sorry Phantom Hornet, whom no one seems to care about in all this).
I've compiled sources and the input from 4+ staff members and hope to put all the information in one place, so hopefully people can easily refer back to this post or share it to try and correct all the misinformation I see being spread all over the place (including on the Fandom Wiki- which I tried to correct but the admin keeps reverting changes on and has threatened to ban me for.)
TL;DR: They're all a genderless/sexless alien robot species, but the series creator/director wanted some to either be women or merely more "feminine". Some have female voice actors and some use feminine or masculine family terms to refer to themselves. Cielo, Sky Gallop, Phantom Hornet, Tachy, and Tachyon all have female voice actors and lean towards more feminine self expressions.
Rock Crush has a female VA too, but that's because they're a young child (Just like how Jun and Theo are voiced by women) though some localizations made them a girl (more on that at the end of the post).
But some members of the staff have differing takes on this. If you do want the entire history of this discussion, feel free to read on. But I'm putting it below the cut because it's quite the ramble (10~ minute read):
To start, I help out on the MCB fansubs over on the sub site! If you watched the fansubs here and noticed they/them is used for Cielo and Sky Gallop, this is because it was a temporary placeholder until we get confirmation on which pronouns to use for these characters. We didn't want to assume anything based on voice alone, especially with varying official opinions being thrown around which I'll get to later. We also wanted to stay true to the official English localization for consistency in the fansubs whenever it may come out, though even the official English dub swapped back and forth on "He" or "It" for some character pronouns. The English dub is not well known for being gramatically correct, so it's hard to tell if any neutral Cardbot pronoun attemps were made, or if it was just one of the many writing mistakes.
Originally, our translator staro_sphere used she/her for Cielo, Sky Gallop, and Phantom Hornet when handing over the script. When we asked if these were the actual pronouns the characters used during the S2 subs, we were told that in Korean, gendered pronouns like that are rarely used, and the Cardbots never use any when speaking among one another. Cielo and Sky Gallop being "women" was easily accepted in South Korea just due to being voiced by women and the character's mannerisms, but of course as complicated as the English language tries to make things, it couldn't be that easy for English speaking fans with gendered pronouns being kind of a language requirement. Though the confusion and hesitancy is also because one of the Toy Designers, Blue_audax, made this tweet claiming that "Cielo is not a female character." There was another tweet from them saying "There are no female characters in season 2". However, people keep pulling the latter tweet out to justify that "All Cardbots are men", though that is another incorrect misunderstanding which I'll get to later.
As a toy designer, one of your jobs is to sell toys. Will female character toys sell well among little boys? Apparently not, considering Cielo and Sky Gallop had fairly poor sales among all the other characters that season. They could've been trying to protect sales with this tweet, or trying to keep the higher-ups happy. Blue Audax did later say somewhat remorsefully "It took Precure many years to have a male lead. Maybe Metal Cardbot will be the same." I mean, even the director had to fight to allow Anna to wear sneakers instead of heels.
But this is just one staff member that works on the toys and some other things. They did not have total creative control over the story or characters. Osro (series creator and director), An Yujin (storyboarder/concept artist/various roles), and a few other staff members however, had other plans for these characters. Translations in ALT text:
Link to tweets: X X X
Most notable is the first one, which was posted when the discussion around Cielo's gender was being brought up again. A few other Tweets from Osro discussing this topic were deleted, but making Cielo and Sky Gallop the way they are was due to thinking that there should be characters you can call "sister" or "auntie" if there's characters being called "bro" and "uncle" too, even if they're a sexless/genderless alien robot species.
Also there's just tons of fanart from staff members of these characters all as human women. As well as them calling Cielo the eldest daughter. Or also even crushing on them a little, as An Yujin seems to have a fondness for tough and buff women.
Sources: X X X X
Though back on some fans claiming that "all cardbots are male"; this is wrong too because while Blue Audax said there's no females, that doesn't mean they're all male. Ryota Yamaguchi, the series scriptwriter, actually replied to me on twitter saying that "Metal card bots have no gender. Because they didn't understand the meaning of Jun's birthday."
Though this sounds more like a comment on the fact they have no biological sex and therefore do not reproduce, it seems at the scriptwriting stage, it's considering biological sex and gender as the same thing here. He's gone on to reiterate on this in some other tweets, but he isn't the only one to share the genderless/sexless opinion.
An animator for season 1 (who did not work on season 2) had a very interresting view to share on this subject at the time these discussions were happening. However, many of their tweets were deleted during the time many artists were purging their twitter when AI scraping user content was announced. But I think it is a noteworthy angle to view this whole subject with. You'll just have to take my word for it while I try to rely on my memory here for the gist of it.
Whenever an alien or fantasy species is created, especially for a boy's show, there tends to be the idea that "male is the default" for these kinds of things (See: Transformers) and it's something that writers should step away from in this day and age. Obviously there are a lot of problems when being female is treated as something inherently "other", especially in content meant for the developing minds of young boys. (It's clear in the tweet mentioned above that even Osro wanted to step away from this too, but the big companies tend to have the final word.) But alien species should have a lot of variance among eachother too, right? It's less realistic to assume an entire sexless species would all lean towards masculine.
It's not just a Metal Cardbot issue, but an entire genre issue when you look at any other robot series, especially ones aimed towards boys. I'm glad though that this pattern is being challenged by some of the staff. It's the 2020's after all!
After season 2 ended, and more fanart and comments from staff referred to Cielo and Sky Gallop as women, and Fleta Z was hitting on them in the end credits, most fans in Korea kept to their own view that these characters are women. When season 3 rolled around and Phantom Hornet came out with a women's voice (Same VA as Jun's mom, Yuri!), the same fans carried on treating her like another one of the "girls."
But later on in season 3, a certain character reveal caught the eye of a lot of new fans. Tachy's reveal reopened the discussion because many people unfamiliar with the series assumed Tachy was the first girl due to their appearance, the misunderstanding of Blue_Audax's previous tweets, lacking context from not seeing the director or scripwriter's tweets from season 2, and likely going to the fandom wiki thinking the information here is true, despite always using headcannons and personal interpretations as trivia.
It is true though that Tachy, from the initial character/toy design stage, was likely the first to be initially designed with a female image in mind, though is not the first "girl". Tachy's designer, GuiltyFish, made this (now deleted*) tweet suggesting she's a female character, also taking inspiration from the female character Na Ae-ri from Run Hani. (Auto translated):
*Most if not all tweets from some God Brave Studio staff talking about Metal Cardbot have since been deleted. There was no official reason or statement given as to why, but it may not be possible to source all tweets if they have not been archived.
Though nothing has yet been stated by Phantom Hornet's designer, Salbyeol, if they were initially designed with a female image in mind or not.
What do I mean by initially designed? Characters are handed off between many staff members during the creation process, undergoing various changes. Most notably is that when they reach the director, Osro, the character's head and eyes undergo some design changes. Blue_Audax also touched up a lot of colors during season 1. And as we know from above, many staff members have different ideas for a character than what ends up being the final product in the show.
For example, GBSCurry&Caloan, Sky Gallop's initial designer, said "When Sky Gallop appeared in the show, I was not expecting this kind of character." While a little vague, this may be referring to the female image they were given. Many of the toy designers don't really know what the character will be like once they appear in the show. Therefore, someone like Sky Gallop may have not been initially designed with the image of a woman by GBSC&C, but underwent some visual changes when it reached Osro who did have those intentions for the character.
Back on Tachy: While Guiltyfish seems pretty dead set on creating a feminine character, the scriptwriter continues his stance on genderless robots, saying this about Tachy:
"Who said it was a girl? You can make a mecha look like anything depending on its standing pose."
And yet Osro seems to share a similar idea to Guiltyfish. When Tachy appears in the show, they're the first to use a feminine family term for themself*(See below) and is called "daughter" by Tachyon, who also uses feminine family terms, being referred to as Tachy's mother. However, these terms are used differently by Metal Cardbots, as seen by the Speranza crew only learning of the term "Father" when coming to earth, and Blue Cop calling himself "Mom" with full seriousness (even if for a running gag this season.)
(How the concept of mom/daughter exists on Machina is yet to be explained, but my personal assumption is it's because of the existence of Deus Machina being the "mother" computer, although Wild Cardbots do not follow Deus, so this is a little contradictory.)
*Tachy calls herself "Noona" in episode 9, which is the way a younger boy should refer to an older sister. Girls call older girls "Unnie". Some Korean fans say this portrays gender neutrality while others say it's because she's saying it's what Blue Cop and the others should call her (Despite her being the youngest in the scene outside of Jun and Soleil.)
Where was I? Right, let's wrap this up. This is starting to be a lot of confusing and conflicting information, so how do we decide which is the correct interpretation, when multiple official sources seem to contradict eachother? Especially when you consider the other localization dubs, which change the gender of the characters in each different dub? Even Rock Crush, who was originally only voiced by a woman due to being a child, is apparently a girl in the Taiwanese dub.
I'd say we can still look to the cartoon itself for the answer on this. In season 1 they clearly show there's no birthdays on Machina since Cardbots do not reproduce and are not "born", and are therefore sexless alien beings. And for gender expression? Some tend to lean one way or another either by their voice or chosen family term, even if some Cardbots use them with limited understanding. However any official gender is technically not given for any character in the show itself yet, unless you count those family terms. BUT! It's evident the series creator and director wanted some of these characters to be women, if not just more "feminine."
If you read this far, I'm glad to find other fans as interested in mundane trivia as I am. I hope this helps shed some light on some of the confusion, and I may come back to update this post if anything else changes.
Again, not all staff discussing this may understand the concept of sex and gender as seperate things (Some do though!). And not all localizations will adhere to the mostly genderless setting shown in the cartoon, and will give the characters pronouns they think suit the sensibilities of their target audiences, even if it later strays from a character's perceived gender in the original Korean version. Personally I think in an ideal world, localizations of it should probably be more like Pokopia or even the Among Us Show which uses they/them for everyone. But as older language customs demand, gendered pronouns seem to be required. We have yet to see what'll happen in the English dub, but it'll be up to you if you want to use a localization or the original as your cannon.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask away and I'll try my best to answer them!
hi, i have a question. I did the Spanish subs for s1 an s2 on your site but is there a way to make them "fixed"? (like you can see the eng/jp subs without needing a subcard)
Please do not harass any staff at Agabyss or SAMG for this - I truly believe they want Metal Cardbot to succeed. I'm mostly venting my own frustrations from the perspective of someone who's been invested in this show since day one.
Some context: I'm a fansubber for Metal Cardbot and the owner of the Metal Cardbot SUB site, which has been the go-to method for tens of thousands of people to watch the series. At the time of writing, over 54,000 users-- mostly from the United States-- have used the site to watch MCB since November 2024. I constantly hear it recommended online as the definitive way to watch the show (thank you!).
I fell in love with Metal Cardbot because of what set it apart from Transformers. The designs are new and refreshing, the characters are endearing and well crafted, and the production team behind it is seriously capable. It's why, given the (terrible!!) dub of Season 1 that aired in 2024, I created the sub site to let English speakers access a more faithful translation of the series without piracy. And the show has continued to outdo itself in the seasons following it - I feel like I'm constantly blown away by every new episode of Season 3 that airs. There's a reason it's been extremely popular everywhere it's been localized - in Korea, it's only second to Teenieping, which has 6 seasons and 2 full-length movies of its own!
That's why it pains me to see Metal Cardbot treated how it currently is in the USA. Its American distributor is making some truly baffling decisions regarding the IP, and, unless some major changes are made, I have little hope that Metal Cardbot will hold any weight in the American market against Transformers and other mecha franchises.
So, what's happening?
Agabyss is the company behind the distribution of Metal Cardbot in the United States. They announced their partnership at the New York Toy Fair on March 1, 2025, and since then, they've released 6 toys from Season 1, with another 4 toys arriving in September 2026. (In Korea, there are currently 39 toys released and 1 available for preorder.)
From interviews, it seemed like this partnership was incidental. Agabyss reached out first, and SAMG was looking for an American partner at the time. SAMG has been notoriously hands-off in overseas localizations in the past, so this lines up with how they usually treat international releases.
But since their partnership was announced, Agabyss has been hyperfixated on making Metal Cardbot look appealing to adult Transformers collectors. Why is this, you may ask?
Agabyss is a company that primarily produces and distributes Transformers toys; they've designed quite a few third party toys of their own, in fact. Given this, it's understandable that they tend to gravitate towards their main audience: adult collectors. But that experience in producing TF has turned into forcing TF into an IP that doesn't need nor want it.
Change for the sake of change
There's no better place to see this than in how they present Metal Cardbot to the masses. On multiple occasions, Agabyss has attempted to rewrite the story and characters of the show to be more appealing to a Transformers audience. Just look at what they're naming them:
(The original names are already in English, by the way. They also didn't change all of them; Fleta Z, Shadow X, Buffalo Crush, and Heavy Iron remain the same.)
This would maybe be acceptable if they also redubbed the show with the new names, so it's not confusing to new fans that their favorite characters are suddenly being called something different. But Agabyss didn't redub the show for cost reasons, and only gave vague hints that they might look into it if it "does well"... and I don't know how much affiliation they have with Season 2's English dub (done by a different Canadian studio), so... guys??? Why???
They've also developed entirely new box art that's less colorful and looks much more similar to other Transformers toys:
Agabyss has even gone so far as to try and rewrite the actual story in the past, but they've thankfully backtracked on that. At one point, they started calling Jun's group of Cardbots the "New Star Guardians", which directly clashes with the current plot of the show (and I KNOW they've watched the show, they literally posted a screenshot from my sub site!). Agabyss later quietly edited their own posts to back out of this direction.
I've polled other fans on this, and the sentiment on these changes seem to be "I hate it!" and "I don't really care". I've hardly seen anyone think these names are better (besides Blue Star).
So then, I ask: why the hell are we changing the names if your current fans hate them and you don't have enough money to redub the show that the toys are from so that they actually make sense??
Now, I don't know how much of this is Agabyss's doing, and how much is SAMG. But the person in charge of bringing Metal Cardbot to the US is Jesse Wittnoto, who was previously a TF magazine editor and seems to take pride in naming Transformers toys, so I suspect a lot of these changes are under his direction.
Unfortunately, Jesse seems to be responding to fan backlash by doubling down on his decisions, which is extremely depressing. I mean, c'mon. Which toy do you think looks more show accurate? Left or right?
(The left one was created specifically to match the show.)
To me, all these changes feel arrogant. It comes across like Agabyss is saying "I know the show better than the original creators do", which is just insulting.
These choices aren't without consequence. When you have prospective buyers already looking for certain characters, your "own spin on Metal Cardbot" gets perceived as a cheap knockoff that gets devalued in search results and obscured from all but the most diehard fans. And given that it seems like Season 2's first toys will be delayed to mid-2027, I have to think these changes are slowing production down for no benefit.
Accessibility
Let's say you're a little kid who likes robots. You probably found Metal Cardbot through countless TikTok reuploads of the show, or the English Metal Cardbot YouTube channel. Now, you want more - there's a new season? And there's toys? That's so cool, you need them!
Except, you can't. The only way to get Metal Cardbot toys is on Agabyss's own storefront-- where I assume they have higher margins-- and Big Bad Toy Store, at a 10% markup. You can't even get them on Amazon, which is one of the easiest retailers to get anything onto! Let alone any physical retailers where people actually buy toys.
I know they've said they've been exploring their options on this, but how do you honestly expect people to buy Cardbots if they don't even know you're selling them? A bunch of people are into MCB that don't even know you exist. And if you can't get into Target, Walmart, or actual toy stores, do you even exist for a kid?
Now, let's say you're an adult collector. What you really love is the toys - you don't really care about the show, and you probably found out about it through a toy reviewer (like That Toy Guy) or the TFW2005 thread. These SAMG people have some seriously cool stuff - Blastrain's a sick ass train that combines? Flame Nova is so massive! They even made a combiner that has its own transforming weapons?!
But none of these toys are available in the USA, and it doesn't look like they'll be out anytime soon. Adult collectors aren't just waiting patiently for Agabyss to maybe get around to distributing them in 2-3 years. Why wait for Glober (sorry, Wayfinder) to release at $37.95 sometime in the future when you can just buy it on Amazon right now for $59.60 and have it next week? There are no real timelines for when the toys that people actually want will release, and this seems to come up in the replies every time that they post something.
Setting up supply chains takes time, and the fact that preorders for Wave 1 went "really well" is honestly fantastic. But if Agabyss wants to put their money where their mouth is, they need expansion in areas that aren't just their own store - and they need it fast. We can't have Tachy releasing in 2029, guys.
Communication
For a while, Agabyss only posted Metal Cardbot updates in two places: the official Metal Cardbot Facebook page, and the BotCon (??) Twitter account. They did make an official Metal Cardbot US Twitter account recently, but the 11 real posts it does have are mostly Facebook posts with information removed. When the bulk of the fanbase and all of the production staff are on Twitter, this seems... backwards? They also have no traction on Instagram, BlueSky, or TikTok (the latter of which is where a lot of younger fans are discovering the show).
There is also an official English metalcardbotTV YouTube channel that posts episode clips, but I am not sure if Agabyss has access to this. It seems like they don't, since no mention of toys have ever showed up on this account - and they've been stuck reuploading clips of the same Season 1 episodes since December 2025. (This YouTube account has also made some baffling decisions, but that's a story for another time.)
Agabyss is not very good at communicating things. Ignoring some sloppily-made AI generated advertisements that they only changed after being called out on it - did you know they raised prices on all of the toys by about 5-10% yesterday? Yup-- it turns out the original prices were actually "introductory prices" and not the actual retail price, despite their website not reflecting this at the time of Wave 1's release. The only mention of this is in a Facebook post the day before it happened, and a newsletter sent out two days before. They even made Twitter posts during that time that omitted this information! Is that not insane?
How things could be
I've been very negative in this post, so let me show you what a real Metal Cardbot distributor looks like.
Let's look at JUMPGO, the distributor for Metal Cardbot in China. They started about two years earlier than Agabyss, and in that time:
It's surpassed 500 million cumulative views and topped viewership charts on streaming services
It's ranked #1 for robot-related searches on Taobao (China's equivalent of Amazon)
They've held multiple in-person events for kids and adults
They've created three entire mascot costumes, and post original Metal Cardbot comics on their social media accounts
They're on season 2 of their own Metal Cardbot live-action spinoff that has its own toys
I know this isn't an apples to apples comparison. Agabyss is much smaller than JUMPGO, and JUMPGO has a unique position in that they're also the manufacturer of the toys. But it just shows you how much reach the series can get if given the chance, and it saddens me that Metal Cardbot won't ever achieve this level of prominence in the United States.
What to do
If someone at Agabyss is reading this and somehow sat through my angry rambling, here's what I wish as a completely uninformed crazy man that's mad people can't get their hands on plastic toys.
Put your toys on actual shelves. This is hard, I know, but you get no sales if you don't exist. Most people are buying them on Amazon and eBay, so start there. (If I search "metal cardbot mega trucker" on Google after seeing him in Episode 1 of your own dub, I should not have to go to page 10 to find the first real store listing. And it's not even an Agabyss.com listing!)
Meet your fans where they are. Your top priority should be getting toys out, not changing things. Engage with fans on Twitter and TikTok, and understand what they like about MCB. Integrate the show better with the toys you are selling, so people naturally know where to look after watching it.
Keep fans updated. Your current English fanbase is avidly watching the Korean release as it happens, so tap into that hype! (And no, retweeting the MF/MC Development Twitter account doesn't count.)
STOP CHANGING STUFF! We're not 4Kids, guys. Why are you doing this. Stop trying to act like you know the show better than the production team!
I'm glad Metal Cardbot is coming to the USA, in any capacity. But if we want the show to get the recognition it deserves, we need to do more than the bare minimum, and not make it appear like it's yet another Transformers clone.
Conclusion
Metal Cardbot will always have its roots in Transformers. The director, Seoro Oh (aka OSRO), got his start making Transformers animations on YouTube, and you can draw direct inspirations from TF to characters like Heavy Iron.
But what makes Cardbot special is that it's not Transformers. Just look at any toy review online - they'll say that Cardbot is a breath of fresh air with toys that are fun to play with and ripe to compete with Transformers if given the chance.
But Agabyss just isn't giving them the chance. It seems like they'd rather keep trying to fit a Cardbot-shaped peg into a Transformers-shaped hole, and sloppily at that. That's what makes it so frustrating as a fan.
I know they've said in many interviews that they're trying, and global tensions aren't helping them ship stuff from Asia. And I get that - but it's been over a year and we don't even have a release date for the end of season 1. To me, Agabyss seems more preoccupied with stomping on the creativity of the production team rather than releasing toys that fans actually want and giving the show the spotlight it deserves.
If they continue like this, I don't have any hope for Metal Cardbot in the United States.
sorry if this is annoying, or if you've gotten tons of these asks!
with metal cardbot w coming out pretty soon, will you also be subbing it on your website? no pressure if not, i'm just curious!
also thank you for subbing the previous two seasons, the original/korean dub is my favorite even though i don't speak korean (yet... ^^)
We will be subbing Metal Cardbot W! However, due to copyright restrictions, we can't add subs until the episodes appear on the official YouTube channel, which can take a few months. But once they're there, they'll be subbed on the website soon after!
We might have something else planned for the holidays, though... stay tuned! :)
Hi, just a question, on the page to watch Metal Cardbots with subtitles, how can one add them? I would like to add Spanish subtitles when I go on vacation (very busy right now with school) but I don't know what I should do. On your Twitter I saw that you helped with the English translation (correct me if I'm wrong).
Spanish subs would be so awesome! Thank you for wanting to contribute more subs for MCB! @cabalex would probably be better to ask about these things (being the website creator!), but I'll give a little rundown of how you can make your own subtitles and sub card!
on the website first, click these two thangs:
then after selecting which episode you want to work on, click "load from default subtitles" here:
and this is where the magic happens:
you can also adjust timings with the buttons here too. and you can select "add line" to add a line between two others. timings will need to then be adjusted with the buttons. if you don't want to work within the website, you can download the .srt files and edit them that way! you can load them back into the subtitle editor on the website later too.
and now for saving and exporting!:
make sure not to edit the subtitle card in any image editors afterwards, because it can mess up the file.
I hope my MS paint guide is helpful but if you have any other questions feel free to ask either of us!
If anyone ever needs to know anythings abt metal cardbot please never ever consult the fandom wiki if u want correct information. Fixes have been attempted but get undone in favor of wrong information 😑…
Theres plenty of ppl u can ask if u ever need info! Though anything with an actual source in the trivia section is usually reliable!
Fun fact: Despite shit and ass being used fluently throughout the game's dialogue, the common swear word "Fuck" does not make any appearance in Astral Chain.
Go follow @astralchainfunfacts if you're interested in a bunch of random facts about a 6 year old game that I've spent way too long in!
You'll get to see this!
And this!
And... wow, I have a lot of these things.
Although I suspect most of you follow me because of Metal Cardbot, and that's fine too. I'm not a cop.
(actually, why do both of the things I obsess over contain human-alien partners who are chained together and one of them is also a police officer?? Maybe some of you will like this blog after all...)
4 PM PST: Updated to clarify TCG information. (It's not being planned at the moment.)
Thank you to @rinovarka for covering this event! Please see the full Twitter thread for more info.
What's new since Toyfair in February?
Names have been changed, again. See below.
They showcased the first episode of the dub at the panel. The dub appears to be the same as the existing one, even down to the old names (Blue Cop, Mega Trucker). Rino writes that "A light apology is given for the English dubbing, as it was done for affordability, and that Season 2's localization should be better."
If the first wave is received well, then there's more justification for quality dubbing, marketing, etc.. Lots of things (human figures, comic, etc) were answered with "if it does well, then maybe!",
There are talks about making a new Metal Cardbot TCG for the US audience, since TCGs don't attract much attention in Asia, but it's hypothetical (source)
They hope that MCB becomes good competition in the transforming robot market (people who work on MCB know TF and the American market, and study them for fresh views/ideas).
Planned to be distributed at Entertainment Earth, BBTS, and Amazon in Fall 2025. They hope to distribute to larger, in-person retailers in the future... "maybe"
Prototype packaging was shown off (see below) - not final
Prototype Packaging (Toyfair vs BotCon)
Toyfair coverage: misswhynowhy on Twitter
Cardbots
Season 1, Wave 1 (releasing Late 2025/2026)
Names are not final, and "they acknowledge the translated names arent that great right now", and that they're still tweaking them (and possibly the names in the dub).
Names marked in blue are new.
Blue Star (Blue Cop, formerly Blue Cobalt) - $23.99
Shadow X - $23.99
Bluster Gale (Buster Gallon) - $23.99
Mech Tackle (Mega Trucker) - $32.99
Steel Hook (Black Hook) - $32.99
Heavy Iron - $49.99
Season 1, TBD price and release date
Wild Guardian (Wild Guardy)
Buffalo Crush
Med Alert (Mega Ambler)
Fire Buster (Phoenix Fire)
Dextrous (Dexter)
Fleta Z
Ultimate Blue Star (Ultimate Blue Cop)
While Season 2 toys were shown off at the event, there was no timeline or plans announced to bring them to US retailers.
TL;DR: Dub is the same. More names changed, though none of it is final. The first wave'll come out in late 2025, along with the dub on Tubi and YouTube, which'll probably be very similar to the one we already have.
"Loud support when MCB hits the Western Market greatly needed to justify bigger and better things :]" - Rino
Does everyone have their popcorn ready for the finale of season 2? Tune in here tomorrow for the final episode!
I had a lot of fun lending a hand with the edits for the English fansubs this season, but all thanks goes to @cabalex and staro_sphere for making it possible in the first place! Friday's are gonna start to feel a lil empty now 🥲...
i believe the font for the english on the logos is (a modified) "paladins" by Iconian Fonts, which is free for personal use and can be downloaded here.
I appreciate and applaud all the work you've put in to sub Metal Cardbot! I was wondering if you planned to do MCB S in the future? Sorry if this question has been asked before, I just wanted to know before sitting down and just watching the show without captions (and therefore not understanding anything, but it's better than not watching Metal Cardbot at all).
I totally did not see this message, so my apologies! Obviously, the answer exists right now, thanks to a fellow MCB fan who was willing to translate it.
Ultimately the bottleneck right now is how fast they upload the second season to YouTube. For Season 1, they uploaded the first two episodes before taking an five month break (April - September). I suspect they'll do the same thing with S2, to push people towards their [Korean-only] streaming service. But once they're on YouTube, we'll likely have subs for them soon after!
Also, when the official dub comes out (likely late 2025), I'll be sure to make subtitles from that and add it to the website! :)
Merry Christmas, everyone! Thanks to staro_sphere over on Twitter and @cabalex and a little bit of editing from me, we were able to put together English fansubs for episode 1! We're not sure about the youtube airing schedule just yet, but we will try to continue to work on this in the meantime. As always, these are put over the official youtube channel's videos, so they retain all views and ad revenue. Make sure to leave them a like too!
I hope everyone has a happy holiday! 🎁🎄And we hope you enjoy the subs!
@cabalex Has done some amazing work to put together the Metal Cardbot English sub!!! If anyone has been waiting for subtitles to check this show out, now's the time! The subtitles are based on the English dub which is still being released, so the rest of the episodes will steadily be added as those come out.
No need for any VPNs, and these subtitles are overlaid on the official channel's Youtube videos! This way you get full quality, without piracy!
A fun little bonus is that your browser's translate features capture these subtitles too, which works a little better than youtube's built in auto translate. So anyone looking for another language, this may be a good option too!
I hope more people can come enjoy Metal Cardbot now!!! I really love this series, and hope others will as well! 💙
Do you have some Splatoon trivia that you couldn't find time/a place to tell but you really want to?
how about i give some extremely niche and pointless trivia that i discovered and have never seen anyone else mention:
the busses in inkopolis are mint green and dark green. this is the same color as the kyoto city busses, which is the city where nintendo is headquartered in
UPDATE: A new skip has been discovered that skips from File 02 to File 11! Though it's not without caveats: you already need a save file at File 11 in the first place. It's being run at SGDQ 2024, but a great explanation of the glitch can be found here.
A lot of video games have "ultra shortcuts", ways to skip hours of an otherwise completely linear game. Many of these take the form of clipping into loading areas left behind by the developer, or warping to the credits using some obscure trick.
Astral Chain has been out for over three years now, and has a relatively active speedrunning community (hell, ratyu's going to be speedrunning it at GDQ this year!). So, clearly there should be at least some major game-breaking glitch that lets you skip significant parts of a file, right?
Well... there isn't. The biggest skips speedrunners have found are in the Astral Plane sections, with some notable skips being the File 03 Hal skip, File 05 Beast fight, and second Hal Skip. But even those save a handful of minutes at best in a two and a half hour speedrun.
So, what gives?
Okay, so what are our options?
Having no major skips doesn't mean there's no glitches at our disposal. Even though Astral Chain is a relatively well built game, there's still some glitches that abuse the Legion system.
In fact, using a technique known as superclimbing, you can gain almost infinite height. While airborne, if you summon the Arrow Legion at the peak of your jump and chain jump, dismiss, and resummon them, you can repeatedly gain height almost anywhere you choose.
Superclimb clearly has potential, but another glitch known as Arrow Storage makes it so much stronger. Arrow Storage allows you to keep your Legion summoned even in areas that don't normally allow it, including the Police HQ, Hal's Hideout, on ladders, and even the character select screen in File 01.
So with speedrunners being able to essentially infinite jump anywhere they please, why can't we skip major sections of the game?
The game's structure isn't kind to major skips
Astral Chain is an incredibly linear game. As such, it relies heavily on a global story progression counter (internally "File_Scenario"), which increments as you progress through the game.
Almost all in-game logic (playing cutscenes, loading new areas, summoning enemies, etc) are done using quests, a system that not only codes red and blue cases, but also story progression and the entirety of the Astral Plane. The game loads these quests on a file-by-file basis depending on what environment you're currently in.
Inside these quests are scripts called tasks, which are responsible for the game logic listed above. Tasks are difficult to explain, but here's the gist:
Each task is made up of individual lists of code blocks called LineLists.
LineLists are made up of IF and EXEC blocks. IF blocks check a certain condition in the game (such as if enemies in an enemy set have been defeated), while EXEC blocks run game functions (such as setting flags and spawning enemies).
In each task, LineList 0 constantly loops over and over until a block tells it to move somewhere else.
Due to the structure of the game, all quests in an environment are ran at once. Basically, every quest has to individually check the global story progression counter before running their logic.
[Scratch blocks are a great way to represent these tasks!]
For example, these enemies are only loaded and unloaded when the global "File_Scenario" flag is in the correct position (between two points in File 02). This makes skipping even just a single story trigger impossible.
You can see this in game: if you try skipping over a section, like a trigger in File 07, everything after it (cases, cutscenes, story triggers) won't load, even if you stand in the areas where they should be.
This programming decision is the main reason why major parts of Astral Chain can't be skipped. The game just refuses to do anything if you're not in the right story position!
The game's environments use extremely tall, hardcoded invisible walls
If you've ever tried superclimbing over the railing on the Helipad of the Police HQ, or over the edges of the rooftop of Zone 36, you'll notice it's impossible. That's because these sections use tall invisible walls.
Like... extremely tall.
These walls are hardcoded into the game's environments. The developers clearly did not want you to get out of bounds here, so they created giant walls to keep you out.
"But we can jump over a bunch of invisible walls in the speedrun. Why are these different?" you may ask.
Walls that are temporary (such as the "no entry" police barrier you see throughout the game) is a dynamic object created by a quest. Since this barrier object is used hundreds of times throughout the game, it has a fixed (and relatively short) height to ensure they don't accidentally block something above or below.
As it is, we don't have a reliable way to clip through solid walls. So if you were looking to clip out of the playing area to skip a trigger, it probably won't work.
So how do Astral Plane skips work?
If you've ever watched the speedrun of this game, you'll notice that Astral Plane sections are broken wide open. What makes these areas so exploitable?
There are three major reasons why most skips are in the Astral Plane:
The Astral Plane is generated by quests! 90% of the Astral Plane sections in the game are just a collection of blocks fit together like puzzle pieces, in contrast to the Ark environments that are loaded from a single model file. Thus, the Astral Plane doesn't have extremely tall invisible walls-- all invisible walls used are dynamic objects and can easily be superclimbed over.
Story progression is never incremented nor checked in the Astral Plane. If you can get to the final area in an Astral Plane section, the final cutscene or portal will automatically spawn.
Astral Plane sections are often extremely nested with many exposed holes and gaps, makes traversing into areas you're not supposed to go very easy for speedrunners.
For these reasons, skipping the Beast fight and Hal sections are exploited to great extent in full-game speedruns.
Well, that's depressing. What can we do?
Not all hope is lost! It's entirely possible that there are glitches just waiting to be discovered. The quest system could have flaws that allow us to skip instructions, or we could find ways to clip through walls. There are some instances where story progression isn't checked at all-- it's possible there could be new ways to skip these that we haven't found yet.
Along with this, case-specific progression can be completely separate from the global story progression counter, so there could be ways to avoid doing the full extent of a required case.
In all, most of the tasks increment the global story progression counter rather than set it to a certain value, so it's possible we could find a repeatable quest that could rapidly advance our story position.
Outside of glitches, another ultra-skip intended by the developer would be to find the game's "Final Secret", implemented in many Platinum Games titles by inputting the Platinum Code (↑ ↓ ↑ → ← X B Y A). Although initially not thought to be in the game, datamines have revealed sound effects seemingly related to this final secret:
I guess all that's left is to find this secret, right?
- - -
Updated May 28, 2024 to add additional insights in Astral Chain quest research - we know what the story progression counters are called now!
Please let me know if I've gotten any information wrong regarding speedrunning -- this is just based off of the routes I've seen runners use. Thanks for reading ^^
