"I come from the Nickscast. Through conventions, people, and cities, to this place - Fanthropological. My format, Co-host: To state and investigate. To learn about my new found friends, their hopes and dreams, and to defend them from their enemies. ... They say _the chat_ lives outside the podcast and inputs text for pleasure. No one knows for sure, but I intend to find out!"
Uh... yeah. We're talking about fans of ReBoot (the animated series). Next week? Retrogaming!
History and Origins:
ReBoot is a Canadian CGI-animated action-adventure television series that originally aired from 1994 to 2001. It was produced by Vancouver-based production company Mainframe Entertainment, Alliance Communications and BLT Productions. The series follows the adventures of a Guardian named Bob and his companions Enzo and Dot Matrix as they work to keep the computer system of Mainframe safe from the viruses known as Megabyte and Hexadecimal. It was the world's first ever half-hour, completely computer-animated TV series. ...
A reimagined, live-action/CG-animated series, ReBoot: The Guardian Code, was announced in 2015 and is slated to premiere on Netflix worldwide (excluding Canada) on March 30, 2018. YTV will later broadcast the series sometime in June 2018.
Search Data:
Considering that the show aired until 2001, _Google Trends'_ usual 2004 limit on data almost works in this case! Interest in the show has been mostly flat, or arguably on a very slow decline. There have been some notable spikes in interested around July 2007 (likely due to the announcement of a potential trilogy of films), May 2008 (Countdown to the launch of a webcomic, _Code of Honor_), December 2010 (Possibly due to the rights being acquired for a full DVD release) and February 2018 (The announcement of _ReBoot: The Guardian Code_ with a release date).
The top ten countries, by search volume: Canada, Philippines, South Africa, Kenya, United States, Pakistan, New Zealand, Croatia, Puerto Rico, and Singapore.
Size of Fandom:
Some of the notes on ReBoot in fanlore mention it as a microfandom: a source with some interest beyond a single fan, but perhaps not with a specific community or fansite, or without a lot of fanworks.
That being said, we can still give a rough estimate of the size of the fandom based on a few different data sources:
With so few data points, and the new series not being released yet, it's hard to estimate the size of the fandom. A rough estimate would be in the low _tens-of-thousands_.
Fanac Fast Facts:
G
How much non-nostalgic interest is there in the series?
T
Is there a reboot fan convention?
Z
Is there another country where Reboot was and is popular?
Z is in. Missed