LEGO Exo-Force Story Explained: Sentai Mountain to the Golden City

LEGO Exo-Force ran from 2006 to 2008 and told one continuous war story through online comics, chapter books and the sets themselves. It was LEGO's first theme built around human pilots in mecha, with a clear anime influence, and it stopped before its story did. This is that story in order. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

How the war began#

Sentai Mountain was once a place where humans and robots worked side by side. The robots did the heavy labour and the humans kept them running. That balance ended with Meca One, a golden robot able to think for itself. It decided the machines had no reason to serve anyone, reprogrammed the others and led them in revolt. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

The fighting split the mountain in two. The humans drove the robots into the gorge between the halves, but the robots rebuilt and came back in a second rebellion. This time the humans lost the south and anyone left there was enslaved. Bridges crossed the gorge, the Tenchi Bridge above all, and holding them became the whole war. Keiken recruited young pilots, built battle machines of his own and based them at Sentai Fortress. That team was Exo-Force. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

2006: the Battle of Sentai Fortress#

The first arc opens with Hikaru nearly shot down by a robot Fire Vulture flying a manoeuvre no robot should know. He traces it to Takeshi's father, a pilot believed lost, and goes south against orders to find him. He finds him alive and forced to work for the robots, whose scanners had been stealing his knowledge. The rescue brings home Takeshi's family too, and shows how the robots really work: they can't invent, so they copy human designs. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

Meca One answers with the Striking Venom, a four-legged walker far bigger than anything on the mountain, and commits his whole army to crossing the bridge. Ryo's virus had already wiped much of the robots' stolen design data, but the walker still reaches the fortress. Takeshi finally stops it by parking his Grand Titan under the cockpit and firing everything he has into its one weak spot. The robots pull back. Keiken knows they'll simply build more, so he turns to an old legend. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

2007: the Golden City#

Takeshi, Hikaru and Ryo climb the mountain and find the Golden City hidden behind an invisibility field. Inside, a giant computer asks for codes. Each code it accepts gives up more of what its unknown builders left behind, starting with three new machines: the Blade Titan, the Sky Guardian and the Cyclone Defender. The robots follow them, having planted a bug on Ryo's Uplink, and the race for the codes begins. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

With Sentai Fortress wrecked, the humans move into the city, and Meca One uses a code of his own to extend a bridge straight to it. Two side stories stand out here. Ha-Ya-To goes underground in the Aero Booster and ends up in a truce with a Devastator pilot against a monster that hunts machines. And Keiken's granddaughter Hitomi disobeys him, flies the Blazing Falcon into battle and recovers a code with Takeshi that turns out to hold the complete blueprints of Meca One. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

The fall of the shield and the jungle#

The Golden Tower gives the humans a force field the robots can't cross. Then Keiken sends the team back to Sentai Fortress on what turns out to be a pointless errand, and while they're away he destroys the generator himself. He's a Meca One double. The real Keiken has already been captured. The army pours in behind the Mobile Devastator, and the team only saves the city by jamming the robots at the last moment. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

A hidden message from Keiken then explains that he built the first golden robot from ancient technology he found in the jungle at the foot of the mountain. The 2008 arc sends the pilots there to reach that outpost before Meca One pulls its location from Keiken's mind. (LEGO Exo-Force online comics)

Why the story stops#

LEGO ended the theme at the end of 2008. The chapter books had already been cut short after poor sales, with two planned volumes never released, and the online comic ended in March 2008. Keiken's rescue is usually assumed, but what actually gave the robots life was never explained, and the war has no ending. (LEGO Exo-Force chapter books)