How's this for a story idea. A grandfather and his grandchildren are on a trip around America for summer vacation. The grandson has a special alien watch that can temporarily change his DNA to other alien species, the granddaughter is learning magic from a spell book stolen from two evil magicians, and the grandfather is a member of a secret army (of sorts), knows a lot about alien weapons, and is always packing heat when it comes to weekly dangers from aliens, mutants, magicians and more, wanting the watch stuck on the grandson's arm. Would you watch that show? Well I did growing up, and now I'm going to review it because its something I've been meaning to for quite some time now, and so I'm going to use this marathon as an excuse to talk about it.
The show itself is an action/ comedy hybrid which was very common back then, following the template of "they're at a new location, an alien/ magician/ monster attacks it, they have to stop the threat". Most of the time its Ben on his own with Gwen and Grandpa Max acting as support, but as the show goes on it becomes an even split of the work. The comedy, aside from character interactions, comes from the watch itself, known as the Omnitrix. While Ben can transform into 10 (and eventually more) aliens... he doesn't always get the alien he wants from the Omnitrix. On top of that, the Omnitrix has a habit of "plot convenience syndrome" in how long of a charge it has. Sometimes it doesn't last very long, maybe minutes in universe, other times it can last for a few in universe hours. Because giving one of the most dangerous weapons in the universe to a 10 year old wasn't dangerous enough, now he can't always control it. "This is going to work out well for everyone", especially when some of the aliens he has in the watch include one that can control fire, a muscle man with four arms, an alien that can hack and control anything, one that can duplicate itself theoretically infinite times, a giant, a human cannonball, and more. To be fair, people in universe also think its an awful idea. It's an interesting take for a Superhero esque show, as the basic way to look at it is "what do you get if you combine Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends with Spiderman, but make Peter Parker even younger, make Aunt May a member of a secret interstellar army, and give Peter a magical cousin". In fact the Marvel comparison is pretty accurate because some of the recent Marvel shows (Ultimate Spiderman and Avengers Assemble), along with the incoming Big Hero 6 show and Mega Man show were all done by "Man of Action", and this was their first show.
What does help this show's balance is the characters. Ben, Gwen and Max all work off each other really well, with a very believable relationship (trust me, that's a thing going for it because I can count all the "realistic families on TV shows that I've seen" on one hand). It's rare that they get super serious and when they do, its a sign of something important happening. Combine that with a wide variety of villains, some serious, some personal, some.... actually I don't know how to describe Doctor Animo, imagine Doctor Frankenstein but works on animals and aliens. Heck, some of the comedy comes from the names of the organizations. As an example, a space police/ army esque secret organization outfitted with high tech alien weapons and tools with bases all over America. Now let's give them the name of "The Plumbers"... No, I'm not kidding. As a result, the show finds a nice balance of silly and serious, something the later shows struggle with from what I've heard.
In terms of presentation. The best way to describe it is "Western, non traditional anime". It has an anime feel to it, this was the tail end of the anime craze, but it's also not. It's not like Avatar which is Western anime, but it does take a lot of cues from Japan's animation style, it's a nice mash up of the two styles. The original Teen Titans is another example of that fusion of styles, and is the best comparison for many. I however can't comment on any of the major differences between them because I haven't seen the original Teen Titans yet. Soundtrack is ok, I've heard better songs from tv shows, but it does stand out at least, it doesn't just blend in too much into the visuals. It's not my personal taste, but its not something I outright hate either so it doesn't kill the experience for me.
And the experience itself is, to this day, still a blast. I think I'm pissing off a lot of people by not looking at some of Cartoon Network's worst programming, but to be fair, there are a lot of quality shows that they have made, and this is one of them. I'm not surprised that it was one of the four recent reboots, alongside shows like Teen Titans Go and Powerpuff Girls 2016, as it does still hold up. I'm not commenting either way on how the reboot handles the original show, that is a story for another day. With summer coming up here, and the holidays already starting for some students (good luck to all those going into end of year exams), this show is one I would recomend checking out over the Summer, assuming you aren't busy with all the game releases. For me, and I'm going to say that I'll try to get these out next week, but up next is a new movie comm on Wednesday, and on Thursday will be a review to close off CNtober, The Amazing World of Gumball.
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